The Tower of Tarot part 2? And the Meanings of the Library Desks

In 2026, the Florida Tower of Terror has continued to have various refreshes and maintenance, which @chunkecheeks has helpfully been keeping me informed about.  This includes some exterior work that's required scaffolding to cover parts of the facade.  Apparently, employees are reassuring guests that it's just maintenance with no major changes--I like that there's still enough fans to be concerned about that!

 

July 13, 2026, @chunkecheeks

What prompted today’s post, however, is that some of the library props received yet more cleaning, and this in turn revealed an Easter Egg that has significance to a long-held theory of mine.

The props on the “porcelains of Europe” desk are clearer than I’ve ever seen them before. In addition to the mysterious note (which is actually a developer in-joke about props breaking during shipping, per a tour taken by @laffiteslanding), the book itself also is now much more legible than before.  Interestingly, the pages depict slightly abstracted paintings of porcelain vases, rather than, say, using a public domain page of photographs of porcelain.  I thought this might be deliberate, to match the actual vases in the attraction, but based on photos they are merely similar to the props in the ride, not illustrations of the specific items.  This makes the use of an apparent custom prop rather odd.

 

The book.  Photo by @chunkecheeks

Actual prop vase in the lobby.  My photo, 2023

Different pots as planters in the lobby.  My photo, 2023

Pots in one of the libraries (I believe the left side one?) My photo, 2023

Next to the book, though, the “art print” attached to the Mystic Seer fortune has also been cleaned, and is much more recognizable.  It seems to be a tarot card, with a “1” at the bottom under the illustration of the classical-looking statue.  

 

The Mystic Seer fortune, and now what is clearly a tarot card. @chunkecheeks, July 2026

 

Tarot fits with the fortune-telling theme of the Mystic Seer, and also the “1” apparently designates it as a version of “The Magician” card.  I am not well-versed in tarot, but apparently The Magician has positive meanings of “power, influence, willpower, resourcefulness, skill, ability, logic, intellect, concentration, and psychic powers,” and negative meanings of “manipulation, greed, unused ability, untrustworthiness, trickery, conniving, cunning, and lack of mental clarity.” (Source)

 

This symbolism is VERY relevant to the Mystic Seer, a fortune-telling machine that may or may not deliberately manipulate its users into dependency.  It hails from The Twilight Zone s02e07 “Nick of Time” and is also visible in the library on one of the upper shelves not far from the desk.

 

Mystic Seer (red box with devil head) above the window and desk in the left side library. My photo, 2017

Mystic Seer (red box with devil head, partially obscured by cobweb) above the window and desk in the right side library.  My photo, 2017.

I find it especially significant that this indicates one of the Imagineers was definitely consulting tarot symbolism/folklore when working on Tower of Terror.  I first wrote in 2020 that the ride’s plot seemed to have a lot of similarities with the tarot card known as “The Tower.”  The card depicts a lightning-struck tower with people falling out of it, and carries meaning that includes “chaos, destruction, upheaval, trauma, unexpected change, disaster, loss, tragedy, revelations, confusion, and pain.” (Source)

 

Standard artwork for The Tower from the 1909 Rider-Waite Tarot Deck (source)

I’ve always been interested in where, exactly, Tower of Terror’s story originated from, since obviously there is no actual Twilight Zone episode with this plot and the plans for a haunted hotel ride pre-date the choice of a Twilight Zone theme.  At least some of it might be from tarot symbolism!

 

This Magician tarot card still holds yet another mystery though.  What is that statue depicted on it?  It’s certainly not the standard artwork for The Magician, although the young male figure on the left holding out a branch might be an allusion to the standard symbolism.

 

Standard artwork of The Magician from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck (source)

Zoom-in of @chunkecheeks's photo

It feels similar to marble groupings like Laocoon and His Sons, but is definitely not the same statue.  With the deliberately faded look of the card even when cleaned, it’s hard to decipher much detail.  Is it an actual classical Greek or Roman statue?  Is it a neoclassical work like those of Antonio Canova or Georges Bareau?  Is it a real statue at all, or a stylized specific illustration for whatever tarot deck this card was picked from?  Is this from a real tarot deck, or a custom painted prop like the vase book?  Reverse image searching with Tineye and Google Images brought up no matches and I’m not quite sure how to narrow down a brute force search of all the classical and neoclassical marble statues or tarot decks with custom artwork that exist.  Can you identify it?

