10 Things You Didn't Know About Disney's The Haunted Mansion

3. Going Down?

When you first enter the Haunted Mansion, you're taken into an octagonal room with a high-ceiling and a number of portraits adorning the walls. These include a a balding man dressed in a black tailcoat, with a white shirt, red sash, and black bowtie; Constance Hatchaway, an old woman smiling with a red rose; a brown-haired man in a brown suit, with his arms folded; and a young brunette lady with a pink parasol. Then the room begins to stretch, and reveals the more macabre side of these paintings. The tail-coated man isn't wearing any trousers; Constance Hatchaway sits atop her husband's tombstone; the brown-haired man is on top of another's shoulder's and there's a third man underneath him trapped in quicksand; the young lady is on a fraying tightrope above an alligator. The question, once you're over the shock, is are you going down or is the room going up? The answer is...both. In California and Paris, in order to save space, guests descend a level to where the ride starts, while in Tokyo and Orlando, which have more room to play with, the ceiling rises.