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.
It seemed unthinkable… When insiders first reported that the Hollywood Tower Hotel at Disney California Adventure would soon see its last elevators ascend into the Twilight Zone, it felt like a total impossibility. In a park themed to the Golden Age of California, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was a star in its own right: a new classic, tailor-made for the 21st century park and an integral element of the park’s $1.5 billion rebirth.
With our Lost Legends series, we’ve created a library of in-depth stories behind closed classics from around the world. We set course for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, watched the fall of Walt’s Tomorrowland from the Peoplemover, met Dreamfinder and Figment on a Journey into Imagination, took to the skies to go Soarin’ Over California, launched to the stars on Disneyland Paris’ Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, braved a vengeful goddess aboard TOMB RAIDER: The Ride, explored the ride that changed Disney Parks forever – Star Tours – and so many more. Today, we half-heartedly induct another stunning E-Ticket into our archive of in-depth stories behind heartbreaking closures. And this one is a doozy.
Image: Disney
Submitted for your approval: the curious case of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, a headlining attraction borrowing from a Walt Disney World original. Equal parts subtle, thrilling, eerie, and brilliant, it served as an achor to a reborn park and a fan favorite. Only Disney’s greatest minds could’ve concieved it, and barely a decade after its opening, their Tower has toppled. You think you know the story, but there’s so much before “Hollywood, 1939…”
In this in-depth feature, we’ll explore how Imagineers decided on and developed a drop ride, what chilling mysteries awaited within the haunted Hollywood Tower Hotel, what made California’s Tower so essential to the park’s narrative and rebirth, and what took the place of this storytelling marvel. It’s a tale so unbelievable with such an unimaginable twist ending, it can only be a story told from the outer reaches of… The Twilight Zone.
History in Freefall
As is usually the case with our Lost Legends entries, the story begins long before the Tower of Terror carried its first passengers into another dimension. The idea of incorporating a freefall drop ride into a Disney park is as old as the technology that could’ve made it happen.
Demon Drop at Cedar Point, an Intamin First Generation Freefall.
Image: Corey Balazowich, Flickr (license)
In 1982, Six Flags Magic Mountain California opened Freefall, a first generation Intamin Freefall tower. The mechanics behind the ride were cutting edge. Four guests would strap into a cart that slowly advanced backward into the base of a steel tower. The cart would then be lifted up to the height of the tower and gently pushed forward, precariously perched high above the park.
Aligned perfectly with the outside of the tower, the cart would release and careen down the vertical drop, sliding out at the bottom of the curved track so riders would end up on their backs, reversing backwards to the loading area. Truly, the process has to be seen to be believed.
Image: Six Flags
The mechanics might seem rudimentary or even barbaric by today’s standards, but the cutting edge technology caught the world by storm. Guests queued for hours to experience the 20-second ride at Magic Mountain, and the ride was quickly duplicated at thrill parks across the world. In the mid-1980s, Disney was poised to incorporate this brand new experience into their parks, as well.
Discovery Mountain
Both EPCOT Center and Tokyo Disneyland opened within six months of each other (in October 1982 and April 1983, respectively), right about the same time that Six Flags’ Freefall debuted. With two massive projects under their belts, Imagineers got to work creating new concepts that would eventually appear at the company’s next two parks: the Disney-MGM Studios (1989) and Disneyland Paris (1992). And the wild success and spread of Intamin’s drop ride made it a candidate for both.
Image: Disney
To hear Disney historian Jim Hill tell it, Imagineers at once got to work developing ideas for how to incorporate this simple, off-the-shelf thrill ride into Disney Parks in their usual, story-centered way. Luckily, they had an opening. Disneyland Paris was going to be different from anything Disney had done before – each and every land and attraction would be redesigned from a European point of view, infused with new stories and details.
This new, romantic, literary park wouldn’t have a cold, sterile, silver and white Tomorrowland. It wouldn’t have a Tomorrowland at all. Instead, it would have Discoveryland. This gold and brass seaport of bubbling lagoons, submarines, zephyrs, and rocks bursting from the ground was based on a never-built land originally planned for Disneyland in California. (We chronicled the in-depth story of this unbuilt steampunk paradise in its own feature, Possibilityland: Discovery Bay.) Forget a scientific future; this new Discoveryland was the future as envisioned by the past… a fantasy future.
Image: Disney
In this organic world, a stark white, Space Age Space Mountain wouldn’t do, so instead Discoveryland would feature Discovery Mountain, a brass peak of cogs and rivets. Sure, Discovery Mountain would feature a roller coaster through the stars (though here it would be a launched coaster based on Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon), but that would only be one part of a massive indoor complex – a land within the land. Discovery Mountain would be Captain Nemo’s secret lair, with the Nautilus docked beneath a craggily volcanic peak in a glowing lagoon.
(Those interested can learn much more about this never-built wonder and the one-of-a-kind Space Mountain it produced in Lost Legends: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune.)
Image: Disney
And there, in the center of this massive indoor environment would stand an Intamin first generation Freefall ride. Themed to Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, the ride would hoist guests sky-high, up and out of Discovery Mountain (see if you can spot it in the Discoveryland concept art at the top of this section) and then send them plunging down toward an open lava vent, with bursts of steam and fire signaling the drop. Of course, at the last second, the elevator would swing out and splash through a waterfall.
The smart concept disguised the bare steel of Intamin’s ride within the steampunk industrial environment of the mountain.
Image: Disney
Of course, in retrospect, we can be glad Disney didn’t move forward with this drop tower – after all, most of the once-widespread installations of this first-generation ride have since been replaced with more modern variations, and the few that do remain feel downright rickety in comparison. But the idea stuck, and Disney Imagineers doubled down on their insistence that a drop ride could belong at a Disney Park.
