John Frost writes, “It’s been 46 years of happy haunts at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, an attraction both Cory and I share a certain affinity for; when the attraction first opened, the exterior queue featured a small graveyard full of tombstones with humorous epitaphs.”
These graves were actually the attraction’s credits, with the names of the Disney Imagineers engraved upon them. One of those tombstones was my grandfather’s — Vic Greene.
The queue for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has changed a few times over the years and those gravestones have been relocated to the small hill behind the great white house. At some point after his death, my grandfather’s tombstone was removed. As far as I know there is only one mostly obscured image and a blurry video frame of the original tombstone and a blueprint.
It’s now been 42 years since his untimely passing, and a new generation of my grandfather’s descendants are visiting the parks. They deserve to see his ‘credit’ restored by bringing back his Tombstone to Disneyland and adding it to the expanded graveyard at the Magic Kingdom version.
As such, I’m petitioning Disney not by collecting signatures, but by appealing to their sense of correctness and legacy. I hope by publishing this story, I can reach the right person who can ‘make it happen’ as they say and restore Imagineer Vic Greene’s credit.
Petition to return a lost tombstone to the Haunted Mansion [John Frost/The Disney Blog]
(Thanks, John!)