Two Disney Legends that share a role as Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion now run a fictional fortune telling salon together at Disneyland as the first mother-daughter duo to be honored with a personalized decorative window on Main Street U.S.A.
Disney Legends Kim Irvine and her mother, Leota Toombs, have been memorialized as the proprietors of the Crystal Ball Glass Company with a window above the Crystal Arts gift shop on Main Street U.S.A. dedicated to the trailblazing women at Walt Disney Imagineering.
“I’m so happy that Mom and I are able to have this window together. That means so much to me,” Irvine said during the window unveiling ceremony on Tuesday, April 21. “We’ve got our own business now working together just like we used to in the model shop back in the old days.”
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The window dedicated to Irvine and Toombs reads: Crystal Ball Glass Co. / Summoning the spirits of creativity / on windows, doors and regions beyond / Artists, Glaziers, Design Mediums.
A Main Street U.S.A. window at Disneyland is one of the highest honors awarded by the Walt Disney Company — a tradition started by Walt Disney himself.
A Madame Leota character materialized during the window unveiling ceremony to cast a spell on Main Street U.S.A. and immortalize the mother-daughter duo.
“I shall summon the spirits of creativity and seek their hand in creating a marvelous memento for our legendary guest of honor,” the Madame Leota character said during the performance.
Irvine started her career at Imagineering in 1970 with a summer job as a model builder and painter before graduating to creating It’s a Small World dolls and Enchanted Tiki Room birds for Florida’s Magic Kingdom before the park opened in 1971.
Irvine helped open the first Imagineering office in Anaheim in 1979 under the direction of Disney Legends John Hench and Marty Sklar.
As Imagineering’s Executive Creative Director in Anaheim, she oversaw the design of Rancho Del Zocalo, Disneyland Dream Suite and Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe, the expansion of Club 33 and several refurbishments of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
Irvine received a lifetime achievement award in 2011 from the Themed Entertainment Association.
She retired in 2025 after more than five decades with Imagineering, the secretive arm of the company that designs theme parks, lands and attractions.
Irvine will be honored as a Disney Legend during the D23 event in August at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Toombs is best known today as the face of fortune teller Madame Leota inside the crystal ball in the Haunted Mansion’s seance circle at Disneyland. Madame Leota’s voice was provided by actress Eleanor Audley, who voiced Lady Tremaine in Disney’s 1950 “Cinderella” and Maleficent in the 1959 “Sleeping Beauty.”
Toombs is also the face and voice of the Little Leota “ghostess” at the Haunted Mansion exit that says: “Hurry back. Make sure to bring a death certificate. We’re dying to meet you.”
“She had a wonderful sense of humor,” Irvine said of her mother during the Disneyland ceremony. “She loved it when people would ask her if she got tired sitting under that table with her head in a ball all day.”
(Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Irvine recreated the role made famous by her mother with a new incantation in 2001 when The Nightmare Before Christmas overlay was added to the Haunted Mansion during the Halloween season.
Toombs started her career in the Ink & Paint department at the Disney Studios in 1940 before becoming a Disney animator in 1945. She married fellow animator Harvey Toombs in 1947 and soon left Disney to raise their children.
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Toombs returned in 1962 as a Disney Imagineer where she worked on the Enchanted Tiki Room, It’s a Small World, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. She moved to Florida in 1971 as part of the Imagineering team that launched the Magic Kingdom.
Toombs passed away in 1991 and was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2009.
Ali Irvine-Wheeler — Irvine’s daughter and Toombs’ granddaughter — is a third generation Imagineer who has worked as a set decorator at Disneyland and on the Frozen themed land at Hong Kong Disneyland.
Irvine-Wheeler named her own daughter Leota after her grandmother.