Have a nice trip. See you next fall.

[CujoSR]

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!) During the recent Cast Previews, Polar and I had the chance to ride the new Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror at Disney's California Adventure. This was my first trip on this ride either here or Florida but I had some idea of what I was getting into after reading about Florida's version and what one of the testers had to say about the Anahiem version.

Walking down Hollywood Blvd and turing left I finally saw the finished version of what I watched being built everyday for three years and I was awe struck. The sheer size of the building and seeing how high you go when the elevator doors open up at the top was amazing. The building is finely detailed including a broken fountain with light fixtures at the bottom to indicate it was a once working fountain. As you walk inside there are plenty of things to really make you feel like this is an old abandoned hotel (ignoring the all the people around you). Right as you walk in on your left there is a small table that was being used to play a game of poker (the pair of tens is winning). There is also a set of keys on the table one of many that can be found around the hotel. Next you enter the library/pre-show also very detailed. The lights go out and this is where I have my first problems.

With only a few major changes DCA's version is nearly a direct lift from Florida, that in mind let's get back to the pre-show. The pre-show direct copy and it shows. One issue is that the movie starts with the original opening the the TV show film grain and cool optical effects included, the next scene of people walking through the hotel and getting into the elevator was obliously shot on video and de-colorized. No film scratches and no age to it at all. My second compalint has to do with the special effects, specifically the electricity spreading across the guests in the preshow. Again a direct lift from a ten year old ride. Great effects back then but today's standards are a little higher. It looks cheesy. Mix that with the video look of the video, it brought me out of the world that the lobby had worked so hard to bring me into. On to the Boiler room.

I must be in the Twilight Zone, we went from the first floor to the basement (a very large basement I might add,) without going down any stairs! Eh, trivial. as soon as you walk down a short hallway the room opens up to very detailed basement with leaky pipes, bad lighting and a large boiler with what looks like a face. Very creepy. Here is where you are grouped and positioned to enter the service elevator. When the doors open the Hotel Bellman is standing there waiting to greet you suprisingly and you are ushered past hallway to enter the elevator. Wait... we go through elevator doors to enter a hallway to go through a second set of elevator doors? I don't get it. WHY!? So sit down, belt up, and hold on it's time to enter the Twilight Zone.

So now were at the meat of the ride. This is what you came for so here goes. This is where the major changes are evident.

"You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator about to take the strangest journey of your lives."

The elevator slides back into position in the ride shaft and up you go.

"Your destination unknown, but this much is clear, a reservation has been made in your name for an extended stay."

"Wave goodbye to the real world."

Since the deletion of the "5th Dimension" scene a new scene is here. The doors open and you see your whole car for a few seconds in a large mirror. It quickly changes to a black backround with ghostly images of your car's passengers. This is really cool since it is yor outline making the image. wave your arms, do something stupid, it's all reflected in front of you in a purple haze, (seems like it's a high tech version of the Playstation 2's "Eye Toy." In another flash all the cars passengers dissapears. Very cool. The moves to the next scene.

"You have just entered the Twilight Zone. What happened here to dim the lights of Hollywood's brightest showplace is about to unfold once again."

At this point you are presented with a hallway similar to the in Florida's famous "5th Dimension" scene. You see the five spirits inviting you to come along with them when they are struck by lightning, (aging, cheesy effects again,) and disappear. the hallway dims and you see a starfield. The elevator at the end of the hall remains but as a ghostly image slightly rotating. The door open and you see the guests again. They drop out of sight. Then it's your turn.

"One stormy night long ago, five people stepped through the door of an elevator and into a nightmare. That door is opening once again, but this time, it's opening for you."

I should take a second to say that everything up to this point takes about a minute and ten seconds to unfold compared to Florida's That clocks in at over 2 mins before the first drop. The story just seems to be rushed and kills the apprehension a bit.

After Rod Serling finishes his monologue you drop... Then head up as the doors open and you see all the way across DCA and DL. At this point I have to admit everytime I rode it lost track of where I really was and could not get an idea of where I was looking. Flash, your picture is taken and you drop again moving up and down several times before going to the top again. With one last look at the real world you make your last drop all the way to the bottom where Rod comes back.

"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."

The doors open and you are let out into that hallway I mentioned earlier. Sure it's supped to be behind closed doors type of feel but it's just so bland. they could have done a little more with this area before you are forced into a gift shop.

All in all I liked the ride but considering it is so short (total time is two min. ten secs.), I would not want to stand in line for two hours. It looks like I won't be riding till the off season. Too bad.

MEDIA CENTER:

Photos:
The Hollywood Tower Hotel
Ahh this looks normal...
Umm... Maybe not...
The Lobby
Desk in the Boiler Room
The Elevator
ToT Computer Desktop

Videos and more:
(If it doesn't work, right click and "Save Target as..." then open with Quicktime Player)
Quick Lobby Shot (2.01 Megs)
Library Pre-show (12.9 Megs)
The Ride Itself (20.1 Megs) Note: Most of this video is dark. It's a dark ride.
Twilight Zone Music (880 Kb)

[Freak]

Awesome! :pbjtime:

[DisneyPrincess]

Thanks for your reviews and opinions :)

I have actually heard from several people that our version is better than the new one; but it's still an awesome ride.

