Unlike other Disney park attractions, when you visit The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, “you’re traveling to another dimension…” as Rod Serling states in the opening of The Twilight Zone television show, on which the attraction is based. Although it appears that he has created an all-new introduction for the Tower of Terror, which opened on this day in 2004, Rod had passed away decades before the attraction was even conceived. In reality, Disney Imagineers used their magic to utilize elements of the vintage film of him, along with newly recorded audio by voice artist and Serling sound-alike, Mark Silverman, who had dreamed of doing a voice for a Disney attraction ever since he was a boy. The final decision to cast Mark was made by Rod Serling’s widow, Carol Serling, Mark says. “There was a book that had every monologue in it for The Twilight Zone. When I was practicing for the actual job, I would find out what episode was going to be on that night, because it was still on TV, and I would look it up in the book and I would read it with Rod. It was amazing how much I practiced for that. It got to a point where I would read it before he would do the monologue and I would be like 95 percent there with exactly how he would word things. I got so into it.”
