Pixar Pals: Countdown to Fun!, Are We Sure This Is a Good Title?

Hearing that Block Party Bash was leaving in January to bring an actual new parade to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I was very excited, because I was one of the few people who didn’t like Block Party Bash, I’m not a fan of show stops in a “parade”, why? because it isn’t a parade that way. Originally titled Pixar Pals Cavalcade, I was excited to see what this new parade was going to be about. Once hearing the name changed to Pixar Pals Countdown to Fun I was a bit skeptical, why? because that title is a mouthful, and most things (in my opinion) that have a long title, don’t live up to the title. This new parade, personally I wouldn’t even call it a parade, its just an eight minute long procession of color and recycled stuff, followed suit.

I went with a group of friends, braved the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Weekend Crowds and went to Hollywood Studios for the day. We were one of the first people staked-out near the Sorcerer’s Hat at 2:00pm. (If you were there, we were the ones sitting basically in the middle of the promenade in front of the giant hat.

The announcements letting guests know what is coming happen at 2:30pm, 2:45pm, and 2:55pm (30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 5 minutes respectively), are very annoying, no more Green Army Men, now we have an annoying lady/girl with a squeeky voice. But I figured I wouldn’t judge until I saw the parade. The music started, and as known before premiereing it was going to be “Countdown to Fun!” from Disney’s California Adventure’s Pixar Play Parade, so I had a tiny hope that we MIGHT get a float or two from DCA, though that was highly unlikely, guess what…we didn’t.

The parade turned the corner and headed down Hollywood Blvd and you could hear a sigh of “eh” as it moved down the route, not even to us yet, because we could see the recycled costumes, and all of the floats, just in reverse order that they were in Block Party Bash. I’ll let you see for yourself…

           

                

When the parade was over you looked around at the guests, who you could tell were there for THE NEW PARADE, and they were just filled with disappointment at this eight minute long procession. After talking to a few people, including one of my friends who was standing next to some of the executives of the park, everyone is in hope of a change as-soon-as-possible, as without it, this parade will become a tremendous failure, sadly. One question I had was, where were Lightning McQueen and Mater? You couldn’t just add them to the back of the parade like in Pixar Play Parade, you could have easily placed them in back, then had the two cones behind them, it would be better, I think, than just having two RANDOM cones at the end of the parade. Or what about Finding Nemo and Wall_E?

After yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see some changes, and fast! Did you see the parade?? What did you think? Leave comments in comment section below.

The Original Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

    

Opening on July 22, 1994, the ride system of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney's Hollywood Studios employs specialized technology developed specifically for Disney, particularly the ability to move the vehicle in and out of the vertical motion shaft. The elevator cabs are self-propelled automated ride vehicles which lock into separate vertical motion cabs. The cabs can move into and out of elevators horizontally, move through the "Fifth Dimension" scene, and on to the drop shaft. After the elevator cab has completed its profile, it propels itself to the unload dock and then back to the show shaft. The Floridian ride system runs on a unique loop system, although this is not as efficient as the newer "franchise" version used in California, Paris, and Tokyo.

In this version of the attraction, Rod Serling greets passengers the moment the elevator doors close, saying, "You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator about to ascend into your very own episode of The Twilight Zone." The elevator rises for a few seconds before coming to its first stop.

The doors open to reveal a long, dimly-lit hotel corridor with a single window at the opposite end. A violent thunderstorm is raging and lightning flashes outside the window. Ghostly images of the five doomed guests from 1939 appear for a moment, then vanish in a burst of electricity. The guests disappear in a burst of lightning. The corridor then fades away, but the window remains and morphs into a creepier black-and-white version and shatters in the now star-filled hallway, like in the opening segment of each episode.

The elevator doors close and the car continues its ascent. Serling's voice continues on, saying "One stormy night long ago, five people stepped through the door of an elevator and into a nightmare. That door is opening once again, and this time, it's opening for you." The elevator stops once more. The doors open to what at first looks like a maintenance room, but slowly morphs into an endless field of stars. The elevator car emerges horizontally from the lift shaft and enters a section of the ride called The Fifth Dimension, which is a bizarre collection of sights and sounds and starfields, once again in the style of the television show's opening sequence. A rendition of The Twilight Zone opening sequence plays throughout. The scene ends as the elevator reaches another star field which splits and opens much like elevator doors. The elevator enters another vertical shaft. Serling's voice is heard again, saying, "You are about to discover what lies beyond the fifth dimension, beyond the deepest, darkest corner of the imagination, in the Tower of Terror."

On the last word of Serling's narration, the elevator starts its drop sequence. Rather than a simple gravity-powered drop, however, the elevator is pulled downwards, causing most riders to rise off their seats, held down only by a seat-belt. At least once during the drop sequence, wide elevator doors in front of the riders will open to reveal a view of the park from a height of about 170 feet. The back of the "Hollywood Tower Hotel" sign partially obstructs the view.

