The Halloween Season just started at Disneyland Paris and the decorations look better than ever! But this wasn’t always the case. A few years back the Disneyland Paris Entertainment department created their own characters called The Pumpkin Men. They first appeared randomly around 2002 and 2003, but it wasn’t until 2004 when they were introduced in the park with an actual story. This story was posted on Main Street, U.S.A. and retells how the Pumpkin Men are born and how they ended up frozen on Main Street, U.S.A.
Read the official story and browse through our archival pictures of the Halloween Season of 2004.
Once upon a Halloween
Once upon a time, and for every Halloween since, in a mystical “marvelous” and mischievous place called Halloweenland, there grows the magical Pumkinwood Forest.
At this autumnal time of year, when nature turns orange, the great trumpet flowers bloom on the pumpkin vines to herald the season.
The friendly scarecrows nurture the patch, so full to bursting with these very special pumpkin seedlings.
On the night when the full October moon shines bright, Halloween magic calls the wines to arise and entwine: Pumpkin trees flourish out of the garden.
The fruit of these twisted trees are fantastic creatures, half Halloween and half Human. Gloved hands and booted feet pop out of the autumnal plants and onto their buds from brushes and buckets. The bloom in the light of the harvest moon to become… PUMPKIN MEN!
Pumpkin Men are painters with a passion. Their true Halloween trick or treat fun comes from the obsession to paint everything that comes along their path the most splendid color: orange.
Once the last pumpkin man has picked himself from the wine, off they go, with their gear in tow, to fill up their buckets with their bright orange paint.
The paint comes from the Pumpkin Paint Pit of Big Thunder Mountain. The orange mountain glows in the middle of the wicked Waters of the Far West, inviting the Pumpkin Men to come and take possession of the magic orange pigment to fabricate their paint.
However, the river is full of Spooky Specter Slime. Evil Spirit emerge from the water to ambush and capture the Pumpkin Men. But our Halloween heroes have devised very clever solutions for getting to and from their pit without falling into the wicked waters. If the Pumpkin Men fall into the murky slime, they go bad and turn green!
Just prior to the stroke of midnight, this jolly team of Pumpkin Men painters sneak their way out Halloween Land, rolling a humongous pumpkin onto Central Plaza. These Pumpin Men are full of Trick or Treat Magic. They blow orange pigment dust over the pumpkin and it grows before their eyes into an impressively Giant Jack ‘o’ Lantern.
It is easy as Pumpkin Pie for the Pumpkin Men to begin their splashing and splatching of orange paint on Main Street, U.S.A. The electric arches erected on the main thorough fare provide great shoots and ladders for our acrobatic artists, who scale the façades with ease.
The Pumpkin Men are having so much fun that they hardly noticed the screechy screams of Gruzella, the wacky witch who is making her way to Halloween Land for the enchanted evening of incantations.
Gruzella takes her favorite blind corner hairpin turn, and is caught by surprise! Smack in the middle of a cackling giggle, she smashes, crashes, plunges and just plain spatches into the Gazebo in Town Square.
Time stand still.
The unlucky Pumpkin Men are statisfied! Mummytized! Freeze-Fried right in mid-stroke of their orange masterpiece!
Those Pumpkin Men, who were not in the wrong place at the wrong time, continue their trick or treat mischief throughout the Halloween festival season. Whether frozen in an archway in full swing of orange artistic folly, or enchanted and articulately live, the Pumpkin Men have one creed… They come out only once a year during Halloween to do what?
PAINT OF COURSE!!!
Photos Magiques 