More never-built Haunted Mansion & an Indy stairwell

I'm still dividing my time between developing the inside (and outside, for that matter) of the Indiana Jones Adventure queue and working on that other design for the Haunted Mansion that an unknown WED artist created many moons ago. (You wouldn't happen to know the artist's name, would ya, Brandon?)

Lots of obvious progress in this render I posted to Flickr a few days ago. Like the first render I posted—and another you'll see in a moment—this is from the exact same angle as the illustration. Lots of roof elements have appeared, along with the tower in back and the porch out front. I'm guessing those would have been for the attraction exit and entrance, respectively, based on the fact that the porch is in front and the tower is in back, along the side. You can see the rather nice Victorian architecture, though this design incorporates (to a lesser degree than the McKim design) the ramshackle elements Walt would later veto. You'll see those below.

This is the first view of the model from an angle other than that of the drawing. Note the show building in back, which is completely speculative and not based on anything in the drawing. As you can see from the previous renders and the one after this, no show building is visible in the drawing, so it's up to me. I wasn't originally going to do one, since I'm told this would have been a simple walkthrough. But the house turned out to be rather smaller than I thought it'd be. It's comparable in size to the McKim design from my "mystery project", or even to the facade WED Enterprises ended up building. Not huge by any means. So I've added a small show building in back, situated in such a way that it could fade into the background of Edison Square.

There's a better look at the windows that first show up in that aerial view. Many are still missing, of course, as evidenced by the gaping holes, and even a few holes still need to be added. Note that a few are boarded up, with one of the shutters hanging on its hinges. Walt didn't approve of these sorts of run-down elements. However, the degree of dilapidation is certainly much less than in McKim's crumbling illustrations—in fact, once I texture this baby, you'll see that the surfaces are actually in rather good condition. The walls appear to have the same clapboard construction as that used on the real Haunted Mansion, with shingle roofs to top it all off, from the look of it. (With the exception of the flat roof of the show building, that is, which I expect'll be unthemed membrane roofing.)

So yeah, that's about all I've got done on this mini-project for the time being. Huge thanks go to Brandon of the Ghost Relations Department, if not for whom I never would have started this part of the model. I'll now leave you with this small render of a roof access stairwell alongside the Indiana Jones queue. The Indy queue is complicated, geographically speaking and otherwise. It starts as a small, free-standing temple structure in Adventureland. Then it snakes its way up to the first Pirates of the Caribbean show building—with one wall covered by earth on the outside for part of the way, mind you—where it shares a wall with Pirates until that wall peels away from the Indy queue, heading west. That's what you're seeing here, where the west wall of the Indy queue finally shows its face outdoors. That's the shorter wall on the right; the taller wall on the left is Pirates. Yes, that's right, the bayou scene is right next to Indy's bamboo canyon. Weird, right? Anyway, this stairwell leads a short way up from ground level to emergency exit doors (hidden behind the stairs in this render). Then the stairs progress up to the roof level of the queue, where a catwalk runs above the entire bamboo canyon.