The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or simply Tower of Terror, is a series of similar accelerated drop tower dark rides located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, Disney Adventure World, and formerly located at Disney California Adventure. The attraction is inspired by Rod Serling's anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, and takes place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version features an original storyline not related to The Twilight Zone and takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. All versions of the attraction place riders in a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present a fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of a supernatural element many years previously.
The original version of the attraction opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios, then named Disney-MGM Studios, at Walt Disney World in July 1994. A decade later, Disney began plans to add similar versions of the attraction to their newest parks at the Disneyland Resort in California, Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, and Disneyland Paris. In California and Paris, Disney sought to use the popular attraction to boost attendance at the respective resorts' struggling new theme parks. The California and Tokyo versions of Tower of Terror opened in 2004 and 2006, respectively, while financial problems delayed the opening of the Paris version until 2007. The California version closed in January 2017 and was replaced by Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!, which was later incorporated into the adjacent Avengers Campus in 2021.
The Tower of Terror buildings are among the tallest structures found at their respective Disney resorts. At , the Florida version is the second tallest attraction at the Walt Disney World Resort, with only Expedition Everest at Disney's Animal Kingdom being taller by . After its retheme, the structure at the Disneyland Resort is still the tallest building on the property, as well as one of the tallest buildings in Anaheim. At Disneyland Paris, it is the second tallest attraction.
History Development
In the late 1980s, a second phase of development was being designed for Disneyland Paris, then known as Euro Disney. Included was a free-fall type ride in Frontierland that was to be named Geyser Mountain. It would have been part roller coaster and part free-fall ride that shot guests up a vertical shaft. The plan was scrapped, but was picked up by Disney's Hollywood Studios, then named Disney-MGM Studios, as part of a massive expansion to their U.S. park. Several attractions had already been proposed, including "Dick Tracy's Crimestoppers", which was later made into Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland. Still needing a major "E-ticket" attraction, the idea of a drop-shaft ride came up and was chosen.
There had been several proposed ideas for haunted attractions, including a ride based on Stephen King's novels, a Vincent Price ghost tour, a Mel Brooks-narrated ride, a real hotel, an awards show honoring classic movie monsters starring Godzilla hosted by Eddie Murphy and Elvira,"The Disney MGM Studios Expansion." Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career, by Kevin P. Rafferty, Disney Editions, 2019, pp. 129–134. and a whodunit murder mystery, but none progressed into development.
Walt Disney Imagineering eventually took inspiration from Rod Serling's anthology stories featured in The Twilight Zone, as a foundation for the attraction's original story. Imagineers mused that the attraction would be able to take guests into the Fifth Dimension that Serling always described as unlocking in every episode of the series. With the project in firm development, Disney licensed the rights to use the Twilight Zone intellectual property from CBS. The Imagineering team settled on a 1930s-era Hollywood hotel with a Twilight Zone theme, but a new ride system had to be built, which would allow both more capacity inside the ride and make the drop fast. Otis Elevator Company was tasked to create the vertical ride system, while Eaton-Kenway developed a ride vehicle that could drive itself horizontally. Joe Dante directed the ride's preshow film.
Disney felt Rod Serling needed to be part of the attraction, although he had died almost two decades earlier. In order to include Serling in the attraction, Disney opted to hold auditions to cast his voice, with Carol Serling, Rod's widow, serving as a consultant for the casting. After many auditions, Mark Silverman was chosen by Carol to provide her late husband's voice. The archival footage of Serling used in the preshow was taken from the episode, "It's a Good Life". Silverman would later reprise this voice role for additional lines for the Disney California Adventure attraction. He also reprised the voice of Serling for the first-season finale of the 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone. The child actor in the ride's pre-show and ride experience is voiced by Kat Cressida, who also voices Constance Hatchaway in The Haunted Mansion.
The new ride was announced on September 30, 1991, and it was later described as a haunted attraction with a "stomach-churning 130-foot drop" for its finale, a contrasting experience to the friendlier Haunted Mansion attraction at Magic Kingdom. Site-clearing and preparation began in early 1992, and the original location was moved slightly after a sinkhole formed. The tower's interior and exterior design took inspiration from existing Southern California landmarks, including the Biltmore Hotel and Mission Inn.