In the years since the attraction's initial opening, a randomized pattern of drops and lifts have been added, where the ride vehicle will drop or rise various distances at different intervals. Other effects were also added, including new projection images of the breaking window, wind effects, lightning flashes, and ominous blacklit figures of the five ghostly original riders. These changes were made so that each trip on The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a slightly different experience. The ride was reprogrammed most recently in its fourth conversion. The result of the reprogramming is that the ride system allows for any number of randomized drops and lifts. When guests enter the drop shaft, a computer randomly chooses one of four drop profiles, one of which is a modified version of the ride's third incarnation. Regardless of the number of randomized drops and lifts, each drop sequence always features one "faux drop" meant to startle the riders, and one complete drop through the entire tower. Since each trip results in a unique drop sequence, Florida's slogan for the ride is "Never the Same Great Fear Twice!"

After a series of these drops have been made, the elevator returns to the basement of the decrepit Hollywood Tower Hotel. A movie plays, showing elements from the season four opening sequence, along with the 1939 elevator passengers and Rod Serling, falling into the "vortex" seen in the season three opening sequence. Rod Serling's voice states, "A warm welcome back to those of you who made it, and a friendly word of warning; something you won't find in any guidebook. The next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you know just what kind of vacancy you're filling. Or you may find yourself a permanent resident of... The Twilight Zone." Guests then exit the elevator, leaving the hotel through the gift shop.

And finally, onto the pins! The first couple featured are ‘original’ logo pins for the attraction, as you can see, they feature the theme of the attraction, which is the tall ominous Hotel Building, and the crashing elevator.

     

         

      

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was such an important milestone for the Disney theme parks, it was featured in many ‘history’ series, like the Dave Smith Collection and the 35 Magical Years Series, as well as the Original Piece of Disney History Series.

     

There are a few pins that have more elements from the attraction, and more than just the elevator or the building, the feature items in the attraction that are references to the Twilight Zone series.

   

Like the Haunted Mansion in Magic Kingdom, The Tower of Terror has been featured in many Friday the 13th Collections throughout the past couple of years, here are just two of the many themed pins.

      

Finally, we have two 15th Anniversary pins for the Disney’s Hollywood Studios version, though the one on the left’s tower looks like Disney California Adventure.

   

Pictures and Information from Tower of Terror.Org, and Pin Pics.

Tower Origins

Originally as an idea for a Disneyland Paris attraction, the concept for a ‘free-fall drop’ attraction began in the 1980s. Part of the original plans for Disneyland Paris was Geyser Mountain in Frontierland - just past Phantom Manor, next to the geyser that exists today. This would have been a mine train ride through a mountain, with a geyser bursting out from the tracks and catching your train from below. then pushing it up a chasm and out of the top of the mountain - and dropping you back down onto the tracks. The water jets would have hidden an elaborate free fall mechanism. This attraction never got off the planning stage, but the idea stayed in Paris. Discovery Mountain was to be built soon after DLP opened in April 1992, being twice as large as the present Space Mountain. As well as housing the space rollercoaster, there was to be a Journey to the Center of the Earth attraction and had a freefall ride vehicle. At least 2 versions of this were looked at - one had a vehicle with a `drill` underneath it to plunge straight down into the floor (volcano), the other was a more elaborate steel rig where the ride would either start or finish with the passenger vehicle on its side in a curved spur off of the main drop shaft. Due to DLPs financial issues, Discovery Mountain was shrunk into Space Mountain, and so the idea was put away again.

Once the Disneyland Paris ideas were scrapped, the Walt Disney Company was looking to expand Disney-MGM Studios, which was, at the time, a small park with shows, and three attractions. The expansion would involve a new ‘land’ area coming off of Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard. All early plans for the land were scrapped, from a Mickey Movieland, to a Roger Rabbit attraction with licensing issues, and Dick Tracey film struck out in theaters. What was needed was a major E Ticket Attraction, and they preferred that it would act as a weenie for the new land, to move guests past and thru the shops of Sunset. Space was reserved for future attractions on Sunset (Rock 'n Roller Coaster`s plot, Fantasmic!'s plot, the third plot between these two and the Farmers Market area - always planned to be a temporary structure.) Until these spaces were filled, the Disney-MGM Studios needed a must see at the end of Sunset. The Imagineers dug out the free fall attraction plans.

In the fall of 1989, Mel Brooks, Michael Eisner, Marty Skylar, C. McNair Wilson and the rest of the Imagineering group met together. It was the beginning of an attempt by Eisner to bring Mel Brooks over to Disney to produce his films at the then brand new Disney-MGM Studios. Mel initially had to be sold on the idea of a theme park attraction after being explained that a theme park attraction has a lasting effect of being in place and seen every day of the week by about 20,000 people for anywhere from 10-20 years. Mel Brooks made about six trips to Imagineering and a number of telephone calls to work on the attraction. Disney Imagineers wanted to shoot for something scary and funny with Mel Brooks and at one point in the early development with Mel Brooks, what later became the Tower of Terror started out as "Castle Young Frankenstein" which would have featured a Bavarian village with winding streets to the castle with a drawbridge. The queue line would be towards the back of the "village" with a kind of indoor line that had the feel of Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom. The idea later changed to "Mel Brooks' Hollywood Horror Hotel".

