Tower of Terror - How does it work?

[viking86]

I love that picture, it clearly explains a lot of how the ride works, which is not so obvious when you're on it. Great post!!

[coasternate]

What is Tower of Terror's "good tower" or "bad tower" or whatever you call it? I have heard a few references to a tower that stands out.

[Canobie Coaster]

What is Tower of Terror's "good tower" or "bad tower" or whatever you call it? I have heard a few references to a tower that stands out.

 

The good tower is the Walt Disney World one with the 4th dimension where the elevator leaves the shaft like a dark ride and also has a randomized drop sequence. The other versions (bad tower) just have the drop sequence in the shaft, but like I said earlier, they still kick the butt of any other drop tower.

[Rotura Violenta]

In regards to the ride not having a true free fall, how would people who've been on the ride describe the airtime? Would it be similar to what you feel on the S&S turbo drops?

 

I've only ridden the CA one, but no, it doesn't feel like a regular drop tower and certainly isn't free-falling or being pulled faster than gravitational pull. You come out of your seat on it, but I doubt you'd even need the seatbelt to be honest whereas on a regular drop you wouldn't stand a chance. A quick bit of googling suggests that the speed of the drop on TOT is about 40mph, Supreme Scream (a fairly slow drop ride) is 50mph, whereas the Intamin towers (like Lex Luthor) are 85mph.

[Dom497]

^Speed doesn't matter. The acceleration is faster than other drop towers. I've ridden the one at Disney World and I don't find it hard to believe that without the seat belt, you would easily go airborne to the point that you wouldn't land in your seat.

[SFMMGeek27]

In regards to the ride not having a true free fall, how would people who've been on the ride describe the airtime? Would it be similar to what you feel on the S&S turbo drops?

 

I've only ridden the CA one, but no, it doesn't feel like a regular drop tower and certainly isn't free-falling or being pulled faster than gravitational pull. You come out of your seat on it, but I doubt you'd even need the seatbelt to be honest whereas on a regular drop you wouldn't stand a chance. A quick bit of googling suggests that the speed of the drop on TOT is about 40mph, Supreme Scream (a fairly slow drop ride) is 50mph, whereas the Intamin towers (like Lex Luthor) are 85mph.

 

Yeah, Supreme Scream and Lex Luthor's top speeds are built up over a long time. What is important is that the acceleration of the drop tower is greater than the acceleration due to gravity (9.8ish m/s^2). It could be going 1,000 mph but if it took 100 seconds to do that then it is just falling with Gravity.

[rcdude]

I've only ridden the CA one, but no, it doesn't feel like a regular drop tower and certainly isn't free-falling or being pulled faster than gravitational pull. You come out of your seat on it, but I doubt you'd even need the seatbelt to be honest whereas on a regular drop you wouldn't stand a chance.

 

I saw a video once of someone on Tower of Terror (I think the Florida version) riding without a seatbelt, and when the ride dropped they flew up and nearly hit the ceiling. The ride definitely accelerates downward at or greater than the acceleration of gravity. I've only been on the California one, and while the dropping sensation is not as good as the Intamin drop towers I think Tower of Terror has more airtime (including one long moment of sustained airtime). It's very different from other drop rides.

 

The drawing a couple pages back is great, as I've always wondered how different Florida's Tower really was from California's. It seems that the main differences are the 5th dimension sequence and having randomized drops, which certainly makes the ride a bit better. One of these days I'll get to Florida and finally experience "Good Tower."

[gerstlaueringvar]

I've only been on the CA one, it feels more like when S&S tower launches the car downwards. Slight ejector airtime that is not as intense as S&S towers but very fun.

 

Is Intamin involved in this project? I saw a picture of a cancelled ToT plan that is even more complicated than the Orlando one, does it work similar to the Orlando one? Are Tokyo and Paris' ToT like the CA one or Orlando one?

[Rotura Violenta]

That's interesting about the different accelerations. I've never really noticed any kind of acceleration on Supreme Scream or Lex Luther before, but it makes sense. If the platform that the cars sit on is on a taught cable system pulling up and down, you'd think whatever spinning mechanism ToT uses to roll the cable would need to accelerate as well. I guess, I'm mainly just going on what it feels like to me—which is very tame, but definitely a seat lifter.

 

What's most interesting to me though is that I find drop towers like SS and ToT to be super tame, but the old Intamin freefall at Magic Mountain was gnarly. Also, I just rode a carnie-style drop tower a couple of days ago (at Scandia) at it felt far more intense than SS or even LL. I wonder if acceleration is playing a role there as well?