 

The other library’s desk, with the book of plants and the “climate of California” note, also received a partial refresh.  The note is now very clean and readable, although it seems its book was not similarly refreshed.  Also, I looked through some old photos and found that this note used to be covered by a stopwatch prop!  And not even the famous broken stopwatch either.  This dedication to clear Easter Eggs via the notes is apparently relatively new, even if the notes themselves have been in place for a while.

 

Photo by @chunkecheeks, July 2026

Dirty and partially obscured version of the same note back in 2017.  My photo.  I wish I had more pics in between this to know when this change occurred.

Given the status of the porcelain note as a developer in-joke, I’m now pretty convinced that this plant note is also an in-joke over-explanation.  It’s about plants from a subtropical environment (i.e. Florida) being able to adapt to a Californian setting.  It’s over-explaining how a California-set story has Floridian landscaping.  I don’t think most people would even notice the difference, and those that would probably also understand the practicalities of landscaping a ride to the environment it actually exists within.  But hey, if the Imagineers felt the need to explain cracked porcelain in a building that had part of it blasted off by magic lightning, I could see them also being concerned over Floridian plants in a California-set story.

 

While I’m on the subject of the library desks, I went rifling through some old photos of California Tower to see if it had any Easter Eggs on its desks.  Both of its desks had identical (albeit mirrored) displays…of a mahjong set and an apparent book of rules.

 

Queen's Library (left side library) desk at California Adventure, 2016.  My photo.

Slightly wider view of the Queen's Library desk, 2016. My photo.

King's Library (right side library) desk, 2016.  Photo from Dusty Sage/Micechat

Wider view of the King's Library desk, 2016.  Photo by Commander Corn of Micechat

 

Sadly, given the limitations of my camera ten years ago, I don't have a clear detail shot to see what exactly the page said.  Even the clearest shot I've found so far, by Infinitographer on Flickr, still isn't quite high-resolution enough to fully read the text:

 

Photo dated March 2015, by Infinitographer

I do find this display odd because this is a seeming callback to Florida Tower, and the possibility of playing mahjong with celebrities was a detail included in the Easter Egg Buena Vista Street newspaper.  Florida Tower has a mahjong game in its lobby, and according to the bellhops I spoke to in 2023, that’s because mahjong was a “rich man’s game” while cards was a “poor man’s game” and the Hollywood Tower caters to the most elite.  California Tower, in the notoriously budget-cut California Adventure, had a card game in the place of Florida’s mahjong, yet here in the libraries someone is trying to learn that “rich man’s game.”  Is it coincidence?  A callback to the original design?  Or a symbolic, hidden complaint from an Imagineer annoyed that this second iteration experienced so many budget cuts?

 

Given that the desks in Florida both serve as references to obscure development difficulties with props arriving broken and (possibly) trouble finding accurate landscaping, it’s not entirely out of the question that the mahjong set in DCA Tower is also a reference to that version’s Imagineering problems.

The Mission Breakout movie...that isn't a Marvel film

 Since my last post here was about Tower of Terror (1997), and a response to that post by @shaydystheshadowqueen led to the subject of this one, I figured I’d take the time to editorialize a bit more about movies here.  Surprisingly, it may be actually relevant to the Tower of Terror rides--well, at least one of them.  You can judge for yourself by the end.

Picture if you will, a new crop of filmmakers having to tackle the same challenge Tower of Terror (1997)’s filmmakers did: make a film about an IP ride, but it cannot use the IP in question.

And, make it a Mission Breakout movie.

Now, obviously, such a situation would never really exist.  A main drive of the Mission Breakout changeover was for the lucrative Guardians of the Galaxy IP, after all.  But let’s continue this thought experiment for a moment.  What are you left with?

An ominous figure who obsessively collects things, including monstrous sentient beings.

The collector is intent on adding at least one of the heroes to his collection. 

Both those monstrous beings and our heroes need to break out of their containment.

Extremely distinct celestial industrial futurist fantasy art deco (?) architecture.  And I mean REALLY distinct architecture.  I have no idea if this actually describes a real style of it, but you know it if you see it.  And I’ve seen it in two places now.

Because this theoretical movie?  It actually kind of exists.