Around the time the Disney-MGM Studios was opened, Bob Weiss wanted to do a 1930's art-deco high-end 4 or 5 diamond hotel at the front of the Disney-MGM Studios. Because murder mysteries were all the rage in the 1930's, McNair mentioned to Bob Weiss an idea for the hotel to build in little clues that could be found all around the grounds of the hotel and would be a mini scavenger hunt and had ideas like all the hotel staff would know little key phrases that would lead guests onto other clues and you could solve it and the end you could get a certificate that the guest had solved the mystery of the hotel. This idea lead to another idea of the Hollywood Hotel having one end being covered in ivy and had broken windows and was falling apart and when you went into the hotel, if you went down the hall to that section, it would say "closed" or "condemned" and that part would be the Hollywood Horror Hotel so that it was two buildings but it would look like it was one large building.

Some other ideas were tossed around, including an idea to incorporate Mel Brooks into the Studios was to do a "comedy Haunted Mansion" that would feature Castle Young Frankenstein on the same grounds in case the elevator based attraction was scrapped. Mel Brooks eventually left the project at the time Disney Imagineers had some firm ideas and brought in an idea to have a moving elevator off it's track and moving down hallways and crash out one side of the building and they had architects and engineers brought onto the project and Mel lost interest partially because Disney wasn't building on Mel's original idea anymore. Once Mel Brooks had left, Imagineers started to figure out what the new attraction would look like and budgets and so forth and played with it some more and with Mel leaving, Imagineers started leaning toward that Spanish-Renaissance/Riverside Mission Inn "look" because of the great architecture and because it would fit in with the eclectic store fronts on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. Disney felt the attraction needed a movie reference and eventually settled on the Twilight Zone theme after calling around and see what movie rights were available. The Twilight Zone theme was a fairly easy overlay for the Disney Imagineers and went through all the Twilight Zone episodes to pick elements from the series although the theme did not change the attraction much. The one element that was lost in all of this was the comedy aspect to it that Mel Brooks had wanted but with Mel gone, Imagineers focused on the eeriness and thrill of the attraction with a Twilight Zone theme to it.

One of the initial ideas for the Tower of Terror attraction was to have a bench near the queue with a man sitting down, hunched over with a newspaper in his lap and cobwebs between him and the newspaper and he would slightly move his head to the left and right and when he would sense a guest starring at him, he would "come to life", revealing he is a live actor and start conversing with the guest. There was another idea of having audio-animatronics including a elevator repair man sleeping in the boiler room. But this and other ideas were eventually scrapped because they slowed the line down too much, also because the line barely was in the lobby where the theme.

Now that they have their idea, the Imagineers had to think of a story to fit into theme of the park. After much consideration, the Imagineers finally found one that seemed to work, the plot revolved around a studio wrap party in a modern day hotel, where the owner started to kill the guests. Management knocked this back straight away due to the murder storyline. Next up was a narrated by Vincent Price, with a part walk through, part ride about a group of movie stars staying in a hotel and who disappeared during a storm. As the walk through progressed, clues would tell the story bit by bit, until you enter an elevator and what happened becomes all to obvious - and its too late to get out. Eisner liked this story, but wanted the guests to be more involved. And so the Twilight Zone theme was worked in, with guests starring in their own `lost` episode. The ride through portion of the attraction became the queue area - hence its great theming and little clues all around - and the boiler room holding area. Twilight Zone themes were worked into the attraction, but it became apparent the original freefall ride vehicle would have to do a lot more. Disney initially involved Otis elevators, who balked at the idea of a freefall car - they had spent 140 years making elevators feel like they were stationary.

The Fifth Dimension idea played a strong part of the story from the beginning - and it became the ideal transition from Ride shaft to drop shaft (early plans called for the 5th Dimension floor to be in the basement, having descended from the corridor scene, and then to rise to the top of the building and move into the drop shaft without a show scene.) To maximize capacity without duplicating everything it was decided to have 4 ride shafts but only 2 drop shafts. This, and the 5th Dimension transition, called for a new type of ride vehicle. Imagineering had to have an elevator car, but one that could also move horizontally. Disney had to think of their own ride system and vehicle, the Autonomous Guided Vehicle. A self controlling self contained ride vehicle, that could move without track. Although the 5th Dimension floor has guideways for traction, the vehicle itself runs on its own wheels along the floor. Such a vehicle needed to have onboard power, with fast charging. Inductive power coupling was designed for EPCOT Centers Universe of Energy travelling theatre cars by Inductran Corp, and can recharge onboard batteries without a physical connection. This technology was refined for Tower of Terror, and also used later in Tokyo Disneyland`s Poohs Honey Hunt. Onboard computers follow a pre programmed ride path, and `talk` to the Ride Control System via a wireless frequency. A secondary tracking system follows a wire embedded in the floor to keep track of the AGV`s location, and these can easily trigger a ride shutdown if a carelessly discarded park map comes between it and the underside of the AGV.