How old is tower of terror

All information comes from Matt at Studios Central. The Tower of Terror has its origins miles away in Paris. Part of the original plans for Disneyland Paris was Geyser Mountain in Frontierland - just past Phantom Manor, next to the geyser that exists today the only part actually built. This would have been a mine train ride through a mountain, with a geyser bursting out from the tracks and catching your train from below The water jets would have hidden an elaborate free fall mechanism.

Sound familiar? This attraction never got off the planning stage, but the idea stayed in Paris. As well as housing the space rollercoaster, there was to be a Journey to the Center of the Earth attraction all based on Jules Verne. This was way before the DisneySea version or indeed the MGM tram tour version and had a free fall ride vehicle. About this time TWDC were looking to expand the over popular studios.

What was needed was a major E Ride, and preferably one to act as a weenie, to move guests past and through the shops of Sunset. And out of the archives came the free fall ride. Often Imagineers will bring into a team their ideas from other projects that were not implemented so ideas from Geyser Mountain as well as other Disneyland Paris projects found their way to the Studios when Marty Skylar, Head of Disney Imagineering told Disney Imagineer C. McNair Wilson to put a team together of his favorite people to talk about a new project.

McNair Wilson and the rest of the Imagineering group met together. The meeting was the beginning of an attempt by Eisner to bring Mel Brooks over to Disney to produce his films at the then brand new Disney-MGM Studios because he knew Mel and Mel's son Max were huge Disneyland fans and a joint collaboration between Brooks and Disney would be a good starting point for working together.

Mel initially had to be sold on the idea of a theme park attraction after being explained that a theme park attraction has a lasting effect of being in place and seen every day of the week by about 20, people for anywhere from years. Mel Brooks made about six trips to Imagineering and a number of telephone calls to work on the attraction. Disney Imagineers wanted to shoot for something scary and funny with Mel Brooks and at one point in the early development with Mel Brooks, what later became the Tower of Terror started out as "Castle Young Frankenstein" which would have featured a Bavarian village with winding streets to the castle with a drawbridge.

The queue line would be towards the back of the "village" with a kind of indoor line that had the feel of Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom. This idea lead to another idea of the Hollywood Hotel having one end being covered in ivy and had broken windows and was falling apart and when you went into the hotel, if you went down the hall to that section, it would say "closed" or "condemned" and that part would be the Hollywood Horror Hotel The Mel Brooks attraction project commonly referred to by the Disney Imagineers as "Hotel Mel" so that it was literally two buildings but it would look like it was one large building.

In fact, if you look at the Tower of Terror today, the backend looks like it could be extended to attach to another building right along side it. Another idea to incorporate Mel Brooks into the Studios was to do a "comedy Haunted Mansion" that would feature Castle Young Frankenstein on the same grounds in case the elevator based attraction was scrapped.

Mel Brooks eventually left the project at the time Disney Imagineers had some firm ideas and brought in an idea to have a moving elevator off it's track and moving down hallways and crash out one side of the building and they had architects and engineers brought onto the project and Mel lost interest partially because Disney wasn't building on Mel's original idea anymore and partially because Mel went off to make the movie "Life Stinks".

Disney felt the attraction needed a movie reference and eventually settled on the Twilight Zone theme after calling around and see what movie rights were available. In fact, the idea of a Twilight Zone attraction was tossed around for one of the opening day attractions at the Disney-MGM Studios at one of the attractions that featured multiple movie and television brands such as the Great Movie Ride and Superstar TV.

The Twilight Zone theme was a fairly easy overlay for the Disney Imagineers and went through all the Twilight Zone episodes to pick elements from the series although the theme did not change the attraction much.

The one element that was lost in all of this was the comedy aspect to it that Mel Brooks had wanted but with Mel gone, Imagineers focused on the eeriness and thrill of the attraction with a Twilight Zone theme to it. One of the initial ideas for the Tower of Terror attraction was incorporating Disney Cast Members who would be dressed as different members of the hotel staff, such as a hotel manager, desk clerk and of course bellhops and each would have something about them that was just a little bit off.

