He’s a dead ringer for Rod Serling
Disney World’s voice of the Tower of Terror
The urge sometimes strikes Mark Silverman when he rides in an elevator.
He starts his famous monologue, unbothered that he’s standing in a Target elevator in Los Angeles — not the plummeting Tower of Terror ride at Walt Disney World.
“You are the passengers on a most uncommon elevator,” the voice actor says in his deadpan impression of Rod Serling, getting a round of applause from strangers for his impromptu performance.
Twenty-five years ago this month, the attraction opened at the Orlando theme park with Silverman’s voice narrating the 100-foot drop through the haunted hotel. Time hasn’t faded the joy of being immortalized in a Disney ride.
“I can’t tell you what it means to me,” said Silverman, now 55, living in Los Angeles, during a recent
phone interview. He’s made a career with his voice, reviving Serling again on Jordan Peele’s rebooted “Twilight Zone” series this year.
Silverman grew up 15 minutes from Disneyland, a place that fascinated him with all the distinct voices. The ghostly whispered threats from the Haunted Mansion. The buccaneers on the Pirates of Caribbean.
He had been the kid in school who mimicked his teachers, to the delight of his classmates. Here were new targets to impersonate.
Young Silverman recorded the animatronics on the rides with a tape recorder and practiced repeating them over and over. He eventually knew them all by heart.
“I was completely obsessed with Disneyland,” said Silverman, who dreamed of being a Disney animator.
With his eventual deep voice that he inherited from his father, a Hollywood movie producer, Silverman seemed destined for a career as a voice actor.
Meanwhile 2,500 miles away in Florida, Disney prepared for its biggest thrill ride.
The roughly 100-foot drop on Tower of Terror would be twice as long as the plunge in Splash Mountain. At the time, the new ride would also be Disney’s fastest and steepest.
“After all, you can’t get much steeper than vertical,” the Orlando Sentinel wrote at the time.
The ride was the brain child of about 200 Imagineers who spent five years developing the attraction, an estimated $150 million compilation of 150,000 cubic feet of concrete, 1,500 tons of steel and a 14-month construction timeline.
Now, all Disney needed was the perfect voice to narrate the “Twilight Zone” storyline.
Rod Serling, the original “Twilight Zone” host, was unavailable. He had been dead since 1975.
So Silverman, then 29, began trying out for the role in 1993.
He practiced at least four hours a day, mimicking Serling on old television episodes while he read from his book of “Twilight Zone” monologues that he
bought to prepare.
The competition whittled away and after a series of auditions, Silverman landed the role.
Winning the job, he felt like a kid who had grown up playing stickball in the neighborhood being drafted by the New York Yankees, he said.
Silverman recorded the dialogue in about two hours at a large soundstage in Walt Disney Imagineering headquarters in Glendale, Calif.
The first time, he heard himself complete with the music and the full effects was on opening day of the ride — July 22, 1994.
The crowds lined up, some waiting three hours in the hot sun, to experience it.
Vikki Tupay was one of those first riders in 1994, and it “almost instantly” became one of her favorite rides at Walt Disney World. Silverman’s voice sounded authentic and played into the ride’s charm, she said.
“You hear his voice and it brings you back to old ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes,” said Tupay, a regular parks-goer to this day who works as corporate travel agent and lives in Kissimmee.
These days, the landscape is changing where for a quarter of a century, the 199-feet-tall Tower of Terror has loomed as the imposing icon of Hollywood Studios.
The buzz is on the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge under construction.
Good luck trying to get a FastPass for the popular Slinky Dog roller coaster in the new Toy Story Land. The colorful gondolas whiz through the skies, another cheerful distraction for visitors.
But Tower of Terror remains a fan favorite.
Noontime on a recent Friday, the posted wait time exceeded two hours. A grown man bashfully admitted to another grown man he had been scared of Tower of Terror in the gift shop after the ride.
Silverman figures he has returned to Walt Disney World about 15 times over the years since 1994. The next trip will be Oct. 4 for a special event to ride with Tower of Terror fans.
About five years ago, the ride malfunctioned and the sound stopped working on the Tower of Terror while Silverman was on it. He happily obliged, delivering the script for the other passengers.
“People didn’t know to react,” he laughed. “I felt like it was my duty to do that.”
The ride is particularly special when the elevator is empty, and it’s just him and his voice.
“Hearing my voice boom back, it’s like some weird Disney dream,” Silverman said.