Florida

Florida is the state in the United States of America where Walt Disney World is located, home of the second Haunted Mansion attraction.

Haunted Mansion Connections

Parks

Orlando, Florida is home of Walt Disney World and the Magic Kingdom. The Magic Kingdom holds Liberty Square where Walt Disney World's incarnation of the Haunted Mansion can be found.

Lore Connections

Ghost Gallery

In the cast-member created Ghost Gallery, Florida and Walt Disney World are treated as diegetic elements of the Haunted Mansion's fictional backstory. In this story, Walt Disney World purchased the Haunted Mansion and brought it from its original home in New York to Florida as an attraction for the park's opening in 1971. Walt Disney World cast-member Dick O'Dell (the Ghost Gallery counterpart to the Caretaker) would be given a home within the Mansion in-addition to his dog Bony who is related to several other dogs found across Walt Disney World. Additionally it is revealed that Little Leota was born to Master Gracey and Madame Leota in Orlando, Florida in this continuity though how or why is never explained.

Disney Kingdoms

The shared universe Disney Kingdoms comics features Florida as a location in its Figment series. Here, Florida is revealed to be the home of the modern American Scientifica Lucida science academy's Florida Campus and EPCOT's Spaceship Earth. This Spaceship Earth is a mysterious floating entity which the campus (modelled after the Imagination Institute of EPCOT) taps into as a source of power. When the story's protagonist Blarion "Blair" Mercurial AKA The Dreamfinder attempted to study the geodesic sphere, it vanished into thin air.

Disney Parks Connections

Florida connects to several Disney Parks series, often connecting to greater mega-themes such as the Society of Explorers and Adventurers in addition to other Haunted Mansion related attractions. In alphabetical order this includes:

• Blizzard Beach: Disney's Blizzard Beach water-park is set in Florida. In its backstory, apparently a freak snowstorm hit Florida which caused some locals to decide to open a ski-resort. However, the tropical sun soon melted the resort and the owners decided to turn it into a makeshift water-park.
• DinoLand U.S.A.: In 1947, a large sum of skeletons belonging to prehistoric animals were found in a small highway town in Diggs County, Florida. Two years later, a science organization known as the Dino Institute was founded in Diggs County which had since come to be a roadside, dinosaur-themed tourist trap thanks to locals Chester and Hester.
  • DINOSAUR: Countdown to Extinction: In the late 1990s, the Dino Institute teamed up with a technology developing subsidiary known as Chrono-Tech which had managed to invent time-machines. Using, "Time-Rovers" the Institute began researching prehistory first-hand while also allowing guests to go on prehistoric tours so that the Institute could receive additional funding. In one incident, an employee named Dr. Seeker hijacked a civilian tour's Time-Rover in an effort to have the rover obtain an Iguanadon which he had tracked to the late Cretaceous, minutes before the K-T extinction. However, the mission was troubled due to the Chicxulub meteor in-addition to a (fictional) Floridian sub-species of Carnotaurus (Robustus floridaensis) hunting the civilians. Ultimately they managed to obtain the Iguanadon and get back to the present.
• Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar: In the year 1938, archaeologist Indiana Jones and his pilot Jock Lindsey were flying over Florida in-search of the legendary Fountain of Youth. While stopping in the small town of Disney Springs, Jock fell in love with the town and came to move there where he opened his own bar in 1955. Jock would come to become a member of S.E.A..
• Jungle Navigation Co. Skipper Canteen: S.E.A. member Luana Teixeira once documented her travels to Florida in a book found in the Skipper Canteen. Another book here is called Native Orange Birds of the Southeastern United States by Dr. Sid Truss as an allusion to both the state of Florida, and the Orange Bird who is made to represent Florida's citrus industry in-relation to Disney.
• Pirates of the Caribbean (film series): La Florida is shown on Captain Jack Sparrow's Mao Kun Map in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). It shows the location where the Aqua de Vida (Fountain of Youth) is supposedly located. In real-life history, 15th century conquistador Juan Ponce de León similarly documented his belief that the legendary fountain of youth was located here.

• Pleasure Island: Disney's now defunct Pleasure Island was set in early-mid 20th century Florida on the island of Pleasure Island in Buena Vista Lake. The island was colonized in 1911 by S.E.A. member Merriweather Adam Pleasure and turned into a booming industrial district after being brought to the island by visions of a mystic being known as The Funmeister; a being he came to learn was also worshiped by the Seminole tribe of Pleasure Island. In 1955, the island was his by a hurricane (possibly the same one which hit Placid Palms) and was subsequently abandoned.
  • Mystic Point's restaurant the Explorer's Club has several masks which are recycled in real-life from the defunct Pleasure Island location, The Adventurer's Club. In lore, these were enchanted masks owned by Lord Henry Mystic and likely passed on somehow to the Adventurer's Club by the club's setting in the 1930s.

• Sunshine Tree Terrace: This Adventureland food counter-service location was themed to fit in with the Florida Citrus Commission in 1970. The mascot for this location was the Orange Bird, a mute bird seemingly resembling an orange who moved to Florida for its access to the citrus industry and made its home in the titular Sunshine Tree of Adventureland.
  • The Orange Bird has since appeared in the Enchanted Tiki Room Comics within the shared Disney Kingdoms continuity (which also featured the Haunted Mansion and Seekers of the Weird).