One idea along those lines involved having bellhops walking through the line with arms full of luggage asking guests if anyone wants to check their luggage or telling a random guest "Mr. Eisner, you car is ready! Another idea was to have a bench near the queue with a man sitting down, hunched over with a newspaper in his lap and cobwebs between him and the newspaper and he would slightly move his head to the left and right and when he would sense a guest starring at him, he would "come to life", revealing he is a live actor and start conversing with the guest.

There was another idea of having audio-animatronics including a elevator repair man sleeping in the boiler room. In this version of the attraction, the voice of Rod Serling greets the now-seated passengers the moment the elevator doors close, saying "You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator about to ascend into your very own episode of The Twilight Zone ".

The elevator rises for a few seconds before coming to a stop. The doors open to reveal a corridor populated by the five lost ghostly occupants from , who then disappear. The corridor fades to a starlit night sky, except the window at the end of the corridor. The window then morphs into a more ghostly black-and-white version and shatters like in the opening sequence of each episode.

The elevator doors close again and the car continues ascending. Serling's voice continues: "One stormy night long ago, five people stepped through the door of an elevator and into a nightmare. That door is opening once again, and this time, it's opening for you".

At the top, the doors open again and the car mysteriously moves forward out of the shaft, through a section of the ride called "The Fifth Dimension": a surreal collection of objects and sights, once again in the style of the television show's opening sequence.

A field of stars appears at the end of the corridor. After the segment is done, the stars fade, forming a hidden Mickey right before disappearing, then reveals a vertical line, which splits in half and opens like elevator doors. Serling's voice is heard again, saying "You are about to discover what lies beyond the fifth dimension, beyond the deepest, darkest corner of the imagination, in the Tower of Terror". After the elevator moves into the shaft, the randomly-selected drop sequence begins.

At one point, doors in front of the riders open to reveal a view of the park from a height of 13 stories. In the years since the attraction's initial opening, a randomized pattern of drops and lifts have been added, where the ride vehicle will drop or rise various distances at different intervals. Other effects were also added, including new projection images of the breaking window, wind effects, ominous black-lit figures of the five ghostly original riders, and even fake endings.

These changes were made to make every trip to the Twilight Zone a different experience. After a series of these drops have been made, the opening sequence of the show's third season plays showing images of the objects from Season 5's opening, the lost passengers and Serling as the vehicle enters the hotel's basement.

Then Rod Serling's voice says, "A warm welcome back to those of you who made it and a friendly word of warning; something you won't find in any guidebook. 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 While retaining the same exact concept and theme of the original attraction in Florida, the version at Disney California Adventure Park had some major differences.

Imagineers redesigned the entire ride system for the west coast incarnation of the attraction and made some general changes to many show scenes. The attraction featured three elevator shafts. Each shaft, in theory, is its own separate ride with its own separate operating system. Doing this made it easier to repair individual areas of the attraction without causing the entire attraction to go down. Each shaft has two vehicles and two loading levels.

It is designed so that the lower vehicle can be in profile while the upper vehicle is loading, making the attraction much more efficient. Since each vehicle loads and unloads from the same point, it also saves space. Since this system works so much more efficiently, it is the system used in both the Paris and Tokyo versions of the ride as well. When the show cycle started, the vehicle pushed backward away from the elevator door while a starfield and a purple spiral appeared on the doors.

The voice of Rod Serling said: "You are the passengers of a most uncommon elevator, about to take the strangest journey of your lives. Your destination The first stop for the elevator was a hallway with a large mirror. Rod Serling told the riders to "wave goodbye to the real world". As they do, lightning struck and electricity began to arc around the mirror and the reflection of the riders is replaced by a ghostly silhouette of themselves. Keeps us on the edge.

Thanks Jennifer for the list — some of the facts were completely unknown to us. The Tower of Terror is a thrill we never tire of and the first ride we head to when we enter Hollywood Studios! It is pure unadulterated fun, excitement and scary all intertwined! Thanks for the neat facts about my absolute favorite ride!!!

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