Note: updates and edits will be denoted by This Color Text
Around Christmas, I'd been thoroughly enjoying Boundless Realm: Deep Explorations inside Disney's Haunted Mansion by Foxx Nolte, aka longtime Disney blogger Passport2Dreams. Near the end of the book, the author decides to take a look at some significant attractions that took heavy influence from the Haunted Mansion, ranging from various European knockoffs that pre-dated EuroDisney to Paris' elaborate Phantom Manor itself! Nolte briefly mentions Tower of Terror as one of the few times Disney has tried to do another attraction along Mansion's haunted lines, but decides it's "a wholly different animal" before moving on to other analyses.
But... is it a different beast altogether? Honestly, that assessment came as a shock to me. Throughout the rest of the book, I had instead been struck by exactly how much of Tower of Terror was directly copied from the Haunted Mansion. Indeed, I started to wonder if my great appreciation for both attractions was rooted in the fact that they were essentially the same. Both thematic elements and special effects were more or less lifted verbatim. From a blog writer's standpoint, it was oddly disheartening too--after all, this whole blog is somewhat redundant if everything I could possibly write about had already been thoroughly expressed and studied by Mansion fans decades before I was even born!
Therefore, I decided to really dig in to this Mansion x Tower analysis. Was Tower of Terror just Mansion with a new ride system? Did it really have enough of its own influences, its own uniqueness to stand on its own, rather than being considered a Mansion iteration?
Perhaps it's best to begin with those striking similarities. For the Tower, ride system aside, Disney clearly dipped back into its immense pool of knowledge regarding "haunted" attractions and repurposed it. Both Gracey Manor and the Hollywood Tower are iterations on the same cultural concept--the once-grand building on the edge of town that has since fallen into decay, with rumors of ghosts, and kids and teens (and maybe even adults!) daring each other to poke around the grounds for a scare. The same old traditional haunted tropes appear: flickering lights, sliding panels with hidden doors, creepy servant-archetypes that may or may not be serving the building itself...
The same special effects appear too; Pepper's Ghost effects provide the, well, ghosts, and there's lots of forced perspective and careful lighting. One of Tower's signature effects--where, at three of the Towers, guests see themselves transformed into ghosts in a haunted mirror--might even have its roots in a rejected mansion concept!
Even the buildings' placement in the parks is equally deliberate and functions in the same manner. At the start of Chapter 2 of Boundless Realm, it states:
"Haunted Mansions lurk deep inside theme parks, and this is as it should be... It's crucial that we must first pass through themed areas celebrating an optimistic, golden past... before we hit the place where that optimism somehow all went wrong."
I thought this perfectly described how well-placed both the Disneyland and Disney World Mansions are, and how well that placement makes them "work"--something I hadn't considered before. Then, I realized the same principle was also applied to the Towers of Terror!
The sheer scale of the Towers makes blending them into the scenery even more difficult, though, since you can't tuck them into trees or the hillside like a more "regular" haunted house. Still, the designers preserved the idea of hiding the haunts until the guests "see the optimism first".
While both the DCA and Hollywood Studios Towers are visible even from outside the park, they're carefully angled or placed behind other buildings so that none of the destroyed/haunted parts obviously show. Florida's is mostly visible only from the back and sides until you get into the park--and the back and sides still look like a normal hotel, with the ripped-open and burned parts restricted to the front. DCA's destroyed front side faced the park's entry gates, but buildings in front of it mostly hid the burn scars, leaving the slightly off-kilter sign as the only visible signal that something might be amiss.
It is/was a significant trek through an optimistically-themed area to get to either Tower as well. DCA made you walk through either a stylized retro postcard or Walt's Los Angeles, and then through the glitz of a Hollywood set/street, before you turned the corner to find that fancy hotel that was beckoning you was, in fact, a haunted wreck all along. In Florida, you first take a walk down a fancy Hollywood street before turning onto Sunset Boulevard. While the wreckage is visible from the second you turn onto Sunset, there's still the sense of having to "see the optimism first". In addition to the initial Hollywood street, Sunset itself has an idealized late-WWII setting, with advertisements for war bonds and victory gardens in the food court. Looming over this idealized "can-do" spirit, though, is an ominous reminder of how things can go terribly wrong, and how not all is good and cheery in this setting.
In the 90s-2000s--an era in which Disney focused more on thrills while also having to deal with tighter budgets--it would have been entirely possible that the company would forget to work the environment for maximum story potential. Heck, it might even be coincidence or luck. But still, it's great how it worked out, and an excellent storytelling element for Tower to borrow from its predecessor.
