The home of 999 Happy Haunts will once again welcome visitors after months of renovations.

Officials for the “Happiest Place on Earth” announced Thursday that Haunted Mansion will reopen next week with its “Nightmare Before Christmas” overlay.

Haunted Mansion Holiday will return on July 29, several weeks ahead of the typical time when the Eerie Estate transition from summer frights to fall festivities. Its early return will give guests the chance to return to the spooky labyrinth alongside Jack Skellington, Sally, Zero and other iconic characters from the Tim Burton-produced holiday classic.

“The attraction will don décor inspired by [the film],” a Disneyland spokesperson said. “At the center of the frightful fête’s ballroom scene is the gingerbread house, with an all-new design for this year.”

Haunted Mansion has been closed for refurbishment since January and crews are working to create a new retail shop next to the attraction exit and an expanded outdoor queue with “enhanced theming.”

The area that surround the attraction is prone to getting crowded and congested as it spills into a busy walkway connecting some of the most popular areas of the park.

While work continues on the reimagined outdoor space, Disneyland will only provide a virtual queue for those brave enough to enter.

Guests will need to use the Disneyland app to request to join the queue. Requests open to guests twice per day at 7 a.m. and noon.

New Orleans Square has experienced a transformation to coincide with the re-theming of Splash Mountain to the “Princess and the Frog”-inspired Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which is set to open later this year and will likely be one of the busiest attractions at the park.

For continuing updates about refurbishments and closures at Disneyland, as well as information about the Haunted Mansion Holiday virtual queue, guests can visit Disneyland.com.

Do you swear that it wasn’t this hot back in the day? It certainly feels that way.

To test that hypothesis, we asked Climate Central, an organization of scientists and journalists who study climate change, to analyze summer temperatures in Los Angeles dating back to 1940. We compiled it into a table (below) so you can look and see if the summers when you were young were as hot as the ones we are experiencing now.

For just about everyone around the world, the suspicion is that it’s gotten hotter since the days when you used to play at the park or attend summer camp. Just this past Sunday, the Earth recorded its hottest day ever. That record was broken again on Monday. A slight temperature drop on Tuesday made it the world’s second-hottest day.

In Los Angeles, the difference over the decades is stark when you focus on the average low temperatures. Eighty years ago, summer low temperatures tended to be in the 50s, making for cool mornings and evenings. Now, on average, lows only get down to the mid-60s.

Health experts warn that warmer and warmer nights can be dangerous because they don’t give people’s homes or bodies enough time to cool off.

The average high temperature has also trended upward over the years. The hottest summers in recent history appear to be 2006 and 2018 when the average high temperature between June and August topped 85 degrees. Only time will tell if the summer of 2024 will beat those records, too.

Use the searchable table below to see how hot summers used to be when you were born or when you were growing up, and see how it has changed since then.

Having trouble seeing the table above? Click or tap here to open it in a new window.

The planet has been on a “hot streak” since April 2023, Climate Central says, where month after month has seen record-breaking global temperatures.

Of the 230 cities analyzed by Climate Central, 95% of them have seen summers grow hotter since 1970. The “urban heat island” effect can also make it feel even hotter in certain neighborhoods.

A Southern California man’s livelihood was compromised when thieves stole his work van containing thousands of dollars worth of tools he’s bought over the years, stripped the vehicle for parts and set it on fire late last week.  

A single father of four, Travell Harding, a contract painter, said he was hoping he’d be able to recover the vehicle, which was stolen while parked across the street from his home in Artesia, and some of the tools. 

“It’s my livelihood,” he explained. “It’s like someone burning your shop down.”  

When he found out it had been torched, he said he couldn’t believe it.  

“I call the tow truck, I say, ‘Hey, I want to get my truck, what’s left of it. I want to get some tools out of it,’” he explained. “They were like, ‘No, you don’t understand. Your van is completely in rubble, there’s nothing for you to get out of it.’ They cut my hood in half and took out the engine. They cut out the catalytic converter, gutted it and set it on fire.”  

Officers with California Highway Patrol recovered the charred van, which was burned beyond recognition, in a riverbed several miles from his home.  

The suspects made off with all his equipment, paints, brushes, sprayers and tools he’d inherited from his late father, who was also a contract painter.  

To make the situation even worse, Harding’s insurance doesn’t cover anything beyond a car collision, not even a brazen theft like this.  

“I work out of my van. I don’t have an office,” he told KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff. “I’m a small business owner and that was everything in that van.”  

In his spare time, Harding runs a nonprofit organization – Fighters for the World – that’s dedicated to helping at-risk teens and his work in the community has not gone unnoticed.  

“People are calling me, saying, ‘I’m going to look in my garage, maybe I have a paintbrush, maybe I have this,’ and I’m like, ‘Let me know, I’ll come by and pick it up,’” he said.  

A GoFundMe campaign was also organized to help Harding replace some of his equipment and, eventually, buy a new van with added security.  

“Even before I pick up some new tools, I’m scared they’re going to be taken again, so I’m putting a kill switch in my truck and an alarm, whatever I can do off the bat to help protect it because they’re targets,” Harding explained.  

Investigators with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Lakewood Station are handling the case, but so far, no suspects have been identified.  

Harding believes the work is likely a group of professional thieves because of the way they were able to strip the vehicle so quickly.