The Tower of Terror almost featured an award show hosted by Eddie Murphy and Elvira, Mistress of the Night — with Godzilla as the star. Chris goes deep on the full origin story of Hollywood Studios’ most iconic ride: from the original Six Flags drop tower that inspired it, to the Young Frankenstein castle that almost got built instead, to why Rod Serling’s widow personally helped cast the voice actor who replaced him. Plus Kelli breaks down everything you need to know about Coven Academy, the new Disney+ series that hit #1 in one day and has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes — including why it moved from Disney Channel to Freeform, and why the dark magic is intentionally written as an addiction metaphor.
In this episode:
- Fort Wilderness holiday sleigh rides are now bookable — includes s’mores and a movie at the end
- Disney Believe inaugural cruise sets sail December 18, 2027, featuring an Encanto stage show
- Mobile ordering coming soon to Nomad Lounge at Animal Kingdom
- Disney Plus will broadcast this year’s Super Bowl
- Joe Rohde confirms the Expedition Everest Yeti will be fully replaced, not repaired — “if they could fix the Yeti, they would have fixed the Yeti”
- Gertie the Dinosaur Christmas Loungefly purse is here and it is extremely cute
- Holiday overlays coming November 25–January 6: Cosmic Rewind (Andy Williams, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Waitresses), Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster (The Muppets’ Electric Mayhem with Kermit and Fozzie singing Holiday Road and Christmas Baby Please Come Home, plus Cyndi Lauper and the Electric Mayhem on Silver Bells), and Alien Swirling Saucers (Toyland, Deck the Halls, Joy to the Swirl)
- Coven Academy is now #1 on Disney+, has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and is completely original — not based on any book or IP. Creator Tim Federle pitched it as “Wednesday with witches.” The dark magic is coded as an addiction metaphor, which is why it moved from Disney Channel to Freeform. Episodes are 13-19 minutes each, all 21 dropped at once. Devon Sawa is playing two roles. Miss Graves being Briar’s mom was not in the original script — it happened because of on-set chemistry between Tiffani Thiessen and Malina Weissman
- Tower of Terror origin story: why Disney built it, the drop tower at Six Flags Magic Mountain that inspired it, the rejected Jules Verne volcano concept for Disneyland Paris, the Stephen King stories idea, the Vincent Price ghost tour concept, the Eddie Murphy/Elvira/Godzilla award show pitch, the Young Frankenstein castle with Mel Brooks that almost happened, the $140 million construction that opened July 22, 1994, the design deliberately chosen to blend with EPCOT’s Morocco Pavilion, how Otis Elevators helped build the drop system, the evolution from one to two to three drops to today’s random computer-selected sequence, how Rod Serling’s widow helped cast his voice replacement, the 1997 Steve Guttenberg/Kirsten Dunst Tower of Terror TV movie, and how the Tokyo DisneySea version follows a completely different storyline with no Twilight Zone connection
⏱ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro & Download Shoutouts (Union City NJ, Mason OH, Bern Switzerland)
2:50 Main Street News: Fort Wilderness Holiday Sleigh Rides
3:32 Disney Believe Inaugural Cruise — Encanto Stage Show
4:27 Mobile Ordering Coming to Nomad Lounge
5:20 Disney Plus Broadcasting the Super Bowl
5:37 Joe Rohde: Expedition Everest Yeti Will Be Replaced
6:17 Gertie the Dinosaur Christmas Loungefly Purse
7:02 Holiday Overlays: Cosmic Rewind, Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster, Alien Swirling Saucers
9:30 Tomorrowland: Coven Academy — Everything You Need to Know
23:35 World Showcase: Tower of Terror — The Full Origin Story
🔗 Listen on audio: Apple / Spotify / iHeart
📍 More from us: scfadp.com
📸 Instagram: @SCFADP
#WaltDisneyWorld #DisneyPodcast #TowerOfTerror #HollywoodStudios #CovenAcademy #DisneyPlus #DisneyNews
Transcript:
Chris 0:00
Hello, out there, Disney fam! Welcome to the latest episode of the Super Califragilistic, awesome Disney podcast. My name is Chris,
Kelli 0:14
and I’m Kelli.
Chris 0:16
Classic. I mean, it’s a little bit. Your ears are a little bit of those things I hate.
Kelli 0:22
Candy corn. Candy corn
Chris 0:23
coated. There.
Kelli 0:24
They’re very. They’re all. They’re candy. It’s candy corn witch hat.
Chris 0:28
Well, so I don’t know. I like it, and I feel like I shouldn’t. Yeah.
Kelli 0:31
No, but I’m gonna say it’s on topic because it’s a witch hat.
Chris 0:36
Yeah. Oh, I’m doing spooky season two.
Kelli 0:38
I mean, yeah. I’m gonna go with my ears are on topic, but yes, this is a candy corn witch hat, which I do enjoy. But it is covered in sequins, which, as I have mentioned, not a huge fan of that because it itches. It rubs against the back of your ears and it itches. So not a huge fan, but I’m fine wearing them for the pod.