Indeed, the era in which Tower was developed was also incredibly significant to the finished attraction--but I'll get to that a little later. Before I get to the subject of different eras of ride development and storytelling, I'd like to point out another very important, and very effective storytelling similarity between the two attractions.
Around 21% into Boundless Realm (no page numbers, sadly, since I only have the digital edition), it states that part of what makes the Mansions work is that you experience it "as yourself." You're not given an explicit role such as "a new recruit, deep sea diver, or specialist... you are yourself, and you enter because you want to." It's the old-time childhood dare of entering a haunted house, incarnated in theme park form. And that's pretty much what the Towers do too.
There's been some speculation, including on my part, about why "we" (that is, the characters that us, the guests represent in the the fictional story of the ride) end up getting thrown down an elevator shaft by angry ghosts/a malevolent dimension. I've speculated that maybe we're meant to be assholes poking around a tragedy site, or maybe some sort of urban explorers acting on a dare. But there's no concrete answer--a point which previously seemed like a "plot hole".
Now, I realize, maybe the ambiguity is the point. After all, as I mentioned earlier, Tower is just another haunted house, yet another iteration of that old building on the edge of town that kids and teens tell stories about to spook each other. Only this time, when we get curious, the ghosts are less concerned with politely asking us to return when we have our death certificates, and more bent on violently ensuring that we join them.
Indeed, that striking change in ghost behavior brings me to the first major difference (besides the obvious) between the two rides: their takes on death and the afterlife. As Nolte repeatedly notes in their book, Mansion is incredibly optimistic about the afterlife. People from all different classes, countries, and time periods all get to party in the same awesome mansion, and by all appearances are having an absolute blast. Furthermore, the evil are punished by having to reveal their deeds in the afterlife and being sentenced to the less-fun rooms of the house (this is Nolte's interpretation of Constance and the original Hatbox-ghost-murdering bride). The good ghosts are there by choice; it's a retirement home where they get to have a comfortable afterlife, and it's open to anyone who has their death certificate.
Tower is...not like that. Death and the afterlife are mysterious and frightening. The ghosts we encounter range from "sad" to "threatening" to "mysteriously unreadable". The little girl haunting Paris and DCA's walls and radio is scared and lost. The five trapped people seem to threaten us with lightning as we encounter them on the various floors. Rod Serling, who may or may not also be a ghost, is frustratingly neutral regarding our harrowing plight. Perhaps most telling of all, though, the Hollywood Tower Hotel (and, indeed, the Hotel Hightower in DisneySea) is a prison, not a retirement home. The ghosts aren't there by choice. Unlike the mansion, the hotel that was once fun and luxurious in life is the exact opposite in death. And if any of them did anything evil to deserve their fate, we never have the benefit of finding out in the Twilight Zone.
(As an amusing aside, Rod Serling is Tower of Terror's Ghost Host in more ways than one. On one level, he is the disembodied-voice narrator touring us through the attraction, like Mansion's Ghost Host. On another level, he is shown literally hosting a TV show. On a third level, the real Rod Serling died all the way back in 1975--nearly 20 years before the first Tower of Terror opened. By ressurecting the voice and image of an actual dead person to host their attraction, Disney got about as close as possible to having an actual ghost act as the host.)
Now, remember how I mentioned that Tower was developed in the 90s and 2000s? While I can't lay the difference in tone entirely on the historical context of the rides' development, I can't help but feel some connection between the differing eras and tones. Mansion had a very long development cycle throughout the 50s and 60s--generally considered an optimistic time. It feels right that the same era that produced peace-and-love hippies also produced a haunted house where everyone is happy and equal in the afterlife. Indeed, Mansion seems to have slipped into existence at just the right time to maintain that happier vibe of the earlier 1960s. The very same day as the Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland, the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate--an event which, along with the ongoing Vietnam War, is associated with the "darker" attitude and greater cynicism of the late 60s and into the 70s. (The same 24-hour period also included the Beatles photographing the album cover for Abbey Road. It was a busy day for history.)
Cynicism was also more emblematic of the eras in which Tower was developed and built. The 90s had their grunge edginess, and the 2000s had post-9/11 paranoia and the "here-we-go-again-will-this-be-another-Vietnam" dread of the Iraq War. There was also increased awareness of larger-than-life existential threats like climate change and nuclear war (the latter left over from the Cold War that characterized the prior few decades). The future didn't feel so bright and cheery anymore, and inequality still hung around as frustrating as ever, despite the very visible efforts of the 60s to improve things. What lay ahead was mysterious, frustrating, and scary. I feel it's not entirely coincidence that an particular installation made in this period portrays death and the afterlife, the ultimate "what lays ahead", as being equally inscrutable and potentially undesirable.
