The Thunder Mesa saga: three rides, one story

You can love this story without ever having set foot on a single one of these rides, and that’s the whole point. For its Paris Frontierland, Disney came up with a complete, carefully crafted tale that plays out across three places at once. I’ll tell it here as a story, based on the official version (the Disneyland Paris one, which sometimes differs from the other parks).

Then I’ll go behind the scenery: how, by whom and in what context these rides were really built. You’ll see: once you’ve got hold of the thread, you’ll never look at Frontierland the same way again.

Thunder Mesa is an imaginary town in the American West, sitting at the foot of a red mountain in a hostile desert. Its fate can be summed up in one sentence: it was born of gold and died of the curse that guarded it.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, prospectors head into the region in search of ore.

The discovery of a rich seam of gold in Big Thunder Mountain sets off a rush: within a few years, the desert is covered by a lively town, with its Wild West businesses (the fortified entrance to Fort Comstock, the Thunder Mesa Mercantile Building, the Lucky Nugget Saloon founded in 1858 by Miss Diamond Lill). This is where the man at the centre of everything enters the scene.

Henry Ravenswood, a prospector born in 1795, strikes the seam in 1853. He founds the Thunder Mesa Mining Company and becomes the owner of the Big Thunder Mountain mine and the richest man in the region. The town of Thunder Mesa grows up around his fortune. On Boot Hill, the hill that overlooks the town and is dedicated to its founding families, he has a grand Victorian mansion built, where he settles with his wife Martha (born in 1802) and their only daughter, Melanie (born in 1842). The town cemetery, where the Ravenswood graves lie, is on this same hill.

That’s the setting. A thriving town, a powerful family, a mountain full of gold. Everything seems in place for success, and that’s exactly when the story takes a turn.

Before the gold prospectors, there was a legend. According to local Native American folklore, Big Thunder Mountain is home to the Thunderbird: a guardian spirit in the form of a giant bird, watching over the gold and silver hidden in the mountain.

Anyone who dares to steal its treasure faces its anger, and a single beat of its wings is enough to unleash lightning and trigger an earthquake. Henry Ravenswood, for his part, never believed these stories.

For a few years, the mine produces large amounts of gold, and the curse seems to be nothing more than superstition. But the gold eventually runs low. To keep digging, the miners bring out the dynamite and blast deep into the rock. This desecration awakens the Thunderbird, and the strange happenings start again: the mountain rumbles, the wagons run wild, the mine spins out of control. That’s the chaos you experience on board the mine train.

At Disneyland Paris, this mountain has a special place. Big Thunder Mountain, which French visitors often call Le Train de la Mine, stands on an island in the middle of the Rivers of the Far West, where other Disney parks usually put Tom Sawyer Island. You reach it from a station on the riverbank, through two tunnels that run under the water to the island: something you’ll only find in the Paris version.

It’s also a runaway mine train, in other words a rollercoaster themed as a mine gone out of control.

For the practical side (the queue, the minimum height, the thrills), it’s all on the ride page: Big Thunder Mountain. Here, the main thing to remember is that this mountain isn’t just a big rollercoaster: it’s the cause of everything that follows. Henry Ravenswood owned its mine, and that’s what directly links the mountain to the Ravenswood mansion.

In 1860, the Thunderbird’s anger reaches its peak. A massive earthquake strikes Thunder Mesa: it destroys the mine, sends part of the town crashing into a canyon and kills many residents, including Henry Ravenswood and his wife Martha. Robbed of its founders and its gold, the town is gradually abandoned.

After the disaster, something strange is reported: the locomotives are found racing round the mountain on their own, with no driver or crew, as if possessed. That’s where the ride as you know it comes from: the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is set up in the old mining camp so visitors can climb aboard these runaway trains and relive the curse.

The 1860 earthquake doesn’t only destroy the mountain: the same tragedy sets off the story of the Ravenswood mansion.

The Ravenswood mansion, on its hill, looks down over the town and the mountain. It’s the setting for the darkest part of the tale. And it’s one of the few versions of the Haunted Mansion to have a real official backstory, rooted in the American West rather than in a generic mansion.

