Space Mountain. The Haunted Mansion. Pirates of the Caribbean. Big Thunder Mountain. These are the jewels in the Imagineering crown. Attraction legacies that span decades, continents and vast differences in design, yet always share the same common magic and become effortlessly popular in every corner of the Disney globe.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, it is fair to say, could be one of the only modern Disney attraction legacies to reach that very special level, to create its own legacy worldwide.

From its early 1990s beginnings as an icon for Disney-MGM Studios to a welcome home in Paris as the heart of a new Walt Disney Studios, the Disney Imagineers' Tower of Terror has captured the imagination and excitement of guests like only those classic E-Tickets could.  And, in the same way we've seen Big Thunder Mountain in various Western landscapes, Space Mountain taken "De La Tèrre à la Lune" and Haunted Mansion masqueraded as Phantom Manor, the Tower of Terror legacy is full of contrasts and comparisons.

Just how does the single biggest new attraction at Disneyland Resort Paris in over 10 years measure up to its three cousins?  This is our definitive comparison of Disney's 'Towers around the world'...

Disney-MGM Studios

Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, USA.

Tasked with drastically increasing capacity at the newly-opened and hugely popular Disney-MGM Studios in 1990, the Imagineers not only developed a high-capacity thrill ride in lush surroundings, but placed the attraction at the furthest end of a new Sunset Boulevard, itself at the far end of the park's entrance avenue, Hollywood Boulevard. This places the attraction well out of the park's original boundaries, and requires guests to double-back on themselves to reach the Tower.

In contrast, the distant, lush and deserted Hollywood Hills surroundings of this abandoned movie star retreat do give it a unique atmosphere when compared to its more city-based cousins.

The ride system set-up is clearly the largest difference of the Florida Tower, however. The free-moving elevator vehicles here go through a continuous, circular loop, perhaps using a different drop shaft and loading/unloading point each time. This is therefore the only version to use entirely separate locations for loading and unloading.

From one of the four loading doors, an elevator ascends into the building above before the doors open on the Corridor Ghosts scene.  On the next floor comes the real surprise for this version of Tower, as the doors open and your elevator car drives itself horizontally forwards, through what's known as the "5th Dimension Room" (a pitch-black scene featuring a field of stars and symbols like those of the Twilight Zone opening credits), and then into the drop shaft at the front of the tower. The elevator drops, unloads at a separate location, then drives itself across a service area to the next available loading door.

There are four loading points and "ascending" shafts, but only two 5th Dimension rooms and drop shafts, thus creating the "bottleneck" capacity problem apparently solved with the second version of the ride system.  Should an elevator fail at any point, half of the ride's capacity will be cut off, versus only one third or even one sixth of the 'Mark II' version and its three independant elevator shafts.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney-MGM Studios is so far the only Tower of Terror to experiment with alternate "drop sequences", the frequency and size of each of the multiple drop your elevator experiences inside the Tower.  The attraction is now onto its fourth version, an entirely random sequence, promising "Never the same fear twice!".

Disney's California Adventure park

Disneyland Resort in California, USA.

The second Tower of Terror to open actually used the plans of the fourth (Paris) to come to existance.  During the future planning of both Walt Disney Studios Park and Tokyo DisneySea in the early 2000s, a new version of the attraction was designed for each park.

However, when Disney's California Adventure park (originally opened 8th February 2001) hit attendance troubles in its first year, Disney executives knew the park needed an E-Ticket boost like Tower of Terror.  With the plans for Paris' Tower ready and waiting, featuring a perfect Hollywood Tower Hotel to slot into Hollywood Pictures Backlot, the gears were set in motion. The attraction was officially announced on the park's 1st anniversary at a special press event.

Tower of Terror was built with a steel frame as its core, three entirely separate drop shafts and six loading areas (3 on each floor of the dual-level Boiler Room). Only its Lobby and Library are similar in layout to those at Disney-MGM Studios.

As the second Tower and the unplanned first to use the 'Mark II' ride system layout, the California Tower introduced a higher capacity and more satisfying ride, removing the horizontal movement 5th dimension room and using three separate, shuttle elevator shafts, rather than Florida's loop.

Each drop shaft has two boarding points on separate floors inside the front body of the hotel building. From each, guests board an elevator vehicle permanently assigned to that boarding point and then move horizontally backwards into the vertical drop shaft. When the ride cycle is complete, their elevator is positioned back at their original boarding level and the separate elevator vehicle "dropped off" to return, horizontally forwards, to its loading/unloading point. The vertical elevator then moves up/down to the second loading point to pick up the second elevator, completing the entire cycle. With three independant drop shafts, this not only gives a more efficient, higher capacity, but also greater protection from any unscheduled downtime of individual drop shafts/vehicles - the remaining two shafts can continue as normal.

For further comparisons to the original Disney-MGM Studios version, see Walt Disney Studios Park.

Tokyo Disney Sea

Tokyo Disney Resort, Japan.

In Tokyo, you'll find no Twilight Zone references, no art deco and certainly not the Hollywood Tower Hotel we know - but this is still without doubt an all-American Tower of Terror.