Chris 0:57
Thanks. You sacrifice. You give, give, give. Never take.
Kelli 1:00
I give, give, give. That’s what I do.
Chris 1:04
Yeah. So we had downloads again. Union City, New Jersey.
Kelli 1:10
Union City, New Jersey. Nicknamed
Chris 1:12
Havana on the Hudson.
Kelli 1:15
Ooh. Due
Chris 1:15
to its almost 80% Hispanic population.
Kelli 1:19
Now, how much fun is that? That’s
Chris 1:21
nice.
Kelli 1:22
Havana Una,
Chris 1:24
once known as the embroidery capital of the United States,
Kelli 1:29
embroidery capital of the United States. Yes. Well, now that’s something to be known for. It
Chris 1:35
is. It
Kelli 1:36
is. I tried embroidery this summer. It didn’t. It did not go well. I don’t. It turns out I don’t have the patience to stab something 1000 times. Lucky you.
Chris 1:50
Not even a piece of cloth. Not even a
Kelli 1:52
piece of cloth.
Chris 1:53
Mason, Ohio saw some downloads, known as Ohio’s largest playground.
Kelli 2:00
Okay, it’s the
Chris 2:01
home of Kings Island amusement park, which is a big deal. Okay, there we go.
Kelli 2:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they also have
Chris 2:06
they also host the Cincinnati Open each year. Okay, in Mason, Ohio. That’s fine. That’s a that’s a big prestigious pro tennis tournament.
Kelli 2:13
Okay, great.
Chris 2:14
So investor. Bern, Switzerland, the capital of Switzerland.
Kelli 2:18
Bern. How do you spell that? B
Chris 2:19
E R N
Kelli 2:20
E R N B E R N okay
Chris 2:23
yeah it’s known for its well preserved medieval old town relaxed vibe and unique mix of culture and nature Albert Einstein was living here in 1905 when he published his special theory relativity
Kelli 2:36
looka there so that’s the capital Switzerland
Chris 2:40
yeah I would not have known that.
Kelli 2:42
I would not have either. Okay. Welcome to Burn, Switzerland. We’re huge in Switzerland. I love it. I love being huge in Switzerland. All right, you ready
Chris 2:50
for some Main Street? Let’s do it. Let’s have the news. All right. Holiday sleigh rides are available to be booked now in Fort Wilderness, like you can’t ride them now, but you can book them when the holiday season. Now, what does that
Kelli 3:06
look like? A sleigh ride in Fort Wilderness? It looks like a
Chris 3:08
carriage ride with horses, and they
Kelli 3:11
against that.
Chris 3:12
And they, well, you know, Fort Wilderness has got the whole. I think it’s Circle D Ranch where you they they take care of all the horses, and you can ride. I mean, I think Disney probably
Kelli 3:22
does it really well. I
Chris 3:23
feel like they probably do.
Kelli 3:24
Yeah. Okay.
Chris 3:26
Yep. And I just wanted-I asked myself a question: Why am I just now finding out about this?
Kelli 3:31
Yeah.
Chris 3:32
Because that would be fun to do. I think
Kelli 3:33
it would be a lot of fun. Yeah. I don’t. I guess they just take you around Fort Wilderness. I think they do, and you over the river and through. I think it
Chris 3:39
includes like like s’mores and stuff like that at the end. Oh, that’s cute. Okay, maybe even a movie at the end.
Kelli 3:46
Oh no! Wow, that’s fresh. Yeah, I
Chris 3:47
think. Yeah.
Kelli 3:49
Okay, that’s fresh.
Chris 3:50
The Disney Believe, one of the new ships, sets sail on december 18 for its inaugural cruise, december 18, 2027. Sorry. Okay. It’s going to feature an Encanto stage show.
Kelli 4:02
Oh gosh! Now, now knowing
Chris 4:05
how they do with their special effects and all,
Kelli 4:08
I know.
Chris 4:09
I just,
Kelli 4:10
I know you’re not going to be able to handle that one. I think
Chris 4:12
we had to. I think we know what we’re doing in December 18th. Dog, your
Kelli 4:15
passengers on the belief. That’s what I feel like. Yeah, I
Chris 4:19
wouldn’t be able to take it. I mean, I stood by myself in line to get a picture with
Kelli 4:23
with Mirabelle. I know you can’t. You’re just you cannot handle yourself from Mirabelle. She’s
Chris 4:27
she’s precious. Mobile ordering. This is this is a big deal. Mobile. So put your ears on.
Kelli 4:33
Okay. Mobile
Chris 4:34
ordering is coming soon to Nomad Lounge.
Kelli 4:38
Okay.
Chris 4:40
Churros, baby, I’m just saying.
Kelli 4:42
So we can okay. So I just want to make sure. So we can mobile order, say the bread thing,
Chris 4:48
whatever other offering bread may offer. You can, you’ll be able to mobile order. But I mean,
Kelli 4:54
and then pick them up, like right there,
Chris 4:57
wherever they have set up to do mobile order pickups. That’s that’s a good question. I don’t know. All I know is churros.