Note: All screencaps are from movie-screencaps.com

Thir13en Ghosts (2001) (henceforth Thirteen Ghosts so grammar check stops underlining everything) obviously pre-dates Mission Breakout by many, many years.  It even pre-dates California Adventure’s Tower of Terror, which opened in 2004!  Somehow, though, it has one of the most bizarre, unique, and stunning examples of a haunted house ever put to cinema, and that house manages to have the architecture of Mission Breakout.  

 

The glass monster cages look especially familiar:

 

This distinct design language even carries over into the DVD menus if you buy a physical copy!

In fact, watching this film for the first time, I finally understood what the Mission Breakout designers were attempting to do.  The house in the film is genuinely stunning; if not classically beautiful, then at least extremely visually interesting.  You really don’t see other haunted mansions like it, and as a result it’s one of my favorite haunted building designs.  This might seem surprising, given how often I rag on Mission Breakout’s ugliness.  The difference here is clearly budget (or at least the ability to purpose-build the structure you want) and kinetic energy.  Mission Breakout, being a quick and cheap overlay, doesn’t have the benefit of being custom made to showcase this style, and therefore looks like the Temu knockoff of it.  Breakout generally lacks visual kinetic energy, with lots of parts feeling "pasted on."  The Thirteen Ghosts house is constantly in motion—gears are turning, glass walls are shifting, metal rings spin, and panels on the walls shift around to open and close.  Really, you should go watch the movie to see it, because screencaps aren’t doing it justice, and some examples I could post would be spoilers.  

 

This massive central machine that powers the house feels especially MCU.

I think Breakout’s designers actually intended a more visually kinetic appearance, based on an early press release—which I distinctly remember, but frustratingly can no longer find archived online—that promised projections constantly animating the façade.  Sadly, I presume the budget absolutely hobbled the vision and limited the projections to only Monsters After Dark.

And yes, the plot of Thirteen Ghosts involves a morally questionable collector who keeps his collection of twelve (so far…) monstrous ghosts locked in ever-shifting glass boxes custom-made to keep them contained.  Of course, they escape containment.  Our human protagonists are also locked in the haunted mansion and must escape, with the collector intent on adding at least one of them to the collection instead.  It’s Monsters After Dark and Mission Breakout rolled into one!  Well, okay, there’s much less classic rock going on, and far fewer attempts at comedy.  I won’t spoil the plot because I found this a really enjoyable watch, and the movie is fairly accessible (here it is on Tubi for free, or the DVD is $5 on Amazon).   I think it’s a really underrated haunted mansion movie.  I blame the fact that the poster/DVD cover art doesn’t even indicate it’s a haunted house film for its lack of ability to find an audience these days.

 

This feels so generic.  I probably wouldn't have watched it if I hadn't been recommended it and told it was a haunted mansion movie.  I'm not even sure which of the characters the screaming face is supposed to be.

Heck, the shelves upon shelves of various collectibles and antiques in the mansion even seem to exist in parallel in Thirteen Ghosts and the Collector’s office in Mission Breakout!  It's never officially stated, but it's clear through design details that our mansion owner collects all things, and not just ghosts.

 

Yes, Tony Shaloub is in this.

Matthew Lillard is in it too.

After all the screencaps I’ve posted, here’s some photos of Mission Breakout for comparison: 

 

Note: I took these Mission Breakout photos during Monsters After Dark 2024, and thus they reflect the lighting and set dressing in that version of the ride.

 

Once again, much like watching the movie conveys more than screenshots, actually going on the ride gives a way better sense of the it than this sampling of photos.

You may have noticed that I refer to Thirteen Ghosts as a haunted mansion movie, rather than just a haunted house movie.  That's because it is a Haunted Mansion movie, as in THE Haunted Mansion.  Thirteen Ghosts is officially (in legal terms) but also only sort-of (in plot terms) a remake of the 1960 movie 13 Ghosts.  

 

Back when Walt Disney was brainstorming ideas for a haunted house for Disneyland, he actually took Imagineers to a screening of a specific ghost movie for inspiration.  That movie?  Yeah, it’s 13 Ghosts, cheesy gimmick B-movie extraordinaire.  Apparently Rolly Crump even stated that this movie, and not The Haunting (1963) was the Walt-approved inspiration for the ride.  (He did not rule out that other Imagineers were inspired by The Haunting, just that Walt did not officially direct them to watch it.)