The place is New York City, the time 1899. Hotel Hightower is the legacy of affluent shipping merchants and traders from the nearby docks, built in extravagant gothic style as a true emblem of the riches hoarded by its owner, Harrison Hightower III.

From every corner of the globe, every lost civilisation, Harrison collected ancient artefacts and priceless mementos, all stored in his hidden vaults inside the hotel. Some artefacts it seems, however, weren't so pleased with their displacement. Upon transporting the rare spirit idol Shiriki Utundu to his private quarters, his elevator was seized by the mystical spirit and Hightower was never seen again.

Guests enter the attraction in the American Waterfront timezone of 1912, visiting a re-opened relic through a guided tour that has taken over the former hotel.  Unlike its cousins, this Tower of Terror features not only alternative versions of the two ride scenes seen in the California and Paris attractions, but also a live pre-show conducted in Japanese by one of the "restoration" team members. During the introduction, the idol disappears from its pedastal and later commandeers the elevators once again, as guests themselves attempt to reach the top floor quarters.

Developed at the same time and by the same team as the Walt Disney Studios Park version, Tokyo Disney Sea's Tower of Terror is actually an entirely mirrored version of the Paris and California attractions, featuring the outside queue to the right of its entrance and the pre-show rooms to the left. The drop shafts also switch positions - one on the left and two on the right of the maintenance staircase. The street-level location theme is very much a key element of this city hotel.

The inner ride systems and room layout of the California, Tokyo and Paris Towers are all based on the same plan, albeit with two entirely different themes "pasted" on top.

Walt Disney Studios Park

Disneyland Resort Paris, France.

Bringing the Terror to Paris

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror finally comes to Paris! Planned before the park's opening in 2002 and designed exclusively for the park, the core Tower will now be almost identical in form to the California version (see above) built using the same plans. From its perfect fit into the spot between La Terrasse and Armageddon to the Spanish-influenced architecture matching that of Front Lot and Disney Studio 1, the Tower of Terror has never been more at home or more integral to the make-up of a Disney Park. Its central location right at the heart of the park makes it an icon on the scale of Sleeping Beauty Castle, for all activity to centre around.

As with classics such as Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean, the original Tower of Terror was never planned into the layout of Disney-MGM Studios from the outset. With the benefit of time, Disneyland Resort Paris once again had the ability to reserve space for its new E-Ticket, much like Space Mountain in 1995. Masterplans for the park were infact altered between 2000 and early 2001, pushing the Studio Tram Tour station further back to allow space for the Tower of Terror to almost be lowered into position without any major change to its surrounding area.

The Location

In reality, the change to its surroundings couldn't be more drastic. A dream of Walt Disney Studios fans for over five years came true with the confirmation of a real Hollywood Boulevard movie set to surround the Tower, enclosing it from the park's hub, providing it with a theme and a timezone (1950s, 10+ years after "the incident") and entirely altering the feel and atmosphere of the park's central areas. A new street will run directly past the Tower between Production Courtyard and Studio Tram Tour, past La Terrasse, providing a major new route within the park and the street-level location so vital to this version of the Tower. For more information about Hollywood Boulevard, see our dedicated guide.

Exterior Design

The exterior design of the building itself appears at first glance to be almost identical to that of the pre-built California version. However, several important details do separate the two Towers quite noticably upon further inspection:

Small, circular art deco supports under the over-hanging wings of the tower, seen in the original concepts but not used in California.

The impact of the (fictional) collapse of the Tower's three front wings has been sculpted and formed in much greater detail and expense than the Californian version. The walls have been painted to resemble red and grey brickwork with more detailed pieces of plaster hanging from them. Overall, the effect of this decay and crumbling infrastructure is more believable and likely much more costly to produce.

The dome at the front of the square body of the Hotel building now has an eye-catching surround of turquoise tiles, rather than the empty grey space surrounding it on the Californian Tower.

Also, the Paris Tower is the only one to have been constructed fully from solid concrete, rather than a steel frame. This follows French building regulations and could have helped to notch up the budget.

Ride System

The 'Mark II' ride system of the Tower remains the same as the Tokyo and California towers, with single elevator systems in three separate drop shafts shuttling 2 elevator cars each through the vertical ride above. This is in comparison to the continuous circuit system of the Florida Tower.

In brief: Whilst an elevator vehicle on one level of the boiler room is loading, the vehicle on the second floor will have moved (pushed backwards) horizontally into the Tower drop shaft and be being taken through the ride by the elevator sytem. The ride consists of the horizontal entrance into the vertical tower, a show scene featuring yourselves disappearing in a mirror reflection of the elevator, a second show scene one floor above of a corridor filled with ghosts (showing the Twilight Zone opening up) and, finally, the plummet into the "darkest recesses of the Twilight Zone", before the elevator drops your car off at the loading level and it moves forwards to unload.

Languages & More

Further comparisons and changes, most notably in the area of languages and tailoring the attraction to a European audience, will be added here upon the official opening.