You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
The drop is pretty exciting.
Way, way back in the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster post -- this attraction's very neighbor -- I said that it was probably the third biggest physical thrill in the parks. The second was four days ago, going backwards on Expedition Everest. The first, is the "drop" in the Tower of Terror.
That's not the reason it sits so close to the very top of the list of greatest theme park attractions in the entire history of Walt Disney World though. If Tower were just a simple vertical drop shaft ride where you boarded an elevator, then it went up, then came back down, it would still be an acceptable ride and probably make the lower reaches of this list based on that tear-jerking sensation alone; instead, it's just one -- albeit significant -- detail that helps make it one of the best.
Simply put, Tower arguably makes more effort at making itself feel completely immersive, and to justify what happens on the ride by easily suspending your disbelief, than perhaps any other attraction ever made, and it does so completely successfully. There is maybe just one exception, and we'll get there, but even that's splitting hairs.
The Hollywood Tower Hotel, a massive building scene from across the park, is an incredible peace of 1930s Southern Californian, Spanish Mediterranean-inspired architecture that looks every bit like an actual hotel you'd expect to find somewhere on Sunset Boulevard. The creation of the hotel allowed for the Disney parks take on that iconic street, as well, so it gets some credit for bringing that wonderful golden era Hollywood feel to the park, as well. Almost nothing about this building feels like a forgery, it just looks like an incredibly-damaged vintage hotel that should probably have been demolished long ago.
It beckons for you to walk down Sunset Boulevard to get a look at its amazing architecture. In the evening, it's giant neon sign adds even more visual appeal, the ultimate in weenies. It is huge, amazing to look at, and positively entrancing. Also, every now and then doors open on the side of the building and people start screaming, so that's cool, too.
The storyline of what happened -- and what is happening -- is not fully spelled out, but immediately becomes suggested once you look at the tower. An entire section of the once-perfect hotel is missing, exposing the elevator shafts to the outside world. Clearly something went wrong, and now it has created a wonderful juxtaposition of 1930s high-class beauty with decay and the chill of something sinister. The queue is made up of overgrown and crumbling gardens, and a once-enchanting lobby now covered in cobwebs, as slow 30s jazz plays somewhere eerily in the distance.
Every step of the way, there is a positively absurd amount of detail, and the spaces you walk through feel like real, once-lived-in spaces that served an actual purpose. That never stops. A library with an iconic preshow, and a secret passage to a spooky boiler room where the machinery is still operating for some reason just sell the effect further. Tower makes it so easy to forget you aren't somewhere real -- which only further makes the dark happenings feel possible -- and draws you into its atmosphere and its setting with incredible care.
Meanwhile, the ride itself is prepared to absolutely destroy your expectations with what was -- at least until 1994, and probably long after -- probably the greatest subversive trick ever seen on a theme park attraction.
For as much as Tower is trying to convince you that you have actually stumbled on an abandoned old hotel in Hollywood, like so much urban spelunker, it's extremely easy to think you have the ride figured out before you've even walked past the greeter. You're going to board an elevator, it's going to go up, then it's going to fall. That's fine, cool. Once you're in that atmospheric boiler room -- a scene I'm just glossing right past but really does deserve its own piece as one of the most compelling spaces ever made my WDI -- you see the elevator doors open and no one gets off, and no visible way for them to have gotten of, but you can just explain that away by they got off on a different floor after dropping. Makes sense!
So, you strap in. Just as you predicted, your elevator starts moving up. You stop and elevator doors open, though you don't drop. Instead, you get a really cool sequence where a hallway fades into a starfield (this is cool, don't underestimate its coolness) ending with the iconic Twilight Zone window crash. Then you move on up, and steel yourself to reach the top, where assumedly another set of doors will open then you'll get sent back down.
Instead, the ride decides to absolutely mess with you.
The next time you stop and the doors open, you look out on a plain maintenance hallway, a totally mundane scene, until it suddenly turns black, the walls and pipes fade from existence, and are replaced with floating icons of the Twilight Zone, lit by black light, and fading into stars for an absolutely surreal setting. Then, without warning, the elevator car you just assumed -- quite reasonably -- was secure in its shaft begins inexplicably moving out into what was very recently just a hallway. There was no track, just a floor, but there you are leaving your elevator and moving down it without a diver in sight.
