Hollywood, 1939.

Amid the glitz and the glitter of Hollywood at the height of its golden age, The Hollywood Tower Hotel was a star in its own right.

But something happened. Something dark. Something unexplainable. Something terrifying.

And it’s happening once again.

But this time… It’s happening to you.

Attraction Experience

The glamorous, lively surroundings of Hollywood Boulevard can never prepare you for what you’re about to experience. Nestled behind the colourful facades of tinseltown at the height of the fabulous '50s, The Hollywood Tower Hotel towers into the sky before you. You’re on the driveway of the huge Pueblo Deco hotel, standing on the spot where many a glamorous movie star stepped out of their limousine to check into their luxurious suites. Ghostly music from the era echoes all around, and distant screams from high above prepare you for your fate.

Step through the ornate entrance archway and join the queue to check-in. The staff haven’t had this many guests in quite a time. The Lobby is still coated in dust, with spider webs hanging from the chandeliers and ancient artefacts from the 1920s and 1930s everywhere.

Playing cards have been thrown down on a table, mid-game. Drinks have been left standing, half empty. What happened here to so suddenly dim the lights of such a shining Hollywood hotel?

Passing by the normal guest elevators, mysteriously cordoned off with “Out of Order” signs, you step through the door into the hotel’s Library. A dark, dimly lit room with endless walls of books and artefacts. The Library doors close, and almost immediately a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning outside the window cause the lights to darken. An old television screen in one corner of the room flickers to life, and a mysterious lost episode of “The Twilight Zone” begins playing...

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.

“Hollywood, 1939. Amid the glitz and the glitter of a bustling, young movie town at the height of its golden age, The Hollywood Tower Hotel was a star in its own right... a beacon for the show-business elite. Now, something is about to happen that will change all that...”

The episode shows images of a group of hotel guests boarding the elevator. As they do, a huge lighting bolt hits the tower and their elevator drops into another dimension. Electrical pulses flicker through their bodies and in an instant they’re gone. The camera quickly pans around to Rod Serling...

“The time is now on an evening very much like the one we have just witnessed. Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognise, is a maintenance service elevator. Still in operation, and waiting for you. We invite you, if you dare, to step aboard, because in tonight's episode, you are the star. And this elevator travels directly to... The Twilight Zone.”

Leaving the Library via a hidden exit, you step into the dark and grimy service corridors of the hotel. You continue through the dimly-lit Boiler Rooms to your service elevator. All around, items from the past maintenance workers are still in place, giving clues to what you might experience above. It seems the sudden events of October 31st 1939 didn’t leave time to collect anything. As the level indicator on the elevator rises and falls mysteriously, it soon settles back down to “1”, and the doors ping open for you to climb aboard...

Your bellhop wishes a pleasant stay and the Service Elevator vehicle suddenly moves horizontally, backwards, towards the elevator shaft, with eerie lights and sounds all around. A starfield glistens around the walls of the service shaft.

“You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator, about to take the strangest journey of your lives. Your destination... unknown. But this much is clear: a reservation has been made in your name for an extended stay”

After moving some distance up the tower, the doors open with the usual “ping”, on a wide hallway mirror. Electricity buzzes all around.

“Wave goodbye to the real world. You have just entered... The Twilight Zone”

Well go on... wave goodbye! The whole cast wave to themselves in the mirror, before suddenly a surge of electricity causes the lights to dim and the reflection to crystallize, turn to a holographic blue colour and gradually flicker up and down in waves of electricity. In an instant, it’s gone. Your reflection no longer exists, and you’re left looking at an empty elevator vehicle. The elevator shakes and shudders, with the sound of grinding metal piercing your ears. The doors close, and you ascend further into the darkness of the tower. Next stop – a hotel corridor, floor 13, destroyed by the lightning blast of 1939.

“What happened here to dim the lights of Hollywood’s brightest hotel is about to happen again”

The lights along the corridor flicker, the blue light hazes. Out of nowhere, the group of guests first seen in the Library video appear as ghosts, wailing and crying to leave their abandoned Twilight Zone prison.

“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”

Another bolt of electricity flickers through the corridor and the ghosts vanish into the glow of the wall lights. The elevator shakes and shudders again, more and more violently. As all the lights dim, the door of the destroyed elevator glows in the distance. As the Twilight Zone opens once again, it DROPS.

And so do you.

The electrical forces of the Twilight Zone pull your elevator further and further – you aren’t dropping, you’re being pulled into another dimension. As you near the bottom of the shaft, you’re propelled upwards again, at lightning speed. And then right back to the bottom, before bouncing back up, right to the top. At the very highest point of the tower, the doors open and you’re given a final glimpse of the real world. Then, for one final time, you’re plunged back into the darkness of the tower and driven all the way down into the deepest depths of the basement. Soon, your nightmare is over, and the elevator is moving back to the Boiler Room as familiar images from The Twilight Zone float all around.

“The 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 could find yourself a permanent resident... of The Twilight Zone”

The doors roll open and your bellhop greets you with a pleasant smile. After being ushered out of the elevator, you leave through a labyrinth of deserted corridors that lead you back to the glamorous façade of the bustling hotel. Past the television screens showing souvenir pictures, you enter the luxurious Tower Hotel Gifts boutique to pick up some souvenirs from your unforgettable Hollywood holiday.