Kelli 5:03
Okay,
Speaker 2 5:04
that’s all I. Well, in the Tiffins
Kelli 5:05
Bread Service, but I have to say that that little porch they have is really yeah. I mean, I like their I like their food, but I like it better on that porch. Yeah,
Chris 5:14
well, if the porch is not available, we can test out whether or not we still like the food.
Kelli 5:18
Okay, all right.
Chris 5:20
Disney Plus is going to be broadcasting this year’s Super Bowl. I don’t know if we’re required to say big game or whatever, but it was always going to be on ESPN and ABC this year.
Kelli 5:30
Okay,
Chris 5:30
so it makes sense that Disney Plus would also be pitching it.
Kelli 5:34
Okay,
Chris 5:34
bud.
Kelli 5:34
We’ve got a puppy that just died to be part of the pod this week.
Chris 5:37
Joe Rhodey was on a podcast recently and said the Yeti is not going to be fixed.
Kelli 5:44
Okay,
Chris 5:45
it’s going to be fully replaced.
Kelli 5:47
Wow, that’s
Chris 5:48
what he says.
Kelli 5:49
Okay,
Chris 5:50
he would have included that in his new book, which is what he was pimping out whenever he was on this podcast.
Kelli 5:54
Okay,
Chris 5:54
but he only found out after the book went to the editors that that they were actually going to replace the yeti,
Kelli 6:00
the yeti. I mean, they’ve got to like cut the mountain open.
Chris 6:04
I don’t know. I don’t know what they got to do. But he said, he said if they could fix the yeti, they would have fixed the yeti. This will be a full-on replacement.
Kelli 6:13
Wow, I’m here
Chris 6:14
for it.
Kelli 6:14
Okay, all right, upgraded yeti.
Chris 6:17
Gertie, you know Gertie the dinosaur. Yeah, yeah, she’s got a lounge fly.
Kelli 6:21
I saw those, so cute. It’s
Chris 6:24
it’s a little. Oh my gosh, those
Kelli 6:25
are adorable. It’s a Christmas
Chris 6:27
lounge fly. It is
Kelli 6:28
a Gertie shaped lounge fly. So like when you say Gertie’s got a lounge fly, it makes it sound like a backpack with a Gertie. It’s a purse. It’s a purse, and it is a Gertie shaped purse with Christmas. She’s got the hat and the little ornament dropping down. Yeah, it’s. I love
Chris 6:45
it. I’m gonna have to have one.
Kelli 6:46
I mean, I think. I think it is. I think that’s huge. I think that is excellent. People love those kind of deep cuts. Oh
Chris 6:55
yeah,
Kelli 6:55
love it. Strong. Yeah. This is
Chris 6:57
the biggest news of the whole the whole week,
Kelli 7:02
whole week,
Chris 7:03
Cosmic Rewind, Rock and Roller Coaster, and the Alien Swirling Saucers are all getting holiday overlays.
Kelli 7:11
Oh, you sent me that TikTok. Yes, you were very excited about it. So
Chris 7:15
excited about it,
Kelli 7:16
right?
Chris 7:16
And I think we’re going to get to experience them.
Kelli 7:19
Oh, really? I don’t think they
Chris 7:21
end. Yeah, november 25 through january 6.
Speaker 3 7:24
Oh, fun! So we’ll be
Chris 7:26
there. We’ll be able to.
Kelli 7:28
So we get to do those. That’ll be fun. They picked some really good ones. Really good songs.
Chris 7:33
Andy for Cosmic Rewind. Andy Williams, the most wonderful time of the year, classic. Trans Siberian Orchestra doing Sarajevo, so great! It’s so good. Zen
Kelli 7:44
Guardians, yeah. Yeah,
Chris 7:45
it’s in Guardians Cosmic Rewind and the Waitress’s Christmas Wrapping. Yes, which all three, all great, great selections,
Kelli 7:51
fantastic.
Chris 7:52
Rock and roller coaster will all be. It’ll be Holiday Road, the Muppets singing it, the Electric Mayhem.
Kelli 8:00
Yes,
Chris 8:00
with Kermit and Fozzie,
Kelli 8:01
right? Right, Holiday Road, yeah.
Chris 8:03
And then they’ll also have Christmas, baby. Please come home with Jennifer Hudson and the Electric Mayhem.
Kelli 8:09
So I mean, I I have stayed away from riding the rock and roller coaster for years because it hurts my ears.
Chris 8:18
That’s not going to change. But
Kelli 8:19
when you have piercings like up in your cartilage, it slams your head from one to the other. Like you get out and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, my ears hurt. I love the ride. Yeah, but I don’t know. I might ride it for that. I haven’t ridden it the last three times y’all have ridden it. Yeah, because it hurts my ears.
