Category Archives: Decorations

Favorite Ghost – Madame Leota

Costumes, Decorations,

“Serpents and spiders, tail of a rat. Call in the spirits, wherever they’re at!” I’d have to say, one of my favorite Disney characters is Madame Leota, the fortune telling woman whose head is projected in the crystal ball in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion attraction. In my recent trip to Disneyland, I noticed the woman looked different than the woman I remembered as a child. Did Disney update the ride some time ago and replace the original Madame Leota with a new actor? I decided to investigate and was quite pleased with what I found. The original voice of Madame Leota was Eleanor Audley. The original actor for Madame Leota was a well respected Walt Disney Imagineer named Leota Toombs Thomas. Leota began working for WED (Walt Elias Disney) from a very young age and became a talented model builder, character artist and costumer for the company. She worked on several projects throughout her careeer including The Enchanted Tiki Room, The Hall of Presidents, The Haunted Mansion, and The Jungle Cruise. Her first husband, Harvey Toombs, was a Disney animator. She met her second husband, Hugh Thomas, while inspecting the banks of The Jungle Cruise ride in Florida. (There’s that Disney magic!). People who knew her and had a chance to work with her said that she was a gifted and extremely dedicated hard worker, and was an extremely nice and generous person. Continue reading →

Laser Vortex: Building the Prop

Decorations

Oh yes…the Laser Vortex. I’m sort of panicking right now. There are only two days left before Halloween and I’ve totally procrastinated on my Halloween prop for this year! The good thing is that I have all the necessary parts to build the prop. And I’ve already soldered some of the wires together. I feel like a mad scientist putting this thing together at night in the hopes that it will work beautifully and I can cry out “ITS ALIVE!”. Continue reading →

Laser Vortex Prop: Gathering Supplies

Decorations,
laservortex1

This year I decided I wanted to make a really cool new prop for my yard haunt. Something that wouldn’t put me out financially and something that wouldn’t be too complicated or difficult to build. I found a fantastic prop idea from the Garage Of Evil website. A laser vortex…no, not a flex capacitor…a LASER VORTEX! The parts are actually very cheap and most can be purchased from Radio Shack. The only tools I had to buy was a Dremel tool (I’ve always wanted one), and a soldering gun kit. Now I’m ready to go. I’ll keep you updated through future posts on the build phase and test phase of this project.