Meanwhile, development continued at the other new park Disney had planned…
The Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park
We’ve talked in a few of our Lost Legends entries about Michael Eisner – a controversial figure whose legacy is a mix of transformative success and debilitating defeat. However, we’ve always insisted that early on in his time with Disney, Eisner was exactly was Disney needed – a fresh visionary with his finger on the pulse of entertainment (coming directly off a stint as CEO of Paramount Pictures) willing to take big chances to grow Disney’s films, animation, and parks.
Eisner and famed Imagineer Marty Sklar at first imagined leveraging their new cinematic vision into a filmmaking pavilion at EPCOT Center, but the idea soon evolved into its own park: Disney-MGM Studios, Walt Disney World’s third gate. Allegedly designed intentionally to take only a half-day to explore, Disney-MGM Studios opened as Disney’s smallest park by far. Look at the map above and you’ll see that even much of the park we know today wasn’t open to guests. While it had its share of entertainment offerings and a single ride (the Great Movie Ride), its real purpose was to host the Backlot Studio Tram Tour.
(To be clear, the idea of a multi-hour, tram-lead studio tour was “borrowed” from the historic tour at Universal Studios Hollywood. Universal planned to duplicate their famed Studio experience in Orlando, and Disney’s rushed construction of their own tour was literally meant as a preemptive strike to keep Universal out. Insiders still stay that Eisner was unfairly aware of Universal’s plans because of his time at Paramount, making Disney’s fast-tracked studio park a cheat. In any case, Disney’s tram tour forced Universal to re-think its Orlando plans, axing a studio tour in favor of standalone rides for Jaws, King Kong, Earthquake, and more… ultimately a win.)
Disney historian Jim Hill notes that, from its opening, exit polls showed that guests liked the Studio park, but said it needed more things to do – more rides.
Horror Stories
Disney Imagineers began to toy with expanding the Studios. A fast-tracked version of Disneyland’s Star Tours was already under construction and would open before the end of the park’s first calendar year. A logical way to analyze a movie-themed park is by genre. Disney-MGM Studios included action adventure, sci-fi, animation, silver screen classics… one genre was no where to be found: horror.
Image: Disney
The reason was simple: Disney doesn’t do horror. Sure, we chronicled the partnership between Eisner and George Lucas that led to a Lost Legend: the original Star Tours, and how that growing relationship would later lead to Disney’s scariest attraction ever and another Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. But that would be years in the future. Long before Disney would think about using 20th Century Fox’s Alien, they were on the hunt for horror properties to bring to the Disney-MGM Studios. You name it, they looked into it: Friday the 13th, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street. Even, reportedly, a ride to bring all of Stephen King’s horror tales together.
Ultimately, it must’ve been decided that these grisly horror features were too intense for a Disney Park – even a more mature movie-themed one – and Imagineers went back to the drawing board. If no real horror movies would work, maybe they could create their own? Maybe even a horror-comedy?
Image: 20th Century Fox
It was at this point that Disney contacted Mel Brooks (brilliant creator of the go-to horror-comedy, 1974’s Young Frankenstein, as well as The Producers, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights). Like George Lucas, Eisner had carved out a professional relationship with Brooks, and this seemed just the right time to use it.
With Mel, Imagineers created early plans for a dark ride through a haunted Hollywood hotel that was apparently being called Hotel Mel. In line with the Studios’ overarching story, we would’ve been led to believe that we were on a hot set for a movie being shot inside of an abandoned hotel.
Image: Disney
The dark ride, then, would’ve taken guests behind the scenes to see classic movie monsters at work. Problem is, Imagineers couldn’t get the tone of the ride quite right. Was this hotel really haunted? Where the monsters real, or actors? Were we seeing behind-the-scenes of moviemaking, or were we part of the movie?
Point is, Hotel Mel just couldn’t seem to come together in a satisfying way. Not to mention, it didn’t really satisfy Eisner’s decree that Disney Parks should become hip, thrilling places that teens would want to visit.
But as Imagineers regrettably left Hotel Mel behind, the idea began to coalesce with that lingering need for a drop ride. Could Disney designers create a triple threat: a thrill ride, horror ride, drop ride? This is where the story gets good. Read on…
Image: Disney
While Mel Brooks’ Hollywood Horror Hotel idea just didn’t stick, it did give Imagineers the boost they needed to see the idea to completion. The idea developed around an expansion for the Studio park called Sunset Blvd. From the start, concept art showed a once grand Hollywood hotel looming overhead.
When the idea of the haunted Hollywood Hotel merged with the back-burnered drop ride concept, a Tower of Terror was envisioned. Imagineers first developed the idea around that Intamin first generation Freefall technology –with the vertical drop that curves out into a level runout track – simply building a derelict hotel around the structure (see above and below).
Image: Disney
Ultimately, Disney didn’t move forward with the first generation freefall tower concept (but someone did in one of the most astounding, must-see Disney “knock-offs” out there today…).
As before, we’re lucky that Imagineers sat on the idea a little longer before deciding on the two key elements that would bring the attraction to life: its content and its technology.
They found their first answer thanks to CBS. Disney licensed the use of The Twilight Zone, the creepy, groundbreaking, timeless anthology series by Rod Serling, which had run on CBS from 1959 – 1965. The Twilight Zone was a cultural phenomenon forever tied to American pop culture. The five-season, 156 episode series featured a new story, new characters, and new setting in each episode.
Sometimes sci-fi, sometimes fantasy, sometimes horror; set in the past, present, or future; always ending with a twist or a moral; the show imagined unthinkable circumstances and surprising endings for everyday people who had unknowingly “crossed over into a land whose boundaries were that of imagination” – The Twilight Zone.
Image: Disney / CBS
The storied pop program was perfect for a park meant to celebrate cinema. Brilliantly, using the otherworldly, eerie aura of The Twilight Zone allowed Disney to craft a haunted hotel that would give riders good, old-fashioned goose bumps without the blood and gore while also celebrating a revered, respected, and timeless entry in the cultural canon of “horror” in the United States.
