Theory About Haunted Mansion Holiday

[Karalora]

I know this topic is a bit, oh, unseasonal, but I wanted to share it with you.

Those who have visited the Haunted Mansion Holiday the past two years might have noticed a few things they added for 2002--most notably, some of the original music from "The Nightmare Before Christmas". (For 2001, they had some music that was in a similar style, but none of the actual tunes that were in the movie.) My friends and I believe that we have a video game to thank for this.

Between December of 2001 and October of 2002, Disney Interactive, in collaboration with Squaresoft, released a game called Kingdom Hearts. For those of you who aren't familiar with the game, it involves a young boy who travels to the settings of various Disney movies. One of the places he visits is Halloweentown, and the background music for that stage of the game is an instrumental version of "This is Halloween".

Obviously, Disney had to purchase the rights for that music from Danny Elfman, the composer. It would not surprise me to learn that they negotiated for rights to all of his "Nightmare" music at the same time, and that's why it was in the ride the second year, but not the first.

What do you all think?

[netenyahoo]

could be

[a.j.DANK]

Who knows, but I love Haunted Mansion Holiday. The neon colors in there are such a trip to look at.

[disneyfreak62]

Wouldn't Disney already own the rights to use the music? Since it was a Disney-made movie (Toutchstone).

[Karalora]

Wouldn't Disney already own the rights to use the music? Since it was a Disney-made movie (Toutchstone).

I don't think so. I think Elfman had the exclusive rights to his own music beforehand. If Disney already had it, why would they leave it out of the HMH 2001?

[Briguy1314]

maybe a time issue?

[Karalora]

maybe a time issue?

How so?

[Briguy1314]

maybe they didnt think about it till it was too late. that or money. they waited till the next years budget.

[Karalora]

maybe they didnt think about it till it was too late. that or money. they waited till the next years budget.

Neither one of those possibilities rings true to me. The music is one of the big theming points in their movie-based rides; it's not likely that they'd forget it. And if they already had the rights to the music, it would actually cost them more to have someone compose new tunes than to use the ones they already had.

Or maybe I just like the idea that we owe the HMH enhancement to Sora and Riku.

[DisneyPrincess81]

they might have been able to push it off for a year, and realized it was a great way to spruce up the ride... maybe in 2001 they didn't know if they needed the music, and then decided to try it out for 2002...