Chris 8:39
Silver bells will also be available: Cyndi Lauper and
Kelli 8:42
the Electric Mayhem. Fantastic! I saw the Miss Biggie video. Yeah, exactly. And then Alien Saucers called her Cindy. I just called her Lopper. Lopper. Come on, Lawper.
Chris 8:51
Alien Swirling Saucers will also get new music: Toyland, Deck the Halls, Swirling Swirling Saucers, and Joy to the Swirl.
Kelli 9:00
Oh, Joy to the Swirl. That’s great. Who sings the ailing swirling saucer song? I don’t
Chris 9:04
know who’s singing those. I don’t know.
Kelli 9:06
Joy to the swirl. Okay. I don’t know
Chris 9:08
who’s singing those. Okay. But I am here for Cosmic Rewind. Okay. And I am here for that rock and roller coaster. I mean, I want to ride it with the electric mayhem anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. I mean, I feel like I probably
Kelli 9:18
should ride it again just because of the Muppets. I should. Yeah. Okay.
Chris 9:22
We got to support the Muppets. Okay. They’re a little marginalized these days.
Kelli 9:25
They are. They are.
Chris 9:26
All right. You ready for Tomorrowland? Tomorrowland. Excited. Let’s hit it.
Kelli 9:30
Ready? So I said my ears are on topic, and they are. I’m talking about Coven Academy. I
Chris 9:38
don’t know what is Coven Academy. I don’t know what Coven Academy
Kelli 9:41
is. I’m talking about Coven Academy on Disney Plus. This is the hottest new thing. It went to number one on Disney Plus the day that it launched, which was October the second. Oh, I did some searching today. Went down a fairly deep dive. It is not based on any series. Okay, it’s not based. Based on books or anything, yes, it’s completely original, written for Disney by the same person who wrote High School Musical. But this isn’t a musical. Like, just to be clear, it’s not a musical. That’s not the idea. But it is like written by that same person, so they’re expecting greatness. I’ve got a dog that is just running all the way through all of my cords right here, and I feel like everything’s about to get ripped off my head. So anyway, so for those of us that are not, you know, hip to the now, right? And obviously, using that saying, it’s clearly not me. Hip to the now. That’s not me. I am definitely. You’re definitely hip to the now. Coven Academy follows a New York teen. Her name is Briar Roberts. She arrives at a mysterious school for magic in New Orleans. Now, this school for magic is like decrepit. Like it looks like a it looks like a haunted mansion, right? If you were going to be a haunted mansion in New Orleans, that’s what it looks like.
Chris 11:06
Poorly funded.
Kelli 11:07
Poorly funded on the outside. On the inside, it’s fantastic. Okay, right. It’s what you would expect. It’s a magic school. Magic school. Okay, but so people
Chris 11:16
just walking in. You
Kelli 11:18
don’t want people walking in, so it’s kind of a rouge, right? And so, so this is New Orleans, and she’s trying to figure out her mother’s death. So her mother recently passed. Her dad sent her down to this school and told her it was a school for wayward teens, and so she shows up like, you know, I’ve been sitting here for a wayward teen, whatever. And so, literally within the first five minutes, she’s calling her dad. She’s like, “Juvie would have been better than this dad, you know. You’ve got no idea, whatever. And of course, that’s when she learns she’s got magical powers. So naturally, she’s also going to learn her mom had magical powers, right? We’re gonna we’re gonna go back through all of this. So that’s the idea. But what’s happening in New Orleans, which is what always happens in New Orleans, is there’s a conflict between witches and vampires. Like New Orleans is just known for vampires. It is
Chris 12:08
just lousy chocolate
Kelli 12:11
full because people get drunk and they’re just wandering down the streets. You know what I mean? Easy pickings. It’s easy pickings for vampires. And so I’m telling you right now, you watch a lot of vampire movies, whatever they always end up in New Orleans at some point. Some point, my favorite series, the All Souls trilogy, they end up in New Orleans at some point. I believe Interview with a vampire, New Orleans, right? New Orleans is just really known for that’s where vampires are, right? So in any case, there is a situation right now between witches and vampires, as they’re always, and so this school is being called to kind of solve
Chris 12:45
it. Oh, right.
Kelli 12:45
Okay. And so there are witches and warlocks in the schools. Okay, and within that, they form like they can form like smaller covens, and so the the person in charge, the headmistress, is asking her to form a coven with these other two young girls. So she’s saying, “Form a coven, and here’s what y’all are gonna do. So, along with her coven of teenage witches in training, she must find a way to combat a darker looming threat while navigating the perils of their supernatural high school. As the dangers unfold, so does forbidden first love.
Chris 13:23
Oh no, got love interesting. I know it’s teenagers, right? I mean, the hormones are
Kelli 13:29
raging. Okay,
Chris 13:30
imagine which hormones, right?
