"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into…The Twilight Zone" -The Narrator
The 5th Dimension alternatively known as The Twilight Zone is a location in the attraction The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Description[]
Background[]
The 5th dimension is a plane of existence which lies outside of time and space while being dictated by the laws of high-conceptuality rather than those of logic, nature or physics. It is shown to bend reality when it interacts with the world and doesn't seem to be grounded to any one world or even timeline. Its most notable resident is a being known as The Narrator who is able to follow it with near omniscience, always out of sight and always documenting how it affects reality to an unseen audience.
In the world of the Disney Parks, the 5th dimension materialized as a supernatural thunderstorm on the Halloween night of 1939. At exactly 8:05 PM, a paranormal lightning-bolt struck the elevator-shafts of the Hollywood Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Said lightning caused the five people in the elevator to be plummeted to an untimely death and trapped as ghosts in the 5th dimension.
The Hollywood Tower Hotel would be subsequently abandoned for 55 years during which time the 5th dimension would further meld with and bleed into the haunted hotel. In 1994, the Hotel would be reopened and staffed by disturbed bellhops who seemed keen on sending new guests to the 5th dimension for eternity for yet unknown reasons; they would use the maintenance elevators to try and achieve this goal. The narrator himself would oversee the traversing of at-least one group of guests through the tower, remaining neutral while simply informing mortals of the nature of their journeys.
Development History[]
The 5th dimension is a synonym for the Twilight Zone, the titular entity from the television series of the same name. In the original show, the 5th dimension was used as a framing-device for the anthology series with the narrator opening each episode describing the otherworldly nature of the Twilight Zone and introducing the conceptuality of its interacting with humanity for each respective story. The dimension itself would only be seen in the opening of the episodes; originally as an island-like landmass covered in shadows but later as an abyss of space with floating eyeballs, doors, floating equations of relativity, dolls, and smashing windows which visualize the words of the disembodied narrator.
Appearances[]
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror[]
The 5th dimension is referenced in the pre-show and beginning of this attraction. It is first directly encountered right after seeing the ghost victims of 1939 when the hallway they appear in begins to disappear and transform into an abyss of black space and white star-like bodies. After this, the elevators take guests to an area resembling a boiler-room before blue lightning surges throughout the environment, transforming (or perhaps revealing) it to be the 5th dimension.
Within this realm, guests go through a material encounter with the 5th dimension, in a way reminiscent of the Twilight Zone's iconic opening. Guests pass by dim silhouettes of old Hollywood and the ghosts of the victims of the hotel as music from the Twilight Zone plays. Einstein's theory of relativity is scrawled across the space and a giant stop-watch can be seen ticking. A giant disembodied eyeball flashes with static before showing a reflection of the humans as they pass through the 5th dimension in ways defying physics. Finally they reenter the real world by plummeting downwards faster than the speed of gravity and back into reality; although it is implied many did not make such a lucky trip after entering.
A number of references to other instances of the Twilight Zone encountering mankind can be found throughout the hotel, seeped in from the 5th dimension. This includes:
- Anthony Freemont: Posters in the lobby identify Anthony Freemont and his orchestra as being performers at the Tip Top Club.
- Broken Glasses: A pair of broken glasses in the library. In the show they belonged to an antisocial man named Henry Bemis who survived into the apocalypse trying to avoid people just to read his books. Within the apocalypse however, his glasses broke preventing him from being able to read.
- Broken Stopwatch: A broken stopwatch which used to appear in the wait area for the DCA Tower, advertising it as a conversation-starter found in the gift-shop. In the episode this was an occult stopwatch used by a drunkard to stop time for everyone but himself.
- Cadwallader: Cadwallader is the name of the man who approved the tower's maintenance elevators. In the television show, this was an alias used by the devil to make faustian bargains and claim mortal lives.
- Caesar the Dummy: Caesar is a ventriloquist's dummy which can be found in the storage room of the hotel. In the show, Caesar manipulated his puppeteer into committed crimes and later murders before letting him be arrested; after this he moved onto a new host with the same agenda.
- Chalk Circle: DCA's boiler-room had a chalk symbol on the wall where Sally Shine's ghost could be heard, pleading for help from the 5th dimension. The symbol came from an episode where a little girl got trapped in the Twilight Zone and the chalk was used to guide her out.
- Gold Thimble: A gold thimble which used to appear in the wait area for the DCA Tower, advertising it as a gift for mothers found in the gift-shop. In the show, the gold thimble was pursued in a department-store by a woman before her realizing that it was a ploy to lure her to the store as she was in-reality a mannequin given life who forgot her old existence.
- Invader: The figure of a small space-man is seen on a shelf in the library. This spaceman comes from the episode Invaders where multiple of the small aliens attacked a woman in her home.
- Mystic Seer: A fortune-telling device with the likeness of the devil. This machine appeared in the show giving out dark prophecies.
- Popular Mechanics Magazine: These magazines appeared in the DCA Tower and were taken from an episode of the Twilight Zone written by Ray Bradbury.
- Red Toy Telephone: A red toy telephone advertised to be sold in the gift-shop which is perfect for, "Late night calls with grandma". In the show, this phone was the last toy given to a young boy by his grandmother which the child used to communicate with her ghost.
- Room 22: A room marked with the numbers 22 appeared in the lobby of DCA's tower. In the TV show, a hospitalized woman had repeated nightmares about the number 22 being marked on a door before learning it was the morgue of the building. Later on an airplane she refused to go on a flight after learning it was flight 22 with said flight going on to crash horribly with no survivors.
- Slot Machine: This slot machine is found in the storage room and in the show was a sentient gambling device in Los Vegas which mocked and taunted humans to continue gambling with it until they had nothing.
- Talky Tina: A doll in the gift-shop who in the show was a murderous living doll that killed her owner's toxic step-father.
- She is often misidentified for a Shirley Temple doll which used to appear in the lobby for DCA's Tower of Terror. It is possible that said doll was also sentient and murderous, but they were not the same toy.
- To Serve Man: A book found in the library with strange glyphs and a taped on translation saying, "To serve man". In the show, this was a cookbook confiscated from an advanced alien race which came to Earth and tricked humanity into taking vacations to their home-planet; not knowing it was to their planets' abattoirs.
- Trumpet: A trumpet appears in the library which in the show belonged to a jazz musician who commit suicide only to find himself trapped in limbo, unable to be seen or heard. Fittingly enough, trumpet jazz music from no apparent source fills the queue.
- Twilight Zone Scripts: Books containing the scripts for Twilight Zone episodes, found in the library.
- Willoughby Travel: A travel agency which was advertised at the DCA Tower. It references a town trapped in time called Willoughby from the show.
Trivia[]
- In real-life, the 5th dimension is applied to a theoretical plane of existence regarding the traversing of alternate realities in the multiverse. Namely that if the 3rd dimension is an accumulation of all space and that the 4th dimension is time, that the 5th dimension is alternating time-lines.
- Episodes of the Twilight Zone were an influence on the Disney Channel series Gravity Falls with multiple allusions being found in the show and lore of the series.
- There is a fan-theory that the 5th Dimension might have some connection to the Collector's Fortress in the ride Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT! which succeeded the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Disney's California Adventure. As multiple relics from the Hollywood Tower Hotel can be found in the Collector's ownership and that it is a science-fiction themed ride, that said relics might have been collected from a portal to the 5th dimension.
- In the "Are you Brave enough?" Music video for Tower of Terror, The 5th Dimension was Identical to the 12th Doctor's Time Vortex from Doctor Who.
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