Drop in if you dare (Disneyland Paris)

Member Name: aylawarner

Product:	Disneyland Paris
Date:	22/05/09 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great thrill ride, staff and queue add to the experience

Disadvantages: Long queue waiting time

When I visited Disneyland Paris a couple of years ago, I was disappointed to see that the second park, Walt Disney Studios, hadn't yet finished being made. Some rides were open but there was building work going on everywhere. One of the rides we could see being made was the Tower of Terror as it stood way up high above the fences which were blocking the building area off. So when I took another trip back there last year, I was thrilled to finally get to go on the Tower of Terror.

The ride is based on the TV series The Twilight Zone where five guests arrive at the Hollywood Tower Hotel on 31 October 1939. The bellman shows them into a lift to take them to their room when lightening strikes them and they are plunged down 13 floors of terror into The Twilight Zone.

The ride takes on the same script as The Twilight Zone story - you go into the Hollywood Tower Hotel and are then shown to a lift. There are seats in the lift and fit around 20 people in each one. You will slowly ascend the floors to the very top of the tower. Here, there is an open area where you can see outside to the rest of the park and when you're down on the ground, it's fun to look up and see all the people sitting there just waiting to drop. The ride is absolutely brilliant. It turns your stomach so much every time you go up and down which I love the feeling of. Some of the staff play really well at acting like scary and weird staff at the hotel. They wear old fashioned bellman uniforms with ghostly white faces and show you into the lift with dead straight faces and look at you through scary eyes. It may freak some younger children out a little and can even make some adults feel a little uncomfortable but this is all just adds to the experience. There was one guy who showed us into our lift, one of the many times we went on the ride, and he was just brilliant. He walked slowly around the group of us waiting for our lift staring at each person with wide open eyes which made us feel really uncomfortable. After showing us into our lift he made a remark along the lines of 'enjoy the ride' and laughed a deep and scary laugh. I was sitting directly at the front of the lift in the centre just where the doors are so he kept looking at me in a scary way. After the ride was over, and the lift doors slowly opened, he jumped out at us from behind them and, I can honestly say, that I was so bloody scared! Because I was right at the front and closest to him he had freaked me out so much. I screamed so loudly, along with some other people he'd scared in the lift. Throughout all this though he managed to keep a completely straight face and acting perfectly like he was a strange staff member simply showing us into our lift in the hotel. This made the whole experience even better than just the thrill of the ride.

The queue is usually quite long as this is one of the biggest thrill rides in Disneyland - the longest we saw it it was about 70 minutes I think. But, because it is in the smaller of the two parks, it gets less crowded towards the end of the day when everyone flocks over the to the main park for the fireworks, so this is when you'll catch the shorter queues. Or simply get a fast pass ticket from the ticket machine which gives you a set time to come back to the ride and you can just pass by all the people waiting in the queue straight to the ride.

There is a great gift shop which accompanies the ride where you can buy loads of scary items such as The Twilight Zone and The Nightmare Before Christmas products. This is where you can also view and purchase your photos which were taken on the ride.

Summary: One of the best rides in Disneyland Paris