Outside the hotel, the sun is still shining and the palm trees swaying along the boulevard, as Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” echoes around from a ghostly ballroom high up in the tower...

Facts & Footnotes

The attraction features three drop shafts, each used by two elevators. Boarding takes place across two floors, with elevators moving horizontally into and out of the drop shaft from their boarding point. Whilst one elevator is boarding, the other is ascending into The Twilight Zone. In the elevator, guests are seated in rows of three or four, with 21 guests per vehicle. The elevator cars use seatbelts for restraints, but are infact not elevators in the common sense of the word. Classed as ‘Verticle Conveyance Vehicles’, they are able to drop guests faster than the speed of gravity.

The tower reaches a height of 183ft, with a 40ft basement, but the elevators do not travel right to the top of the tower, since a large amount of the space is used by the winch mechanisms which drive the drop shaft cabin. The attraction is by far the tallest building at Disneyland Resort Paris.

The mirror scene uses digital projection on a plate of thermal glass to achieve the effect of guests disappearing. As the doors open, a high-definition video camera captures guests and projects this onto the electronically-activated ‘mirror’. A computer separates the guests from the normal, generic elevator background and allows their silhouette to come loose and shimmer in wavy form before the ‘mirror’ projection screen is de-activated and guests are simply looking straight through to a dummy ride vehicle.

The corridor scene uses the same glass projection screen technique to create the effects of ghosts, with the corridor using a steep forced perspective to allow the effect to work. It only extends around 10ft in front of your elevator, with a height of just 4ft.

The Twilight Zone television series originally ran for five years on CBS, from 1959 to 1964. Rod Serling, its creator and host, a six-time Emmy winner, wrote 92 of the original 156 episodes.

The Parisian/Californian attraction uses a style known as ‘Pueblo Deco’. Pueblo Deco, popular when the hotel was fictionally built in the 1920's, is characterized by the clean, geometric shapes common to the Art Deco style. However, from southwestern Native American art, it borrows elements such as radial sunbursts, arrowhead shapes, and simplified thunderbird motifs. A prime southern California landmark in the Pueblo Deco style is the L.A. City Hall Building.

The episode from which Rod Serling's appearance was taken for the ‘lost episode’ guests see in the Library is entitled " It's A Good Life ," written by Rod Serling. This episode tells the story of a little boy who can read minds and control people. His new lines here (and throughout the attraction) was provided by Mark Silverman, chosen from hundreds who auditioned for the role by Rod Serling’s widow.

The Lobby features an extensive array of period props and furniture that creates a bygone era of Hollywood splendor. Magazines and newspapers from 1939 are casually placed just where the guests left them. At the front desk, a set of luggage remains where a guest was about to register. On a table, a deck of cards, a cribbage board, two wine glasses…all carefully placed to indicate that the people in this lobby left in a hurry without a thought of taking anything with them - and never came back. The Boiler Room is especially rich in prop and set details that suggest an actual working facility, from the time clock to the maintenance man's desk filled with photos and personal effects.

History

Construction began May 2005, with foundations laid and, eventually, a huge reinforced pit dug for the attraction’s 40ft basement. The attraction is due to open in January 2008, with "soft opening" previews and tests running from late December 2007. An opening as early as October 2007 has been rumoured, however, in late 2006 it became clear an opening in early 2008 would be more attractive for the resort, to avoid the inauguration events clashing with the popular Halloween and Christmas seasons.

The attraction will be almost identical to the version already in operation at Disney’s California Adventure. Unlike this version, however, the Paris edition has been constructed using formed concrete rather than a steel skeleton, following French construction standards. The finished product will, though, be eerily familiar.

Infact, this version of the Tower was originally designed for Walt Disney Studios Park during the park’s construction, with the ‘La Terrasse’ area built in preparation for this. It was due to open in 2004/2005, but was quickly postponed as the park experienced a poor opening season and the resort’s operating company underwent another major financial restructuring. At the same time, Disney’s California Adventure park at Disneyland Resort had attendance troubles of its own. In need of a quick-fix E-Ticket to save the park, the Imagineers pulled out the plans for the Paris tower and hastily affixed them to the Californian park’s ‘Hollywood Pictures Backlot’ zone, with the attraction officially opening 5th May 2004.

Disneyland Resort Paris finally got its long-planned Tower confirmed on 11th January 2005, as Euro Disney SCA, the resort’s operating company, announced the fruits of their financial restructuring – €230m for major new attractions, of which around €110m will have likely been budgeted immediately for the Tower. The project grew massively in January 2007 with the confirmation of Hollywood Boulevard.

The original version of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opened at Disney-MGM Studios on 22nd July 1994 as part of the massive ‘Sunset Boulevard’ expansion of the park. Unlike the Paris, California and Tokyo Towers (which all share the same basic ride design), this version features two pairs of drop shafts, separate load and unload points and a unique horizontal movement between the “up” shaft and the “down” shaft, known as the ‘Fifth Dimension Room’. In designing the Paris/California Tower, the Imagineers were pushed to create a Tower with higher throughput (and more affordable budget), and so removed this element as they believed it was never as successful as they had originally hoped.

In 1997, Disney produced a made-for-TV movie based on the story of The Hollywood Tower Hotel. More information can be found at the Internet Movie DataBase.