It’s the 25th anniversary of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and the 18th time tat Jack Skellington has visited the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and added his own special flair for decorating transforming it into the Haunted Mansion Holiday. One of Jack’s holiday traditions is leaving a giant gingerbread house inside the mansion’s grand hall.
This year’s gingerbread house is now on display in the Haunted Mansion and it’s every bit as scary as you could desire. Once again Tim Wollweber, associate art director for Disney Parks, helped define the design of the gingerbread display.
“We wanted to create a monster movie vibe, and a scary spider is a classic and iconic Halloween image. With that in mind, we designed a giant 5-foot spider with eerie glowing eyes and moving legs and mandibles. This multicolor spider is suspended above the Haunted Mansion’s Grand Hall table, attempting to pry the edible mansion from its foundation, revealing candy cane rebar and sparking lights. General chaos ensues as gingerbread zombies watch in astonishment and cocoon-wrapped gingerbread zombies wait to become spider snacks.”
An enormous five-foot multicolor spider with an intricate ‘stained glass’ design on its back rests atop the house. The spider and the gingerbread house together is made of 90 pounds of gingerbread, 30 pounds of confectioner’s sugar, 10 pounds of white chocolate, and 45 pounds of fondant.
We like looking for all the little gingerbread men, some of whom appear to have run into gruesome ends despite arming themselves with forks and other kitchen instruments.
It took more than a month to bake all the gingerbread involved in creating the Gingerbread House and no less than 12 pastry chefs.
You’ll be able to experience the Haunted Mansion Holiday through early January 2019.