Melanie grows up in this mansion, one of the most eligible young women in Thunder Mesa, courted by many suitors. The problem is her father: Henry can’t bear the idea of seeing her leave with another man.

The official version, as it’s told today, is chilling: the Phantom, the menacing narrator who rules over the mansion, is Henry Ravenswood himself. To keep his daughter by his side, even beyond death, he poisoned Melanie’s suitors one after another.

Four men courted her, four men died. After so much waiting and losing the people she loves, Melanie descends into madness and wanders the corridors for eternity, in her wedding dress, bouquet in hand.

The Phantom’s identity was kept secret for a long time. For years, the ride deliberately kept things ambiguous. It was the major refurbishment of 2018 that clarified this tale and made it official.

To visit the mansion (queue, how the ride works, access tips), it’s all on the ride page: Phantom Manor.

The four suitors all have a trade linked to the economy of Thunder Mesa, and their names are American-style puns, each one hinting at a death to match their trade (the dark humour the Imagineers love). Their fates can be guessed in the mansion’s Music Room and Crypt.

At the height of Thunder Mesa’s success, its wealth draws trade and travellers. That’s how an elegant landing stage appears, the Thunder Mesa Riverboat Landing, along with two paddle steamers sailing the Rivers of the Far West: the Mark Twain and the Molly Brown.

Their names are no accident. The Mark Twain pays tribute to the author of Tom Sawyer (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens), whom Walt Disney had admired since childhood. The Molly Brown is named after "the unsinkable" Molly Brown, a survivor of the Titanic, and takes the shape of the paddle steamers that travelled up the rivers of the West during the gold rush.

From the deck, the cruise circles the island and gives you the best overall view of Thunder Mesa: the mountain on one side, the Ravenswood mansion perched on its hill on the other and, all around, the river scenery (an old fisherman asleep, Yellowstone-style geysers, dinosaur bones). The boat is the viewpoint that makes you realise the three places belong to the same world.

For the cruise in practice (and the boat actually in service), see the Thunder Mesa Riverboat page. Good to know: new animated scenes (bison, raccoons and other prairie animals inspired by Marc Davis’s drawings) have been added all around the Rivers of the Far West, to spot from the deck of the Molly Brown. The landing stage (Thunder Mesa Riverboat Landing) is still open.

Here’s the heart of the tale, the part that turns three rides into a single saga. The gold of Big Thunder Mountain makes Henry Ravenswood’s fortune. That fortune lets him build the town of Thunder Mesa and the mansion on the hill. But blasting the mine with dynamite desecrates the mountain and awakens the Thunderbird. Its anger causes the earthquake of 1860, which kills Henry and Martha.

Henry then returns as the Phantom to haunt the mansion and condemn Melanie to an endless wait. Robbed of its founders and its gold, the town declines and empties. And the Riverboat now sails through these haunted ruins.

One fury, three fates. Together, the mountain, the mansion and the boat tell the rise, the heyday and the fall of Thunder Mesa.

So much for the imaginary tale. Now for the other side of the scenery, because the real story of Thunder Mesa is just as interesting. All three rides opened with the park, on 12 April 1992 (the park was then called Euro Disneyland). That makes it stand out: Big Thunder Mountain is the only one of the four Big Thunder mountains in the world to have opened on its park’s very first day.

Behind this corner of Frontierland there’s a team: the Imagineers of Walt Disney Imagineering, led by Tony Baxter, the executive designer in charge of adapting the great Disney classics to the tastes of a European audience.

Rather than copying the American versions, Baxter and his team decided to link all the Frontierland rides to the same story setting: the town of Thunder Mesa, an idea that draws on the concepts of a project dreamed up years earlier by the legendary Imagineer Marc Davis. The aim: for the mountain, the mansion and the river to tell one consistent story.

This approach is what makes the Paris Frontierland different from (and, for many, more accomplished than) its American cousins.

To place Frontierland in the wider history of the park (its construction, its lands, how it has changed), head to the history of Disneyland Paris. You can also read the story of Space Mountain, the park’s other big mountain, or take a step back with the Disney parks around the world.

The idea of a haunted house in a Disney park is much older than the Paris park: it goes back to the beginnings of Disneyland in California. At the time, Walt Disney talked about a "retirement home for ghosts", an idea dreamed up as early as 1951.

