TOT: la volte face d'Al Lutz

Démarré par fredddys, 26 Mars 2004, 17:52:35

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fredddys

Après avoir démoli la TOT de DCA pendant des mois (des années?), Al Lutz vient de faire soudainement marche arrière! Il n'a pas fait personnellement l'attraction, mais il livre le TR extrêmement positif de quelqu'un qui a fait l'attraction et en qui il dit avoir pleinement confiance.
Pridence, cependant: ce TR ne correspond pas tout à fait au descriptof niveau effets spéciaux du précédent TR sur laughinplace. L'un des deux a visiblement invité. lequel, difficile à dire. Mais dans les deux cas, le verdict est positif!
CitationLuckily for the Disneyland Marketing Department, the advance word on Tower of Terror's ride experience is just as good as Mummy's. They have been testing the attraction for managers and Attractions Cast Members for several weeks now, and the following is a report a MiceAge reader sent in after their ride on Tower of Terror. Let's just say (knowing who the writer is) that I place reasonable trust in the opinion that is offered:

The DCA version of Tower of Terror is quite different from Florida's, but when it comes to the theme and attention to detail it is just as impressive. I should rephrase that though, as the theme and attention to detail is just as impressive once you get inside the building. The exterior grounds are well done, but there isn't much to it. The building sits literally steps past the southern wall of the Hyperion Theater courtyard, and unlike in Florida where you spend a long time walking through creepy pathways just to get to the hotel, in DCA it slaps you right in the face immediately. There just isn't much room or time to develop the sense of foreboding like you do in Florida, unless you count the walk down the street past Hyperion's unattractive cement courtyard.

But once you step inside the building... WOW! It's obviously a different architectural style from Florida's, and the interior lobby has a real retro feel. But the minutest detail is all there, and the overall layout of the interior queue and hotel lobby is almost identical to Florida's. The library with the old Philco TV set is also similar to Florida. The two DCA library preshow rooms have different decorating schemes, one is a classic Deco and one is done in an Egyptian Deco theme. Once you leave the library, turn sharply to your left and go down a short hallway, you enter the "Boiler Room" area and again you say.... WOW! It's two stories tall, and seems much bigger than what I remember from Florida. It's also themed to the hilt, and is full of sound and lighting effects, dripping water, and lots of things to look at and examine. It doesn't have the cartoony/ToonTown type of feel that Orlando's version does.

The elevators themselves seem to be exact duplicates from Disney World. As I remember, they seat 22 people in three rows. There are no lap bars, and individual seat belts that work just like Soarin'. One thing I noticed is that there are no seat pockets to put bags or purses in, and I have a feeling stuff will be flying around when the elevator is full of tourists and all of their usual "stuff". The show starts immediately, and your elevator pulls back about 25 feet away from the door and everything fades into a star field. If you are a fan of "star field" effects, then you are going to love this ride. I lost track of how many times we kept seeing star fields. (As I understand it Star Fields are a more reasonably priced effect.) The dialogue appears to be the same Rod Serling voiceover from Florida.

You immediately travel up one level and see the first scene of the people from 1939 who were lost in the elevator when the lightning struck. That scene seemed to be a direct lift from Florida and really nicely done. The advances in projection technology since the first ride was built are very evident, as we all thought it looked crisper and more impressive than Florida's version. Another star field effect is used here too. You travel up one more floor and see the new scene that replaces the 5th Dimension Room. I didn't quite understand it, or figure out what the significance was, but you look at a mirror image of your elevator and see everyone in it. Everybody begins waving of course, and then your image fades away into a ghostly fog. That elevator then falls away, and your elevator doors close.

And then you begin the drop sequence. You rise and fall about two complete times, with a few false drops thrown in several times. The drop sequence didn't seem as long as the Florida version I rode last year, but it was satisfying. You then drop back to the lowest level, and your elevator rolls forward 25 feet back to the door you entered from. Another star field effect is thrown in, and there is more Rod Serling dialogue. I clocked the entire thing from start to finish at just about 2 minutes. There are three elevator shafts, and the third shaft in the boiler room has the two show scenes flip-flopped in order. I was told this was because the building had some important infrastructure that couldn't support the 1939 scene on the second level, and so it was reversed in order from the other two shafts. I rode in both types of shafts, and I actually preferred the shaft that has things flip-flopped.

You exit out a long series of corridors themed to a hotel basement, and you find yourself in the area where the photo viewing monitors are located. It's themed like a shopping courtyard in the hotel, with a travel agency and things seen through the windows. The gift shop is beautifully decorated, and they have some neat old pictures of Walt Disney in Hollywood during the '30s on the walls. The exit of the building brings up the same problem that the entrance has. That is, you get slapped in the face with being back in DCA as soon as you exit the attraction. You have nothing to look at but a stucco wall and the horribly unattractive side of the Hyperion Theater with all of those ugly stairways and cheap stucco.

Overall, the attraction is a great deal of fun and really nicely done once you get inside. You kind of have to keep reminding yourself that you are in DCA because everything is so themed and intricately designed. It really is an E Ticket in the true sense of the word, even though the actual ride time is only about two minutes, and the actual drop sequence lasts only about 15 seconds. Compared to big sections of the rest of DCA, Tower of Terror makes the park's flaws, lack of themeing, and cut corners stand out even more. But taken simply by itself, DCA's new Tower of Terror is a really great attraction.

Interesting, don't you think? To their credit, they are quickly working on retheming the bland stucco walls of the backside of the Animation building as a '30s street facade. As for the Hyperion Theater, hopefully Anne Hamburger's plan to pull the plug early on Aladdin and replace it with a new show by The Blue Man Group will give them an opportunity to give that ugly duckling a similar beauty treatment. With a show running in that theater 7 days a week, they can't do much with that unfortunate building for now.


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