It’s that time of year again, where the happiest place on earth has taken a turn for the scary and frightful. Disneyland has been taken over by the Disney Villains for the month of October to assist in celebrating Halloween with their own villainous flair. The Disneyland theme park has been redecorated to capture the essence of the fall season, but when the sun begins to set, the villains come out to play and Disneyland is transformed into the spookiest place to be. Your favorite Disney characters dawn their Halloween costumes to be a part of the celebration that is going on throughout the park, with monstrous shows and gripping meet and greets with your favorite Disney characters.
As you walk into the park at the start of the party, villains such as the Evil Queen, Jafar, and Maleficent are standing around Town Square waiting to recruit you to be a villain and…. to take a picture with you… But let’s be real, you’re going to be taking loads of pictures throughout the night. Of course, Mickey can’t leave his park unattended during such a frightful evening, so he and his friends put on their costumes to keep the fiends in line and join in the Halloween celebration.
During the day, the Royal Hall, where you can go and meet your favorite Disney princesses, has been apprehended and transformed into a meeting place for you to meet even more of the Disney villains trying to take over the park. Who comes to meet you inside these stoned walls changes every night so visit it often, you never know when you’ll come face to face with your favorite Disney villain.
Tomorrowland is one of the only areas where villains have not taken over. Instead the top scaring Monsters from Disney and Pixar’s movie Monster’s University, James P. Sullivan and Mike Wizowski decorate the Tomorrowland Terrace to look like their school so that they may host their very own Scare Academy.
With the help of the Monster of Scaremonies, and the fearleaders, Mike and Sulley face off in a head-to-head scare competition with teams of four frightfully costumed monsters chosen from the crowd to determine who the top scaring monster team is. This show is great for kids of all ages and enjoyable for the whole family to watch and with so many scary monsters in the area it is sure to be a frightening good time.
Within the Innoventions building located behind the Tomorrowland Terrace, you can also meet your favorite characters from the hit Disney cartoon, Phineas and Ferb, including Phineas and Ferb themselves along with their semi-aquatic mammal Perry the Platypus.
In Frontierland there is nothing short of celebrating the scary, the pirate and the dead. The Old West has time travelled to the era of Pirates, where you can stand in line to meet your favorite pirates from Disney movies Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan, the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow and the infamous Captain Hook. With the Mark Twain Landing completely redecorated as the Pirate’s Wharf to fit the needs of a pirate and the Jolly Roger anchored in the Rivers of America, the scene is set for a swashbuckling meet and greet where you can receive an autograph and take a seafaring picture with two pirates known for their notorious deeds.
There are even a few characters that wanted to join in the nautical celebration, as they put on their pirate costumes and walk around, to greet everyone that comes to celebrate, so keep an eye out for these characters all night long. Across the way from the Pirate’s Wharf there are giant skeleton statues placed to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, with a mariachi band taking the stage to add to the ambiance of the night.
In the northern area of Frontierland, Mickey and his friends have created an arts and crafts area in the Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree for kids to come, get crafty, run around, and play with well-known Disney characters in their Halloween costumes. There are Halloween carnival games such as a Witch’s Ring Toss and the Wheel of Halloween Randomness right beside the Villain’s Tent where guests, young witches and wizards can summon a villain from the evil world at random for a private meet and greet. There are also stations sporadically located around the Jamboree for kids to color, watch pumpkins be carved with faces of well-known Disney characters, and get their ghastly ghost faces painted by gypsy travellers. Finally, there is a fantastic magician that takes the stage to perform wonderful tricks that will boggle the mind. As a whole, the Halloween celebration going on at the Big Thunder Jamboree is great fun for the whole family to play and craft together.
An attraction that has caught the eye of thousands fans is the Nightmare Before Christmas takeover of the renowned Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square. Jack Skellington and the rest of Halloween Town have moved into the Haunted Mansion for the rest of the year and have made it obvious that they are going to be there for a while. The decorations alone make guests stop dead in the middle of the walkway to snap pictures of the dreadful mess that is the Haunted Mansion.
The line for this highly anticipated attraction comes close to surpassing that of the Frozen meet and greet, making guests wait in line for almost two hours. If you love the Nightmare Before Christmas as much as everyone else waiting in those long lines, then you’ll love meeting the Pumpkin King himself Jack Skellington and his Rag Doll counterpart Sally as they step out of their coffins to meet with the fleshy mortals of our world.
Mickey’s Halloween Party is great family fun for everyone this Halloween, with shows, villainous meet and greets and decorations that usher in the season of fright. Throughout the park during the parties there are stations that you, your kids, your younger siblings and maybe even your parents can walk through to do your own style of Trick or Treating. A word of caution to all you scary ghouls, ghosts and teenagers, please respect the characters, you don’t want to be banished from the parties or to a night of continually riding “It’s A Small World.” Hope to see you all in your best Halloween costumes. Have a scary good time!
A list of rules and regulations for costumes can be found at https://disneyland.disney.go.com/events-tours/mickeys-halloween-party/