They found the answer to their second hurdle – the ride’s technology – in AGVs, or Autonomous Guided Vehicles. The elevators placed within Florida’s Hollywood Tower Hotel weren’t elevators at all. They’re enormous 22-person ride vehicle carts that begin parked in a lift elevator. But during the course of the ride, they advance out of the elevator on wheels, moving horizontally – one of the most surprising, technologically clever, and brilliant storytelling elements of any dark ride on Earth. The AGVs would be “trackless,” following a wire embedded in the ground. Then, they would re-enter and lock onto a second elevator lift (this one at the front of the building, inside the drop shaft) for their faster-than-gravity freefall at 39 miles per hour.
Building the Original
Image: Disney
In 1992, ground was broken on the massive ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The towering Hotel is obviously a landmark, standing 199 feet tall (any taller and it would require a flashing red aviation beacon that Imagineers expected would distract from its atmosphere – one of the most well-known bits of Disney Parks trivia ever) at the end of Sunset Blvd.
But what might be surprising is the depth of the building. Its guts – where the show scenes take place – are housed in the enormous (but exceptionally designed and decorated) showbuilding behind the tower.
Image: Disney
The Neo-Mediterranean / Spanish Gothic building is a veritable fortress of red tiled roofs, arched doorways, keystones, stucco walls, twisted columns, minarets, and pointed stone turrets. It’s imposing, dark, and foreboding, and that’s without the scortched lightning strike and the flickering, sparking neon sign. As you might imagine, the building was aged and weathered, crafting what may be Disney’s most detailed queue.
It starts well before you enter the hotel, in the misty, overgrown gardens filled with plants that look… well… sinister. You pass dilapidated signs pointing to the hotel’s long-lost amenities, crumbling statues, vine-covered arbors, and dry fountains. Inside the hotel’s storied lobby and library, you might notice that the hotel seems to have been abandoned in a hurry and learn of the mysterious happenings here on Halloween night in 1939.
Image: Disney
Then it’s on to the boiler room to board a maintenance service elevator for a journey into the hotel’s eerie past, and up to the 13th floor where the Twilight Zone awaits.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Imagineering – the height of what Disney’s creative minds are capable of. Even 25 years after its debut, the ride is unequivocally considered a classic, standing equally between the old era (Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion) and the new (Mystic Manor and Journey to the Center of the Earth). We can’t even begin to expound on the ride’s details and effects, because if you haven’t ridden it, you need to do yourself the service.
Image: Disney
In any case, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at once became a crowning gem of Disney’s Imagineers. A testament to the incredible fusion of storytelling, technology, and detail for which they’d always been renowned, Tower of Terror proved that a new generation of Imagineers still “had it,” ready to craft 21st century classics. The ride singularly propelled Disney-MGM Studios to superstardom and became an icon of Walt Disney World.
That reinvigorated Imagineers to consider that a similar ride could work at Disneyland.
Geyser Mountain
With the technology behind the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror absolutely wowing guests in Florida, Disney began to toy with ways to expand on it. They started by reexamining a concept from years before called Geyser Mountain. Concealed within an artificial mountain peak, this thrilling ride was designed to fit in Frontierland at the Disneyland Parks in California and France.
Image: Disney
Aboard mine elevators, guests would descend into the peak to view some of the glorious natural wonders that recent drilling had revealed: endless unexplored caves, crystal-lit caverns, bubbling geysers, and more. Of course, when a wayward, “Ole Unfaithful” geyser erupts at precisely the wrong time, it would send the deep-earth elevator blasting skyward.
You can read more about Geyser Mountain in our walk-through of the Disneyland that never was: Possibilityland. But as the new millennium neared, Imagineers were ready to give Disneyland its own Geyser Mountain. They imagined that the 40-year-old park would need a stunning, groundbreaking new E-Ticket to divert crowds from the brand new and much hipper Disney’s California Adventure opening across the way. Certainly this second gate would be so popular that people would forget about ole’ tried-and-true Disneyland, and Geyser Mountain would be just the thing to draw them back!
Then, Disney California Adventure opened…
California Mis-Adventure
When Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, it was met with… well… chilly reception. Word of mouth was so negative that in the park’s debut year – when interest should’ve been at its height – only 5 million guests visited. That sounds impressive until you hear that the original Disneyland just across the plaza saw 12.3 million in the same year, meaning that of all the people who visited Disneyland, not even 40% bothered to check out the brand new park next door. Of those who did visit in 2001, only 20% reported being “satisfied” or better in exit polling.
We detailed it all in a walkthrough of the creatively-starved park for our in-depth Disaster Files: Disney’s California Adventure feature that tells the full story, but in short, California Adventure’s mistake was that it was too modern, too “hip,” too “edgy.” The very things out-of-touch executives imagined would make the park so desirable instead made it appear thoughtless and crass, and instantly dated it as a product of ’90s design.
Image: Disney
Take, for example, the park’s Hollywood-themed land. It made a costly mistake: it was called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot, ostensibly themed to a façade-lined, Hollywood studio-style recreation of Hollywood (despite the real Hollywood being just an hour north). In other words, rather than transporting guests to a romantic, idealized, dreamy version of the Golden Age of Hollywood like Disney-MGM Studios’ grand Hollywood Blvd. or Sunset Blvd., California Adventure’s cheap Backlot land was intentionally modern – cardboard cutout 2-D buildings with exposed scaffolds, cheetah-print awnings, and awful, dated puns.
Like the rest of the park, it was a certifiable disaster and made few fans. Despite executives promising that California Adventure would be packed and closed to capacity every weekend, the park was practically deserted most days. Plans to put Geyser Mountain into Disneyland’s Frontierland were immediately put on hold. Suddenly, it was clear that Disneyland Park did not need the boost that an E-Ticket drop ride would bring… California Adventure did. And Disney Imagineers knew exactly which ride could make it happen.
Hollywood Tower Hotel
Image: Disney
Even if the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was a shoe-in for Disney’s California Adventure, executives ensured that this version of the ride would look a little bit different. After all, still lodged firmly in the midst of a budget-conscious regime under a now-infamously-restrictive Eisner, Disney Parks were on a tight leash, and Florida’s Tower had been among the most expensive rides Disney had ever built, allegedly running millions of dollars over budget – reportedly $150 million total.