Kelli 13:31
Okay, so the cast here’s where it gets good. The cast Briar is played by Melina Weissman, and I’m going to tell you, like when you first see it, you don’t get this, but her vibe is giving young Shannon Doherty. Oh, okay. Her vibe’s giving young Shannon Doherty, and then when you see some of the promo pictures, I think she absolutely looks like young Shannon Doherty. Interesting. Okay, but what they’re saying is sharp and she’s sarcastic and she’s a New Yorker, right? So she arrives with nothing but questions. She doesn’t believe in witches. She doesn’t believe in vampires. She doesn’t believe this school is a real thing. Like she is just
Chris 14:14
pragmatic New Yorker. Yes,
Kelli 14:15
right. The the headmistress, Miss Graves, Tiffany Amber Theisen.
Chris 14:22
Oh come on!
Kelli 14:24
Now she’s dropped the Amber. She’s not just Tiffany Theason. Yeah, just Tiffany Theisen. I follow her now. Okay, so Tiffany Andrew Theason, man, right out of 900 210, Valerie nothing but trouble. Valerie at 900 210. Right, she came down with trouble.
Chris 14:40
I’ll be honest. Always the trouble. 90210 was not what crossed my mind. Saved by the Bell did though.
Kelli 14:45
Saved by the Bell. Okay, whatever. Tiffany Amber Thiesen was on 90210. She was Valerie. She was the Walsh’s friend. She came down. She lived with them. She was a trouble team. Her dad had committed suicide. She the very first episode, she’s smoking a joint.
Chris 14:58
Oh
Kelli 14:59
my! I know. I know, right? You just cannot, kids. Anyway, so she is now Miss Grave. She’s the head of the school who promises to answer Briar’s questions about her mom. She’s like, I know, and I won’t answer the questions about your mom in time. First, you need to learn how to control your magic, so you better jump in here and start doing some training. Okay, so she tasked Briar with forming a coven with her new classmates Sasha and Teagan, right? And they’re cute. It’s a lovely multi-diverse task. There is a teacher, mr. Cole, described as an effortlessly cool warlock teacher. This is Devan Sawa. I’m gonna come back to him. Okay, so I’ve got here the top 10 things you need to know about Coven Academy going into it. Okay, number one, it became number one on Disney in one day. It debuted on October the second. Immediately became number one show on Disney Plus. Most watched chart after just one day. It has also got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Chris 16:00
Wow.
Kelli 16:01
Yeah, the episodes are really short. Each episode is like 13 to 19 minutes. I watch so there’s 21. They dropped them all at once. Very bingeable. I watched the first episode today. It’s 18 minutes long, and I learned what I need to know out of that first episode. Did it blow me away? Meh. But I can see why people are drawn into the show and are watching it.
Chris 16:24
Okay,
Kelli 16:24
okay, they are calling them 21 chapters and saying that they are bite-sized. So the whole season is very, very bingeable. The creator himself describes this as a tribute to Charmed, Dawson’s Creek and the Vampire Diaries, so that gives you a great feel for the vibe. Yeah. Okay, a great feel for the vibe.
Chris 16:50
Like this show.
Kelli 16:50
Yeah, Tiffany Amber Theson. I have to keep calling her Tiffany Amber Thiesen, even though everything on my notes says Tiffany Theisen. It doesn’t even have Amber on my notes. It just says Tiffany Thesa, and I’m going to call her Tiffany Amber Thiessen. She has secrets about the school, so she’s not just hiding secrets about Briar’s mom. She’s got secrets about the school. She attended Coven Caveney herself and had her own coven there, so she carries a lot of stories. So she’s the head of the school, not just the authority figure, and she’s hiding something. Very Wednesday vibe, right? The head of the school is hiding something. Oh yeah, the
Chris 17:29
show Wednesday. You
Kelli 17:30
know, yeah. Okay. There is a whole supernatural universe that is hinted to beyond the show. So basically, what Disney’s doing here is opening themselves up to potentially a whole supernatural side of things. Okay, the show hints at werewolves, sea creatures, and either another Coven Academy in Florence, like Italy, for supreme witches. So if this gets picked up for another season, there’s a bigger world being built here. Okay, cool. Okay, the H the AHS coven comparisons are intentional. This is American Horror Story.
Chris 18:11
Oh yes. So
Kelli 18:12
things are being compared to that. It goes way beyond just witches in New Orleans, and it is worth acknowledging on here, like beginning with the beginning season, that you will immediately see the correlation between American Horror Story. Now, I haven’t watched any of American Horror Story, but American Horror Story Coven is the one supposedly that it’s attached to. I’m against Ryan Murphy, so I’ve got some issues there with Ryan Murphy for a lot of reasons. But that’s why I haven’t watched American Horror Story. But now it kind of makes me want to watch American Horror Story Coven just to get a better idea there. Okay, Devin Sawa, back to Devin. He’s the number seven thing you need to know about major nostalgia casting. There, Devon is from Casper, Wild America, and now and then. Okay, he was everywhere in the mid ’90s Disney family film situation. Specifically joined him. They specifically cast him because of the nostalgia, and I’m going to say that’s why Tiffany Amber Thiessen’s here too.
