The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, commonly known as Tower of Terror, is an accelerated drop tower dark ride located at Disneys Hollywood Studios, Disney California Adventure, Tokyo DisneySea and Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris. Exempting the Tokyo version, all the attractions are based upon Rod Serlings CBS television anthology series, The Twilight Zone, and take place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel, in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version, which features an original storyline not derived from The Twilight Zone, takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. Nevertheless, all four versions place riders in a vehicle themed as a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present riders with a fictional back story in which people mysteriously disappeared from a hotel elevator under the influence of some supernatural element many years prior.\r
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The original version of the attraction opened at Disneys Hollywood Studios in July 1994, and was the basis of the 1997 made-for-television movie Tower of Terror where several scenes were shot at the actual attraction. A decade later, Disney began plans to add similar versions of the attraction at their newest parks at the Disneyland Resort in California, Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, and Disneyland Resort 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[2] and 2006,[3] respectively, while financial problems delayed the opening of the Paris version until 2008.[4]\r
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The Tower of Terror buildings are among the tallest found at their respective Disney resorts. At 199 feet (60.7 m), the Florida version is the second tallest attraction building at the Walt Disney World Resort, shorter only than Expedition Everests 199.5 feet (60.8 m). At the Disneyland Resort, the 183-foot (55.8 m) structure is the tallest attraction at the resort, as well as one of the tallest buildings in Anaheim.[5] At Disneyland Paris it is the second tallest attraction.\r
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In the American and European versions of the attraction, guests enter the Hollywood Tower Hotel through the front gate. Throughout the entire queue area in most parks, typical 1930s jazz music can be heard, hauntingly echoing through a cracked, serpentine pathway which leads to the hotel. The outdoor queue winds through the overgrown gardens of the hotel, past signs pointing to the stables, bowling green, tennis courts and swimming pools. The queue meanders to the west of the hotel entrance, past disheveled and crumbling statuary and a vine-covered pavilion. Eventually it leads to the lobby from the left. Inside the doors, the Hollywood Tower Hotel appears frozen in time, everything in it draped in decades worth of dust and decay. There is a yellowed copy of the Los Angeles Examiner dated October 31, 1939, a table set with tea and stale pastries, several suitcases abandoned near the front desk, a long-extinguished fireplace, an unfinished game of Mahjong at a table accompanied by a few rancid cocktails, a concierge desk with a hat and cane left behind, and a cobwebbed owl sculpture surrounded by a circle of dead flowers acting as the centerpiece of the lobby. In the California and Paris versions, the game of Mahjong was replaced with an unfinished game of cards.\r
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Behind the front desk are the elevators, one of which its sliding doors partially detached from their grooves. A sign in front of the elevator still reads Out of Order. Everything in the hotel has apparently been preserved ever since it closed that fateful night all those years ago. Guests are informed that their rooms are not quite ready; in the meantime, guests are ushered into the hotel library. The library is home to not only books, but also the hotels collection of antiques and exotic curiosities, an old television set, and various pieces of Twilight Zone memorabilia scattered about the room. Through the window, guests may observe a fierce thunderstorm raging outside.