The attraction was themed around the fictional, abandoned Hollywood Tower Hotel. According to the storyline, on Halloween night in 1939, a mysterious bolt of lightning struck the luxury resort, causing an entire wing of the building—and five unfortunate passengers inside a maintenance elevator—to vanish into thin air. Guests entered the dust-covered, cobweb-laden lobby and passed through a dark boiler room before boarding a "service elevator" of their own.

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Rather than a simple free-fall, the ride used a complex system of cables to actively pull the elevator vehicle downward faster than the speed of gravity. This created intense periods of weightlessness as the elevator repeatedly surged up and plunged down the shaft, occasionally opening a massive set of doors to give riders a brief, terrifying view of the park from 130 feet in the air.