Et voila les impressions de casts qui ont testé l attraction:
Il parait aussi que, apres les remarques d'Eisner sur l adure du ride, le parcours aurait été allongé de 20 secondes environ....
The exterior queue is very nicely done. It's easy to see from the pictures already on the Net that they've done a nice job theming the exterior queue and surrounding area. When you are walking around the area it's very obvious that this was something added after DCA opened, because it's all very lushly themed and quite immersive in it's detail. This outdoes Grizzly and Soarin's queue easily, the previous DCA theming champs.
The one thing that could be improved however is the lack of a "buildup" like you get in Florida. You literally just walk right across the street and into the Tower queue and "experience". There is no winding overgrown path up the hill like in Florida, it's all right there on the sidewalk just a few yards from Hyperion. But once you get "into it", it's a very different look and feel from the rest of DCA.
Stepping inside the building and into the lobby, it's a bit different from Florida because of the different architecture and color scheme. But, it's just as heavily themed and entirely immersive. The lobby and Library Room pre-show elements are equally as impressive as Florida's, and it's really one of those "Only Disney Can Do This" type of experiences that the West Coast hasn't seen since Indy in '95. One person felt the DCA Tower lobby seemed just a bit bigger and grander than Florida's, but the other person described it as being "airier" because of the lighter Pueblo Deco color scheme.
After going through very impressively done Library Rooms similar to Florida's, the big difference is still to come. You exit the Library and make a quick turn down a short hall and into the Boiler Room loading area scene. And this one is BIG compared to Florida's. It's a two story tall double decker loading area, with a very tall and large room stuffed full of spooky set pieces and props. There are catwalks upstairs where half of the guests are grouped into boarding parties, and you can see up into the second floor easily. There are giant boilers dripping water and hissing steam, lots and lots of eye candy and "abandoned hotel" props, and just all sorts of spooky light tricks and odd sound effects going on all over this giant room.
Each of the three shafts has two elevators, and while one is going through the "show" in one shaft, the other one is loading and unloading in the Boiler Room. Each elevator travels backwards about 20 feet from the loading area door and into the drop shaft where the show takes place. One of the shafts presents the sequence of show scenes in a different order from the other two shafts, and both of my friends felt that it didn't really matter in which order you see the particular show scenes.
Once you've boarded and the bellhop has closed the doors, the show immediately starts with music and a Rod Serling voiceover. But every single time everyone was talking and making nervous noises so much that they missed that particular audio track at the beginning.
Your elevator pulls back from the doors and you see more boiler room type decorations. But then the room disappears into a convincing star field, and the elevator doors that you walked through turn a spooky blue color and finally disappear into the star field.
You are then immediately whisked up several floors, and everyone yells. The doors of the shaft open and the first show scene is the "mirror scene", and it was reported as very convincing.
I'm going to be muddling some of the smaller details, just because I don't want to ruin it completely. But the mirror effect left everyone saying "How did they do that? Was that really our image?" Then you drop suddenly to the second show scene, which is the haunted hallway with the 1939 elevator passengers introduced in the preshow beckoning you forward. Lots of cool visual effects with lightning and breeze and digital projections. After about a 30 second show with more Rod Serling dialogue (which everyone is quiet enough to listen to, unlike at the start), the room again fades into a very convincing star field that seems to surround the car.
And that's when you go into the drop sequence. It's a lot like the drop sequence WDW had a few years ago, and anyone who stands outside the Hyperion and watches the vehicles cycling can pretty much figure out what it's like. But, it was reported as very thrilling, and definitely something that will take most people's breath away. Lots of the ladies were screaming their heads off, with the guys whooping and hollering the whole time.
The view at the top isn't what most people expected. Ride after ride, what seemed to stick out most to riders was the huge white walls of the Mickey & Friends Parking Structure that caught your eye each time. You could see Disneyland's vast expanse of green tree's and Thunder Mountain in the distance, with lots of beige stucco buildings in DCA closer up. There's also a decent view of the San Gabriel mountains in the far, far distance. But for some reason your eye is naturally drawn to the blindingly white parking structure wall in the middle distance. It will probably look much different at night. Also, the exterior walls and fake plumbing used to disguise the Image Capture cameras kind of obscure the view directly down into DCA and the HPB area. You are forced to look farther out, into the general area of Frontierland and the Parking Structure just beyond.
