Extinct Attractions Haunted Mansion
As an avid Haunted Mansion fan, I get excited going to Disney and riding the Haunted Mansion. In the early 1990s, I would bring a cassette recorder with me to record some of the sounds in the Haunted Mansion. The purpose of capturing the sounds was a way to remember the trip.
Favorite Clip Challenges
A couple my favorite sounds:"Welcome Foolish Mortals to the Haunted Mansion"
This is very hard to capture because you have to be in the stretching room as soon as the doors open. In addition, to get the best quality of sound you need to know which speaker the audio is coming from and most importantly have a quiet room.
"Our library is well-stocked with priceless first editions. Only ghost stories, of course. And marble busts of the greatest ghost writers the literary world has ever known. They have all retired here, to the Haunted Mansion."
"Actually, we have 999 happy haunts here, but there's room for 1000. Any volunteers, hmmm? If you should decide to join us, final arrangements may be made at the end of the tour...."
This can be tricky to capture because the sound quality isn't the same in all the doom buggies. For some reason, some of the doom buggies speakers would fail just before you get to the library. You end up hearing the ghost host from nearby doom buggies.
I like this clip because this track is only played in Disney World as the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland doesn't have a library.
Extinct Attraction Club to the Rescue
Around the turn of the century, Haunted Mansion fans could have gotten a CD copy of individual sounds from Extinct Attractions. According to the sales pitch, the audio clips were pulled from the same audio used in the Haunted Mansion. The quality of sound was worth the price.
Extinct Attractions was created as a resource for people to share old home movies of attractions that are no longer at Disney. Guest could purchase DVDs and relive such rides as Tiki Room and Carousel of Progress.
I purchased my audio collection in 2006. Today I still listen to the audio around Halloween or just before heading on my next Disney vacation.
The 3 CD collection has 71 tracks including: HM Virtual Audio Tour, Foyer Music (Stereo), Four 1969 Radio Spots, Stretch & Portrait Hall (Ghost Host), Load Area Wolf Howl, Bells, DoomBuggy Load (Ghost Host), Hall Clock Loop, Madame Leota (Final), Ghost Host With Organ, Pistols, Ballroom (Stereo), Attic Heart Beat & Screams, Attic Scream 1, Heartbeat (Isolated), Caretaker's Dog, Cats, Chanting Ghosts, Bones & Flute (Isolated, Stereo), Deaf Guy, Singing Busts Tracks, Ghost Host Goodbye (Stereo), Exit Crypt Music, Little Leota_ Hurry Back, Come Back, Grim Grinning Ghosts, Otherworldly Music.
The Foyer and Ballroom music tracks are great as background music when you need to drown out the background of an open office.
Extinct Attractions Club Takedown
When it seems too good to be true...
Disney sued the Extinct Attractions Club in 2010 and as a result completely shut down their sales pipeline. This could explain why I haven't gotten any emails since May 25, 2010. In the prior email the subject was "Extinct Attraction Extinct?" There were a couple of issues not related to the take-down by Disney.
Disney Lawyers has imposed the owner, David O'Neal, a Million dollar fine if he used any Disney materials for future sales. According to various internet sites, prior to the shutdown, he was shipping nearly 1,800 DVDs a week.
Initially David justified his sales as portions of the sales went to help the homeless around Anaheim. Evidently, he got greedy and Disney caught on and shut down the mail order business.
Today, the Extinct Attractions Club is still operating, but they no longer selling any merchandise. They appear to still comply with Disney lawyers.
Occasionally you'll find some CDs or DVDs on eBay from Disney fans selling their personal collection. If you do see the Haunted Mansion CD/DVD collection, I would highly recommend getting it.
Alternative Solution
If you're looking for a legal version of the Haunted Mansion Soundtrack, check out the "Haunted Mansion souvenir soundtracks" Soundtrack. You'll find some ride audio walkthrough.
The Disney CDs doesn't include the individual clips that were in the Extinct Attractions Club. Maybe some day they will offer it? Perhaps on the 50th-anniversary audio collection.
The walk through audio quality is still better than if you were to personally record the media for yourself. Certainly can't go wrong.
You can pick up the CD at Memento Mori (Haunted Mansion store in the Magic Kingdom).
Extinct Attraction Media
Warning to anyone that purchased any media from Extinct Attractions.
None of the extinct attractions videos were ever manufactured on pressed DVDs as they were always done on regular DVD media. This is true for the CD collection too. This means that they may lose quality over time, much faster than pressed media would.
Since you can't get a replacement for your media should anything happen to it. You should back up your CD or DVD collection. The easiest way to do backup the CD collection is to 'Mix-Rip-Burn' the CD via iTunes.