They’re Closing Tower of Terror.
Dylan texted me early one Saturday morning. It said: “I have just found out the worst news ever.”
Luckily, I didn’t see the text right away, or I might have gone into cardiac arrest.
Dylan thundered upstairs shortly thereafter to find me.
“Did you see my text?” he said.
“No, I didn’t see your text,” I said. It was only 8:00 in the morning.
“I’ve just heard some really bad news,” Dylan said. “I mean, it really is almost the worst news ever.”
I was certain someone had died. Someone I really loved, like a family member.
But I would have heard about that. So maybe it was someone I really loved … but didn’t know, like Rod Stewart.
“Oh no,” I moaned. “What is it?”
“They’re closing Tower of Terror,” Dylan said.
My stomach suddenly felt like there was a bowling ball inside. Denial kicked in: “No they’re not,” I sputtered. “They can’t be!”
“They are,” Dylan repeated.
“When?” I squeaked, realizing that there was little chance we’d get to Disney World again before the family’s all-time favorite ride disappeared forever.
“Like January,” he said.
“Oh no,” I moaned. “No, no, no…”
Tower of Terror is an awesome ride. It’s incredibly scary – so much so that we had to ride it without Shane during our first trip to Disney World – but it is also incredibly fun. It’s like a wild frogger ride, where whole families plummet randomly in an insane elevator. Best of all, the ride changes every time for an added thrill.
It’s the kind of ride our family can ride over and over and over and over … and, on our few trips to Disney World, that’s exactly what we’ve done. We have ridden Tower of Terror for more than an hour – just that one ride – and never tired of it.
We’ve done this several times with great success and happiness. All four of us love it. We own t-shirts so that we can broadcast our love of this ride all year long. And we still believe we haven’t ridden it nearly enough.
So the news that our favorite ride was closing came as a very despairing shock.
I told Shane, our family’s amusement park and rides expert, that Dylan said Tower of Terror was closing.
His eyes widened and his voice got very quiet. “Is it true?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to look it up.”
I looked it up on the internet. The Tower of Terror ride is closing.
But not really.
Not our Tower of Terror.
Upon closer inspection, the Tower of Terror ride that is closing is not in Disney World, where we’ve vacationed so happily.
The Tower of Terror ride that is closing is in Disneyland. It is located in the California park, where we’ve never been.
We all nearly cried with happiness.
Whew, I sighed. The perfection of my little world hasn’t crumbled after all.