DirtyGlassEye
The curse is real!
"I obtained this idol at great expense and risk to my life. Yes sir, the local tribesmen weren't happy to part with it."
"Mr. Hightower, are you aware of the rumors that the idol may be cursed?"
"Ha! A cursed idol? Ridiculous."
Or so it seemed.
I love this Tower of Terror, I love it's originality and practicality, and it's story. For a tower that prides itself for being a scary drop tower without the Twilight Zone theme, it's ironic that the story for this one fits The Twilight Zone standard better than the other ones across the world. An eccentric traveler who steals and derelicts to no end until a vengeful African idol begins tormenting his soul for eternity is an interesting story about greed that I could definitely see Rod Serling writing. He may be remorseful now of his actions, but Shiriki Utundu will never let him go, and he knows it.
This shot is the whole reason I lugged my camera bag around this park all day. In case you don't remember my story from "Erupting Every Hour", I spent almost 5 hours of the day waiting in a line for Journey To The Center Of The Earth to open after maitenance issues, so by the time they finally let people in, I was panicking. The sun was fully down by now, and time was running thin, I had nighttime shoots to get to. I resorted to sprinting around the park to get to all my spots in time.
But like I said, this one was the priority shot, I wanted Shiriki's lightning in the window at night. The fireworks from the nighttime spectacular were going off as I ran to American Waterfront. A consequence immediately presented itself. It only shows up for half a second in the penthouse window, and while I could watch the shafts below for the elevators (it's a scripted sequence, lightning goes to the shaft, makes the elevator rumble before falling, another cool design choice). So I was forced to take a quick shutter shot, adjust my F-stop and ISO accordingly. This brought up all kinds of issues in editing, for a start, grain in a still unvaried sky. I didn't have my 200mm on me tonight so the tower itself wasn't as tall as I wanted. After scaling it up, no matter how much I tried to sharpen the edges and raise the clarity, the tower looked too soft, the reason likely being it needed more pixels then the original shots allowed.
Even with a regular wide angle I had to back up against the streetcar poles towards the central lagoon to get all this in frame. Somehow I have a feeling this is going to get more attention then I want it to cause that's how it normally works on this site. The ones I feel I could've done more to but didn't know how typically get more attention then the ones I'm proud of.
A personal hell could bring even the most deranged of personalities back, so personally I would give Hightower a 2nd chance despite how easy it is to hate the guy on this ride. Shiriki is a well written antagonist when you look further into the story and is one of the creepiest designs I've ever seen Disney do. I love that they didn't shy away from the live action or the more mature tone of this Tower Of Terror, while the one in Florida will always be the best of the 4, this is a VERY close second.
I hate Disney
The curse is real!
"I obtained this idol at great expense and risk to my life. Yes sir, the local tribesmen weren't happy to part with it."
"Mr. Hightower, are you aware of the rumors that the idol may be cursed?"
"Ha! A cursed idol? Ridiculous."
Or so it seemed.
I love this Tower of Terror, I love it's originality and practicality, and it's story. For a tower that prides itself for being a scary drop tower without the Twilight Zone theme, it's ironic that the story for this one fits The Twilight Zone standard better than the other ones across the world. An eccentric traveler who steals and derelicts to no end until a vengeful African idol begins tormenting his soul for eternity is an interesting story about greed that I could definitely see Rod Serling writing. He may be remorseful now of his actions, but Shiriki Utundu will never let him go, and he knows it.
This shot is the whole reason I lugged my camera bag around this park all day. In case you don't remember my story from "Erupting Every Hour", I spent almost 5 hours of the day waiting in a line for Journey To The Center Of The Earth to open after maitenance issues, so by the time they finally let people in, I was panicking. The sun was fully down by now, and time was running thin, I had nighttime shoots to get to. I resorted to sprinting around the park to get to all my spots in time.
But like I said, this one was the priority shot, I wanted Shiriki's lightning in the window at night. The fireworks from the nighttime spectacular were going off as I ran to American Waterfront. A consequence immediately presented itself. It only shows up for half a second in the penthouse window, and while I could watch the shafts below for the elevators (it's a scripted sequence, lightning goes to the shaft, makes the elevator rumble before falling, another cool design choice). So I was forced to take a quick shutter shot, adjust my F-stop and ISO accordingly. This brought up all kinds of issues in editing, for a start, grain in a still unvaried sky. I didn't have my 200mm on me tonight so the tower itself wasn't as tall as I wanted. After scaling it up, no matter how much I tried to sharpen the edges and raise the clarity, the tower looked too soft, the reason likely being it needed more pixels then the original shots allowed.
Even with a regular wide angle I had to back up against the streetcar poles towards the central lagoon to get all this in frame. Somehow I have a feeling this is going to get more attention then I want it to cause that's how it normally works on this site. The ones I feel I could've done more to but didn't know how typically get more attention then the ones I'm proud of.
A personal hell could bring even the most deranged of personalities back, so personally I would give Hightower a 2nd chance despite how easy it is to hate the guy on this ride. Shiriki is a well written antagonist when you look further into the story and is one of the creepiest designs I've ever seen Disney do. I love that they didn't shy away from the live action or the more mature tone of this Tower Of Terror, while the one in Florida will always be the best of the 4, this is a VERY close second.
I hate Disney