The entire California Adventure park had cost only $650 million, so a clone of Florida’s Tower was out of the question.
Image: Disneyana by Max
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror did open at Disney’s California Adventure on May 5, 2004 – almost exactly a decade after Florida’s original.
Ready to see what California’s Tower had in store? Read on as we step into the Hollywood Tower Hotel.
The Hollywood Tower Hotel in Florida is a landmark, set on a hill towering 199 feet above Sunset Blvd. with its sunset tiled roofs, twisted columns, and ornate Gothic accents. While the old Hollywood Tower Hotel in California shares its name, the Anaheim hotel’s style is entirely unique. That’s on purpose.
For one thing, the dark, foreboding Gothic style is no more, replaced with a warm architectural style called Pueblo Deco, skillfully blending southwest motifs and Art Deco accents with Egyptian shapes and metalwork. While less overtly “horrifying,” the beautiful Southern Californian hotel looks sincerely grand, its towers topped with gorgeous teal domes faded by decades of weathering.
Image: Disney
For those lucky enough to have seen both Florida and California’s Towers up close, they’re likely to have thought that California’s is much less intimidating; even measurably shorter. There are two primary reasons. The first is that California’s Tower is shorter – only 180 feet compared to Florida’s 199 (and Disney World’s Tower is precariously perched on a distant hilltop to boot, adding to its looming presence.)
The second is a matter of perspective. The configuration of Florida’s Tower structurally has most of the ride occur in the massive showbuilding behind the main “guest” tower, with the AGVs moving through the showbuilding horizontally and into the main drop shaft in the “guest” tower out front only for the big finale. That makes Florida’s Tower sincerely loom over Sunset Blvd. In contrast, the new ride system developed for California omits the horizontal scene, meaning that the show building has to be parked right up front ahead of the “guest” tower, making the highest wing of the hotel recede into the distance and appear shorter thanks to the massive showbuilding parked up front.
Image: Disney
And without the ample space and lofty position Florida’s enjoys, it’s true that California’s Tower of Terror also lacks the atmospheric entry and sprawling, misty gardens. Instead, the building is marked by a cracked, art deco fountain with a stone plaque engraved: “THE HOLLYWOOD TOWER HOTEL.”
But stand at the fountain long enough and you’ll see a light glimmer within. As the lights sparkle within the rock, the Hotel’s sign will be overcome with glowing script: “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.” A wrought iron gate before an Art Deco portico serves as the entrance to the hotel’s lobby right from the street, with a small side garden of crumbling statues as its extended queue.
The Lobby & Library
Image: Disney
But passing beneath the grand glass windows into the hotel itself, a familiar scene comes into view. The grand, towering lobby of the Hollywood Tower Hotel may be one of the most well crafted queue rooms in any Disney attraction. The lobby is covered in cobwebs as the memories of former guests are scattered about, abandoned.
This is storytelling at its finest – whatever happened to empty out the Hollywood Tower Hotel, it must’ve happened quickly as guests left games of backgammon half-played, children left dolls unattended, room keys on lounge chairs…
A felt changeable sign notes the floors in the building that house the pool, lounge, and the Tip Top Club. However, the elevators on either side are out of order. Their ornate wooden doors are buckled outward, splintered – a symptom of an elevator trapping a cushion of air underneath as it freefalls, exploding out the door below…
As the misty remnants of old jazz standards play through crackling sound systems, echoing from distant reaches, a hotel usher leads you from this once-grand lobby into the hotel’s library.
Image: Disney
The dusty bookshelves are filled to the brim with yellowed tomes, knick-knacks, and oddities, with a dusty old television packed away into the shelves. As guests file in and stand on the parquet floors, a storm rumbles as lightning crackles in the distance.
As the doors to the library close, the room rumbles as a sudden bolt of blinding light strikes nearby, the television springing to life. It’s the disconcerting introduction to The Twilight Zone. But this episode is unlike any other. As the intro closes, the black and white television set focuses on a hotel – this very hotel – on a dark and stormy night. Rod Serling’s voice recounts:
Hollywood, 1939. Amid the glitz and the glitter of a bustling young movie town at the height of its Golden Age, the Hollywood Tower Hotel was a star in its own right – a beacon for the show business elite. Now, something is about to happen that will change all that…
You know the story. Halloween night, 1939, a rogue bolt of lightning strikes a guest wing of the elegant Hollywood Tower Hotel. More than a usual act of god, this lightning strike makes three guest towers of the hotel flicker out of existence, disappearing along with an elevator carrying five guests who are never seen again.
Image: Disney
As the story replays on the old black and white television set in the hotel’s dim, cobweb-infested library, the lightning on screen begins to sync to the lightning flashing in the window…
The time is now on an evening very much like the one we have just witnessed. Tonight’s story on the Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a maintenance service elevator still in operation and waiting for you. We invite you if you dare to step aboard, because in tonight’s episode you are the star, and this elevator travels directly to the Twilight Zone.
The Elevator
Image: Disney
A bookcase slides out of the way to reveal the entrance into the hotel’s boiler room. The massive two-story maintenance zone appears oddly alive for a long-shuttered hotel as boilers and ducts rattle and rumble with energy, pulsating with flames. Tensions rise as guests begin to realize there’s no turning back now…
Naturally, you’re guided to a cargo elevator loading dock to anxiously watch as the elevator dial above the rusted metal doors signals the ascent of the group before you. The dainty arrow advances on the dial… 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12… And then, it pushes past twelve… And sits. As the boiler room’s lights flicker and ghostly sounds echo over the radio, you watch. Finally, the arrow budges, reversing and returning to B. It’s your turn.
Image: Disney
Strapped onboard, you can look through the metal cage that surrounds this industrial elevator and take in the otherworldly rattles and flickers of air that seem to disguise distant screams – perfectly timed.
