Disney now owns Marvel, which means they’re going to milk it for all it’s worth. I don’t blame ’em; it’s a business and it cost billions. But it sucks that corporations think solely with calculators and zero heart. Because of this we’ve lost all sorts of treasures from Universal Studios’ original “Jaws” and “King Kong” rides to EPCOT’s “Journey Into Imagination.”
The next casualty is the “Twilight Zone” ride at Disneyland, “Tower of Terror,” which takes park attendees on a stay at The Hollywood Tower Hotel, which ends in a surprising elevator drop.
It’s been confirmed over the weekend that Disney plans to recalibrate the ride to fit into the Marvel Universe. Yes, “Tower of Terror” will soon become a ride based on James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
“The plan is for the original ‘Twilight Zone’ backstory to be removed entirely, and replaced with an all new show based around the Collector character from the Guardians movie franchise,” reveals Micechat. “WDI had been testing and experimenting with the new show in the elevators for months and the ‘Tower of Terror’ hourly CM’s were all aware of what WDI had been cooking up since this winter. But when the plan finally leaked online in April, the TDA executive suite hit the roof in anger.
And what does an angry executive team do in this modern age when a juicy rumor, that just happens to be true, leaks online? They issue Talking Points, of course! TDA’s Cast Communications team was instructed to send out vague and pointless “Talking Points” to the CM’s that instructed them to not believe everything they see online until it is confirmed by the Disney Parks Blog. Except many hourly CM’s who work the ‘Tower of Terror’ attraction and its gift shop had known about this evolving plan for months prior to its online leak, as Imagineers and TDA executives spent plenty of early mornings and late nights inside the ride building testing out the new show proposals in the elevators and tinkering around the pre-show hallways and queue.
The current plan for ‘Tower of Terror’ is to close the attraction this fall and give the entire building a full interior and exterior refurbishment so that the new version of the ride can open next May, with the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie premiere held at DCA the same week the new ride opens. Assuming this gets the green light by August, and a disastrous Shanghai opening summer is about the only thing that could derail it at this point, the CM’s will be treated to another round of approved Talking Points that will somehow explain that they can now believe what they read online about ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ taking over ‘Tower of Terror’. The hourly CM’s, of course, are already several steps ahead of TDA.
This ‘Tower of Terror’ proposal is part of a multi-year plan to get more Marvel into DCA, being pushed heavily by Bob Chapek. Since Chapek arrived a year ago as the new Parks Chairman, he’s been shocked to learn that after five years of owning Marvel there still isn’t a new Marvel ride in the California parks, and that the only thing TDA has done with Marvel is slap together some cheap meet n’ greets over the years. The plan now is to adjust the Marvel mega-coaster from its original spot in the Timon parking lot to fit into the northern end of Hollywood where Stage 17, ‘Monsters Inc.,’ and the unused Stage 12 buildings are. This would save Timon for future DCA expansion, and better use the under-utilized space on the opposite side of Hollywood Land.
The good news, if there is any, is that this is only taking place in California, which means the way better version, in Disney World, remains unscathed (for now). What does this mean for Disney’s feature film they had been developing? My best guess is that it’s dead as doornails, or soon will be. The purpose of the movie was to bring people into the parks, not the other way around. Without a ride, the movie becomes a moot point.
Let’s just end by acknowledging how much this sucks. I don’t think it comes as a surprise anymore, but it doesn’t hurt any less. At least we’ll have the memories and YouTube videos shot in HD. I can only hope this doesn’t ever happen to “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Haunted Mansion” or I may crawl into an early grave and scoop the dirt on myself.