The Balinese Music Box is the central artifact of Hong Kong Disneyland's Mystic Manor.
Development[]
The Balinese Music Box came about as a solution for how to culturally translate the Haunted Mansion to Hong Kong Disneyland. As ghosts having a much more serious and reverent cultural meaning in Chinese culture, Imagineers chose to go for an "enchanted artifacts" direction, using the music box to tie everything together.
Background[]
The Balinese Music Box was acquired by Lord Henry Mystic in 1909 during his travels in Bali. According to local legend, it had the ability to bring inanimate objects to life through the power of its music, releasing a magical green Music Dust as it played. Featuring engraved images of monkeys reaching for the lid, Henry Mystic's monkey Albert was obsessed with the music box. As a new object in the Mystic Collection, the Music Box was kept in the Acquisitions and Cataloguing Room. During a tour, Albert snuck into the room, pressed the jewel at the top of the box down to open it, unleashing magic, music and mischief upon the museum. The music box's spell started out benign enough, but with the Mystic Collection including such things as an armory, man-eating plants, Tiki Idols, mummies, and a jade statue of the Monkey King, it soon became a threat to the Manor and Albert. Grabbing the music box in a storm unleashed by the Monkey King, Albert closed it and everything was seemingly restored back to normal, with Lord Henry none the wiser.
