Tower of Terror

Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris is hardly recognizable anymore. As soon as you enter the park with a little walk through studio 1 you suddenly find yourself standing in front of the massive Hollywood Tower Hotel which rises up in the sky in the middle of the park. The attraction in it, the Tower of Terror, is the highlight of the extensive park expansion for the 15th anniversary of Disneyland Paris. With the additional attractions of "Crush's Coaster", a new indoor roller coaster that already opened in summer 2007, as well as the new themed area Toon Studios with "Cars: Race Rally", the Studios have become a far more reasonable alternative to its mother park next door with larger morning crowds than ever before. But let's take a closer look at the new main attraction mentioned at the beginning. So it's straight through to the Hollywood Tower Hotel. The path leads us through some building facades typical for a film studio. Behind them we reach the entrance where the bellhop is smiling politely and asks us to come in.

The lobby of the hotel is breathtaking. At the end of the longish entrance hall is a large fireplace. Four small chandeliers illuminate the walls in a warm yellow colour. The check-in desk is located on the right side of the lobby. Every piece of furniture is heavily dusted and seems to have never been used for many decades. On the left side stands a table where someone seemingly has been interrupted in a card game. A tea wagon has been parked beside one of the massive supporting pillars of the lobby. Countless pieces of art deco are decorating the walls and the room. The thick carpets absorb every single step of ours. A bellhop stands beside the check-in desk and politely requests our reservation. After a short look into his book he shows us the way to the elevator.

Our room isn't ready yet so we are requested into the library for the remaining time. On the way we pass the hotel elevator where a sign informs us that it is out of order. The elevator doors are heavily vaulted to the outside and the floor tiles around this area are broken. What happened here? We follow the hotel personnel into the library. He emphatically requests to not touch anything and to remain standing on the carpet. The old black-white television in the corner goes on and the lights vanish.

What we are now about to see is an episode of the Twilight Zone. It's Hollywood, 1939. The Hollywood Tower Hotel is in its peak days, the place to be for movie stars and the like. In one storminess night five guests step into the hotel elevator. During the ride upwards lightning strikes into one of the hotel towers and the elevator together with its' five passengers vanishes to the twilight zone. Today, this elevator is still out of order. The service elevator of the hotel, however, is still in use and awaits the curious guests which dare to take the ride upwards.

What an eerie story. Outside of the libraries' windows we see bolts of lightning flashing in the sky and hear the thunder roaring. The bellhop now leads us to the boiler room of the hotel where the entrance to the service elevator is located. Some of the rusted pipes here are heavily leaking with water dropping down, the lighting is flickering and the large boiler shines in a deep red. The way leads through the boiler room past many different devices and tools. There is a note lying on a workbench with the message to order replacement parts for the elevator(urgent!). A little further strange symbols have been drawn with chalk on the concrete wall. As we go past it we hear voices screaming from inside that wall. Quickly onwards. A liftboy awaits us and assigns us a spot in front of one of the service elevators.

The finger of the floor sign above the elevator doors slowly rotates to the left. It stops at the B label and the doors open with a creaking noise. Our liftboy assigns us to our places on the uncomfortable-looking seats of the service elevator. In fact though we are sitting quite comfortable. And the safety belt does also barely remind us that we could not use the proper hotel elevator.

The following section describes what the brave hotel guests are facing on their elevator ride. Whoever wants to maintain the surprise and doesn't want to get spoiled should continue reading here.

After some quick security instructions our liftboy gives us some advise for the way, "If you need anything… just scream", and the elevator doors are closing. With a smooth movement our elevator starts to rise. On the first floor the elevator doors are opening with the harmonic "ping" of the lift bell. A long corridor stretches in front of us. Strong winds blowing in from a window on the right-hand side are letting the curtains perform a turbulent dance. Directly in front of us hangs a large mirror in which we can see ourselves as well as the complete elevator. We hear the voice of the narrator from the background which repeats the events of the episode once more. He demands us to "wave goodbye to the real world". We wave and see our mirror images disappearing one by one. We hear a load cracking noise, see a heavy lightning storm outside the window and our elevator shakes like madness.

The elevator continues to rise another story upwards (ping) and again the broad doors are opening. We stare inside a hotel corridor once again. A pair of shoes and the newspaper are lying in front of some doors, everything else seems to be normal. Suddenly some bolts of lightning are flashing in the middle of the corridor and five ghosts appear. They wave to us, we should come to them - they are the five people that we have seen in the episode in the library shortly before. But they disappear again and it gets dark. The hotel corridor vanishes into a deep black. Slowly stars twinkle everywhere and you almost get the impression to be out in space. Only the door in the rear end of the corridor remains visible, floating freely in the black nothing. It opens and once again we see the five ghosts waving at us, wishing for us to come to them. Suddenly the door drops down and disappears in the indefinite space of the room.

At the same time we drop down unexpected as well. One shocking moment later the brakes catch the elevator. Instantly we are hearing the generator getting active. The light is weakly flickering and our elevator accelerates upwards like a rocket. (ping) Even while we continue speeding upwards the elevator doors above us open. The elevator stops for a brief moment in front of the opened doors, but the hotel corridor that we expected to be behind them has vanished. Instead, bright sunlight illuminates the former dark and moody elevator shaft and we have an unblocked view to the park outside. The weight of the elevator pulls us down again into the depths of the dark elevator shaft. After a moment in free fall that feels like eternity the generator is getting active again. The light gets a bit brighter and the elevator comes to a sudden stop. What follows is a short jerk upwards but the elevator blocks. Another strong jerk and the generator is howling louder. Again we just managed to get up about one metre. And once again the generator gets active and literally screams, the light gets so broad that the old light bulbs are almost bursting and our elevator shoots upwards again. (ping) The well-known doors open another time but we aren't being stopped. The elevator speeds a little higher before gravity takes over and sucks us into the depths of the shaft again. Now it is really pitch black and we just feel the strong stream of air that escapes upwards through the floor grids. Aren't we supposed to be braked about a time ago? Suddenly a blue glimmering light illuminates a door in front of us. We are not moving anymore. Strange, we didn't felt any braking and stopping, everything just seems to have been a bad dream. The doors open (where is the "ping"?) and the liftboy appears, grinning into our elevator with a devil-like expression. The safety belts are opening themselves and we can exit the service elevator. A small corridor leads us to the gift shop of the hotel and back into the rose garden.

The concept of the Tower of Terror is not new, of course. It has been successfully realized in Orlando, Anaheim and Tokyo in more or less similar ways. And even if there are some similarities the newest Tower of Terror is still unique in its own way. The technology of the ride is well-engineered in such a degree that it is barely possible to think of improvements for the experience. The whole light ambiance, soundscape and the ride itself are matched to each other up to the tiniest detail and deliver a perfect overall experience that offers a well balanced mixture of thrill and fun. It can be expected that - like in Orlando - the version in Paris will get some different and changing ride sequences in a few years.

The Imagineers managed to design a top-notch attraction for Walt Disney Studios Park that has shot up the bar in the industry like the elevator in the Tower. In any case we are keenly anticipating our next stay in the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Or like our bellhop has put it: "I hope your will reach your room next time".