Chris 19:22
Okay,
Kelli 19:22
right, very no doubt. That’s going to draw us in. My generation is going to watch Tiffany Amber Thiesen. I don’t remember Devin. I think I was a little bit. I wasn’t a kid in
Speaker 4 19:32
the ’90s,
Kelli 19:33
so I don’t. He wasn’t like my crush. I was more of a Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Fred Savage crush. You know. Anyway, supposedly there are two really hot guys on the set. There’s a love triangle, and on the set, Devon has been giving advice to them on how to be a Disney like heartthrob. What it’s going to be like as what your life is going to be like as a Disney heartthrob. Even though Devon heads up, we didn’t. Have the internet in the 90s, and there was no influencer social media and stuff. So I think theirs is going to be like whatever he experienced on steroids,
Chris 20:08
most likely.
Kelli 20:09
This was filmed in Vancouver, not in New Orleans. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So
Chris 20:16
film though.
Kelli 20:16
Yeah. So a lot of the photography and videography began on december 5, 2025, in Vancouver, but the whole show is deeply New Orleans, and it was recreated on a set.
Chris 20:28
Okay,
Kelli 20:28
so that’s cool. The creator pitched this originally as Wednesday with Witches. Now, you know that’s verbatim. That’s a quote from the creator. He said, “I pitched it as Wednesday with witches, which is an interesting framing that ties it into sort of that Netflix series. I will say, after watching one episode, I can see the idea. I think it’s very different than that.
Chris 21:00
Okay,
Kelli 21:01
Brian. comes in very skeptical, like Wednesday, but she’s not really a Wednesday personality.
Chris 21:11
Interesting, right? Yeah,
Kelli 21:13
she comes across as that, but there are times, even in the first, you know, episode where you can see who she really is, and so it’s not quite as Wednesday as Wednesday is.
Chris 21:26
Would be you wouldn’t want to do a carbon copy of well,
Kelli 21:30
Wednesday is more like doom and gloom death,
Chris 21:32
right?
Kelli 21:32
Right. Whereas let’s try to kill people all the time. Whereas this is witches, so that’s sort of it’s a different vibe going in. But in any case, I get why he said that. Okay, and the final thing, the dark magic in the show is intentionally coded as an addiction metaphor.
Chris 21:50
Oh, interesting.
Kelli 21:52
And so the the producer said in a Variety interview that it is written intentionally as an addiction metaphor to make it have a more meaningfully serious undertone than your typical Disney supernatural show, which is why it was moved from Disney Channel to Freeform. So it was originally supposed to launch on Disney Channel. They moved it to Freeform.
Chris 22:16
Interesting,
Kelli 22:17
because it’s not it’s not quite as family friendly as a Disney Channel type show.
Chris 22:22
We’re not talking about Sophia the First here,
Kelli 22:24
right? No, it’s not quite that. Is
Chris 22:26
that still a thing? I don’t know. I
Kelli 22:27
don’t know, but I think that’s Disney Junior.
Chris 22:30
Oh, okay, yeah. Excuse me. Right.
Kelli 22:32
Saved by the Bell would be a good example of a Disney show. I think this is a little bit darker than that, is what they’re saying. But in any case, that’s the top 10 things you need to know. I’m gonna watch it. I’m gonna binge it. It says you can binge the whole thing in like four to five hours. Yeah,
Chris 22:44
seems like
Kelli 22:45
it. So I’ll watch it. I’ll binge it. Haven’t yet, which is how it made the Tomorrowland. Look at me following the rules. I’m killing it this week by rule following. But there you go, Coven Academy, hottest new thing on Disney Plus. Very spooky if you’re into that thing this this time of the year, and also you know, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. So I
Chris 23:11
mean, that’s that means people are big
Kelli 23:13
fans. People are big fans.
Chris 23:15
I thought about doing for World Showcase what they do in the shadows because that’s now on Disney Plus. Because they bought FX.
Speaker 5 23:23
Oh, love! Right? They bought Fox, so now
Chris 23:26
they have that show. So I thought that’d be great.
Kelli 23:28
I might do it next week or next time. We’re still in. Should still be in. Yes, we are 26. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That might be a good one. Okay.
Chris 23:35
Yep. Okay. Awesome. That was great. I can’t wait to watch it. All right. During the 1930s, the Hollywood Tower Hotel was the premier destination for Hollywood’s elite, featuring high-end amenities and fine dining in the Sunset Room. On October 31st, Halloween night, 1939, during a severe storm, lightning struck the upper floors of the building. An elevator carrying a celebrity couple, a child with her Mickey Mouse doll, her nanny, and a bellhop plunged into the fifth dimension, abandoning the rest of the hotel instantly.
Kelli 24:20
Wow. Okay. So
Chris 24:22
we’re talking about the Tower of Terror. Yeah. We are specifically the one at Hollywood Studios.
Kelli 24:28
Love.
Chris 24:29
Okay. Love
Kelli 24:30
it so much.
