In Which Jenn Wants You To Share Your Tower of Terror Screams With Others

Tower of Terror

Unlike your larger majority of Disney parks enthusiasts, I don’t have a ton of family memories from Walt Disney World. My parents took me twice, once when I was so young I hardly remember it (beyond my love of Figment and fear of Snow White’s witch), and the other when I was twelve. I do remember some stuff from the latter trip, but it all felt kind of perfunctory. I think my parents like Disney parks just fine but were largely checking a box on the Traditional Family Activities list.

No slight intended on their part – I mean, as Eeyore so wisely tells us, we can’t all and some of us don’t. I found my own way to WDW love, and they support that even if they find it a touch confusing. I even dragged my mom down to Orlando that one time, and may manage to do it again this November.

The point, though, is that my mind is largely void of the WDW remember-whens that many others cherish. But there are a couple incidents that stand out in my mind. Here’s one:

Okay, so it’s April of 1998. It’s my parents and brother plus my aunt and two cousins. They’re from Florida, admittedly not central Florida, but this isn’t their first time at the proverbial rodeo. Their signature pro-move in this pre-ubiquitous-cell-phones era: a set of walkie-talkies.

My cousins are trying to convince me to ride the Tower of Terror. This being twelve-year-old Jenn, I am not having it – I didn’t really get down with thrill rides until high school, and even now I’m not huge into drop tower. I mean, I’ll ride ToT when someone coerces me because the effects are cool, but I don’t do it alone.

They give up on me, leaving my half of the family at a showing of that live action Beauty and the Beast performance that I don’t think I’ve ever even seen since then… They also leave us one of the walkie-talkies.

So we’re sitting there in the amphitheater, waiting for the show to start, minding our own business, when suddenly…

AHHHHH!!!!! AHHHHH!!!! AHHHHH!!!!!!!

It’s crackly, grainy audio from the walkie-talkie, luckily too weak to bother the others around us, but quite distinct: it’s my cousins on ToT, screaming their way down the drop.

I think of this every time I ride it today. And part of my really wants to call someone up right as the tower window opens and…

What do you remember from your childhood WDW trips?

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2 Comments

  1. That's hilarious! I'm similar to you in that I had the one typical family trip when I was 9. I didn't go back until I was 16 and a very generous friend's family took a group of us for her 16th birthday, rather than having a big Sweet 16. On that trip my friends wanted to go on ToT but 16 year old me was still much too chicken. One of our male friends physically picked me up, put me over his shoulder, and tried to carry me on the ride basically kicking and screaming. You know, because I was a 16 year old acting like a 2 year old. He eventually put me down and I ran away. Far, far away.

  2. I know a lot of people who STILL run far far away! And when I'm with them, I DON'T GO EITHER. But I'll make ToT FPs for people I love enough. A benchmark of my affection, you could say.

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