In a previous post, I talked about my first suspension, mentioning the chamber trip I almost didn't go on. Well, I did go on it. It was a trip to Disneyland and it was a choral festival (in which we got first place.) We were over in California Adventures, and we had something like 2 hours before the ceremony, and we decided to go on the Tower of Terror because I'd never been on it before.
We decided to get a fast past and wait in line as well, so we could go on it and then go on it again (because it sounded like fun?) We waited in line, went through the elevator, watched the little video, everything in between. I was really nervous because free falls really freak me out. We got strapped in or whatever and the ride started.
If you've never been on the Tower of Terror...I don't even know. It drops you a good 3 or 4 times. You rise to the top, watch a video again about how they plummeted through the elevator or whatnot, and then the "elevator" you're in falls. It drops you, brings you back up, drops you, brings you back up, takes your picture, drops you, brings you back up, and drops you again.
Well.
On the last drop, on our final free fall...the power in the park went out. The whole entire park shut down while we were in mid free fall. The emergency brakes had to kick in and we were left stranded on the seventh floor. The lights came on and we thought it was over. We thought it was really exciting, but...we were still stuck on the floor.
Then a voice comes on, saying, "Attention ladies and gentlemen. We are experiencing some technical difficulties."
So we were stuck. If you have been on the Tower of Terror, I'll let you know that when the lights are on in the shaft...YOU CAN SEE ALL THE WAY DOWN! So our little elevator was shaking and the lights were flickering. The voice told us they could see and hear everything we were doing, so I asked, "Are we going to be okay?"
They chose to ignore that question.
An hour. An hour we were stuck on the stupid Tower of Terror. There was no service for our cell phones, and they locked us in our seatbelts so we couldn't even climb out if we had to. While the shaft was shaking, we could have easily fallen and plummeted to our miserable deaths.
It was probably the most traumatizing event of my life. Well, one of them anyway. It was our friend's birthday, and we chose to sing her the "Deathday" song, going:
Oh happy birthday
Oh happy birthday
Grief and mis'ry fill the air
People dying everywhere
Happy birthday
Oh, happy birthday
It got us a few laughs, but it was all nervous laughter. Everything that happened on that was nervous laughter. Me, being the awesome idiot that I am, chose not to shut up. I decided to crack jokes to make light of the situation, while my palms were sweaty and I thought I was going to crap my pants.
Once they had FINALLY figured out how to manually override everything, they slowly brought us down and back to where the line had started. The place was completely empty, which is much scarier than when it's packed full, because it's already creepy enough as it is. We had to take the emergency exit stairs and climb back all the way down. It wasn't fun.
For the record, I have been on the Tower of Terror a few times since then. I saved the fast pass we were going to use but never did. Every other Tower of Terror experience I've had was good, but man was the first one memorable.
There's a shirt that has a picture of the tower on it, saying "I Survived." I should buy it.
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