Tower of Terror effects status watch

Tom Morrow

Well-Known Member

Yikes. At this point the ride should have been closed until that was fixed. This is inexcusable.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Tower of Terror has the absolute worst show quality on property and has held this title for years. It's such a shame.
 

rodserling27

Well-Known Member
Yikes. At this point the ride should have been closed until that was fixed. This is inexcusable.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Tower of Terror has the absolute worst show quality on property and has held this title for years. It's such a shame.
Agreed. I really wish it would get the TLC it deserves. And in that clip above, the lack of sound combined with the fact that they skip the pre-show takes it from "must do" to "must skip" right now for me.
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
There is some odd camera system shenanigans going on right now. First off on Foxtrot where the strobes were for the original camera system(Before 2018), there is a light on in its spot:
1605279931919.png

The second thing that is happening is with the actual flash. From what I have seen so far, on Profiles 1 and 3 the flash is like 20x brighter than it should be compared to Profiles 2 and 4. Here is a photo of Echo doing a normal flash:
NormalFlashEcho.PNG

Now compare that to this image during the same night of Echo on Profile 1(unfortunately the main video I was going to take screenshots of got deleted):
BrightFlashEcho.PNG

Here is a picture of Foxtrot doing the same thing which shows how bright it is better:
BrightFlashFoxtrot.PNG

This kinda seems similar to the "overly bright" hallway scene issue before.

Regarding the audio: There are only streams of Alpha so far since the audio incident, and one thing that stands out now is that the BGM/SFX speakers are playing MUCH more louder now than before the incident, I do not know if this is the same for Bravo yet.
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
So it appears after watching another stream where they rode Echo, its way more odd than I originally thought. All of the lighting and effects(besides the lightning) in the 5th dimension was off and the bright flash is actually from the original picture strobes. It isn't actually tied into any profile, it is just random. I don't know if this is some testing being done or if the Tower has become very sentient/senile. Maybe Disney is doing work in the 5th dimension room that they are keeping the lights off in there and maybe doing tests alternating between the flash systems used for the picture?
I really wish @Rod Serling was online again as to explain what is going on.
 
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Rodj

Well-Known Member
Here is a re-upload I did of the original, because I knew Disney was going to do a copyright strike on the stream due to Frozen.
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
I forgot to mention in my previous post that in good news the unload spiel speaker on Echo is no longer muffled now.
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
Echo side is acting very senile today. On Alpha the hallway scene stayed in its "backup" light mode(Too long to describe why this is bad to see), the 5th dimension main audio refused to play on 3 different streams today of Echo, and the starfield doors were staying open all of the time. One thing however that caught my attention was that at 39:24 on this stream, I heard the lightning SFX play from the drop shaft speakers:

What this means is that drop shaft speakers actually work perfectly fine, its just that the audio system is refusing to play the drop shaft channel audio for the drop sequences from the drop shaft speakers and also the lightning SFX, which normally should play as the AGV is entering the drop shaft. It is actually acting like how it does sometimes after a Ride Reset Assist is done where it will play the SFX as soon as the doors open to the 5th dimension, even if the AGV isn't entering the VVC yet.
 

Mmoore29

Well-Known Member
Is that fabled budget to fix effects going to show and pay dividends in due time when more crowds come or is it ongoing and just being spaced out because of "COVID rules?" Or is there just nothing?
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
Is that fabled budget to fix effects going to show and pay dividends in due time when more crowds come or is it ongoing and just being spaced out because of "COVID rules?" Or is there just nothing?
Unfortunately it seems as if COVID stopped the budget from happening. Maybe it will come back soon.
 

Mmoore29

Well-Known Member
Unfortunately it seems as if COVID stopped the budget from happening. Maybe it will come back soon.
Well I'm sure it would have to be, and that they'd move to do it. Though I do wonder, when the park was shutdown, why didn't they just go ahead with the repairs anyway? That would've been the perfect time.
 

cjkeating

Well-Known Member
Well I'm sure it would have to be, and that they'd move to do it. Though I do wonder, when the park was shutdown, why didn't they just go ahead with the repairs anyway? That would've been the perfect time.
If you want maintenance during the closure come over to Disneyland Paris... ;)

On the subject of TOT pre-COVID Disneyland Paris upgraded their TOT to new show scenes, lighting, audio etc without taking the ride down. (One shaft closed at a time but reopened as the original show before all three were turned on overnight with just three weeks notice for Halloween 2019).
 

Rodj

Well-Known Member
I want to provide a few months update on how the Tower of Terror is doing as of recently, nothing really major, but noteworthy changes.
Starting with the show shafts, the burnt out ambient lights in the hallway scene for all shafts has been fixed(although it is noticeable which ones as they are brighter/less orange) from the "reopening incident" where the ride system was sending too much voltage to the lights.
The starfield doors on Echo side are finally working again, but now they open up a few seconds earlier than before. I have a suspicion that before they were disabled, one side was not opening fast enough and could of made contact with the AGV vehicle, so for a temporary workaround, they made it open up early.
Next up is the drop shafts, which there is plenty to talk about. The drop shaft speakers are finally working again on Echo side, so the drop sequence audio is pretty much the same now between Foxtrot and Echo(Echo does seem like it has louder VVC speakers though). It is still quieter than in early 2019 though. The 7th Horton doors on Echo have been on/off as of recent, but as of recent, all of the Horton doors on Foxtrot are working again!
Now moving onto the not-so-good changes. The secondary strobes(not the main camera strobes) on the external sign facing the doors have been disabled again, I am not sure if this is in preparation for the 50th anniversary look, or another reason why. The bigger change is that Echo now closely matches Foxtrot with the delay between the drop sequence audio and movement, where Echo is now more delayed by an additional 1-2 seconds behind the audio. Again, I am not sure if they are doing this in part of a fix for both sides to get rid of the delay entirely(seems odd they would go in this direction for that), but it is kind of suspicious that it happened at the same time Disney put the Photopass logo over the ride photos.
Everything else is the same.
 

Tom Morrow

Well-Known Member
One step forward, two steps back, and over a decade of horrible show due to only a small number of issues that would be cheap, quick, and easy to fix. Sigh...
 

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