3. Both use a pre-show to set the stakes
In good storytelling, the audience must know what the stakes are. For example, in Finding Nemo, the audience can't connect as much to Marlin's journey unless they know what's at stake for him – the loss of his son. This is true in any form of storytelling, including theme park attractions.
What makes the Haunted Mansion so unique is that it tells you the stakes right at the beginning – when you're locked into the stretch room, the Ghost Host shows you an incredible effect (the stretching of the room), which helps the audience enter the world of the supernatural and realize that death is very much on the table. His creepy exclamation of, “Of course, there's always my way...” only further drives this point home. Yes, it's all in good fun, but as an audience member, it's important to know at the beginning of an experience what the stakes of the situation are – in this case, death.
With the Tower of Terror, Disney uses the utterly brilliant device of a Rod Serling introduction to an episode of the iconic television show, The Twilight Zone. Serling's intro fits the style of the originals perfectly, subconsciously telling those familiar with the show to expect an ironic twist or a fearful journey. Serling's voice, perfectly creepy in its own way, seems simultaneously threatening and comforting. He tells you that the building is haunted, why, and how riding the service elevator of the Hollywood Tower Hotel is a dangerous activity. In less than a minute, he's set the stakes perfectly for the ride experience that's about to get underway. You understand the danger of what you're getting yourself into, and yet you proceed anyway -- that createst the tension necessary to tell a compelling story.
Lots of rides at Disney use pre-shows, but these two attractions do so as a way of heightening the tension before a ride begins. That, combined with the similar theming, really makes them feel like sequels.
4. The Tower of Terror ups the fear ante … just like a sequel
When you're in a movie theater, and you see a preview for an upcoming horror movie sequel, you probably hear the ad proclaiming how it's even better or scarier than the original. This is, of course, by design: if you liked the original movie, and the sequel is supposed to be even better, then it would make sense that you'd want to see it.
This is true for rides as well, and, if you were putting together a preview for the Tower of Terror, you'd likely want to point out that it's scarier than the Haunted Mansion. In fact, it's aggressively scarier in such a way that it feels intentional – as if it were designed specifically to be scarier than that one particular ride.
While the Haunted Mansion is an omnimover, the Tower of Terror is a drop ride – far more intense and far more complicated. While the Haunted Mansion features playful, singing, mostly harmless ghosts, the Tower of Terror's supernatural spirits are more despairing and, ultimately, bewitch your elevator into free-falling.
Even the design is more unsettling. Yes, the Haunted Mansion feels as though it belonged to a recently-deceased wealthy person, the Tower of Terror feels suddenly abandoned, even with its creepy 1920s score still playing. It feels more dangerous and it feels, in a word, scarier.
And so, when you look at the two attractions together, it's hard to miss the patterns that develop between them. They both explore the same ideas using the same point of view, but while one does so in a more playful way, the other does it using more intensity and fear. The result are two attractions that work in concert and are best experienced in quick succession.
And, just like any other sequels, after enjoying the first two, we really hope they make a third.
Comments
Actually there IS another sequel: the Tokyo DisneySea version of Tower of Terror! While the California and Paris TOTs are not as exquisite and elegant – and as amazing – as the Florida original, the Tokyo version brought back some distinct (WDW) Haunted Mansion's features in its remarkable architecture, and enhanced the spooky ghost story quality by omitting The Twilight Zone theming and creating something entirely new. While the Tokyo TOT is technically the same ride as in California and Paris, it has a superior – and exclusive – story, its own excellent music, and some truly remarkable new effects, plus plenty of mischievous humor on the surface though the backstory actually suggests into the direction of dark and serious stuff. I can easily see the Tokyo TOT as the Haunted Mansion Part III (if compared to Florida's HM).