Then, the bellhop steps back from the elevator doors. “Enjoy your stay.”
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Will the elevator rise or fall first?
Neither.
As soon as the doors ding to signal their closure, a most unusual maneuver overcomes you: the elevator pushes off backwards, the boiler room doors growing farther away. “You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator…” a flash of lightning cracks as the concrete walls of the basement disappear, leaving only the boiler room doors floating in the distance with a hypnotic swirl twisting on them. “….about to take the strangest journey of your lives.” In the pitch-black darkness, you can feel and hear a massive set of doors close off your elevator from the basement. “Your destination? Unknown. But this much is clear: a reservation has been made in your name…” the agile elevator sinks a few inches, then begins to rocket skyward as the eerie picks of a violin plays “…for an extended stay.”
Image: Disney
When the massive, ornate doors slide out of the way, they reveal a gorgeous landing in one of the hotel’s hallways with a carved stone frame around a massive mirror, dead plants on either side. “Wave goodbye to the real world.” With a flash of lightning through a corner window, a bolt of lightning strikes the mirror and extinguishes the warmth from the floor’s lamps. An otherworldly wind billows the dusty curtains as the view in the mirror changes. Every single passenger is now a blue force, overtaken by the bolts of lightning. The carriage rattles as the lightning dissipates and the floor falls silent. Somehow, the reflection shows an empty elevator…
The doors close one again as the elevator swiftly rises.
It dings happily as the doors open to a long corridor, lined with lamps and hotel rooms.
“What happened here to dim the lights of Hollywood’s brightest showplace is about to unfold once again…” Silently, something begins to appear halfway down the hallway. Abstract shadows and lights materialize, expanding and contorting, taking on an electrical interference like an untuned television. Finally, the shapes come into focus: the five people who disappeared on the elevator decades ago.
“It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man in snoring…” the girl’s disembodied voice chants. The energy that created the cast collects and spreads to the walls, overloading the lamps and dimming the hallway to pitch black darkness. “One stormy night, long ago, five people stepped through the door of elevator and into a nightmare…” In the infinite blackness, stars sparkle to life around the elevator cage as it floats. The only other thing in existence is another set of elevator doors left where the hallway ended. It opens to reveal the doomed passengers inside. Then, the elevator floats away in the darkness. “… that door is opening once again. But this time, it’s opening for you…” The phantom elevator opposite freefalls out of view.
And so do you.
At once, the elevator releases, yanked down toward the basement. The Tower’s first trick: this is more than a freefall. The elevator doesn’t just drop, it’s pushed down by the twelve foot tall motors hidden in the hotel’s penthouse, with riders experiencing extreme weightlessness as a result. An auxiliary power surges as the cage’s overhead light flickers on, powering the elevator up through the darkness, plastering riders to their seats.
A resounding ding signal’s the elevators arrival at a floor. Only, as the doors part, they reveal something unexpected. Where once, many decades ago, this elevator would’ve opened into a luxurious guest wing, it now opens into a chasm – a gaping, scortched hole in the side of the building where the guest towers simply disappeared all those years ago. You won’t find another view of the Disneyland Resort like this one – from 13 stories up.
It pauses only for a second until the sound of a snapping cable makes it fall again. Up and down, back and forth, the elevator races through the phantom elevator shaft, the overhead light flickering and hotel rooms opening and closing in the darkness. Finally, the elevator is drawn to the height of the tower, looking out over the entire resort.
After a moment of peace, a final plunge pulls the elevator down all thirteen stories and back to the boiler room, the sound of falling cymbal all that’s left. As the doors from the shaft slide open, you can see the boiler room doors once more, floating in darkness. The elevator car glides forward, reconnecting with the doors as the cement walls reappear. “The next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you know just what kind of vacancy you’re filling,” Rod warns, “or you just may find yourself a permanent resident… of the Twilight Zone.”
Ride System
In Florida, there are four separate show shafts (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta) that share two drop shafts (Echo and Foxtrot). Elevators in show shafts A and B share a “5th dimension scene” to connect with drop shaft E, while elevators in show shafts C and D use drop shaft F.
How Florida’s Tower of Terror works. Trace an elevator from the Boiler Room to the exit. Image: Martin Smith. Used with permission.
One problem with this system is, as you might imagine, its expense. This elaborate ride system relies on the trackess AGV ride vehicles to navigate that horizontal scene.
It’s also tempermental… if one of the drop shafts or a famed “5th dimension scene” that connects it to the show shafts experiences a technical difficulty, the ride’s capacity is automatically halved.
The system in California was different, and decidely less complex.
There, the ride has three shafts, period. The “show” and the “drop” happen in the shame shaft, A, B, or C. But each shaft has two loading zones – one on the bottom level, and one a level above. So once an elevator is loaded, (let’s say, shaft C, upper level), it’s pushed backward from the loading zone and into the shaft. When the ride completes, the elevator returns to the upper level loading zone and the vehicle is pushed back out of the shaft and up to the doors for guests to exit. Then, the elevator that’s been loading for shaft C directly below is pushed back into the shaft and begins its ride, on and on, as the two loading levels switch back and forth sharing the shaft. The system is of a higher capacity than Florida’s while also ensuring that if a shaft experiences a technical difficulty; the ride’s throughput is cut only by a third.
Economically, this system is a win-win. It’s also got a higher capacity and is a smarter solution in terms of keeping the ride running. In exchange, though, the ride loses the AGV vehicles capable of driving themselves horizontally and rotating, which in turn eliminates the famous “5th dimension” scene pioneered in Florida and forces the ride’s showbuilding to be parked in front of the tower, reducing its intimidation factor.
So, what makes this headlining E-Ticket thrill ride a Lost Legend? You won’t believe the role it played in renewing a lost park and what’s set to replace it.