Indeed, one can tell that Mansion was developed through the same rosy lens and around the same era as the Carousel of Progress; play "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" over the graveyard scene and it forms a statement about how great even the ultimate tomorrow can be. On the other hand, playing that tune over Tower makes it extremely sarcastic and ironic--and oh did the 90s love their sarcasm and irony.
At their core, Mansion and Tower are two different genres. The Mansion is undeniably a horror-comedy; despite its basis in spooky stories about ghosts and the undead, and the numerous scary images in the finished attraction, it's absolutely saturated with comedy and lightheartedness. Not only is everything egalitarian in the afterlife, but the ghosts themselves are generally pleasant and depicted as goofy. The graveyard scene goes full-on comedy, with cartoonish exaggerated caricatures populating silly scenes. The famous hitchhiking ghosts are a lighthearted take on the scary story of the phantom hitchhiker, for example.
Tower, by contrast, has basically no comedy to be found. Nobody's having a good time or cracking jokes, and the haunts are all depicted as realistic humans with no caricatures. In fact, the one time the Tower attempted a more Mansion-style spook design, it felt horribly out of place. DCA and Paris have the "face boiler", a piece of machinery obviously meant to look like a spooky face. Such machinery is very much in line with Mansion, where part of the spookiness involves faces showing up everywhere--the wallpaper, designs on chairs, banners around the coffin, etc. Tower is much more restrained and "realistic" in its approach to horror; everything is decayed, but there's nothing so straightforward as faces in the wallpaper. So the one time an obvious ""hidden"" face comes up, it feels strikingly tacky.
Nolte calls Tower of Terror a "90s blockbuster take" on the same spook house concept as Mansion. Indeed, it's bigger, more physically thrilling approach alone bears out that observation. However, I think that also makes a deeper point, regarding Tower's influences.
Mansion was influenced by a plethora of folklore, ghost stories, and a hearty helping of B movies about haunted or spooky houses. Tower's influences are all of Mansion's plus... what, exactly? The Twilight Zone, obviously--imagineers were required to view all episodes while developing the ride. But what about that all-important location? The hotel itself? Obviously, there are many, many stories and films about haunted mansions, but when it comes to hotels, there's a bit less to pick from.
Now, if we're talking about general folklore, there's plenty of haunted hotel stories; pick any random old hotel in Southern California and they'll talk about it being haunted. Marilyn Monroe supposedly haunts the Roosevelt, while a maintenance worker killed by the elevator (!) supposedly still haunts The Norconian (yes, the same Norconian where Walt once had a notoriously wild party). Plus hotels generally have big, spooky vibes to begin with, so that's not a large leap for inspiration. (Indeed, one might even guess that the only way to go "bigger" than a haunted mansion in a literal, physical sense, is a haunted hotel!)
In terms of film influence, though, I can't really name as many significant haunted hotel films as haunted house films. One movie simply looms over the whole genre: The Shining.
Okay, maybe it wasn't technically a "blockbuster" in terms of initial financial success, but Stanley Kubrick's film definitely looms large in terms of public perception of haunted hotel stories. In fact, I've often heard Tower of Terror called "Twilight Zone meets The Shining" or "Disney's attempt at making The Shining a ride".
Honestly, besides just being the major representation of a haunted hotel in popular culture (and thus unavoidable for the designers), I'm not sure how much I can say The Shining influenced Tower of Terror. There are a few similarities, however, although they could be coincidental. The real hotel used as a model for the fictional Overlook Hotel, The Ahwanhee, was constructed around the same time the DCA Tower was in-story, and shares many design elements. Indeed we know that Disney studied The Ahwanhee because it was also a major inspiration for the Grand Californian Hotel. Likewise, The Shining takes a serious psychological approach to horror, not the campy, goofy-scary approach of old haunted house B-movies of previous decades. This is closer to Tower's grim approach to storytelling and its contrast with Mansion's lighthearted goofiness.
Indeed, part of the reason I wrote Tower off as "just another Mansion" was because of the lack of obvious other influences. Its primary influences, as far as I can tell, are just The Shining (and even then possibly by pop cultural osmosis), The Twilight Zone series, and The Haunted Mansion itself. And, indeed, by stealing so many tricks and tropes from its predecessor, I suppose Tower absorbed all its influences as well.