The distinctive Spanish Colonial Revival architectural features that are present on and around the attraction's roof were designed so that the rear facade would blend with the skyline of the Morocco Pavilion at Epcot, which is located less than two miles from Disney's Hollywood Studios. After construction ended, the ride was initially set to open on July 4, 1994. However, the Tower of Terror opened on July 22, 1994, along with the Sunset Boulevard section of Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Engineering The ride system employs specialized technology developed by Walt Disney Imagineering, particularly the ability to move the vehicle in and out of the vertical motion shaft. The elevator cabs are self-propelled automated guided vehicles, which lock into separate vertical motion cabs. The cabs can move into and out of elevators horizontally, move through the "Fifth Dimension" scene, and on to the drop shaft. The Florida ride runs on a unique loop system, with two identical ride systems built within the Tower. There are four shafts in the back section of the building containing the dark-ride portion of the attraction.
After the corridor scene, the four shafts merge into two, identical "Fifth Dimension" scenes, and then a cab enters the single drop shaft. After the drop sequence, the elevators unload in the building's basement, then return to one of the show shafts to re-load the next guests. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror initially featured a single drop until May 1996, when the ride was upgraded with a second one. A third drop was added in 1999. In January 2003, the attraction's triple drop was replaced with randomized multi-drop sequences selected by a computer within the ride.
In order to achieve the weightless effect the Imagineers desired, cables attached to the bottom of the elevator car pull it down at a speed slightly faster than what a free fall would provide. Two enormous motors are located at the top of the tower, measuring tall, long, and weighing . They are able to accelerate at 15 times the speed of normal elevators. They generate 275 times the torque of a Chevrolet Corvette engine, reaching top speed in 1.5 seconds.
The ride's slogan, "Never the Same Fear Twice!", refers to the drop pattern being randomly selected by a computer before the ride begins. The drop reaches a top speed of . Initially, the attraction's vehicles seated 22 guests, restrained by lap bars; in 2002, the vehicles each had a seat removed from the back row and lap bars were replaced by seatbelt restraints. The vehicles for Tokyo's Tower of Terror still accommodate 22 guests, 7 in the first two rows and 8 in the third.
The design of the 199 ft (60.7 m) tall Tower of Terror was founded on advanced dynamic analysis to model the effects of moving parts on the structural and non-structural elements. Since the facility was intended to provide new and non-repeatable sensations to visitors, a very wide variety of elevator drops and sequences of downward and upward motions, spanning anywhere from 1 floor to 13 floors, were modeled. Each elevator drop mode was analyzed as a time history - in other words accelerations that change in time - applied to the entire structural system.
The objective was to push the motion beyond a free fall and provide the thrill to riders while ensuring structural integrity and safety. In addition to the self-weight of the structure, when motors weighing 270 kilo-pounds (123 metric tons) move, the force they exert on the structure is amplified by an order of magnitude. The applied accelerations were tested in the model over a range of 1.0 g (32.2 feet/s/s or 9.81 m/s/s) to 2.5 g (80.5 feet/s/s or 24.5 m/s/s). In addition to strength requirements, the design applied very stringent deflection criteria. In the case of the tower, floors have to support cabs while in horizontal motion in and out of the elevators with minimal deflections to avoid blurry projection screens.Chalhoub, Michel Soto (1993), Disney World Tower of Terror Design and Dynamic Analysis for Shock, Vibration, and Fatigue. Des. Rept. #93-08-07, R. M. Parsons Lib., 100 W. Walnut St., Pasadena, CA.
In August 2014, video recording was added to the ride's on-ride camera, included with the on-ride photo through Disney PhotoPass. This was the first ride at Walt Disney World to offer on-ride videos. In September 2014, on-ride videos were added to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom and TRON Lightcycle / Run when it opened in April 2023. making it the only three attractions in Walt Disney World to offer both in-ride photos and videos.
Disney's Hollywood Studios version Queue and preshow
In the American and European versions of the attraction, guests make their way to the dilapidated Hollywood Tower Hotel through the front gate to enter the queue through overgrown gardens and then enter the hotel lobby. Once in the lobby, guests are ushered to the hotel library, which houses the hotel's collection of books and antiques. With a crash of thunder and lightning, the power in the library goes out, except for a television set which crackles into life and plays the opening sequence from the fourth and fifth seasons of The Twilight Zone, hosted by Rod Serling.
The episode depicts the events of a stormy night in Hollywood 1939, where a powerful lightning bolt strikes the hotel and causes five people—an actor, a singer, a child star, her nanny, and a hotel bellhop—to vanish from the elevator, along with an entire wing of the building. Serling then tells guests that they'll be stepping in a maintenance service elevator to become the stars of an episode of The Twilight Zone. The television then turns off and then guests are directed through to the boiler room to board the elevator.
Ride experience