Chris 24:31
Right off the top, thanks to Jonathan Brandau. I’m sorry if I mispronounced your name. His YouTube show, Brandau Collection, Pop Culture and Theme Park history is where I got a lot of this information. So go check out his his channel. It looks really really cool. Okay, so let’s talk about how this thing came to be because we love love love.
Kelli 24:53
Yes, huge fan Hollywood Tower. So for those
Chris 24:56
who don’t know, Tower of Terror is a dark ride drop tower. Based in the world of the Twilight Zone. Hopefully, you know about the Twilight Zone, but if not, there are channels I think maybe like Prime or one of those where you can go watch all the old episodes, and they are do they hold up? They’re still great. One of the first, if not the first, drop tower attraction in the world was built at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and it became an absolute hit right from the start. It was kind of like a roller coaster, but also a drop tower. Disney at the time, late in the mid ’80s, they were building Euro Disney, which would eventually become Disneyland Paris. They sort of were like, “Ooh, that’s a bigger, that’s a that’s a fun ride. Let’s do something like that here. And they had envisioned sort of a Jules Verne type attraction that maybe dropped people into a volcano or something along those lines, right? Budget overruns, as seem to be the case all the time over there.
Kelli 25:59
Yeah,
Chris 25:59
scrapped the idea. However, Hollywood Studios, which at the time was called Disney MGM Studios, was looking for another e-ticket attraction beyond the Great Movie Ride or the Bat Lot tour, where they had Catastrophe Canyon and all that, and they were going to be expanding into what’s now known as Sunset Boulevard area of of the park. We need something. We need a weenie in this part of the park, right? We need something that’s big and pulls people over here, right? And so, but everything’s a story, right? So where are we going to get our stories from? Early ideas were to base something on the stories of Stephen King, not necessarily a drop tower, right? Just something based on the stories of Stephen King. Then they thought maybe a Vincent Price ghost tour. Okay,
Kelli 26:48
so they wanted spook.
Chris 26:49
They were definitely going for spooky. They even thought about doing a kind of like an award show. This sentence is bonkers. They were thinking about doing some sort of an award show type thing that starred Godzilla, but was hosted by Eddie Murphy and Alvira, Mistress of the Night.
Kelli 27:09
Dear God! Oh my goodness! I mean, that was
Chris 27:14
all over the place. the The one that really came closest to fruition that never actually happened was they considered building the castle Young Frankenstein based on Mel Brooks’s movie Young Frankenstein.
Kelli 27:31
Okay,
Chris 27:32
right, and he would narrate the attraction. Mel Brooks would.
Kelli 27:37
Yeah.
Chris 27:38
Mel Brooks eventually had to drop out of the project to go direct a movie, but the idea of a hotel stuck.
Kelli 27:45
Okay, all
Chris 27:46
right. So okay, we’re going to do something around a hotel. What are we going to do? Imagineers search long and hard for a property that they could attach to this hotel idea. That’s where they they settled on the Twilight Zone. They broke ground on Tower of Terror in 1992, and like I said, it would serve as the primary attraction for Sunset Boulevard area. It cost 140 million dollars to build, and honestly, that seems like small potatoes these days. And officially opened on july 22, 1994, it took him two years.
Kelli 28:24
All right,
Chris 28:25
right. Chateau Marmont and the Mission Inn in Hollywood serve as inspiration for the 1930 s design of the hotel. Okay. The design was also chosen, and this is a fun fact: the coloring of the Tower of Terror and the way it it’s designed specifically from the backside is designed specifically to blend in with the Moroccan Pavilion at Epcot because it’s visible
Kelli 28:51
from there, right? So if you’re looking
Chris 28:54
at the Moroccan Pavilion from across the water, you’ll see the Tower of Terror, but it it sort of blends in. So the way they built it, the coloring, everything. Of course,
Kelli 29:03
you can.
Chris 29:03
The things they think about that I love. So as often as the case with Imagineers, they developed an entirely new ride system for the Tower of Terror, and for the drop sequence specifically, they literally leaned on Otis elevators to help them help them create what that became.
Kelli 29:20
Oh wow! Yeah, there are
Chris 29:21
two huge motors at the top that were built probably by Otis or whoever Otis uses that that control this thing.
Kelli 29:28
Wow!
Chris 29:29
It featured a sudden single drop from 1994 to May of 1996. Then a second drop was added. Then in 1999, a third drop was added, and then in January 22,003, the drop sequence was replaced completely with a random drop selected by a computer ride. So great! That’s what
Kelli 29:55
makes it so good. It is because every ride is different. Yes, every
Chris 29:58
time you ride, it is different. Rod Serling, the Twilight Zone host and narrator, famous for that, needed to be a major part of the attraction. By the way, the guy that the guy that directed the show portion of this ride directed the Gremlins movies.
Kelli 30:15
Oh my gosh! But so this wasn’t an actual Twilight Zone show. Like they developed this for Disney. They developed this for Disney. Okay. However, I didn’t realize that. I thought it was one of their shows.