Just a few comments -We have the long dead fountain in our queue too. I do like our very large outside queue (that frequently fills during peak) with the overgrown plants (yours will fill in, ours looked kind of bare and silly when we first opened too :) ) and the signs pointing out the different hotel features. We have a game of mahjong instead of poker in our lobby. We have, behind the checkin desk, several room keys hanging for the "empty" rooms. I'd love to get my hands on one the DCA ones if you all have them too :twisted: Ours also goes from the first floor to the basement with the just going down in the queue as aposed to going up in the outside queue. I've heard the boiler room is much better than ours, a lot more details, it's also supposed to be bigger (but I've also heard it feels smaller). It sounds interesting the way the cars are loaded, at ours the bellhop waits for you at the loading area, the doors open and their is your car, there isn't a hallway and more doors. I think a tiny part of the reason for no 5th deminsion is because the cool eye effect of showing your car hasn't worked in years, but that's only a tiny part of that section. I've heard the mirror gets old after awhile too. I can just picture obsence teenagers on it. :roll: The drop out there is like our Tower 2, so I've riden that drop sequence several times. It is hard to keep track of where you are. As for the sound/lighting effects during the drop, we didn't really have those until Tower 4, we've added a lot of stuff with thos sequences. It's odd that you unload into the same hallway. Ours leads you out in a hallway with the photo preview at the end of it. In between our two shafts is the chicken elevator (or for the CMs, backdoor to go ride :) ) that has a "hallway". You go over a bridge with two metal roll up walls. After close they come up and you can see the cars where they cycle back up to the basement (as the basement at ours is actually a floor above the gift shop, I don't know how yours is set up levelwise). The DCA version is the exact same layout for the gift shop as ours, they came over and took a ton of pictures of ours before it was started out there.
As for the being selfish part, make friends with the bellhops, and they'll backdoor you :D of course it doesn't hurt that I work the shop either ;) .

Thanks again for the reviews, too bad I have to wait until September to go ride it. Oh well, it's only 5 months away.

[Wubbo]

2 cool things i learned about the ride. if you turn on your cell phone and shine it towards the mirror it doesn't have that plasmatic (is that a word?) effect on it. also i guess when you go upstairs in that boiler room there is a wall with a door drawn into it and my sister was like did you hear that poltergiest wall? you can hear the girl calling for her mom in it. i didn't hear it but that sounds like a cool effect.
also i think if the bell hops are into the theming of the ride they make it fun. i guess the elevator door are rubber in between because as we were standing waiting for them to open so we could board- a hand came out between the doors and was all wiggling....very good effect- scared the heck out of us. also when at the end of the ride when the doors opened all you could see was the bell hops head like the elevator stopped short and we were stuck. but turns out he was on his knees...again it scared us a little. thought the ride broke on us. all and all i thought it was great

[GapToothed]

Thanks everyone for your reviews. Hopefully in a few weeks I can submit my Journey to Atlantis review when they let us team members ride it. I'm headed up Tuesday for the AP preview so I'm getting excited. I might take a trip up tomorrow in the (unlikely) event TOT will soft open - I haven't been to the resort in weeks and I'm going through withdrawl!

[Wiseone2980]

also when at the end of the ride when the doors opened all you could see was the bell hops head like the elevator stopped short and we were stuck. but turns out he was on his knees ... again it scared us a little. thought the ride broke on us. all and all i thought it was great

we must've had the same bellhop because on one of my trips on it last weekend we had a guy do the same thing. It got a good chuckle out of everyone.

I do miss the moving forward motion from Florida but the thermal imaging is a cool effect.

[Freak]

Dude Tower ROCKED! So much fun!


The bellhops were great, pretty funny. Our loader was great. He was all "Please raise your hands, good good. Please tug on the yellow straps, good good. Please try to stand up, good good, that was for my own pleasure. If you need anything at all, please don't hesitate to scream. Oh and before I forget, one more thing--..." ::doors close:: So funny!

Yah...best ride..ever. I got B Shaft (I think). It's a great great ride. Tons of airtime and it seems like your rocketing up and down. The mirror effect was cool, but I really loved the starfield. It made you think the room was sooo much bigger than it was. The drops were great, the elevator sound effects were awesome! When I heard it operating from the exterior of the hotel, I was thinking, "Man that is one pissed off elevator."

Such a great ride.

[GapToothed]

I rode Tower today. Since everything has already been said, I won't be saying anything new! Haha. It's unfortunate that we weren't allowed more than one ride. During my ride time, there was virtually no line. But perhaps the later ride times saw bigger crowds.

If today is an indication, the standby line is going to be hell on hot days! Since there was no line, we weren't in the lobby for very long before entering the library. It seems so small in person, but detailed as everyone who has posted pictures has shown. The library effects are great!! The boiler room is neat, but again, we weren't in there long enough to take everything in. It appeared to me that they weren't loading on the second floor, but I could be wrong... I'm sure the view up there is cool!

The reverse direction of the elevator worked really well - in some ways more dramatic then moving forward in the fabled 5th dimension scene. The drop profile is lots of fun - I wonder if the smell effects installed in Florida will be added here eventually... I was actually quite surprised at the exit corridor. For some reason, I envisioned it as one long hallway that fed into the gift shop. I was surprised that the corridor wraps around the drop shafts! Minimally themed to be sure, even an elevator to access the upper floors visible, but it serves it's purpose!

Are they going to be selling a model of the Tower? I looked around for it, but I couldn't find it! ;-( Not that I could afford it right now anyway!!

It was neat to finally take close-up shots of the Tower from the courtyard instead of from the steps of the Hyperion during the last performances of Blast and thru Aladdin.

Can't wait to ride it again to soak up more details. It's to be seen how long I will wait in line for it... but I look forward to making another journey into the Twilight Zone...

Thanks for reading.

[DLSweeper]

It rocked! The end. :mrgreen:

[SpaceRanger]

I've waited over two hours for Rocket Rods before ... at least this would be worth it.

haha VERY good point....