Mansion fans will recognize a lot in 13 Ghosts, but especially the cheesy horror-comedy tone, the wide variety of vaguely comedic spirits, the séance, and the numerically ordered ghosts with “room for one more.”

Anyone else get Mystic Manor vibes from this version of the mansion exterior?

 

I feel like the lion and lion tamer ghosts are iconic to fans familiar with classic Haunted Mansion concept art.  Also note the red-blue "Illusion-O" color tinting.

The seance

 

The family maid/psychic medium is played by Margaret Hamilton!  Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West!

This movie is a very different experience from its "remake" and also worth at least one watch. 13 Ghosts seems to currently be in a bit of a home media limbo, with official physical copies out of print, but there are a few digital copies floating around on streaming.  Plex has the black and white 4x3 VHS version, Tubi has the black and white widescreen (dvd?) version, and Internet Archive has a version that preserves the red/blue tinted Illusion-O effects, so you can experience the original intent at home if you have your own red/blue 3D glasses.

So, if 13 Ghosts has an official Disney ride connection, what of Thirteen Ghosts?  As soon as the movie was over, I was searching up the art and visual development departments in the credits to see if any of them had any Disney or Marvel connection.

I started by IMDB-searching names from the credits, and found a striking number of them went on to work on Disney’s Tomorrowland (2015), of all things. Okay, that was a Disney Parks connection, but a really tenuous one that didn't provide many answers.   Plus, Tomorrowland doesn't look much like Mission Breakout or Thirteen Ghosts.  

Likewise, I looked back at The Collector’s Fortress as depicted in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) for more clues, only to have more questions.  Those glass cages look the same but otherwise the architecture is strikingly un-Breakout.  So, that left the initial Marvel end a mystery as well.

 

Those glass cages are the same, but the Collector's base in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) is much more open and warehouse-like.

 But then, I found a lead in an unlikely place.  I usually don't put stock in random "list-icle" sites but this Ranker post had a potential bombshell: the production designer for Thirteen Ghosts had gone on to work on MCU films, and James Gunn had worked, albeit uncredited, on Thirteen Ghosts.

Thus, I went about verifying those claims.  Sure enough, based on his IMDB page, Sean Hargreaves served as production designer on Thirteen Ghosts, and then went on to be a senior concept designer on multiple MCU films.  Most importantly for this post, he worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Thor Ragnarok: the two films that canonically connect to Mission Breakout.

James Gunn, of course, is the writer and director of the Guardians of the Galaxy portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  He also worked on Mission Breakout, directing the screen-based portions. The claim about him working on Thirteen Ghosts was a bit harder to verify, as the tweet where he confirmed it had been deleted.  I did, however, find an archive of it thanks to the magic of the Wayback Machine:

 

Both he and the person he replied to seemed to have a rather negative view of the film.  Indeed this film has a seemingly disproportionate negative reputation that I can't explain.  Also he uses the title of the original film when obviously he would've worked on the remake instead.

Yeah, Gunn seems to have just done some uncredited rewrites... but he DID work on it.  And, honestly, it feels like it has his signature "vibe" even beyond it looking like a ride he would eventually make.  I think you'll get it if you watch the film.

 

So, it's a tenuous connection... but it IS a connection.  It's not exactly proof that Mission Breakout was inspired by the architecture of Thirteen Ghosts, but it's at least interesting that creatives involved with the latter would go on to create the former.

 

Or, I wondered, could both Breakout and the film be drawing from some even earlier source? 

Some of the architecture in Thor Ragnarok (2017) has this same style, and of course that movie is also canonically part of Mission Breakout, particularly for Monsters After Dark.

 

 

Thor Ragnarok's design was based on the art of Jack Kirby.  Given the numerous comics references that show up in Thirteen Ghosts too, I wonder if that could be the missing link or the inspiration behind it all.

So, there you have it folks.  There's a Mission Breakout movie that's not Marvel or Disney affiliated, and debuted 15 years before the ride.  I can't definitively prove a link, or the origin of this very unique architectural style, but they aren't entirely unrelated.  It'd be especially amusing if there was a connection, because Disney definitely already created an unofficial 13 Ghosts ride with The Haunted Mansion.  I never expected to be diving into Breakout's origins the way I usually do Tower's, but here we are!

Also, in case it wasn't clear already, I recommend you go watch Thirteen Ghosts and 13 Ghosts.  Let me know if you spot any other similarities!