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While Mel Brooks’ Hollywood Horror Hotel idea just didn’t stick, it did give Imagineers the boost they needed to see the idea to completion. The idea developed around an expansion for the Studio park called Sunset Blvd. From the start, concept art showed a once grand Hollywood hotel looming overhead.

When the idea of the haunted Hollywood Hotel merged with the back-burnered drop ride concept, a Tower of Terror was envisioned. Imagineers first developed the idea around that Intamin first generation Freefall technology –with the vertical drop that curves out into a level runout track – simply building a derelict hotel around the structure (see above and below).

Image: Disney

Ultimately, Disney didn't move forward with the first generation freefall tower concept (but someone did in one of the most astounding, must-see Disney "knock-offs" out there today...).

As before, we’re lucky that Imagineers sat on the idea a little longer before deciding on the two key elements that would bring the attraction to life: its content and its technology.

They found their first answer thanks to CBS. Disney licensed the use of The Twilight Zone, the creepy, groundbreaking, timeless anthology series by Rod Serling, which had run on CBS from 1959 – 1965. The Twilight Zone was a cultural phenomenon forever tied to American pop culture. The five-season, 156 episode series featured a new story, new characters, and new setting in each episode.

Sometimes sci-fi, sometimes fantasy, sometimes horror; set in the past, present, or future; always ending with a twist or a moral; the show imagined unthinkable circumstances and surprising endings for everyday people who had unknowingly “crossed over into a land whose boundaries were that of imagination” – The Twilight Zone.

Image: Disney / CBS

The storied pop program was perfect for a park meant to celebrate cinema. Brilliantly, using the otherworldly, eerie aura of The Twilight Zone allowed Disney to craft a haunted hotel that would give riders good, old-fashioned goose bumps without the blood and gore while also celebrating a revered, respected, and timeless entry in the cultural canon of "horror" in the United States.

They found the answer to their second hurdle – the ride’s technology – in AGVs, or Autonomous Guided Vehicles. The elevators placed within Florida's Hollywood Tower Hotel weren’t elevators at all. They’re enormous 22-person ride vehicle carts that begin parked in a lift elevator. But during the course of the ride, they advance out of the elevator on wheels, moving horizontally – one of the most surprising, technologically clever, and brilliant storytelling elements of any dark ride on Earth. The AGVs would be “trackless,” following a wire embedded in the ground. Then, they would re-enter and lock onto a second elevator lift (this one at the front of the building, inside the drop shaft) for their faster-than-gravity freefall at 39 miles per hour.

Building the Original

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In 1992, ground was broken on the massive ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The towering Hotel is obviously a landmark, standing 199 feet tall (any taller and it would require a flashing red aviation beacon that Imagineers expected would distract from its atmosphere – one of the most well-known bits of Disney Parks trivia ever) at the end of Sunset Blvd.

But what might be surprising is the depth of the building. Its guts – where the show scenes take place – are housed in the enormous (but exceptionally designed and decorated) showbuilding behind the tower.

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The Neo-Mediterranean / Spanish Gothic building is a veritable fortress of red tiled roofs, arched doorways, keystones, stucco walls, twisted columns, minarets, and pointed stone turrets. It's imposing, dark, and foreboding, and that's without the scortched lightning strike and the flickering, sparking neon sign. As you might imagine, the building was aged and weathered, crafting what may be Disney’s most detailed queue.

It starts well before you enter the hotel, in the misty, overgrown gardens filled with plants that look… well… sinister. You pass dilapidated signs pointing to the hotel’s long-lost amenities, crumbling statues, vine-covered arbors, and dry fountains. Inside the hotel’s storied lobby and library, you might notice that the hotel seems to have been abandoned in a hurry and learn of the mysterious happenings here on Halloween night in 1939.

Image: Disney

Then it’s on to the boiler room to board a maintenance service elevator for a journey into the hotel’s eerie past, and up to the 13th floor where the Twilight Zone awaits.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Imagineering – the height of what Disney’s creative minds are capable of. Even 25 years after its debut, the ride is unequivocally considered a classic, standing equally between the old era (Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion) and the new (Mystic Manor and Journey to the Center of the Earth). We can’t even begin to expound on the ride’s details and effects, because if you haven’t ridden it, you need to do yourself the service.

