When Disney’s California Adventure received its “reimagineered” Tower of Terror in 2004, it must have caught the eye of OLC executives in charge of Tokyo Disney Resort. With its high capacity and its efficiently reengineered ride system, the Californian version of the Tower of Terror seemed like a perfect installation for Tokyo DisneySea.
However, there were at least a few significant problems…
First and foremost, The Twilight Zone isn’t a recognizable property in Japan. There would be no cultural relevance to a ride themed to the 1960s series, and without that inherent pop culture connection, there would be an immense weight on the shoulders of Imagineers trying to introduce the series’ eerie and distinctive atmosphere.
Second, none of Tokyo DisneySea’s ports could reasonably house the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Rather, the ride would be placed in an expansion pad set aside in the park’s American Waterfront. That port featured both a cozy, coastal “Cape Cod” village and a bustling “Big City,” recreating New York at the turn-of-the-century – a metropolis in the time of Main Street, with department stores, diners, Broadway theaters , and the elevated Electric Railway.
From its inner-city streetscape and urban alleyways to the breathtaking, bustling seaport and docked SS Columbia (open for exploration, and seemingly docked in Tokyo Bay, stretching on to the horizon), the Big City served as the perfect spot to make a towering hotel right at home. In this 1900s New York, Imagineers could easily set down a duplicate of California Adventure’s Tower of Terror (albeit, wrapped in a new architectureal style, disguised as a skyscraper to house a drop ride).
With a location chosen and a ride structure secured, Imagineers had to move on to the toughest work yet… Grafting a new story onto the existing infrastructure – no easy task! After all, remember: No Hollywood. No Hollywood Tower Hotel. No Twilight Zone. So what exactly would even await inside this two-hundred-foot-tall New York landmark? How would designers figure out a new, fresh, and convincingly eerie inhabitant for a haunted hotel? This is where the story gets good…
A new legend
Despite the relative ease of building Tokyo Disneyland back in the ’80s, Imagineers are no strangers to adapting their own work.
Think of how designers needed to take the Tomorrowland-set Submarine Voyage from Disneyland and adapt it to a new home in Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland – the Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Look at how Imagineers took tried-and-true concepts like Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain and adapted them to European sensibilities as the Modern Marvels: Phantom Manor and Space Mountain: De la Terre a la Lune.
So to fit the Tower of Terror into Tokyo DisneySea’s early 20th century American Waterfront, they just needed to go back to the drawing board. Enter Imagineer and show-writer Michael Sprout (who would later adapt the Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor as well). As Sprout explored the American Wterfront and the rst of DisneySea, he must’ve focused in on that plaque in Fortress Explorations – the one alluding the Renaissance-era secret society, S.E.A. A-ha!
Sprout directed the creation of the first in a “new generation” of S.E.A. members – a turn-of-the-century class of the secret society’s elite lineup: Harrison Hightower III (modeled after famed Imagineer Joe Rohde – lead designer of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the Lost Legend: The Advenurers Club).
And as for the Hollywood Tower Hotel? It would be redesigned in arguably its most elaborate style yet. American Waterfront and its New York Harbor could be the subject of its own multi-day exploration, but the entire port is really built around one spectacular structure… Are you ready to steop into the Hightower Hotel?
The Hightower Hotel
Rising from the cityscape of Park Avenue is a true beacon of the wealth and power of the Empire State: the Hotel Hightower is quite unlike anything you’ve seen before. Built decades before the Hollywood Tower Hotel would grace California’s Tinseltown, the Hotel Hightower is another beast entirely…
It lends itself to the Moorish Revival architectural style that spread across the Western world as colonial British settlements in the Middle East made minarets, domes, multifoil arches, and other Asian influences. Still, there are tastes of New York’s brownstones thrown in, plus elegant iron-lined windows and stained glass, robust patterns to highlight different sections of the building, and red brick chimneys, and glorious copper roofs with a matte seafoam patina overtaking them.
Put another way, there’s nothing understated about the Hotel Hightower. And that’s just how its builder wanted it. It’s an icon of power looming over the unwashed masses below, complete with an ornate stone balcony high atop the tower – the presiding penthouse of its owner.
Speaking of whom, the whispers abound about Harrison Hightower III. They say that Hightower was a card-carrying member of a secret internaitonal organization called the Society of Explorers and Adventurers. Though, more appropriately for Mr. Hightower, a Society of Exploiters and Abusers. After all, it’s said Hightower ventured across the globe collecting innumerable artifacts – and enough curses and bad karma for each. Something happened here on New Years Eve 1899 – more than twenty years ago – and the once-grand hotel has been shuttered ever since…
In fact, as the Roaring Twenties begin and the refuse of the past is swept away, the Hotel Hightower is slated for demolition.
The good news for us is that a local organization – the New York Preservation Society – has deemed the Hotel Hightower a local landmark and are fighting to save it from the wrecking ball. But to rescue and restore the gargantuan hotel, they need to fundraise.
That’s where you and I come in, because the New York Preservation Society has decided to pull back the doors of the once-headlining hotel to run tours of the supposedly “cursed” relics Harrison stored away inside. Of course, all press is good press, so to lure visitors into their tours of the hotel, they’ve come up with a catchy name to capitalize on the urban legend style mystery around Hightower and his artifacts, calling offering tours of “The Tower of Terror.”
Collect your FastPass ticket for the tour (from one of Disney’s most highly-decorated FastPass distribution kiosks at any of its parks) and prepare.
The marketing must’ve worked, because we now stand before the Hotel Hightower eager to step inside and explore its mysteries. What did happen to Harrison Hightower all those years ago? Where are his treasures and relics? Perhaps our guide through the “Tower of Terror” can shed some light on this striking story.
On the next page, our tour of the Hotel Hightower begins… Read on…