A Beacon of Change
Image: Disney
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opened at Disney’s California Adventure on May 5, 2004 in a most unusual way – it was struck by lightning. Or at least, it appeared to have been. The celebratory opening ceremony signaled the first major E-Ticket investment at the height of the park’s creative drought. When all else seemed lost, Disney called on the fan favorite to reenergize the park and breathe new life into Disneyland’s stumbling little sister.
And indeed, after consecutive years of attendance decline, attendance jumped 9% at the park from 2003 to 2005.
What fans and Imagineers knew, though, was that even the E-Ticket headliner was nothing more than a Band-Aid on a broken bone. The problem with Disney’s California Adventure wasn’t just that it didn’t have enough rides (though it didn’t), or just that it didn’t have enough Disney-quality details (though it didn’t have those either). Even if Tower of Terror gave the park a new ride with new details and new stories, it didn’t fix the real problem: California Adventure was broken at its foundation.
The park was designed to be “edgy” and “modern” with a bit of an “MTV attitude.” California Adventure in 2001 set out to recreate a modern spoof of California. The time is now, the place is here. Forget the Golden Age of Hollywood… Instead, step into a modern look at moviemaking on a Hollywood backlot set… of Hollywood.
It failed. We chronicled the full, in-depth story behind Disneyland’s second gate in its own standalone Disaster File: Disney’s California Adventure feature that’s a must-read for Disney Parks fans.
A reborn park. Image: Disney
But in 2007, Disney did something unprecedented: they admitted defeat and announced a massive 5-year, $1.2 billion redesign effort that would turn back the clock and follow Disneyland’s lead, rebuilding each of the park’s themed lands as historic, reverent, idealized versions of their former selves. Paradise Pier had its neon signs, stucco walls, and circus freak posters removed, as it became an elegant turn-of-the-century Victorian boardwalk with strung popcorn lights, Edison bulbs, classic pie-eyed Disney characters, and Victorian architecture.
Image: Disney
The park’s entrance was demolished and rebuilt as a charming Los Angeles of the 1920s called Buena Vista Street. This new entry into a reborn park took guests to the bustling Los Angeles Walt must’ve seen when he first arrived, with grand department stores, bubbling fountains, and sunset-tiled roofs with the park’s new icon – the historic Carthay Circle Theatre – reigning over it all. Of course, the electric Red Car Trolley also glides down the street, carrying guests and newsboys who sing of the California dream: “Extree! Extree! Read all about it! Spirit of Optimism sweeps California!” Indeed, Buena Vista Street might be the most intricate and emotional land Disney’s built since New Orleans Square.
Continuity
And there on Buena Vista Street, catty-corner to the Carthay Circle Theater, you could step into the Fiddler, Fifer, and Practical Café (named, in reality, after the Three Little Pigs of Disney’s short, but here explained in the park’s continuity as being the Silver Lake Sisters Jazz trio) where you’d find gorgeous 20s art posters of the three girls performing at the Tip Top Club at the Hollywood Tower Hotel.
Image: Disney
You read that right – 15 years before that ill-fated storm, the Tip Top Club was the place to catch all the best musical acts in Los Angeles, according to the detailed world-building Imagineering achieved.
As if that’s not impressive enough, guests could board the Red Car Electric Trolley as it glides down the street beneath the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge en route to Hollywood Land (a transformed Hollywood Pictures Backlot).
The inside of the Trolley was decked out with ’20s advertisements for Buena Vista Street and Hollywood Land shops, including one for the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Though, in one of the simplest yet most jaw-dropping bits of world building at the resort, you’d notice that back here, in the early 1920s of Buena Vista Street, the Hollywood Tower Hotel hadn’t added its main guest tower… yet.
Image: Disney
In any case, you could ride the Red Car Trolley through Hollywood Land and to the “Hollywood Tower Hotel” stop, as the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was firmly built into the park’s overarching continuity and its new, historic California story. How brilliant!
Elsewhere
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror debuted at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 1994 in what may be its most noteworthy form – a technological marvel that forever shaped Imagineering and its storytelling prowess.
There’s no denying that the follow-up at Disney California Adventure was a more cost-effective version, lacking in some of the frills and thrills that Florida’s version of the ride pioneered. What California’s version did do was to shape the narrative of an entire theme park and its rebirth, granting Disney California Adventure with a new life and a headlining fan-favorite ride that still managed to elicit excitement and stun a generation of West Coast fans.
And the terror didn’t stop there.
Image: David Jafra, Flickr (license)
As we mentioned earlier, Disneyland Paris was an early candidate for Geyser Mountain, a technological redesign of the Tower of Terror system ready to stand tall in Frontierland. But if you can imagine, Paris’s second park was in even worse shape than California Adventure. We chronicled the in-depth story of what may be Disney’s worst theme park ever in its own standalone Disaster File: Walt Disney Studios. Walt Disney Studios needed an even bigger boost than California Adventure had.
So Geyser Mountain was axed from Paris’ Frontierland, too, and in December, 2007, Walt Disney Studios got its own Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, identical to California’s but for its construction in cement instead of steel (due to building codes) and its narration in French. The park also recieved a Hollywood Blvd. to accompany it, with architecture that mirrors the blue domes and pueblo accents of the tower beyond.
While the French Tower of Terror didn’t break new ground, at least it enlivened the tired and wilted Studios Park there, which, truthfully, needs a billion dollar overhaul like California Adventure and then some.
Tower of Terror – Tokyo
Click and expand for a larger view. Image: Ruth Hartnup, Flickr (license)
Then there’s Tokyo. Tokyo DisneySea – often recognized as the best theme park in the world – is a pinnacle of Imagineering. The $4 billion park was built the same year as the original California Adventure (which, again, cost only $650 million) and is by far the most sought-after of all Disney Parks on Earth – a veritable Mecca that all Disney Parks fans aspire to visit. The park is packed with outstanding original rides (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage), and when rides are shared with other resorts, DisneySea’s version is always the “Blue Sky” one with no cut corners and every detail in tact (Indiana Jones Adventure, Toy Story Midway Mania, Raging Spirits).
