Yeah, two posts in one week about the Haunted Mansion. It is the best thing ever made, so NYAH! They opened their interactive queue today. It is not fully operational, but you can see some of the stuff working in the video.

HOLY CRAP. I LOVE THE TENTACLES IN SOME OF THE ARTWORK:

This new queue has interactive displays and even a wall of musical instruments that you can play. All of these are based on the existing storyline of the house.

Thanks to PinkGumiiBear for the heads up!

Woo! Haunted Mansion! Almost everyone knows that the room that stretches is one of the best parts of the Haunted Mansion ride. Innocent portraits stretch to reveal something sinister lurking below.

Long Forgotten Haunted Mansion has a great post that talks about the changes made to the stretch room portraits in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion over the years. I was surprised to find out that there were a considerable amount of changes made to them. Before they switched to a high resolution printer, they had to be repainted by a different artists with each refurbishment. It seems that the portraits went from being more malevolent to less so, but you can be the judge of that.

Click here for the first post about the tightrope girl.

Click here to read the rest.

We have already established that if you want paid speaking or performing engagements – especially recurring ones – you are worth only the number of people that you can bring into the door. You have to draw people to the event. This benefits you because it equals increased sales, press opportunities, and recurring speaking engagements.

So, how do you maximize your “draw”?

Understand that people can’t just drop their entire life the day of the event and run out the door like a lunatic to see you. People have families, jobs, kids, bills – on average people need at least 2 weeks of notice to make the necessary changes to attend a local event – longer if you want to give people the ability to fly to the event from farther away.

The worst thing you can do as a creator is to only start posting or talking about the event the morning of or the week of. We talked about how you can undercut yourself last time? Well this is epic undercutting.

I have staffed enough events to have seen people of every level of notoriety mess this up. I’ve seen big celebrities do it, I’ve seen medium level people do it – and of course I’ve seen small people do this. The phrase, “Yeah he is popular online but he was useless when it came to bringing anyone into the event.” is not good business. If the event’s staff is even remotely tech competent, they will be able to tell how many eyeballs each person, speaker, or band yielded.

Surprisingly, I’ve seen small people beat the crap out of a so-called “big name” in terms of “draw”.

- My advice for first time con runners who are selecting guests: do not get caught up in the hype. Look at who is willing to put some muscle behind what they are doing and avoid paying out a lot for a name that does nothing but look good on a website archive.

- My advice for creators of all levels is to realize that people need time to come and see you. The method I use to promote my appearances and events is the pulse method.

How to pulse out your message and net the most attention:

When you are invited to the event or schedule a performance: Add it to your calendar, make a blog post that points that out. (No one checks calendars very often. Tell them to do so and they will.)

3-6 months before the event: Blog/tweet/Facebook about it at least once a month with a date and clickable link. Blog again if something important is happening, like pre-registration prices are going up or someone cool is being added to the guest list or performance schedule. Don’t just put the link there – endorse it. Far more people will click something you tell them to over a plain link that just sits there.

3 months before the event: Increase blog/tweet/Facebook post frequency referencing the event with the clickable link.

1 month before the event: Blog/tweet/Facebook at least once per week about it.

2 weeks before the event: If your pre existing not event related blog post frequency allows for it, increase the frequency even more.

At event: If possible, live tweet at least a few things. If your readers couldn’t come this time they’ll see how fun it was and come next time.

Remember: More people that know who you are at the event = more sales and more recurring opportunities for you.

What not to do:

- Don’t use one of those services that send your twitter account to your Facebook/Livejournal/whatever. 9 times out of 10 this offends people who are not on Twitter because it sends the message that you don’t care about them and duplicates your content if they also follow you on Twitter. If you haven’t gotten complaints about it, it’s because you have probably been muted. This service is liked by creators, passionately hated by fans. Yes, I also mute people who do this.

A better way? Use a product like Hootsuite. This allows you to pulse out the same information on your blog, Facebook, and Twitter in a more engaging way. You can schedule each post to happen at different times so that it won’t overwhelm the person who is reading right now. I change each post so that it isn’t the same text over and over. This way I can get the word out about what I am doing everywhere while being sensitive to the people who read it. The best part is that statistically you will get more impressions when you space your posts out. People read at different times of day, you know.

At first it seems like it is just best to get the word out any way you can about your creative project. I’ve tried different techniques and observed when people tried different techniques on me. I have come to the conclusion that too many people just barf out information in ways that are convenient for them, and not ways that are convenient for their fans. If even big celebrities can undercut themselves this way, medium and small people will suffer even more for it. The next time you are doing something awesome, take your fans into consideration. I think you’ll find that you’ll develop a larger and more longterm fanbase overall because of it.

Florida, Paris, and Hong Kong was supposed to get a Little Mermaid ride in the 90s, but the idea was scrapped for some crazy reason. I found a mock up of what that ride was supposed to look like. This was released on the 2006 Platinum Edition Little Mermaid DVD:

Finally they are building an attraction based on this popular film called Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. It will be different from the mock up above. They have gotten REALLY good with the animatronics – so good that it is almost creepy and awesome at the same time. They are using a new plastic for the skin and the fingers and joints are going to be more sophisticated. Ariel’s mouth will even sync up perfectly to the words of the songs instead of just opening and closing! There is no video of her yet, but in the meantime check out Ursula being tested:

WOW. 9 year old me just exploded with joy.

This version of the attraction will open is in Disney’s Calfornia Adventure in Anaheim. Guests will ride through on clamshell cars, similar to the ones used in The Seas with Nemo and Friends in Epcot. Ariel’s Undersea Adventure will open June 3, 2011 in California. A version of this will be coming to Florida in 2012. Here is some more concept art:

Whew! It has been a busy few weeks. I am getting ready for my appearance at Zenkaikon next weekend. It’s March 18-20, 2011 in the Philly area. I’ll be posting my panel schedule and table location soon. :D I’ll have some new art prints, art magnets, and fun stuff for sale. I’ll also have a few plush owls. (Most have already sold out! We are making more!) I’ll also be taking pre-registrations for Intervention. If you register directly with me you will save some money.

There is still time to pre-register for Zenkaikon:

Now it is time for me to finish tomorrow’s comic.