When one door closes...

Answer:

ADOORABLE

There's a saying that "when one door closes, another one opens." In this puzzle, you'll want to make your trip around the world by opening each door in a certain order. When you close the first door behind you, a second door will open; when you close the second door, a third door will open, and so on.

You'll notice that each door contains a cryptic-like clue phrase, as well as a few notable landmarks and symbols pertaining to a certain city. The flavortext, "started his Super Fun journey a FEARSOME monster" suggests that you should start with the "Super Fun" SF (San Francisco) door. The flavortext ("came back changed") suggests the need to keep track of the changes to Mike as he travels the world. For example, for the SF door, you apply the cryptic-like clue phrase "remove a quantity" to FEARSOME to get FEAR. You then take FEAR and "change" it using the next door that opens.

How do we know which door opens next? The flavortext hints that Mike wanted to travel the world in "record time," which suggests that you should order the cities by time zone. The transformations are shown below:

Door		Landmarks / Symbols		Location + Timezone		Sign + Meaning		Transformation
		SF Giants, Golden Gate Bridge		San Francisco, USA (GMT -8)		Remove a quantity ("some")		FEARSOME → FEAR
		Statue of Liberty		New York, USA (GMT -5)		Shake (anagram) the terror ("fear") for a price ("fare")		FEAR → FARE
		Christ the Redeemer, Blu from Rio, football		Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (GMT -3)		Hide (remove) the failing grade ("F")		FARE → ARE
		Eiffel Tower, baguettes		Paris, France (GMT +1)		Kung Fu Panda ("Po") covers (replaces) the playing card ("A", for Ace)		ARE → PORE
		The Sphinx, hieroglyphics		~ Cairo, Egypt (GMT +2)		Convert (replace) energy ("E") into a desk ("table")		PORE → PORTABLE
		Taj Mahal, Indian elephant		~ New Delhi, India (GMT +5:30)		Cancel out (remove) the gas constant ("R")		PORTABLE → POTABLE
		The Great Wall of China, dragon		Beijing, China (GMT +8)		Trade (replace) a cooking container ("pot") for a French friend ("ami")		POTABLE → AMIABLE
		Mount Fuji, sushi		~ Tokyo, Japan (GMT +9)		Recast (replace) actress Farrow ("Mia") with a cartoon explorer ("Dora")		AMIABLE → ADORABLE
		Sydney Opera House		Sydney, Australia (GMT +11)		Have the "O" undergo mitosis (double the "O")		ADORABLE → ADOORABLE

Once you finish traveling the world, you'll discover that Mike started FEARSOME and came back ADOORABLE (a play on "adorable" that emphasizes the "door").

Authors’ Notes

This puzzle was inspired by the door chase scene from Monsters Inc. Doors play an important role in Monsters Inc. -- they serve as portals linking two worlds, and our two monster protagonists literally travel through multiple doors in their quest to save a human girl.

The saying, "when one door closes, another one opens" is often used to describe unexpected opportunity, which sometimes leads to personal development or transformation. We combined these ideas to create a puzzle where each door would modify some starting word in turn and ultimately produce something new and unexpected.

We originally tried to make a transformation from ABOMINABLE → ADORABLE work, inspired by the Abominable Snowman (who asks to be called adorable or agreeable instead). This ended up being pretty hard because there were very few natural words one step away from "abominable." However, "adorable" had several good transformations - and as an added bonus, contained a "door" syllable, which we decided to highlight.