But seriously. Kinda...
ToT is such a freudian experience! Really. First you need to find your way through the bush outside. Then suddenly the main lobby opens up for you. As you poke around here, you are gently guided to the back, deeper into a dark and moist cavern. Here you first enter the small dark shaft out back. You slowly go in, deeper and deeper. You now enter the 'twilight zone', a zone where your senses change, where ratio and reason no longer apply, and you are reduced to just a flux, a subconscious near dreamlike state. For the climax, you go to the big shaft up front, where you now wildly slide up and down to uncontrolled screams.
I really do believe the ride was designed by an imagineer with issues! (To be identified as: obviously male, possibly closeted, late 20's or 30's)
Just the way the ride advertises itself, with suddenly that full frontal view of this huge erect building. ToT is all one big subliminated experience from start to finish.
The question is: why is it a scary experience? Why not jubilant? Why terror instead of fun?
Why the further you progress does the experience become ever more terrifying? Why should the damp and wet engine room you descend in be dangerous and foreboding, an unnerving last stop before the absolute terror of entering that shaft? ToT can be understood as an exercise in, if not misogynie, then at least gynophobia.
I think the broken sign is a scream for help, in big neon letters. As are those letters that have fallen of the board, which is the subconscious trying to make itself heard through coded messages.
~ uh, I suppose I'll spare you all my thoughts on Small World
~
