Consider, if you will, the creation of a brand new kind of Disney attraction. This isn't just any attraction. It has the atmosphere of The Twilight Zone, the thrill of the most frightening rides in the world and a story on the level of the greatest tales ever told by Disney.

This is The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

But how did Walt Disney Imagineering ever come to stop off at The Twilight Zone? How did a deserted Hollywood hotel make its way into the legacy of three Disney theme parks, and what brought about the creation of, at its launch, Disney's most frightening thrill ride to date?

The Hollywood Tower Hotel is about to reveal its secrets...

It Began with Jules Verne

Who knew that Jules Verne could lead the Imagineers to The Twilight Zone? But, in fact, before they even reached Jules Verne, the Imagineers had their eyes set firmly elsewhere...

It was 1982, and Intamin engineering had just unveiled their state-of-the-art drop tower 'Freefall' at Six Flags Magic Mountain, LA. The concept is familiar today, but this early edition of the modern thrill ride easily drew lines of several hours for a ride lasting just several seconds, and the Imagineers knew Disney had to get on board. Where would the ride take them? To Euro Disneyland's Discovery Mountain, no less!

Lost to Mysterious Island

As part of their "Mysterious Island" story for the vast space inside the original proposed mountain, Imagineers would have offered guests a ride aboard a rusty elevator to the top of the mountain - only to then plummet them, faster than gravity, toward the bubbling and steaming "centre of the Earth" below.

The original Intamin tower also had a unique feature that the Imagineers incorperated into their original designs for the ride - an L-shaped track. As guests reached the bottom of their descent, the elevator suddenly moves onto its back and continues onwards with guests lying flat on their backs - quite some elevator experience! The Imagineers were so taken with the drop ride idea that they envisaged other themes for the ride system, such as 'Geyser Mountain' for Frontierland, shooting guests upwards rather than dropping them.

Ultimately, the Discovery Mountain concept was pushed back to a 'Phase 2' project for Euro Disneyland as the resort's construction costs peaked and continued over budget. This initial over-spending would return as the final knock-down for the Imagineers' Jules Verne drop ride idea, the Discovery Mountain project eventually simplified to the Space Mountain rollercoaster and an external Nautilus for the 1995 build.

However, no good ideas are lost forever at Imagineering. The ride would indeed make its way to Paris, but it'd have to get there via "Hollywood" first...

Dropping into Hollywood

Having beaten Universal to the claim of the first movie studio-based park in Orlando, Walt Disney World was seeing record attendance at its new Disney-MGM Studios park in the early 1990s. The aim to target the park at an older audience had worked and the park needed to double its capacity, and fast. But not with just anything - the park desperately needed a big, E-Ticket thrill ride on par with other modern thrills in the theme park world.

Even during the masterplanning of the project, Imagineers had envisaged some kind of haunted hotel attraction, a walk-through culminating in some form of elevator ride. Eventually, the plan became a whole new Hollywood street - Sunset Boulevard - to compliment the Hollywood Boulevard which serves as the park's Main Street USA. At the end of the new boulevard, would lie their haunted Hollywood Hotel. The good idea lost in Paris would return, and work began on transforming a regular elevator ride into a thrilling drop ride with several unique show scenes, and one all-important storyline...

The Story

But what could be the legend behind this abandoned Hollywood icon? The first idea on paper might seem a little surprising today, crafted especially for the initially older audience of the new park. Like a classic Film Noir thriller, guests would step into the remains of a big studio wrap party held at the hotel, only to gradually discover that, on that fateful night, the hotel owner had murdered his guests one-by-one in a fit of madness. Needless to say, higher management soon cancelled this sinister idea.

At the time Imagineers were really getting into their Hollywood Hotel ideas, another team was hard at work on an attraction for Euro Disney in Paris - Phantom Manor. Apparently inspired by this attraction's darker, more story-led approach to The Haunted Mansion (and its original narration by Vincent Price), the second story concept revolved around guests entering a hotel where the cast and crew of a horror movie production had mysteriously disappeared one night. With every step through the corridors, led by the cackling voice of Price, they'd discover new clues about the fate of the victims - eventually learning the whole truth only once they'd boarded the elevator to the 13th floor...

Finding The Twilight Zone

Yet, according to Michael Eisner, the Walt Disney Company CEO of the time, this story still lacked a "hook", something to really grab the interest of park guests. In a studio-based park full of franchises and well-known movie titles, the Imagineers soon found a perfect basis for their Hollywood tower - The Twilight Zone. Guests would be the stars of their very own "lost episode" of the cult 1950s/60s television series, experiencing the mysteries and thrills all for themselves. And just like that, for the Imagineers the 5th dimension fell into place around them.

As it did so, the Imagineers quickly realised that neither the original Intamin drop tower nor a regular elevator system would meet their demands for show scenes, unique horizontal movements and faster-than-gravity plummets. It became immediately clear that The Hollywood Tower Hotel would need to be designed from the ground up...

Disney-MGM Studios Concept Art

A selection of concept art charting the development of the original Tower of Terror...

Walt Disney Studios Park Concept Art

(& Disney's California Adventure park)

The Disney thrill drop-ride finally comes to Disneyland Resort Paris after 15 years.

Imagineering Fun Facts

To ensure they captured the mood and atmosphere of the television series perfectly, the Walt Disney Imagineeers screened each of the 156 episodes at least twice. Several episodes were screened many more times and studied in closely to note such details as props, guest stars, settings and music to be used as inspiration for the attraction. The dedication of the Imagineers to these screening sessions also allowed them to perfect the dialogue of Rod Serling, the show's presenter and a lead writer, your host for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

But how exactly did the Imagineers capture Rod Serling's introduction to the service elevator and his on-board narration, considering the screenwriter passed away in 1975? The acting is certainly all Rod Serling's own work, from the episode "It's a Good Life", but his voice is in fact provided by impersonator Mark Silverman through clever editing. As Serling mouths the words "This, as you may recognise, is a map of the United States", superimposed onto a backdrop of the service elevator rather than the map, the Library film cuts away for Mark Silverman to continue the original part of the dialogue, replacing "map of the United States" with "service elevator". Silverman was chosen from hundreds who auditioned, eventually chosen by Serling's widow from an audio tape recording. It is expected that an impersonator of the original French-language host will also be found for the Parisian version of the attraction.

During a research excursion led by a team from the Otis elevator company, the Walt Disney Imagineers had the chance to try what was branded as their fastest generation elevator in a new LA high-rise building. The elevator settings were taken to "full speed" and the Imagineers soon found themselves at ground level... without feeling a thing.  Upon commenting that they required "a gut-wrenching, hair-raising, free-falling thrill", the surprised Otis representative replied, "What? And undo everything we've been trying to perfect for more than a century?!". The Imagineers knew then that they'd have to come up with their own ideas. In fact, the actual ride sytem doesn't "drop" at all, but "drives" the elevator cabins vertically downwards faster than if they were left to drop.