If you’ve ever bought one of those pricey on-ride photo souvenirs you might recall the paper frame your photo came in.  Somewhat clumsy to put together and all too easy to pop the photo out of, these keepsakes often featured some wonderful artwork unique to the frame design.  Scans and photos of these souvenir photo frames are rather difficult to come by now that everything’s going digital. This gallery of the Tower of Terror on ride photo souvenir frames seeks to preserve the frames and their artwork.

1990’s

Guests who purchased the on ride photo in the Tower’s early years got this souvenir photo frame.  These are wonderfully detailed artworks from before the Photoshop era; they look like they might’ve been painted in soft pastel and maybe some colored pencil.  (I wish I knew who the artist was.)

These two 1990s photo frames are from my personal collection, both from the Florida tower.

I first rode the Tower in 1994 and this is the artwork used on the front of the souvenir photo frame. Click to enlarge.

When I returned to the parks in 1999 the artwork on the cover of the photo frame had shifted hues, perhaps in relation to the addition of ride reprogramming that added a second drop.  The photo inside is headlined “Twice the Fright” to accompany the change. It’s the exact same artwork, just palette shifted.  The palette shift was probably done digitally.

Disney gave the frame’s cover art a hue shift for the 1999 version of the on ride photo souvenir frame.  This change likely accompanied the addition of a second drop to the ride’s show profile.

Inside the Frame:

My 1994 frame and my 1999 frame are identical except for one peculiar detail: the second frame (from ’99) lacks the phrase “Tower of Terror” in the little yellow box over the photograph. Everything else is the same. I can only guess at why “Tower of Terror” had to be removed – perhaps it’s a colloquial abbreviation that wasn’t actually approved by the legal department, much like the pins that were discontinued because they used “TOT” on the back instead of “HTH”.

Back in the day, the process of purchasing an on-ride photo also netted you one of these “Do Not Disturb” cards with your picture’s number written on the back.

2000’s & 2010’s

I got nuthin’.

This gallery is incomplete! Do you have a Tower of Terror on ride photo frame from yesteryear? If you’d like to share it here, tell me in the comments!