Favorite Ride at WDW

For lack of anything better enough, because I don't have anything to update on my DCP yet, I'm going to post a story about my favorite ride in all of Disney World. (Ironically enough, it’s not even in Magic Kingdom as everyone expects.) While I love a LOT of rides in Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios Twilight Zone Tower of Terror holds a place near and dear in my heart.


Words cannot describe how much I love this ride. Not only is it fantastic, but I have one of my fondest Disney memories on this ride. In the spring of 2009, I got to perform at Downtown Disney with my theater group and not only was that a dream come true, but I got to spend two days at two parks with my closest friends. The day before the performance, we went to Magic Kingdom and stayed basically all day there. The next day, we performed for hundreds of people and then split up into groups to go to Hollywood Studios. This was the one park I had never been to before. I went with my four closest friends to explore the park and begin our adventure back in time to the 1940’s Hollywood scene.

We got to the area with ToT and Rockin’ Roller Coaster, we grabbed a fastpass for RRC and headed over to wait in the 15 minute line for ToT. At this point, we interacted with the cast members there who were trying to scare my youngest friend out of riding and provided a lot of entertainment for all of us. We finally got inside the ride and the lobby was BRILLIANT. The cobwebs, the time period furniture, the AIR CONDITIONING, I loved it. We got to go into the room to the right, and we stood back, not knowing what to expect.

When the lights suddenly went out after a rather convincing lightning strike and the TV appeared out of the bookcase, I was completely enthralled and sucked into the story of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Being a huge Twilight Zone fan, I enjoyed the short episode telling the story behind what went wrong in the Tower, and then being told that I was to be the star of the next episode in my own still working maintenance elevator- lets just say…I was excited.

After walking through the boiler room, we boarded our elevator and rode the ride, I won’t explain much else just so people can ride it themselves and be as surprised and excited as I was my first time. But I will say that we loved it so much, we rode it two and a half more times throughout the rest of the day.

That’s right, two and a HALF, because my friends, on our fourth ride through the ride STOPPED. Right before we got to the point in the ride where the elevator would drop, the ride stopped and after sitting a few minutes in the dark, the lights came on with the kind audio telling us that our ride has indeed stopped. With nothing to do other than wait for the Cast Members to get us, (Because someone in the other elevator had a panic attack and had to get off the ride, and because of that they couldn’t just start the ride again, they had to evacuate and reset the ride) we began to talk to everyone in the elevator with us. We found out that we were riding a group of kids visiting from Wisconsin and one of them had never ridden a ride in her LIFE. NEVER. So instantly, we blamed the whole ride being stopped on her (she was a good sport about it) and then everyone in the whole elevator began singing random Disney songs.

We were just finishing our rendition of There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow when I decided to look at my phone and see what time it was. By this point, we were stuck in the ride for 30 minutes and my group was now late for our check-in time to leave. I had to call our troupe leader and explain that we were only late because we were currently stuck on Tower of Terror.  At first she didn’t believe me, but I was never one to lie to her so she told me that it was okay, to take my time and to keep her posted. When the CM’s finally came to get us, the Wisconsin group decided to sing Kumbaiah and we were let off the ride. We were offered to cut the line and ride again, but since we were late, we couldn’t.

My best friends and our Cast Member savior

So my friends and I got to ride the real working elevator in Tower of Terror and to prove it we took pictures on my phone with the official cast member manager of the ride on the elevator. We ran all the way to the entrance of the park only to have the entire troupe, minus our leaders, not believe that we were stuck on the ride. We had the pictures to prove it and they still didn’t believe, but I don’t really care about that.



The only picture of me, and it's blurry. Gross. (I'm the girl in the black shirt)

 Being stuck on that ride was one of the best experiences at Disney that I’ve ever had, and not a lot of people could say that about being stuck on a ride, but it’s true. My friends and I tell that story all the time and even though we’re all in college now and we don’t get to see each other as much, we still talk all the time and try and visit whenever possible. But Tower of Terror gave me that moment, and it will always be my favorite ride in Disney World, no matter what anyone says about it. :)

(Sorry for the long post, I’m seriously missing Disney right now. Only 68 more days!)