I might not be massively into Fortnite these days, but if there’s one thing guaranteed to pique my interest in anything, it’s a Disney Haunted Mansion crossover. So as someone who’s been obsessed with the now five-and-a-half-decade-old theme park attraction since the age of three, it looks like a reinstall is on the cards. Epic has announced a “playful” new Fortnite experience celebrating Disneyland’s 70th anniversary is launching 6th November.
Hints that something Haunted Mansion was afoot first surfaced on the official Disneyparks Instagram feed, which shared an image of the attraction’s iconic stretch room paintings, reimagined to include Fortnite characters like Peely and Fishstick. “This lobby has no windows and no doors”, read the caption, suggesting the real chills, as they say, would come later.
And that ‘later’ didn’t take long to arrive. Before we could even finish pondering why all this missed Halloween, Disney and Epic provided an answer: simply, there’s more to it than those 999 happy haunts. The Haunted Mansion is coming to Fortnite this week as part of the newly announced Disneyland Game Rush; a “playful, limited-time” Fortnite Creative island “experience” designed to celebrate Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary.
Starting in a Disneyland-inspired hub – featuring a central sculpture modelled on Sleeping Beauty Castle and a skyline of familiar resort landmarks – up to 11 players can branch off to explore one of seven “quick-play” mini-games. Haunted Mansion fans get Scavenger Haunt, Space Mountain is represented by Rocket Race, there’s the Matterhorn: Slip-and-Climb, Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Sneak Out, Star Wars: Stormtrooper Showdown, Indiana Jones: Tomb Runner, and WEB-Slingers: Spider-Bot Blasters. By completing these mini-games, it’s possible to unlock island-specific cosmetics, so if I don’t get to manifest my head in a hatbox, I’ll be wildly disappointed.
Speaking of disappointment, I was all ready to be a grump about the fact Scavenger Hunt wasn’t exactly the massive Haunted Mansion Fortnite blow-out I was envisaging after seeing that original Disneyparks post, but IGN has screenshots of Disneyland Game Rush – complete with waltzing dinner party ghosts and, YES, a hatbox – and it actually looks pretty neat.
Disneyland Game Rush launches on 6th July (you can find it using island code 4617-4819-8826) and serves as something of a prelude for the main event. Announced in February last year, Disney has partnered with Epic to create an “expansive and open games and entertainment universe connected to Fortnite” which – judging by its concept art – looks very much like a virtual theme park. Perhaps we’ll have more news on that soon.