At-home Disney Imagineering: Add Theme Park Sounds To Your House With Customizable Ichime Doorbell

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Ichime Doorbell

In honor of Friday the 13th, today I bring you a bit of At-Home Imagineering that’s helped add a bit more “spooky” to my daily life. With the aid of a programmable chime doorbell, visitors at my front door no longer signal their arrival with a standard ding-dong but instead the eerie tolling of bells from The Haunted Mansion, gently ringing out to the tune of “Grim Grinning Ghosts.” And it couldn’t have been simpler to install.

The theme doorbell is available online for a little less than $90 and worth every penny for allowing you to program your own doorbell sounds, recorded from any audio device. It also comes with some built-in ringtones, if you will, ranging from happy Christmas tunes to comedic sound effects – something for every occasion.

Here’s a video showing the theme in action, installed in my house:

In case you want to duplicate the same Haunted Mansion chime, here is the MP3 I played via my computer and recorded onto the iChime: HauntedMansionDoorbell.mp3

Changing the sound effect is as simple as switching the dial to one of several themes. The theme can alternate through pre-recorded options within that theme or set to repeat the same one each time. But the most intriguing part of the product is recording audio a standard mini plug, run from a computer, iPod, CD player, or anything else that puts out sound through a headphone jack. The unit itself easily replaces any existing doorbell with a simple two-wire hookup. Four AA batteries are needed to power its speaker, but since a doorbell is only triggered every once in a while, these batteries should last a very long time. Once installed, it uses the existing doorbell button and wires to playback whatever audio it’s programmed for. It’s as simple as that to update your ordinary doorbell to play the chimes of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, the whistle of a Magic Kingdom train, or a few spooky sounds of The Haunted Mansion.

Ichime Doorbell

You can buy the chiming doorbell on Amazon. More information can be found on iChime.com.

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