Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

## The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

**The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror** is an attraction in Walt Disney World's *Disney's Hollywood Studios* and *Walt Disney Studios Park* in Disneyland Paris with it having formerly been a feature of Disneyland's Disney's California Adventure. It is themed around the classic American science-fiction/fantasy/horror television anthology series The Twilight Zone which ran from 1959 to 1964.

## Backstory

The story revolves around the *Hollywood Tower Hotel*, a hotel at the edge of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles which was popular amongst the Hollywood elite in the early 20th century. On the Halloween of 1939, four guests boarded an elevator with a bellhop to take them to the *Tip Top Club* on the 13th floor of the building. However, paranormal lightning struck the elevator shafts causing them to drop down several stories and for the hotel's elevator shafts to be left in ruin as the five victims disappeared off of the face of the Earth.

After this the hotel was shut down and abandoned for fifty-five years before being reopened in 1994, in-part thanks to the success of the next-door G-Force records. The hotel wouldn't be the same however as it was derelict, filled with macabre curios and curiosities, and crewed by a staff of disturbed bellhops with would-be-guests disappearing within the hotel's walls.

## Summary

### Walt Disney World

Guests entered the grounds of the Hollywood Tower Hotel from Sunset Boulevard, traversing its winding overgrown gardens and passing through the hotel's gates; still adorned with a court-order from 1939 to shut down the hotel. Distorted jazz music from the 1920s-1930s plays through the halls as guests enter the lobby which is frozen in time from Halloween night, empty of life and completely covered in dust and cobwebs. Bellhops inform guests that the elevators are out of operation and that they are required to use the maintenance-service elevators from the boiler-room, taking guests to wait in the hotel library as they make their preparations.

Guests wait in the library as a window shows a thunder-storm raging outside when a lightning-bolt strikes outside the room, turning on an old television. On the television is a (fictitious) lost episode of the Twilight Zone which tells the story of the Hollywood Tower Hotel and how its five victims were spirited away to the titular 5th dimension of the Twilight Zone. The Host of the Twilight Zone (Rod Serling) goes on to explain that in the maintenance elevator, guests will relive the same accident and be brought into the 5th dimension themselves, possibly for eternity.

As the TV cuts off a bellhop enters the room to guide guests through the haunting boiler rooms of the hotel and to load them in one of the hotel's two large maintenance elevators, presumably traditionally used for transporting large cargo and equipment. The doors in the elevators close as guests are brought up to an empty hallway of the hotel where the ghosts of the five 1939 deaths materialize in-front of them, charged with electricity and waving to the new guests to come and join them. The Host starts speaking to the riders again as the ghosts vanish and hallway goes dark until it is nothing but a window floating in a black abyss and smashes. The doors close as the elevators continue to rise to the 13th floor of the Tower of Terror.

The doors open onto what appears to be the inside of an elevator shaft being looked at from above or below. Lightning strikes and reveals the elevators to have entered the 5th dimension as their elevators move forwards like vehicles. The dimension is a dark abyss filled with glowing figures of the spirits, old images of Hollywood, a giant eyeball which stares at the riders, and other odd contents. The doors then move forwards where it passes by more elevator doors, inferring that they are in-fact still moving upwards. As the host reinforces guests' fate with his narration, the doors of the elevator open and show how high up they are with a view of Hollywood. Lightning flashes as the elevators are dropped down faster than the speed of gravity between views of the intense heights and pitch blackness filled with haunting sights such as the ghost of the child star singing.

After one final drop, the elevators are met with a swirling abyss with the ghosts waving at them and the Host disappearing into the cycle too only for this to be revealed as another television screen within the hotel's basement. The elevators supernaturally move horizontally through the basement as the host welcomes back those who made it and the vehicles pass by relics of the 5th dimension in storage such as a hideous ventriloquist's dummy, dusty statue and old jukebox. After this, bellhops let the remaining guests out of the elevators where they exit the hotel through the Tower Gifts gift-shop.

## Spin-offs

### Attractions

#### Tower of Terror

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is the attraction which the Tower of Terror in Tokyo DisneySea is based on making the HTH a counterpart to Hotel Hightower. There are however no apparent connections between the hotels' stories. Tokyo's Tower of Terror utilizes an original story outside of the Twilight Zone intellectual-property due to Japanese audiences generally not being as familiar with the American Twilight Zone TV series.

The story of this attraction revolves around the Hotel Hightower in New York City which in the 19th century was home to Harrison Hightower III, a member of the Pillagers Brigade and the Society of Explorers and Adventurers. Harrison travelled the world stealing and pillaging artifacts for his collection in the Hotel Hightower, including an African deity's totem in the form of Shiriki Utundu. On the New Year's Eve of 1899, Hightower disrespected the deity and was subsequently killed by it, being sent down an elevator shaft by its godly energy and bound the hotel as a ghost.

In 1912, the New York City Preservation Society was manipulated by Hightower's manservant Archibald Smelding into preserving Hotel Hightower as a historic building and leading tours in its walls. Smelding had been cast out broke following the events of December 31, 1899 and believed that if he sacrificed tourists to Shiriki Utundu that it might free Hightower's spirit and return them to their former status.

### Films

#### Tower of Terror (film)

The Tower of Terror film presents an alternate depiction of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, portraying a version of its original story but with connections to the Twilight Zone removed. In this version of events, the 1939 incident did not occur due to an inter-dimensional anomaly but rather due to Sally Shine's sister Abigail Gregory learning witchcraft and using black-magic to cause the incident out of jealousy for her sister's fame. Amongst those who died in the elevator was Dewey Todd, Jr., the son of the hotel's owner Dewey Todd, Sr. who had also constructed a sister-location for the Hollywood Tower Hotel known as the Manhattan Tower Hotel. In the 1990s, the curse of the hotel was lifted with the ghosts finding peace in the 13th floor of the Tip Top Club.

## Connections

### Camp Discovery

The front page on a newspaper possessed by the League of Adventurers features an article on the Herman family disappearing from the hotel in an elevator malfunction.

### The Rocketeer

Three of the Tower of Terror's respective characters are performers known as the Silver Lake Sisters. These three women having been musical performers and singers who performed at the Tip Top Club during the events of Halloween, 1939. A poster in their establishment, "Fiddler, Fifer & Practical Café" identifies them as having performed at the South Seas Club, a location from the film The Rocketeer which has been referenced in other Disney Parks materials.

### Disney Kingdoms

A photograph of the Hollywood Tower Hotel is hung up in the Ghostly Materials Gallery of the Haunted Mansion in this non-cannon, shared universe story. It is identified as one of many supernatural locations from across the world connected by the manor's endless staircase along with Ravenswood Manor, Rainbow Ridge and the Museum of the Weird.

### Other

* **Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!**: The Hollywood Tower Hotel is referenced in the queue for *Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT* which replaced the attraction in California. Here, relics from the hotel including branded keys and bellhop hats can be seen in the ownership of the Collector.
* **Rock 'n' Roller Coaster**: This attraction is located next-door to the Hollywood Studios' Tower of Terror with it being themed to being the G-Force Records company. Its success is connected to the 1994 reopening of the Hollywood Tower Hotel.

## Trivia

* In Disney's California Adventure, the ghost of Sally Shine was voiced by actress Kat Cressida. Cressida also voices Constance Hatchaway in the Haunted Mansion.
* The Tower of Terror is alluded to in *Tales from the Haunted Mansion*: *Midnight at Madame Leota*'s where the protagonist finds a large number of Hollywood ghosts in storage at a place called *Unit 1939*.