Halloween Time has officially arrived at the Disneyland Resort, and we spent opening day in the park. The season began Friday with new character costumes in Town Square, the first Mickey and Friends Halloween Cavalcade of the year and a Haunted Mansion Holiday gingerbread house that marks a quiet milestone. All three are on video below. The celebration runs through October 31 across Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure, Downtown Disney and the resort hotels, with seasonal menus that went live three days early.
The New Costumes Go Traditional
Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and their friends debuted new seasonal attire in Town Square on opening day. The looks feature harlequin motifs, frilled collars and cuffs, and swirling confection details in hues of orange, yellow and black. Here they are in person.
Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, and Pluto have debuted their new Halloween costumes at Disneyland today!
— The Disney Scoop (@DisneyScoopGuy) August 21, 2026
The shift is notable because last year’s costumes were built around the Disneyland 70th Celebration, which officially wrapped earlier this month. With the anniversary over, the 2026 designs return to a more classic Halloween palette. The ruffled collars and carnival styling read closer to Venetian masquerade than to the trick-or-treat looks of recent years.
Guests can meet the characters in the new outfits in Town Square, and the full lineup including Goofy, Donald, Pluto, Chip and Dale also rides the cavalcade.
The First Cavalcade Of The Year
The Mickey and Friends Halloween Cavalcade made its first run of the season about half an hour later, with the characters in those same new outfits, a float reading simply Happy Halloween, and a group of Disney villains along the route. Here is the full cavalcade.
The first Mickey and Friends Halloween Cavalcade at Disneyland of the 2026 Halloween season!
— The Disney Scoop (@DisneyScoopGuy) August 21, 2026
We Rode Haunted Mansion Holiday
Jack Skellington has again taken over the Haunted Mansion, and we headed to New Orleans Square to ride it. Our full Haunted Mansion Holiday tour for 2026 is below.
Here’s the full tour of the 2026 Haunted Mansion Holiday to cleanse your timeline!
— The Disney Scoop (@DisneyScoopGuy) August 21, 2026
Twenty Five Years Of Gingerbread
This year’s gingerbread creation takes the form of a monstrous music box, and the design marks twenty five years of changing gingerbread houses inside Haunted Mansion Holiday.
The gingerbread house has been rebuilt to a new design every year, and the tradition has quietly become one of the most watched annual reveals at the resort. The attraction closed on August 8 for the overlay conversion and reopened with the rest of the season.
What Else Is Back
Main Street, U.S.A. has transformed into the Main Street Pumpkin Festival, anchored by the giant Mickey Mouse pumpkin and hundreds of hand-carved pumpkins along the street, some of them shaped like Disney characters. Oogie Boogie sits atop the Main Gate marquee and black bats circle the Carthay Circle Theatre bell tower at Disney California Adventure.
Attraction overlays return in both parks. Disneyland Park has Haunted Mansion Holiday inspired by Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, while Disney California Adventure brings back Luigi’s Honkin’ Haul-O-Ween, Mater’s Graveyard JamBOOree and Guardians of the Galaxy: Monsters After Dark.
Entertainment includes the daytime Mickey’s Trick and Treat show at Disney California Adventure and Halloween Screams, the nighttime spectacular with fireworks on select nights at Disneyland Park. Disney’s Happiest Haunts Guided Tour returns as a paid add-on that walks both parks, and Pluto’s Pumpkin Pursuit is back, with purchased maps sending guests hunting for hidden Disney-themed pumpkins across both parks and Downtown Disney.
Over at the hotels, Pixar Place Hotel is carrying new Monsters, Inc. themed decor this year, with seasonal scenes also going up at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa and the Disneyland Hotel.
The Halloween Tree Is Dressed, But Not Yet Lit
The Halloween Tree in Frontierland is decorated for the season, and on opening night it was still dark. We photographed it late Friday, trimmed and waiting, with the lights not yet switched on.
The Ray Bradbury Halloween tree is decorated but not lit on the first day of Halloween at Disneyland
— The Disney Scoop (@DisneyScoopGuy) August 21, 2026
The tree is a tribute to Ray Bradbury, who wrote the 1972 novel The Halloween Tree and was honored with the dedication at Disneyland on Halloween night in 2007, on the book’s thirty fifth anniversary. Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, which means the season opened the night before his birthday, with his tree standing dressed and dark in Frontierland.
Bradbury’s ties to Disney ran deep. He was a friend of Walt Disney and later consulted with Imagineers on Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, and Disney adapted his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes into a 1983 film. Disney has not said when the tree’s lights come on, and we will update when they do.
What Comes Next
Plaza de la Familia has also opened alongside Halloween Time, bringing the Coco inspired celebration back to Paradise Gardens Park. Oogie Boogie Bash, the separately ticketed after-hours party, is already underway with the debut of Madame Leota’s Swinging Wake, a new Haunted Mansion street party. The event’s dessert party is holding at $94 this year. Clarabelle’s Enchanted Halloween Dinner is running at Storytellers Cafe through the end of the season.
Halloween Time runs through October 31 at both parks. Theme park reservations are still required alongside valid admission during the season.
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