The S.E.A. thief finally has a name. She is Hazel Hightower, daughter of Harrison Hightower III, the hotel owner behind Tower of Terror at Tokyo DisneySea. The artifact she took from the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, the fictional explorers’ club whose members turn up across Disney park attractions, is now sitting in Frontierland at Disneyland for anyone with park admission to see.
Disney revealed the answer on the Disney Parks Blog on October 20, closing out a riddle hunt that started in August at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event. That is where Imagineers opened an S.E.A. crate for the first time and found nothing inside but a pile of bricks and a note from the thief.
How Fans Got To Hazel
S.E.A. archivist Bonnie Booker has been posting riddles on the Walt Disney Imagineering Instagram account since the crate came up empty. Each riddle revealed one letter of the thief’s name, out of order, and every one could be solved at home by looking up photos of Disneyland. Along the way the riddles turned up the Ridge Jewel and a time machine called the Timeskipper, which we covered when the mystery turned to time travel.
The last two riddles pointed straight at Harrison Hightower III, the S.E.A. member who vanished on New Year’s Eve in 1899 after acquiring the cursed idol Shiriki Utundu. Set aside the letters of HIGHTOWER and five are left over: H, A, Z, E and L.
Why She Took The Ridge Jewel
Hazel tells her own story in a letter Disney published with the reveal. She was born in Egypt on April 1, 1881, and applied to join S.E.A., only to be turned down because she was a Hightower. Her father had caused the Society enough trouble, and its members assumed she would be no different.
So she set out to prove them wrong. As a child she had gone with her father to Rainbow Ridge, the mining town at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, where residents were celebrating the Ridge Jewel, an egg-shaped geode full of rainbow crystals. The jewel later went missing, and Hazel decided her father must have taken it. She spent years building the Timeskipper, then used it to go back into her own past, where she discovered he had hidden the jewel inside an official S.E.A. crate. She took it and left her note in the crate in its place, planning to return the jewel to the town on the same day it was taken. Then she left riddles across time so the Society would one day remember her name.
She signs off with a poem that points guests straight to Frontierland: “Shine your spurs and head back west,” and “Collect it at a ticket booth.”
See The Jewel In Frontierland
Starting October 20 and for a limited time, the Rainbow Ridge Jewel is on display at the Ticket Booth outside Pioneer Mercantile in Frontierland. Ask a cast member at Pioneer Mercantile, or tap a MagicBand+ at the booth, and you will get a free commemorative ticket from Hazel herself.
We went to see it in person. The jewel sits on a corner shelf inside the booth, propped against a ledger stamped “Mark Twain” and surrounded by river-town props: a brass bell, a conductor’s cap and a framed steamboat pilot’s certificate made out to Samuel Clemens. It is a pale blue geode with an open cavity full of crystals, and that cavity is lit from inside. The light slowly cycles through pink, green and blue, so the jewel really does glow like a rainbow.
What The Free Ticket Looks Like
The MagicBand+ tap point is on the front of the booth, marked by a glowing S.E.A. crest with a ticket slot just below it.
One side of the ticket is a note from Hazel: “This ticket is my gift to you. Use it to decide where your next adventure will take you. Write your own story.” It is signed in her handwriting and framed with sketches of a hot-air balloon, a flying machine, a fez, a ship’s wheel, crossed oars and a mountain goat. The other side is an Explorer Ticket “issued by the Society of Explorers and Adventurers,” with blanks for your name, the date, your point of origin and your final destination, plus a method of travel to circle: aeroplane, horseback, motorbike, ship, train or other.
Nearby, an S.E.A. sign with a QR code invites guests to “scan and learn more about the Society.” Its fine print names the “Ticketing Depot, Frontierland Territory” and gives a founding date of MDXXXVIII, or 1538.
Look closely at the old newspaper clipping on the Ticket Booth counter, too. Disney first shared it as a clipping from a March 1886 S.E.A. newsletter about the Ridge Jewel exhibition. It now shows Hazel with the jewel in hand.
Hazel’s Oar At The Tropical Hideaway
Like every S.E.A. member, Hazel now has her own oar on the wall at The Tropical Hideaway in Adventureland. It hangs at the end of the row of member oars, striped in purple and natural wood, with an open pocket watch mounted above the brass plaque. The plaque reads “Hazel Hightower, River Thames.” The year underneath is scratched out, a fitting touch for a member who travels through time.
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