The Great Esmeralda or simply Esmeralda is a character in Disneyland with connections to the Haunted Mansion.
Description[]
Esmeralda is an automaton within a fortune-teller machine in the Penny Arcade of Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland. She is characterized as a stereotypical Romani woman fortune-teller with her machine being modelled after classic fortune telling devices.
When given coins she gives out fortunes to guests on cards, telling them their futures. She is one of three fortune-tellers in Disneyland Park alongside the pirate Fortune Red in New Orleans Square and the witch-doctor Shrunken Ned in Adventureland. The PlayDisneyParks mobile app allows for further interacts with her and Fortune Red, allowing guests to obtain stories from them.
Haunted Mansion Connections[]
The four tarot cards which are seen in-front of Esmeralda all have designs taken from the portraits in the Stretching Room of the Haunted Mansion. Namely this includes the Tightrope girl with the alligator, Alexander Nitrokoff, the Quicksand men, and Constance Hatchaway with George's tomb.
The Ghost Post[]
Esmeralda was a pivotal figure in the interactive Ghost Post interactive game's scavenger hunt. This interactive game started with guests having to go see Esmeralda and be given cards instructing them on where to find ghosts who have been trapped outside of the Haunted Mansion in the park. This seeming to imply that Esmeralda (at-least within the contained Ghost Post story) held connections with the Ghost Relations Department, Committee of Wandering Ghosts and/or Madame Leota.
One of these ghosts was named Abigail and was trapped in Fargo's Palm Parlor on Main Street behind a door which guests had to knock patterns on to free her. Fargo's Palm Parlour being a closed off building on Main Street which serves as a tribute to Rolly Crump while also containing allusions to the Haunted Mansion and the Museum of the Weird. The location is themed around being a fortune-teller's business with the window reading, "Fargo's Palm Parlour; Predictions that will haunt you; Bazaar, whimsical & Weird. Designs to die for Roland F. Crump assistant to the Palm Reader". On the window, concept-art made by Crump appears including the Coffin Clock, a tower from It's a Small World in Fantasyland, and Maui from the Enchanted Tiki Room.
Trivia[]
- Esmeralda more than likely takes her name from the character of Esmeralda from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. In addition to having had a feature-film Disney adaptation, Notre Dame de Paris was once proposed to be connected to the Haunted Mansion by Ken Anderson via the titular hunchback Quasimodo being a resident of the mansion.
- Esmeralda is not the only character from a Main Street Penny Arcade to be connected to the Haunted Mansion. Penny the Elephant was an elephant statue found in Disneyland Paris' Main Street which would be homaged in the Pet Cemetery of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.