In 1952, Imagineer Harper Goff drew a first version, already tied to the idea of the Old West. In 1953, Sam McKim drew the building, and the ride took the name Haunted Mansion, which became final in 1957.

When the Imagineers designed Phantom Manor for Paris, they went back to these early versions, and in particular to Harper Goff’s drawing inspired by the grand American homes of the second half of the nineteenth century. So Phantom Manor isn’t a copy of the American Haunted Mansion: it’s a cousin, built on the same roots but anchored in its own Western world.

Before you even go in, the facade sets the tone: it’s the only Haunted Mansion in the Disney parks with a Western theme and the only one deliberately made to look run-down. The illusion of wear is reinforced by duller colours on the right-hand side, where bad weather in the West most often comes from (the east).

In the gardens, everything speaks of neglect: weeping willows, cypresses, leaning trees, a bandstand, haunting music on a loop, candlelight and silhouettes at the windows (including Melanie, a candle in her hand).

The Phantom Manor ride vehicles are called Doom Buggies. They use the Omnimover system, dreamed up by the Imagineers in the 1960s and developed by WED Enterprises (the former name of Walt Disney Imagineering). Here’s how it works: a chain of cars moving continuously, each one turning up to 180° in a pre-programmed direction, with a wraparound shell that frames your view like a camera.

That’s what lets the Imagineers show you exactly what they want, at the precise moment they want.

The figures that come to life in the mansion and in Phantom Canyon are Audio-Animatronics: robots that reproduce human movements using electronic animation and hydraulic motion. This Disney technology first appeared at the 1964 World’s Fair.

The narration of Phantom Manor has a story all of its own. The Phantom’s original voice belongs to Vincent Price, the horror actor many people know from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (1982). But an agreement with the French authorities required the narration to be mostly in French. So when the ride opened, it was Gérard Chevalier (who had already voiced other attractions, including the Disneyland Railroad) who spoke, and for a long time all that remained of Vincent Price was his maniacal laugh.

Since the renovation, the narration has been bilingual: you finally hear Vincent Price’s English recording, alongside a French version recorded by Bernard Alane (the voice of Clopin in The Hunchback of Notre Dame).

Melanie, for her part, never says a word: her character only ever vocalises. The theme song of every Haunted Mansion, "Grim Grinning Ghosts" (lyrics by Xavier Atencio, music by Buddy Baker, the same pair who wrote "Yo Ho Ho" for Pirates of the Caribbean), comes from an a cappella recording made on 17 February 1969, remastered into a jazzy soundtrack.

As for the manor’s background music, it was composed by John Debney, echoing Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, and recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London with the London Chamber Orchestra. The most sinister sounds were worked on with Skywalker Sound.

The big turning point for Phantom Manor was its refurbishment in 2018. The aim: to clarify and strengthen the story of Melanie and the narrator, and to add scenery, illusions and new features. It’s this version that officially confirms the Phantom is Henry Ravenswood.

On the creative side, the work was overseen by Tom Fitzgerald (creative director and executive producer) and Imagineer Daniel Joseph (special effects and illusions, an expert on Yale Gracey’s work). At Disneyland Paris, art director Beth Clapperton and show design manager Bjørn Heerwagen led the project, in a spirit of collaboration between American Imagineers and French teams.

Several hundred workers and craftspeople (painters, set decorators, lighting technicians, carpenters, robotics engineers, sculptors), many of them local, worked on this refurbishment.

Phantom Manor may stand apart, but it belongs to a big family of Disney rides. It picks up many of their nods (the singing busts, Madame Leota, the clock that strikes thirteen, the wallpaper), while remaining the only version set in a Western world.

Thunder Mesa is also full of wider nods shared across the whole park. For the famous Hidden Mickeys (those Mickey silhouettes tucked away everywhere), see my guide to the Hidden Mickeys. And for the other secrets scattered around Disneyland Paris, take a look at the secrets of Disneyland Paris.

If you like this kind of behind-the-scenes story, other backstories in the series might interest you: the backstory of Pirates of the Caribbean, the Tower of Terror one or the Indiana Jones one.