Actually... well, there is one more probable influence: the tarot card literally called "The Tower". I already thoroughly explored that influence [here], so I won't repeat myself. It is interesting to note that Disney might have drawn on the Tower card as inspiration due to being familiar with tarot from its usage in Haunted Mansion and Museum of the Weird concepts.
EDIT: I was also helpfully reminded by Tumblr user peculiarreality-main of yet one more possible influence! Much as The Shining looms over the haunted hotel genre in film, the song "Hotel California" looms over it in song.
In the past, I've joked about how I was surprised DCA didn't name its Tower "Hotel California", given that other attractions like California Screamin' or Catch a Flave Ice Cream were named after songs. However, the similarities go deeper than just the joke.
The "plot" of the song involves someone encountering a mysterious hotel with mission-style architecture (it has a mission bell, at least) and having a rather haunted-sounding experience. Ominous disembodied voices, mysterious characters (including hotel staff) implied to be trapped from different eras, and the disconcerting assertion that "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave" all await the main character, accompanied by a spooky musical score. Already, that's very much Tower's territory.
It gets even closer, though! Songwriter Glen Frey stated in an interview, "We wanted this song to open like an episode of The Twilight Zone--just one shot after another." In the same interview, his co-writer Don Henley stated that the band had a fascination with hotels, in part because staying in hotels was a major aspect of their life as a band. Henley specifically mentions that he was fascinated by the "mystery and romance" of old Californian hotels, especially those with mission inspired architecture, and would even take road trips to see historic structures.
So, we have a song that combines historic Californian architecture and influence from The Twilight Zone into a ghost story that takes place at a hotel? It's actually a bit surprising that nobody has ever officially mentioned "Hotel California" as an inspiration for Tower of Terror. Maybe nobody wants to mention it because it's so similar?
As a side note, it's also amusing to me that I've heard a lot of debate about the "true" meaning of "Hotel California", such as if it's about drugs or the rockstar lifestyle. It might be, but, amusingly, the literal reading of it as the story of someone trapped at a haunted hotel might also be correct!
So, to sum the last few points of influence up, I think that the grimmer, more serious-horror tone of Tower of Terror likely came from a combination of being made in a more cynical era, having a singular grim-toned film as its new major cinematic influence, being inspired by a spooky song, and being based on the symbolism of the most negative tarot card in the deck.
But... wait... what about The Twilight Zone? That IS the main IP the ride is built around, after all.
Well, The Twilight Zone is an odd source with no real genre and a wildly varying tone. Outcomes range from "karmic justice" to "shit happens". So, technically, whichever tone Tower of Terror had been made with, it would fit with the IP just fine. Interestingly for this comparison, though, is that a recurring theme in several episodes was, "death isn't so bad". "One for the Angels" features a rather pleasant, businesslike angel of death allowing a man to fulfill a dream before he peacefully walks into heaven. Yet another episode, "Nothing in the Dark", features Death as played by a handsome young Robert Redford! There are examples of the guilty being punished by ghosts/the afterlife as well, such as "A Nice Place to Visit" (a criminal is tricked into thinking he is in heaven, only to find out he is in hell), or "Death's Head Revisited" (A Nazi is punished for his crimes by the ghosts of his victims). This theme of "the good get a good afterlife and death isn't so bad" and "the evil are punished in death" fits in much more with Mansion's optimistic afterlife than Tower's grim and mysterious one. Indeed, the original Twilight Zone series was created during approximately the same time as Mansion's development, although incredibly there appears to have been no known influence on Mansion's development at all.
While thus far this analysis has focused on the theoretical and thematic elements of Tower vs. Mansion, it's about time I got to the obvious difference: the ride system. Mansion is a slow-moving ride that never delves into physical thrill, while Tower is a major drop ride which plummets riders into weightlessness. Tower of Terror simulates the feeling of falling to your death, in order to thrill and, well, terrorize its riders. Nolte refutes the theory that the descent out of the attic scene in The Haunted Mansion represents a death fall, and I agree. Whereas Mansion spooks through visual presentation, Tower adds the visceral element of physical sensation into the mix.
Of course, there are more comparisons I could make, such as the way both attractions make use of the "light in the window" trope, or how in the Mansion you're doomed upon entering the door, while Tower practically begs you to turn back before you're doomed by getting on the elevator. However, I feel like I've rather thoroughly covered this deep dive of thematic comparisons. Whether optimistic or cynical, cinematic or viscerally thrilling, both of these attractions have earned their places as beloved classics. Long may they haunt.
