Sentimental Paleontology: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Well, here we are. The Great California Adventure Mistake of 2017 is live, with reports of a queue stretching all the way to the park's entrance.

Within five minutes of opening.

Every day so far.

Dammit, people. Why are you rewarding them for this? That thing should have opened to the sound of crickets, and not the kind that asks you to recycle your beverage containers.

Dude. This is actually a pin.

Nuts to y'all. I'm going to reminisce about what we lost.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was an early attempt to fix some of what was perceived to be wrong with California Adventure 1.0—namely a shortage of well-themed thrill rides, especially in that corner of the park. And, well, it worked. The ride was an instant hit, despite it being common knowledge that what we got was a toned-down version of the original in Disney-Hollywood Studios. We didn't mind. That's how hard up we were for good rides in California Adventure.

It's easy to assume that the Tower's popularity was attributable to its thrill level—and indeed, a free-falling elevator is up there*—but that's only half of it, and not the more important half. It was a double dose of on-the-nose theming, not only set in the romantic, glamorous Golden Age of Hollywood, but tied to a highly acclaimed television series.

Moreover, the whole presentation of the attraction really classed up the joint. Imagine this: You're strolling down the main walkway of Hollywood Pictures Backlot, half wondering what exactly the freaking point is. The buildings look good enough, but they aren't substantially different than the buildings you saw in the actual Hollywood (the nice part) last week. Ahead of you, at the end of the boulevard, is the exterior wall of the Hyperion Theatre, but instead of thematically appropriate architectural adornment, it's decorated with a cheesy attempt at a trompe l'oeil mural trying to look like a continuation of the street.

And then you get there, and make a right turn, and there's this:

This was one of those theme park transitions that worked because of its abruptness. You would turn that corner, and the entire tone of Hollywood Pictures Backlot/Hollywood Land would change in an instant. The proximity to tall buildings tended to keep the walkway shaded for most of the day, and in sunny but not especially hot weather the difference could produce a literal chilling sensation. I don't even know if that part was deliberate; the Imagineers were working within the space available (hence the reduction in scope from the Orlando version). You were literally in the shadow of the Tower of Terror, which put you figuratively in its shadow—its influence—as well.

Drawing closer to the building, you begin to hear music drifting on the breeze. It eventually resolves itself into a series of mellow 1930s big-band standards, but something is...off. The melodies are just slightly distorted, reverberating in a way that makes them sound like they're echoing through empty corridors...or across the boundary between dimensions?

The building itself has suffered hideous damage on one face, exposing elevator shafts, but otherwise the grounds are reasonably well kept. You're already completely enthralled, and you're not even in line yet.

Are you reminded of the Haunted Mansion? That probably was deliberate. And yet the Tower of Terror had a subtly different sensibility to it. The Haunted Mansion is haunted because it's a good place for ghosts to be and they are drawn to it (or something). Once the ghosts reveal themselves, the eeriness turns to celebration. The Tower of Terror depicted something more like a classic haunting (but probably not a literal haunting in the usual sense of the word): something terrible happened there once, many years ago, and it left a mark. Once the ghosts revealed themselves, the terror was just beginning.

This came, of course, after a whole lot of atmospheric buildup. Each section of the queue was more dimly lit and more obviously touched by the supernatural than the one preceding it. First we passed through the dilapidated, cobwebby lobby, where dropped magazines and half-finished games of chess attested to guests suddenly fleeing (or being spirited away). Then came the genteel library, its leather-bound books and exotic sculptures contrasting in jarring fashion with the brassy obtrusiveness of the black-and-white television set which turned on by itself in order to introduce us to the scenario. Finally we traversed the boiler room, ramping things yet further with a just noticeable enough homage to the “Little Girl Lost” episode of the classic TV series, located within a few yards of this goddamn thing:

The girl's not lost. This thing ATE her...

It was as if we were slowly being drawn into the Twilight Zone even before we boarded the actual ride. During the life of the attraction I saw a lot of people in that queue, genuinely terrified at the prospect of free-fall, nonetheless decide to push through and get on with it. I never thought about it at the time, but it occurs to me now to wonder if the design of the queue encouraged that sort of decision-making: My journey is already in progress. I cannot go back the way I came. The only way out is through. It's another one of those things that may or may not have been deliberate on the part of WDI, but if it was then it was a stroke of genius.

And that's about all I have to say for the time being. It's a terrible loss to a park that was just starting to figure things out. I hope those bozos are proud of themselves.

P.S. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is great.

* Until it suddenly isn't, which is the point.