In 2006, DisneySea opened their own Tower of Terror. However, The Twilight Zone is relatively unknown in Japanese pop culture, necessitating a change. As always, Tokyo Disney Resort’s owners, the Oriental Land Company, went all out. While the ride is structurally identical to the ride in California and France, Imagineers crafted an entirely original story for the Japanese ride. Forget the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Forget a lightning strike. Forget The Twilight Zone.
Image: Bong Grit, Flickr (license)
Instead, the Tower of Terror in Tokyo is located in the park’s American Waterfront – an idealized New York City in the 1912. The Californian tower has here been reskinned as a looming, gorgeous Moorish revival building of Islamic arches, weathered domes, oriental patterns, and stained glass. The fascinating backstory tells of Harrison Hightower, a ne’er-do-well member of S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers whose incredible interwoven story connects Disney rides, lands, and even parks across the world.
Mr. Hightower was a menace, scouring the world for remnants of ancient civilizations and stealing priceless artifacts to hoard in the dark vaults of his New York hotel. However, he made one fatal mistake – he stole an ancient idol named Shiriki Utundu from an African tribe who seemed all-too happy to part with it. On New Years Eve 1899, Hightower proved to his hotel guests that he didn’t fear the supposedly “cursed” idol by putting his cigar out on the statue’s head. A few minutes later, his ride up to the Penthouse came to a sudden, crashing end, with Hightower’s body never discovered and Shiriki mysteriously found back on his pedestal in Hightower’s office without a scratch.
Image: Cory Doctorow, Flickr (license)
The ride is a wonder, employing the same basic scenes as California’s (albeit, in reverse order) as a well-meaning preservation society tries to raise money to restore the dilapidated hotel by offering tours under the catchy, attention-grabbing name… “Tower of Terror.” Perhaps the most detailed ride in Disney’s repertoire, this Tower of Terror is, like so much at DisneySea, at the top of many Disney Parks fans’ bucket lists, and for good reason. Trust us.
Back in California
Image: Disney
So, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is inarguably a starring E-Ticket at a reborn Disney California Adventure – a triumphant piece of a careful new story and identity, folded into the continuity of a park determined to tell California’s stories and legends.
Would you believe that it would be replaced by a science-fiction space warehouse looming over Buena Vista Street? Just wait until you hear how this Lost Legend met its demise via what some fans call one of the most shortsighted and ill-conceived ideas Disney has ever had… Read on…
Rumors…
In early 2016, a very strange rumor began to spread. Sources began to report that Guardians of the Galaxy, a surprise hit Marvel superhero movie from 2014, would take up residence inside the Towers of Terror in the United States.
To be clear, the rumor was instantly derided as insanity, and many fans (this writer included) wrote it off as a prank. So outrageously stupid did it sound that a futuristic sci-fi superhero movie would take over a 1920s art-deco hotel reigning over a newly-redesigned Golden Age California park, many in the Disney Parks fan community literally, sincerely imagined that the rumor was cooked up just to see how much fury and chaos such an obviously fake rumor could provoke.
Image: Disney
A decade ago, maybe! Back then, Disney’s California Adventure was a creative mess, and it would’ve made sense for Disney to throw anything at the wall just to see if it would stick. They could’ve made the floundering California Adventure into a west coast Hollywood Studios, serving as a catch-all for any intellectual property that wouldn’t reasonably fit in the other parks. Big, boxy tan showbuildings lend themselves to such a strategy, since it can be excused away as being a “movie studio” where cohesive themes, immersive environments, and intellectual properties need not be treated with much reverence.
But California Adventure was fixed! It was saved! No more irreverent jokes, no more modern music… It had a new lease on life with a refreshed, reverent, historic California story. Guardians of the Galaxy taking over the California-set Twilight Zone Tower of Terror? Decimating the careful continuity and storytelling Disney just spent over a billion dollars to craft? A sci-fi superhero ride looming over a 1920s Los Angeles? A 1950s High Sierras national park? Pushing Marvel super heroes into California Adventure when next-door, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland is as creatively desolate and in need of new stories as California Adventure used to be?
It sounded unthinkable.
Condemned
Image: Disney / Marvel
At the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Joe Rohde (the Imagineering figurehead behind Disney’s Animal Kingdom and its Pandora – The World of Avatar) was on hand to announce that Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! would replace the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney California Adventure in 2017. The detailed lobby, library, and boiler room would be gutted and redesigned as an industrial futuristic prison owned by the enigmatic Collector from the 2014 film. Of course, the drop ride within would be retained and reprogrammed, but everything around it would be completely redesigned and not an ounce of Tower of Terror would remain in the brand new attraction…
…Unless you count the exterior clearly being a 1920s art deco hotel affixed with pipes and satellite dishes, reskinning it to capture “the beauty of an oil rig.”
Image: Disney / Marvel. Click and expand for a larger, detailed view.
Rohde explained that the hotel would become an interdimensional “warehouse fortress power plant” (his words, not ours) with the queue and ride rebuilt entirely to incorporate the “irreverent” superhero team from the PG-13 movie and feature its 1970s and ’80s musical soundtrack… Yes, in a park that just spent a billion dollars to get rid of irreverence and modern pop music.
As it is, it seems deeply odd that Rohde – an otherwise revered Imagineer known for his inexhaustible taste for detail, storytelling, and authenticity – would buy into the idea of scrapping the 1940s Hollywood area of a California-themed park to replace it with a superhero prison… and yet…
Image: MintCrocodile, Magic Eye Disneyland Resort Pictoral Blog (Used with permission)
In a most astounding and unthinkable move, Disney began to literally disassemble the attraction while it was still operating, pulling down the neon “THE HOLLYWOOD TOWER HOTEL” sign and the ride’s rusted blue domes in September 2016, and covering the entire hotel in tarps by October.
All the while, they initiated a “Late Check-Out” promotion wherein the ride itself took place in pitch-black darkness after dusk each night, with the Silver Lake Sisters of Buena Vista Street fame performing live in the lobby, earning multi-hour waits for the starring attraction. It didn’t matter.
