Since it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything about the Tower of Terror project, let me review. Disney found great success with the original Tower of Terror ride at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park at Walt Disney World in Florida. Developing the concept and engineering for such a ride is very costly and time consuming, so when they find one that works well and is popular, they will repeat the ride at other parks. A Tower of Terror attraction was subsequently built at Disney parks in Paris, California, and Japan.
The original theme was based on the old TV series “The Twilight Zone”. But they wanted a different theme for the ride in Tokyo. They came up with an original story line about a wealthy hotel magnet at the turn of the century (1900) who had a habit of touring the world and collecting rare and ancient artifacts. Harrison Hightower was his name. One day he came back with a voodoo type image from Africa that had a curse on it. When he got into the elevator in his grand New York hotel, the enchanted voodoo god zapped him and the elevator fell to the basement. Hightower was never seen or heard from again.
So when it came to explaining this back-story, they wanted to fill the lobby of the hotel, which is actually the queueing area for the ride, with murals that depicted the exploits of Harrison Hightower and his personal assistant and valet, Smelding. I was commissioned to paint these murals (11) that would tell this story. They showed Hightower in various parts of the world. I painted them with oil paints on panels that were one third the size they would appear at the attraction. These murals were reproduced, enlarged and installed on location in the lobby area of the hotel.
The murals were different sizes and appear above doorways throughout the lobby. The Egypt mural was one of the widest pieces.
This is a snap shot of how it looks on location.
Hightower and Smelding are floating away in the early morning with various artifacts tied to their hot air balloon.
Abu Simbel is actually many miles away from the great pyramids. We’ll call this artistic license.
Next, I’ll show some of the preliminary work that goes into this kind of work.
Thanks,
Come back soon.