After the drop sequence, there's another star field and a fade back into the elevator loading door as your vehicle travels forward about 20 feet and back towards the unload area. At the very end there's a final bit of Rod Serling dialogue that everyone was too chatty and excited to hear each and every time.
There is sort of a double door system, with a narrow hallway inbetween, as the loading area is on the other side of the second set of doors where you unload from. The Attractions CM's that went on it were curious to figure out how they are going to time guests walking down that hallway while other cars are loading or unloading and cutting across the hallway, without ruining the desired effect of boarding a haunted elevator meant just for them. That part could get a bit tricky, and it's one of those instances where the Florida ride system is probably better logistically and from a show perspective.
Then it's down a long series of hotel utility stairs and/or corridors to get you into the gift shop. One of the elevator shafts is right next to the gift shop, while the other two require a long walk down hallways to get out.
The Image Capture room just before the gift shop is very nicely done and heavily themed, with lots of Twilight Zone memorabilia and eye candy to look at. The gift shop itself is just as heavily themed as the rest of the building, except without the decrepit and abandoned look to it that the lobby and boiler room have. It's all very convincing, and very different than any other attraction in DCA. When you add in a dozen or two Attractions and Stores CM's in their heavily themed 1930's costumes, it's going to be very sharp looking!
Sadly, the one final piece, exiting the building and heading back into the Park, is where it really needs some major help. The gift shop exit takes you out into a small garden area and you are sort of dumped out on to the sidewalk.
The problem comes from the fact that EVERYONE who exits Tower will go out that door, and it is perfectly positioned for a giant view of the south side of the Hyperion Theater. If you don't remember what that side of the Hyperion looks like, it is UGLY. You are immediately faced with this looming stucco warehouse building with blue steel girders and completely UNTHEMED staircases tacked on to the side of that giant structure.
You had just spent a lot of time building up the 1930's themed show through the elaborate and lush indoor queue, the spooky library room with the moving wall, then this amazingly large and very creepy boiler room loading area, and of course the impressive technical tour de force ride itself, which dumps you into a heavily themed and very luxurious gift shop from the 1930's. And then you go out the exit and stare at the ugliest side of one of the biggest and most unthemed buildings in DCA. Not a good ending.
But, overall, DCA's Tower of Terror left everyone who rode it today very impressed. Inbetween rides the CM's I talked to were chatting with the managers and listening to their comments, and everyone was very impressed and pleasantly surprised with the ride. It's different from Florida, there's no doubt about it. But the changes that everyone noticed were either changes for the better, or changes that really had no impact on the experience one way or the other. The loss of the "5D" room was not missed, and the effects overall were generally classified as being on a better quality and/or of higher technical ability than Florida's 10 year old version. The boiler room was a much more impressive experience at DCA.
What is yet to be seen is how the new loading system, and the common hallway shared by all of the elevators, will impact the experience once the place is full of hundreds of guests with six differemt elevators loading, unloading and going through their show all at the same time.
Definetely the biggest let down was the ugly, ugly view of the Hyperion warehouse building and it's utilitarian and charmlessly massive stairwells that slap you in the face as you exit the gift shop. They are already fixing the back of the stucco walled Animation building and theming it like an old department store, so that will be a big help. But now they need to do something with the Hyperion and it's stairwells in order to extend the beautifully done theming the guests had been enjoying for the previous hour inside the Tower of Terror.
The one thing that people kept saying, both the CM's I talked to and the management in attendance today, was that "This is VERY different from the rest of DCA's attractions!" and lots of comments like "If only DCA could have opened with this in '01, we wouldn't have had so many problems!".
I'm sure there will be more testing with Attractions CM's to come, and more ride reports from first hand accounts. But I thought you guys would like to hear what I heard from two eye witness accounts just an hour or so after they had spent the afternoon riding Tower of Terror over and over.
Now, discuss.
