I guess we all know the story by now: on Halloween night in 1939, a starlet, a leading man, a child actress and chaperone and a bellhop board an elevator that is struck by lightning. The hotel is abandoned, and the guest is invited to recreate the journey via the service elevator, into which they are strapped, with the lift gate shut in front of their eyes by a possessed bellhop. So far, so good, but surely Disney isn't subjecting their guests to true free-fall, are they?

Of course not! The elevator cars actually are powered by a number of standard elevator motors, enabling them to travel at speeds faster than free-fall in both directions. Of course, being Disney, it's not enough that the elevators just go up and down. These elevators can move sideways, too.

But before we get to that, let's look at the first scene - a hotel corridor, where we see the fated guests one more time, before the whole scene becomes part of the Twilight Zone once again. This is a typical Disney scene - forced perspective (the corridor in side projection looks like a > sign, with the front much higher than the back). In the middle of the corridor is a glass wall positioned on the diagonal, onto which the ghosts are projected by a machine to the left of the scene. As this projector shuts off, a screen moves to block out the corridor, and a projector in the rear shows the window animation.

Next we move into the Fifth Dimension, as the sideways motion scene is called. Aside from the use of yet more mirrors to hide the moving parts and give you a floating sensation, the movement is actually the same tried and tested technology as the far more sedate Universe of Energy's traveling theater cars. Essentially, the elevator car you board is not a true elevator, it is a vehicle that fits inside an elevator housing. At the scene, the car 'drives' itself along a guidance wire, out of one housing and into another waiting housing in the drop shaft. In the interim, the motion is powered by a battery, charged by a device positioned in the unloading area that the car clips into, much like a cellphone charger. This portion of the journey causes the most 101s (attraction breakdowns), due to the fact that any object interfering with the current flow (such as a map, hat or similar) or a battery failure will lead to the elevator not being able to run in accordance with the operation cycle. This will lead to a precautionary shutdown, as the computers cannot track the cars when they are between housings, and there is a potential issue if the housing stays in the place outside the hydraulic doors for too long (any car entering the shaft from the other side could enter the housing out of sequence, and a collision could occur. It´s no surprise, therefore that the later Disneyland versions don´t have this sideways motion (see later).

Originally, the eyeball in the scene showed a photograph of the people in your car, taken by a digital camera positioned at the hotel corridor scene. However, the data communication system broke down early in the life of the attraction, and was never replaced - the eyeball resorts to its emergency compensation mode, showing a random picture from the drop zone database. This actually plays better in the scene in my opinion, as it foreshadows your ultimate fate.

After passing through the scene, you move towards the drop shaft - of which there are actually two (if you took the straight on option in the boiler room queue, you will end up in the left hand shaft from your point of view, which is the right hand shaft when looking at the building from Sunset Boulevard (I´ll call this Foxtrot Shaft, after the 'official' designation), and vice versa if you chose to turn at the queue split point (Echo Shaft). The cars on each side (Alpha and Bravo for Echo, and Charlie and Delta for Foxtrot) take it in turns to enter the shaft, so while one is in the shaft, the other is in the first phase of the ride, loading or unloading. At this stage, the ride path is allegedly totally random (I say allegedly, as I've heard that there are in fact a finite number of ride patterns, which are then selected at random when the ride starts).

The motors now work to carry out the computer's instructions, which are a list of floor numbers, and time delays. This is the reason why the cars were retrofitted with seatbelts; the rapid changing of direction could have caused people to become lodged in the original lapbar system, which while not dangerous, would certainly have been uncomfortable.

At some point, the car will stop for an extended period, where some scene will play out in front of you - you may stop at the lightning effect, or at the movie screen used at the end of show, which on this occasion will play the 'broken window' element of the Twilight Zone titles. The third option is to stop seemingly in the middle of nowhere, in an area where there is some scaffolding. At this stage you may just make out the figure of the child actress, as she sings 'It's raining, it's pouring'. These ghostly models were originally installed in Echo Shaft only, and were meant to be dimly illuminated for sharp-eyed guests. The effect was abandoned, with only the first set finished, until the randomization allowed for guests to stay in this area for longer, meaning there was a reason for their inclusion. Also in this part of the shaft is a smoke machine, originally intended as an extra effect, but during testing it just made the tower look like it was on fire, so again it was abandoned.

Regardless of what random motion you have encountered, eventually you will find yourself positioned at a set of elevator doors, opening to give you a good view of the Disney Studios. You may notice that you are positioned slightly above the doors; this was not the original plan. At first, you were positioned in line with the doors, and a camera on the wall took your photograph as you dropped. However, the cameras had to activate just before the drop to avoid missing the opportunity. Therefore, the Imagineers reprogrammed the computer to send the elevator to its maximum height, so that the camera could activate just after the car started to drop. After more random motion, eventually the car stops at the basement, showing a small movie before moving back out of the drop shaft, and into the hotel lobby/gift shop.

Localization:

If you were to visit the Disneyland version, you would notice that they have significantly different dimensions. Their ride cars do not move sideways, the Fifth Dimension replaced by a real-time CGI effect. What is also interesting is that they boast three drop shafts, rather than two - as there is no sideways motion to allow for the staging of vehicles, three shafts are needed to keep capacity high (each shaft only has one car). This also means that loading and unloading take place in the same spot, cars do not mysteriously appear empty, but contain the last set of guests to ride. In Tokyo DisneySea, the Twilight Zone theming is removed, but the Hotel Hightower is basically the same attraction as in Disney World, with the lateral motion being in the first scene, and backwards too (so their loading and unloading is where our drop shafts are).

As for Disneyland Paris, the building is made of concrete rather than steel, but as for other differences - I´ll let you know if it´s open when I go there soon.

Photos by Pat Whitson

Did You Know? When the Imagineers designed The Tower of Terror, they knew that it would be visible from within World Showcase in Epcot. In order to minimize this visual intrusion, they designed the rear of the building to blend in with the Morocco pavilion. If you stand in just the right spot, the buildings actually align and look like a single castle!