Chris 30:27
No, no, it wasn’t. This is an original story, but they definitely wanted Rod Serling involved. Yeah, like his his image. So they pulled footage from the Twilight Zone episode called “It’s a Good Life, and so what we see of him there in the ride is from that things
Kelli 30:45
he said in that episode, or
Chris 30:46
or or his at least his visage, like his movements and everything. They did need a voice actor though to narrate to be Rod Serling’s voice, and they actually it ended up going to a guy named Mark Silverman, who I don’t really know that well, but I saw a clip of him doing Rod Serling’s voice.
Kelli 31:03
Name sounds so it does sound very
Chris 31:04
familiar. I’m probably knowing from something, but they actually brought Rod Serling’s widow in to help call the auditions. So she actually got to help pick the person that did the voice. That’s got to be weird. I know that’s got to be really weird. That’s got to be
Kelli 31:20
so weird.
Chris 31:22
When it opened, it was an instant hit. Became world famous. In fact, like they’ve made a lot of Disney movies based on the ride attractions. Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansions had a couple different ones. This was the first one to inspire an Actual movie,
Kelli 31:41
ah.
Chris 31:42
So in 1997, October 26, 1997, ABC aired Disney’s Tower of Terror movie, and it starred Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst.
Kelli 31:52
I’ve never seen that. I
Chris 31:53
haven’t either. I mean, it was made for TV. It was like for the wonderful world of Disney.
Kelli 31:57
Yeah, but still, I’ve never seen it. Never
Chris 31:59
seen it. So as as if you’ve written it, you know guests queue through the overgrown gardens and the dilapidated lobby until they’re ushered into a library where power goes out. Rod Serling, except for one TV, and
Kelli 32:12
then we we’re
Chris 32:12
about to enter the Twilight Zone. may 5, 2005, 2000 may 5, 2004, a duplicate tower terror was opened in California Adventure Park, in hopes of bolstering their sagging attendance at that park. On january 3, 2017, 13 years later, the version of that ride closed, and just a few months later, Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout opened, which
Kelli 32:37
is a fun one.
Chris 32:38
It’s great. It’s great. It’s fantastic. It’s a different vibe, but it’s it’s great. It’s not so much on the scary side. Right, Disneyland Paris got their own version of the tower december 22, 2007 at Disney Animation Studios. Now listen, that one’s creepy. Like we did. It’s because it just had the little girl. Ah, right. Remember the little girl.
Speaker 6 33:02
Yes.
Chris 33:03
For some reason, a singular little girl is so much creepier than five people. Remember
Kelli 33:09
that. Yeah.
Chris 33:10
So creep tassel. Otherwise, it’s very similar. Right. But she was creepy.
Kelli 33:15
Yeah. I remember that. Uh huh. Yeah. But you had clearly tried to block it, and I don’t know. I clearly tried to block it. Yeah,
Chris 33:21
Tokyo Disney Sea got their own version in 2006, and it follows a completely different storyline. Twilight Zone’s not involved in it at all. It follows the the Hotel High Tower and a mystical idol on New Year’s Eve of 1899,
Kelli 33:35
Okay,
Chris 33:36
so it’s got its own thing. So yeah, that’s the Tower of Terror and how it came to be at Hollywood Studios, and I mean,
Kelli 33:47
I really thought that it was already an existing thing. I didn’t realize they had made that straight. It’s a totally original
Chris 33:53
story.
Kelli 33:53
I didn’t realize that. Yeah, that’s awesome. So I love that. It’s
Chris 33:57
fun. It’s just the best ride. I mean, just pure classic, and I wish I could just cover my walls with pictures of people that have that we’ve gotten. Like the oh, it’s great kids or my my brother. Oh my gosh, my brother. Nobody hates that ride like my brother does. My mid 40s year old brother.
Kelli 34:17
Yeah, so I love it. That’s great. Tower
Chris 34:20
Terror. It’s a classic. It’s good for spooky season, and it’s one of our favorite rides. Well
Kelli 34:24
done, honey. I love it. All right, love that so much.
Chris 34:27
That’s the show, folks. We hope you enjoyed it. We love doing it, and if you love it as much as we do, or if you only love it a little bit, go out wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five star rating. And if it allows you to leave a review, do that because that’s going to drive people to the show.
Kelli 34:44
Absolutely, and if you’re looking for more things Disney, visit scfadp.com. That’s S for super, C for Cali, F for fragilistic, A for awesome, D for Disney, P for podcast. So
Chris 34:54
good at that. Go out there and get your merch, your booty you merch, and all the other Halloween merch.
Kelli 34:59
Absolutely. And
Chris 35:00
keep an eye out for new merch that might pop up during the holidays.
Kelli 35:03
Yeah, and you’re keeping things rocking out there on the socials.
Chris 35:06
We’re out there on the socials. We’ve got the YouTube videos that are out there every time. That’ll be up as of Monday morning. So go out there and check us out. And with that, we will see you real soon. Oh, we can’t take that.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
