Trip Report: Disney/MGM Studios
Reedy Creek I. D., Florida - 11/17/2003

"That's right, Epcot is still open..."

Unfortunately, they didn't build it that way. Instead, to get to the studio park I had to return to the central transit hub, then drive around to the parking area for the other park. Not difficult, but a little time consuming. In fact the only real difficulty was finding my rental car, which looks like all the other little white rental cars out there.

Anyway, I got to the park around 5:00pm, which gave me two hours before the park closed in which to visit the attractions I most wanted to see. The race was on, though, admittedly, I have another day that I can come back.

I hiked down the central street and down the cross-road to the Hollywood Tower Hotel. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is the one major attraction in the park I had not yet ridden. The sign indicated a 20-minute wait, and this time turned out to be right. I went up the walkway to the lobby, carefully created and decorated down to the tiniest detail. A group was formed and we proceeded into the library, then down a service corridor. I think we were supposed to forget we were still on the ground floor and not in the basement as it appeared. Which, by the way, had an interesting little trick. The elevators are equipped with a floor indicator outside the door, giving the floor numbers B-12. The font used looks like the characters are stenciled, so the letter "B" has a small gap between the serifed vertical stroke and the curve attachment on the right side of the letter, making the letter "B" resemble the number "13". Very clever. After a bit of a wait in that room, we were shown to our elevator. I ended up in the top row, pretty much right in the middle of the car.

As a total ride experience, Tower of Terror is outstanding. The visual effects, in particular, are amazing. And when the doors opened at the top, just briefly, it was clear that we were at or near the top of the tower, but I still have no idea how we got there. I never felt the thing going up, but once there we went down in a hurry. A bit of bouncing later, followed by a quick trip back to the unloading area, and the ride was over.

As a drop ride, I found Tower of Terror to be a little lacking. Perhaps it is because I rode Dr. Doom's Fearfall the day before. Yes, Tower of Terror can go faster than gravity will allow, but the action is very brief, no doubt because the park wanted to limit the downward acceleration at the reverse point. The result is a gentler ride than I had been led to expect. As drop rides go, it's less memorable than the Turbo Drop elevators at Cedar Point and Valleyfair!. As rides go, though, it has other drop rides beat handily. And of course it scores bonus points from me for having seat belts instead of shoulder bars. 8-)

Next to the Hollywood Tower Hotel is a plaza outside G-Force Records, home of the Rock 'N Roller Coaster. I had ridden this one before, and with almost no wait, I opted to ride again. My last ride was in Seat #1; this time I opted for Row #11, which is the front row of the last car, my customary location on Arrow-style looping coasters. I pulled down the @%!* shoulder bar, which, I noted, had been equipped with "soft" warts up around the top of the bar. Not the tall blinder pads as on the SLCs, but that same kind of material. When the light turned green, we took off. The ride starts out a lot like Flight of Fear, only bigger. Off the launch, it climbs into the first inversion, which seems to be a Sidewinder, and moments later is doing it again. It was more or less at this point that I started to take a pretty severe whalloping until I finally remembered to stick my neck out and get my head clear of the @%!* shoulder bars. That wasn't quite as bad, but it meant I could barely hear the music. I remember the last time I rode this thing (11/2001), I got off saying, "I never thought I'd say this, but Flight of Fear is better." Well, Flight of Fear is still better, but only because Rock 'N Roller Coaster is a headbanger...and that only because it has those mind-numbingly stupid, badly-designed, poorly crafted, anatomically incorrect, shoulder bars on it. After 28 years, can't we be rid of these @%!* things?

I got off the coaster with my head and left ear hurting, with some time left in the operating day. Remembering my previous experiences with the park, I decided to go see the MuppetVision 3D show. This time I remembered to check under the welcome mat in front of the security office to see if the key is there (it is, as advertised). Once inside the theater, I did my now-customary quick check of the seat and found it "clean" [Footnote 1], though I knew from prior experience that was the case. I described the show pretty completely in my last trip report, and it hasn't changed. It's still a good show.

I had very little time remaining, so I opted for the Great Movie Ride, which is the studio park's signature dark ride. For a while it looked like I might be the only passenger, but a handful of other people arrived before the ride started. I don't fully understand the mechanicals of the ride. It's a two-car electric tram, piloted by a driver. Sort of. Except that I sat next to the driver. There is an automotive-type automatic transmission shifter, which is apparently used to lock out vehicle motion when the driver wants to stay stopped. There is a wheel, which the driver steers, but the vehicle motion seems to bear little relationship at all to the driver's control inputs. And the driver doesn't have any obvious stop/go control (other than the shifter) but the vehicle seems to figure out what to do when just fine. As for the show part...it's quite a well done combination of staging, animatronics, and...at the risk of throwing in a spoiler...some reasonable acting by the two tour guides. The scenes are highly detailed, with advanced robotics throughout.

When the ride ended, the park was nearly closed, leaving me no time for another ride. But in just a couple of hours I had managed to do the things I really wanted to do in that park. A quick dinner in Kissimmee, and I was off to my hotel, ready to do it all again the next day.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: Free of suspicious openings, grilles, nozzles, or other parts that tend to (sometimes literally) pop up in amusement park theater seats. [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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