Tower of Terror (Tokyo DisneySea)
| Tower of Terror | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo DisneySea |
| Land / area | American Waterfront |
| Type | Drop tower dark ride |
| Opened | September 22, 2006 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 40 in (102 cm) |
| Status | Operating |
Tower of Terror is a drop tower dark ride in American Waterfront at Tokyo DisneySea in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. It opened on September 22, 2006. Although it shares its name and its basic premise — a hotel elevator, a disappearance, and a terrifying drop — with The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in the United States and Paris, the Tokyo attraction has no connection to The Twilight Zone at all. Because Rod Serling's television series was little known in Japan, Walt Disney Imagineering instead wrote an entirely original story for this version, set not in Hollywood but in New York, in the fictional Hotel Hightower.[1][2]
The red-brick tower, in Moorish Revival styling, rises over American Waterfront near the ocean liner S.S. Columbia. Its ride system is the second-generation Tower of Terror system also used in California and Paris: elevator vehicles carry 22 people, the experience is scored by Joel McNeely, and it lasts about two and a half minutes.[1]
Backstory
The hotel was the creation of Harrison Hightower III, a fabulously wealthy New York antiquities collector — a character modelled on Imagineering executive Joe Rohde — who filled it with thousands of artefacts gathered, and frequently stolen, on expeditions worldwide. On an 1899 expedition up the Congo, Hightower learned of Shiriki Utundu, a protective idol revered by the people who guarded it. Ignoring their refusal and their warnings of a curse, he seized the idol from its altar and carried it back to New York as the prize of his collection.[1]
On New Year's Eve 1899, Hightower unveiled his trophy at a press conference and party in the hotel, boasting about how he had taken it and mocking the idea of a curse — at one point using the idol's head to stub out his cigar. Near midnight he took the elevator up to his penthouse. As the car neared the top, Shiriki Utundu came to life. The elevator plummeted, and when the wreckage was opened, Hightower was gone: only his hat and the idol were found inside. The hotel closed abruptly and stood condemned and reputedly haunted for more than a decade, earning the nickname "Tower of Terror". In the story's present, 1912, a New York preservation society has reopened the building and is offering tours — and guests are joining one of those tours when they enter the queue.[1][2]
Experience
The queue crosses gardens filled with statues looted from many countries and enters a grand lobby frozen as Hightower left it, its ceiling arches painted with murals of the collector escaping with other people's treasures, and the wrecked elevator displayed at its end. Guests then enter Hightower's office or library for the pre-show: a stained-glass window shows a confident Hightower, with Shiriki Utundu sitting on a nearby pedestal. A tour guide plays a gramophone recording of Hightower's last interview; the window's image changes to show him clutching the idol in fear, green lightning shatters the glass — whereupon the idol turns its head, laughs at the guests, and vanishes into a starfield.[1]
Guests pass through Hightower's storerooms and board the service elevator. As it pulls back into the shaft, Hightower's ghost berates the riders as fools, explaining that the idol has cursed him to relive his fall for ever, while the idol's glowing green eyes open in the dark. The car rises to the penthouse, where Hightower's spirit appears beside the idol, taunts it — and is blasted backwards by a bolt of green energy and sent falling down the shaft as the room dissolves into stars. In the mirror sequence that follows, riders wave goodbye to themselves; under a green light their reflections turn ghostly and disappear, leaving Shiriki Utundu alone in the reflected elevator before it lunges toward them.[1]
The drop sequence follows, the elevator rising and falling in a computer-selected pattern before returning to the loading level, where the idol's eyes glare once more and Hightower warns guests never to return. Riders must be at least 40 inches (102 cm) tall.[1] In winter, usually January to March, an overlay called Tower of Terror "Unlimited" runs more intense alternative drop profiles, introduced in 2012 with named Tour A (Level 13) and Tour B (Shadow of Shiriki) patterns added in 2015.[1]