Tower of Terror Magical stars appearing

[Tower of Terror Theater]

So I have been posting on my project to recreate the basement elevator entrance at the Disney Tower of Terror ride along with creating multiple special effects for viewers representing a transition from today, to 1939 and recreating events of what happened to cause the elevator crash and the disappearance of the guests inside, to the experience of transitioning through the twilight zone and entering the Fifth Dimension as a permanent guest in the Tower of Terror Theater hotel. Here is a link to the Youtube channel documenting the development of the set, and special effects.

Tower of Terror Theater

This Channel will be focused on my decade-long dream to recreate the Disney Tower of Terror basement elevator ride entrance from a standard sliding glass doo...

www.youtube.com

As part of the growing list of the sequence of programmed special effects, one being currently contemplated is essentially reproducing a portion of the Disney ride shown here in which the set is darkened and replaced with stars. Credit to Attraction Spot Youtube channel for video used.

I believe this is done by the Disney Tower of Terror set having fiberoptic strands (3 or 4 different diameters) embedded in the set walls which illuminate as the set darkens. I would like to reproduce, no actually one-up Disney by having this same effect in the entire room in my Tower of Terror Theater project from the floor to the ceiling enveloping the viewers. I think that I can have styrofoam1' thick sheets as were used to construct the original set to reproduce the concrete block walls embedded with the various sized fiberoptic strands in starfield pattern extending through and left with excess length on the outside, and the inside strands running to the fiberoptic light source. The exterior styrofoam sheets can be adhered to all the wall surfaces and ceiling surfaces and then textured, painted/hard coated in similar fashion as the original set to appear like concrete block on the walls, and concrete slab on the soffits and ceiling, and make a surface that will not be easily damaged by prodding fingers, shoes, etc. Once this is done then all the fiberoptic strands would be trimmed at the surface which hopefully would not be detectable until the lights go off and the fiberoptic light source is turned on.

Do you agree with my presumption on how this effect works at Disney, and if I am missing anything in my plans?

 

[Rodj]

This video shows it perfectly how it was done for the Florida tower:
The truth is, the walls are translucent, which if all of the hallway lights are off and the backroom lights are on, you can see through, but in "normal" lighting, the walls appear opaque. There is strands of fiber optics on the backside of the walls, but past the two plants, they have the projection screen move out of the way for the "floating" fiber optics in front of the projector to reflect off the 45 degree scrim/glass.

 

[Tower of Terror Theater]

Yes I see now that the walls are transparent. Amazing how your eyes can fool you. I would swear before seeing this video that there was no way the walls were opaque. I think for my planned application where viewers are much closer to the set, that it would be much more difficult to use the same approach, and the fiberoptic embedded in the set as described would work better.

 

[Rodj]

Where did you find the information that the walls are opaque? Thanks

The walls are not opaque, as I stated earlier in the post, they are partially transparent. You can tell in the video I sent because as the camera is going around the exterior of the wall, you can see right through, particularly at 1:57-2:18 in the video. It just appears opaque when the back room lights are off.

 

[Tower of Terror Theater]

The walls are not opaque, as I stated earlier in the post, they are partially transparent. You can tell in the video I sent because as the camera is going around the exterior of the wall, you can see right through, particularly at 1:57-2:18 in the video. It just appears opaque when the back room lights are off.

OK I have decided I will attempt to duplicate what Disney does for this effect. I intend to purchase a fire-proof black fabric with three different LEDs embedded which I intend to mount on a frame to cover the wall so LEDs illuminate in toward the room. I can then mount on the other side of a frame a theatrical scrim which can be painted (NOT by me, but a good artist) to make a realistic-looking boiler room. I can then mount 3D props over the scrim such as foam carved boiler grates, steam pipes, gauges, with artificial fire LED lights behind the faux boiler grates, to further increase the illusion. I dont know if I can achieve the extremely convincing hotel hall set success for this project, but we will try. So in the relatively dark Tower of Terror Set, the black fabric with LEDs behind the painted scrim should be invisible and viewers hopefully will only see the boiler room depiction on the scrim. When the lights on the set go off, and the LED "stars" are lit, this hopefully will magically give the same effect as the Tower of Terror.

I am trying to obtain a small sized black LED cloth to place behind the elevator door wrap on the left side of the "elevator" door to assess how well this illusion might work.