The DHS has the superior facade and queue, hands down. But the ride, I feel, is better at DCA.
1. The opening. I love boarding the elevator and immediately having something be wrong as your most unusual elevator seems to get pulled back into a ghastly world. The movement reminds me of a Hitchcock closeup.
2. Pace of ride. The DCA version really moves at an alarming pace. The car physically moves faster and the narration drives forward. It gives a great feeling of panic and anxiety.
3. Mirror Scene. A simple but effective special effect. It replaces the 5th Dimension and I prefer it over the 5th Dimension. The maintenance floor vibe at DHS just feels cheap to me. Why does this hotel have large steel framed glass boxes? Is this Guardians of the Galaxy? The effects in there are pretty bad. Static figures which remind me of Christmas lawn ornaments, flimsy cut out signs bobbing on fishing line, the eye and door. I do love the star-field turning into a doorway though. But then the car takes so long to center itself and load into the drop shaft. Its slow, clumbsy, and kills the build up.
4. The Hallway Scene. I love the drop scare they added. Great fun little momemt that ends the scene perfectly and immediately propels us into the climax. DHS' has the window change into the TV show window, it breaks, and then the doors silently close to snickers and awkward laughter from guests. It has a kind of "student film" vibe where you can tell they thought this moment would be trippy, but its just kind of corny.
5. Ride ending. Love the book-ending feature of being thrust back into the real world. It reminds me of the horror films when the character tries telling an authority figure something strange has happened and end up doubting their own senses. "The car, it pulled backwards and I saw the hotel as it was, and I saw ghosts, and I almost dropped to my death!" "What do you mean, the doors only closed a moment ago and you haven't moved..." The fact you have the same exact bellhop on door closing as door opening is fantastic. I've had so many amazing bellhops who really embrace this fact.
The DHS ending is much less satisfying. You see a screen silently play footage from the show. No sound, no nothing. Then our car moves to a completely new exit point. This move is in bright light and there's nothing mysterious or scary about it. It feels like a theme park ride car moving to a new position rather than being part of the story.
6. Horror vs. Camp. The events of the two rides are similar, but the plots are very different. In DHS, Rod Serling tells us tgis elevator is transporting us into the actual TV show. We are now trapped in this fictional episode. I'm mot sure why a Hollywood hotel elevator can move us into a TV show, but that's the plot. We see imagery which isn't meant to tie into the ghost story, but the TV show itself. Windows become black and white then shatter as they do in the show opening. We see big fake floating eyes and other such iconography instead of anything ghastly or hotel related in the 5th Dimension Room. The final scene shows us the TV show elements being sucked into a vortex as we leave this experience. Its closer to the source material, but obviously more campy than scary. Its like a spooky version of Pleasantville. "You are now sucked into this corny 60's TV show....ooooo"
With DCA's update, we are in an actual haunted hotel. The narration is changed and we are no longer going into the old show. Instead, we see scenes which focus on the ghost story. A hallway instantly ages before our eyes into something spooky as our reflection vanishes. Are these ghosts trying to steal our souls? Then we don't see a floating window but the doomed elevator full of these malicious spirits. They drop. We drop. Our fate is mirroring theirs.
Its a much more fear based experience. The original is fun, and I wish they had set it at an old TV studio, as then getting sucked inside a TV show would make sense. The DCA version focuses on us having a truly freaky experience.