Image: Disney

In any case, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at once became a crowning gem of Disney’s Imagineers. A testament to the incredible fusion of storytelling, technology, and detail for which they’d always been renowned, Tower of Terror proved that a new generation of Imagineers still “had it,” ready to craft 21st century classics. The ride singularly propelled Disney-MGM Studios to superstardom and became an icon of Walt Disney World.

That reinvigorated Imagineers to consider that a similar ride could work at Disneyland.

Geyser Mountain 

With the technology behind the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror absolutely wowing guests in Florida, Disney began to toy with ways to expand on it. They started by reexamining a concept from years before called Geyser Mountain. Concealed within an artificial mountain peak, this thrilling ride was designed to fit in Frontierland at the Disneyland Parks in California and France.

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Aboard mine elevators, guests would descend into the peak to view some of the glorious natural wonders that recent drilling had revealed: endless unexplored caves, crystal-lit caverns, bubbling geysers, and more. Of course, when a wayward, “Ole Unfaithful” geyser erupts at precisely the wrong time, it would send the deep-earth elevator blasting skyward.

You can read more about Geyser Mountain in our walk-through of the Disneyland that never was: Possibilityland. But as the new millennium neared, Imagineers were ready to give Disneyland its own Geyser Mountain. They imagined that the 40-year-old park would need a stunning, groundbreaking new E-Ticket to divert crowds from the brand new and much hipper Disney’s California Adventure opening across the way. Certainly this second gate would be so popular that people would forget about ole’ tried-and-true Disneyland, and Geyser Mountain would be just the thing to draw them back!

Then, Disney California Adventure opened…

California Mis-Adventure

When Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, it was met with… well… chilly reception. Word of mouth was so negative that in the park’s debut year – when interest should’ve been at its height – only 5 million guests visited. That sounds impressive until you hear that the original Disneyland just across the plaza saw 12.3 million in the same year, meaning that of all the people who visited Disneyland, not even 40% bothered to check out the brand new park next door. Of those who did visit in 2001, only 20% reported being “satisfied” or better in exit polling.

We detailed it all in a walkthrough of the creatively-starved park for our in-depth Disaster Files: Disney’s California Adventure feature that tells the full story, but in short, California Adventure’s mistake was that it was too modern, too “hip,” too “edgy.” The very things out-of-touch executives imagined would make the park so desirable instead made it appear thoughtless and crass, and instantly dated it as a product of '90s design.

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Take, for example, the park’s Hollywood-themed land. It made a costly mistake: it was called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot, ostensibly themed to a façade-lined, Hollywood studio-style recreation of Hollywood (despite the real Hollywood being just an hour north). In other words, rather than transporting guests to a romantic, idealized, dreamy version of the Golden Age of Hollywood like Disney-MGM Studios’ grand Hollywood Blvd. or Sunset Blvd., California Adventure’s cheap Backlot land was intentionally modern – cardboard cutout 2-D buildings with exposed scaffolds, cheetah-print awnings, and awful, dated puns.

Like the rest of the park, it was a certifiable disaster and made few fans. Despite executives promising that California Adventure would be packed and closed to capacity every weekend, the park was practically deserted most days. Plans to put Geyser Mountain into Disneyland’s Frontierland were immediately put on hold. Suddenly, it was clear that Disneyland Park did not need the boost that an E-Ticket drop ride would bring... California Adventure did. And Disney Imagineers knew exactly which ride could make it happen.

Hollywood Tower Hotel

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Even if the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was a shoe-in for Disney’s California Adventure, executives ensured that this version of the ride would look a little bit different. After all, still lodged firmly in the midst of a budget-conscious regime under a now-infamously-restrictive Eisner, Disney Parks were on a tight leash, and Florida’s Tower had been among the most expensive rides Disney had ever built, allegedly running millions of dollars over budget – reportedly $150 million total.

The entire California Adventure park had cost only $650 million, so a clone of Florida’s Tower was out of the question.

Image: Disneyana by Max

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror did open at Disney’s California Adventure on May 5, 2004 – almost exactly a decade after Florida’s original.

Ready to see what California’s Tower had in store? Read on as we step into the Hollywood Tower Hotel.