The transformation continued. On January 2nd, 2017, the last of the Hollywood Tower Hotel’s guests ascended into the Twilight Zone.
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! opened May 25th, 2017 at Disney California Adventure – less than six months after Tower of Terror’s closure. That sci-fi space warehouse based on the beauty of an oil rig now reigns over Disney California Adventure, visible from Buena Vista Street, Grizzy Peak, Pacific Wharf, Pixar Pier…
Inside the fortress, guests are toured through the Tivan Collection of interdimensional artifacts (from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a few nods to Disney Parks history) gaining security clearance to access the Collector’s newest and most prized addition: the Guardians of the Galaxy themselves. But Rocket – ever the escape artist – has a plan, and it involves you.
Image: Disney / Marvel. Click and expand for a larger, detailed view.
In Tivan’s office (a re-themed library), Rocket explains via an amazing Audio Animatronic that he’ll hitch a ride atop the Gantry Lift meant to carry us to the Guardians… and the massive generator that’s keeping all of those locked cages closed. When the time’s right, he’ll cut the power to free his friends.
Strapped into a Gantry Lift, Rocket unplugs the power and plugs in the Walkman, sending the Lifts past two action-packed floors (brought to life through Parallax screens) to the sounds of Pat Benatar, the Jackson 5, or Elvis. Re-rides earn you new songs, new scenes, and new elevator drop profiles in this high-action thrill ride that trades Tower of Terror’s eerieness and subtlety for in-your-face irreverence and yo-yo’ing chaos.
Here’s an official glimpse at what awaits inside the new Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!:
Don’t be surprised when the “gantry lift” doors open to reveal the same bird’s eye view of the resort with Rocket now narrating by saying, “Disneyland?! That’s thematically inconsistant!” It’s obviously a nod to (or perhaps an “irreverent, MTV-attitude” jab at) fans and how very silly they are for caring about old-fashioned things like continuity and subtlety.
Let’s be clear: Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! is a rip-roaring thrill ride adventure that’s stylish, loud, and fun. Far from the dismal failure some fans hoped and predicted, BREAKOUT is an E-Ticket that only Disney could conjure with all the comedy, action, music, and characters you love from Guardians of the Galaxy.
It’s too bad that it looks, feels, and sounds like the wrong place for them all.
Image: Disney / Marvel
Some insiders offered that Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT may make more sense in the coming context of the Avengers Campus, a new mini-land dedicated to Marvel heroes that is set to officially open at the park in 2020… Surely, being officially annexed to an Avengers land will at least make more sense than the ride’s current placement in a 1940s Hollywood (even if that will leave Hollywood Land without an anchor attraction at all). Somehow, that’s not very comforting for fans who just saw Disney California Adventure earn and then erase a billion-dollar rebirth on Californian stories and settings…
VACANCY
Image: Disney
For a few years now, we’ve been slowly building our library of Lost Legends – the in-depth stories of rides that were beloved and celebrated icons of Imagineering and storytelling; guest favorites that were taken too soon. To be clear, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is another legend lost. And if you ask many fans, its also a grim harbinger of change for the future.
While Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! is a fun, loud, gleeful, thrilling E-Ticket in its own right, few would bother arguing that it’s a smartly-backed concept fueled by a long-term vision. It feels like a knee-jerk race to get a hot intellectual property into Disney Parks as quickly as possible. And that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. Guardians is neither the first nor the last example of Disney’s newest strategy: packing the parks with current box office hits come hell or high water… even if it means that ride lifetimes are measured in seasons rather than decades.
It’s a strategy that many industry fans will recognize…
Image: Universal
It’s what Universal has been doing nonstop for the last decade, cannibalizing their own classic attractions (Kongfrontation, Jaws, Back to the Future: The Ride, Earthquake, Twister) for whatever’s hottest (The Mummy, Harry Potter, The Simpsons, Fast & Furious, and Jimmy Fallon, respectively). Sure, the strategy has catapulted Universal’s parks into the limelight with earth constantly moving… but nothing – and we mean nothing – is sacred, and Universal will topple any opening day favorite to get a hot intellectual property in.
But Disney’s caught onto this new strategy, literally reading off of Universal’s playbook… perhaps without accounting for the fact that Disney Parks were special precisely because they played the long game and had thoughtful, timeless, spectacular rides such that even movie-based rides amount to much more than “riding the movies.” People feel a deeper connection to Disney’s rides than to Universal’s, and – admittedly – expect more from Disney. With Guardians, it may feel that they’re getting less in the form of a more short-sighted IP-invasion at the expense of a ride that could’ve been a star for decades.
As for the new ride, we can’t say whether or not Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! will still feel like a good choice in 10, 15, or 20 years. Frankly, it probably won’t last that long. The plug-and-play design makes it easy to update this adventure to whatever’s new and next in the Marvel universe… just like Universal would.
Image: Disney / Marvel
Still, when we look up at the towering art deco prison painted in stripes and silver pipes rising above Disney California Adventure blaring The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” though sliding elevator doors, we’ll wonder if this was the best course for Disney’s underdog – the reborn park given a new lease on life, now risking it all on an unexpected intellectual property.
If you made it through our most in-depth Lost Legends entry yet, you’re just the kind of Disney Parks fans to make the jump to our In-Depth Collections Library where the full stories of closed classics come alive. As always, we invite your thoughts and comments below. We want to know your memories of California Adventure’s Tower of Terror and your thoughts on the new Marvel attraction that’ll take its place. All Twilight Zone stories end with a moral lesson – what will we as fans learn from Disney’s twist ending here?
We’ve done our best here to capture the story behind the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and celebrate its magnificent presence in a park tailor-made for it. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t say goodbye with a friendly word of warning – something you won’t find in any guide book: the next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you know just what kind of vacancy you’re filling, or you may find yourself a permanent resident… of the Twilight Zone.
Image: Disney