Just stop and think about this moment. It works on two levels, and it is so easy to take it for granted if you have been through the Tower Hotel a few times, but if you rode Tower without knowing anything about what actually happened inside, reflect on how mind blowing this sequence is. It is so easy to just assume you know what's happening on this ride, there is no reason to think you're actually sitting in a separate ride vehicle that will leave the elevator shaft to follow a guide wire down a hallway. It is an awe-inspiring moment that perfectly fits with the idea of The Twilight Zone's surrealism, as the vehicle seemingly moves all on its own. It's amazing.
It is also another case of the ride being fully committed to its narrative, and selling itself a an actual event in real space rather than a theme park attraction. The Cast of the ride -- the bellhops of the hotel -- fit both in the atmosphere of the personalities and in the setting with their fantastic costumes, and are also stars of the show. We already talked about how every step feels like an actual space. Rod Serling even told you back in the library that you were boarding a maintenance service elevator, not the elevator shafts that were struck by lighting. Those towers disappeared, and the elevators aren't safe. This dark, spooky hallway that you never expected to move through represents a trip through the fifth dimension, as you are sucked out of this maintenance elevator and into the shafts of the destroyed towers; the thrills are being justified by the setting. The ride never feels like it needs to patronize you with overexplaining this situation at all, either; it just lets it happen.
Then comes the drop shaft, and that is nothing to sneeze at, either. Famously, the ride does not actually drop you, it pulls you down faster than the speed of gravity to really get the g forces going. It lifts you back up, too. Once again, you think you have it all figured out when you look at the elevator dropping from outside, but the Tower of Terror isn't just a simple drop once the doors open that's over in a moment. First, it drops you (or lifts you) in the utter darkness as you sit waiting for those doors to open. Then, it throws you up and down in a sequence that is (probably) different every time you ride, making itself unpredictable, and giving you a huge range of motion intensity.
After it all, you get to leave, and without your knowledge the vehicle slides gracefully under the feet of those above and back into its starting position in a different shaft. This ride just absolutely excels at making you wrong, and doing what you don't expect, all in an incredibly thematic package, which a monumental advancement in ride tech. If you want to argue this should be No. 1, you won't get pushback from me; at this point these are all virtually tied.
The chosen IP is also what makes Tower so special. Michael Eisner's directions were to have a thrill ride based on a non-Disney IP in a working hotel. We didn't get the working hotel, but we got the other two, and The Twilight Zone is just an amazing property to use for this. A legendary series that was monumentally influential on culture and television as we know it, The Twilight Zone deserves a place in theme parks, Rod Serling's show told mind-bending parables about humanity with amazing cinematography and extraordinary imagination. The show avoided being mere frights and horror, and rather sought to discuss questions about the essential truths of humanity, and litter its narratives with unexpected twists. It was intellectual, it was witty, and it exuded an atmosphere of fear of the unknown without feeling any obligation whatsoever at explaining the unknown.
Walt Disney World very smartly used the show itself as an idea and a setting by telling a story that fits perfectly within the The Twilight Zone rather than performing a retelling of a story from The Twilight Zone. The haunting, unforgettable theme song works perfectly; that song immediately indicates to you what kind of tail you're encountering. Combining that sign with the immediately recognizable visual vocabulary elements created by the show creates a perfect send off.
The show of the attraction pulls from the very spirit of the show it gains its inspiration from in original ways as well. A young girl at the start singing, "It's Raining, It's Pouring," is used a song that will stick in your head. That way, later it can be used as an atmospheric and chilling reminder of what you saw earlier as the events start to twist out of control. There's no reason for you to care about that song, but it's the perfect ear worm to subtly mess with you. Not to mention the very idea of the fifth dimension twist is so incredibly Twilight Zone.
It even pulls of a neat trick by combining the actual Serling with a phenomenal impressionist, doing so mid-sentence to really hide the effect. If you don't know, "this as you may recognize," comes from the intro of the episode "It's a Good Life." The next fragment in that sentence is, "a map of the United States." The M in "map" here instead seamlessly becomes the start of, "maintenance service elevator." It's a truly clever trick, and it's amazing they found a way for Rod Serling himself to participate in and host the attraction.
There really is so much more. Nearly everything here could be expounded upon in a separate post, and we haven't even discussed the ballroom menu or the artifacts in the basement or the capacity of four lifts and two drop shafts that don't connect. This is a truly special attraction with a truly special theme and some truly special twists based on a truly special show.
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