The coaster (both of them) is such a C ticket, dressed up as a D.
Paris got it in a rush since it was off the shelf, cheap (it’s designed to be transportable) and quick. They needed it open in less than a year to deal with the looming summer 1993 crowds after the opening season swamped the park. I was shocked when Tokyo cloned it.
It was meant to be a quick temporary fix for Paris. It’s not something that should be considered for the 2020s.
The original expansion plan for Tokyo DisneySea was much less exciting than the Raging Spirits/Tower of Terror combo that opened in 2005-2006.
American Waterfront was originally scheduled to get a pair of dark rides, a pair of Vekoma Mad House inside Sailing Ship Colombia and a pair of dressed up Wild Mouse coasters. The Dark Ride was to have been called Motor Mania and guests would have taken early 1900's roadsters on a drive around New-York, indoor and outdoor. The Mad Houses would have been themed to a trip to Europe and Mad House is an old rotating house ride where 40 guests sit on a large swing set inside a large rotating barrel. The barrel is themed and at first, things are eerie as you feel like you're moving... but with no visible changes. Eventually, the room start spinning around you and those were quite popular in Europe. My main issue at Toyko DisneySea was they proposed using the small 40 passenger version versus the large 80 passenger version that Efteling, Walibi Belgium, Walibi Holland and others installed.
The Wild Mouse coasters had a very fun theme: Cops and Robbers! Guests would have entered a police station. Half the guests were sent to the police motor pool and the other half through a wall in the prison to the getaway car. The ride was outdoor in a construction zone.
What I pieced together is that Oriental Land Co. rejected those proposals, two of which have had public concept arts released, and went with Raging Spirits/Tower of Terror. Raging Spirits was a 60 million dollars US project that bookended Lost River Delta quite well and added a popular food counter as well. Tower of Terror with its new storyline and looked fitted the American Waterfront like a glove and allowed them to add Toy Story Mania! later.
There is a popular misconception that Temple du Peril is "transportable" while the truth is more complicated than that. The ride was bolted to a cement pad and its also how Rock n Roller Coaster was built later: instead of dozens of individual footers, the supports of Rock n Roller Coaster are bolted to a large cement pad. Temple du Peril layout was certainly inspired by the Pinfari TL-59 and Intamin improved the engineering and layout. They also modified it to run 6 trains at once while the TL-59 was 3-4 at most. For Raging Spirits, Sansei-Yusoki further improved the layout and built better trains for it.
Pinfari TL-59:
Temple du Peril:
The main differences with Temple du Peril are:
- Holding brake between load and the lift hill on the curve.
- Smoother lift crest.
- Instead of the brake- shallow drop-insanely tight curving drop into the loop on the TL-59, its now a long straight away, brakes, steeper and smoother curving drop into the loop.
- Helix has a small drop in the middle of it to boost speed.
- Instead of separate load and unload, two trains fit inside a single station and the transfer track is right before.
