This Twilight Zone Episode Inspired A Major Plot Point For Disney's Tower Of Terror
Everyone has a favorite Disney theme park ride, and if it isn't the Tower of Terror you are objectively wrong. Okay, it's not the most inventive attraction mechanically speaking; indeed, drop-shaft rides of this kind were passing out of fashion when it opened on July 22, 1994. But the Tower of Terror was a drop with a difference. It was a tie-in to "The Twilight Zone."
There was also an important technical wrinkle to the Tower of Terror. As visitors are shot upward through the spooky Hollywood Hotel (on their way to the 130-foot peak), the car occasionally stops and moves out of the shaft as a means of immersing passengers in Rod Serling's Fifth Dimension. It's a gloriously disorienting experience that's as close as anyone will come to that "wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination" outside of getting cast in an actual "Twilight Zone" episode.
And one of the coolest parts of the ride is that, in essence, we are playing our role in an original "Twilight Zone" episode. For the most part. Tower of Terror might not be based on a specific "Twilight Zone" tale, but it was absolutely influenced by one.
A whole lotta Matheson and a dash of Spielberg
If you've never seen the "Little Girl Lost" episode of "The Twilight Zone," I'm fairly certain you've seen a piece of fiction inspired by it. There's the "Treehouse of Horror VI" segment from "The Simpsons" where Homer wanders into a computer-generated third dimension, and, according to Richard Matheson, who adapted his own short story for the episode in question, "Poltergeist" is a thinly disguised riff on his premise.
For those of us who entered "The Twilight Zone" at a young age (via syndication), "Little Girl Lost" scarred our psyche. The idea of getting trapped in an alternate dimension, in our own house, from which our parents can't rescue us, is the stuff of nightmares. And we'd never consider such a bizarre notion were it not for Matheson's demented genius.
So, when the Imagineers set about designing the Tower of Terror, they wisely (perhaps instinctively) drew from "Little Girl Lost." Per the official Disney fan site D23, you can hear the young girl's voice crying out for help as you pass through the boiler room on the way to the car. There are also chalk marks that are a clear reference to the episode.
This is an ideal starting point for "Twilight Zone" junkies and newcomers to the series; you don't have to be familiar with every nook and cranny of the fifth dimension to get freaked out by the sound of a distressed little girl's voice. You can't get that on Space Mountain (which, let's face it, kinda sucks)!