During the preshow, lightning flashes outside the window at the exact same moment it happens on screen. Rod Serling then says "The time is now." He means that literally. The image of the hotel on the T.V. is supposedly a real time feed of what's happening outside at that moment. They were one and the same lightning flash.
The first version of this ride (and most thereafter) being set in a Hollywood-themed area seems to invoke All Part of the Show. It all seems scary, but there's nothing to worry about. We're just filming an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), after all! Nothing to be scared of, right? ...Right?
Like many Disney attractions, the queue line is set both to give you something to look at while you wait to ride and build anticipation for the ride. The lobby is set as such; mail in the slots at the front desk waiting for guests to pick up, a set of suitcases waiting to be picked up by the bellhop, a dinner set in the far corner and a mahjong set to play (the Imagineers even hired professional mahjong players to set up a game, play it for a little while and then just suddenly stop). The way it's set up (instead of utter chaos like you'd expect news of a lightning strike and elevator crash to result in a crowded room) it's as if everyone just got up and left, implying that more than the five souls trapped in the elevator haunt the hotel...
Hand Waved in the movie, which claims that everyone was instructed to leave everything untouched after the lightning bolt struck the hotel.
When the lightning strike in 1939 made sections of the building disappear, there had to have been guests in those rooms, right?. Now they're seemingly lost forever...in another world.
Fridge Horror with a bit of Fridge Logic. In the Japanese version, Manfred Strang, the protagonist of the ride's promotional material, wants the Hotel Hightower demolished, so to keep anyone else from being cursed. However, Hotel Hightower is full of historically and culturally important artefacts, which will probably be moved if it is demolished...including Shiriki Utundu, who will probably be put in museum and probably disrespected again.
