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GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY DISNEYLAND RIDE LOOKS TO OFFER A LOT OF FUN FOR MARVEL FANS
How the new attraction will be a very different experience from the Tower of Terror.
While Iron Man Experience has just opened at Hong Kong Disneyland, the first Marvel-based ride to come to an American Disney park will arrive this coming summer, with Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout! Replacing the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA, the ride immerses guests in the world of the Marvel comics characters popularized in the feature film and its upcoming sequel.
With construction currently underway, I took part in an early press preview (complete with protective hardhats!) of what to expect from Mission: Breakout -- as Disney crews worked to quickly overhaul the Tower of Terror into the new ride -- and came away feeling very excited and optimistic about what's in store.
The decision to close Tower of Terror at all was met with its fair share of negative reaction by Disneyland fans, as that was a beloved ride in its own right, with a distinct and immersive old Hollywood setting and storyline. Mission: Breakout is using the existing structure and ride system and it seemed at first as this new attraction was more of a cosmetic overhaul that would essentially be the same experience. However, that assumption doesn't seem to actually be correct.
"I want to stress, there is a complete, tonal shift on what the ride will be like," explained Walt Disney Imagineering veteran Joe Rohde. "It is the ride system [from Tower of Terror], but any ride system can be made to do many things.”
Mission: Breakout takes guests into the lair of Taneleer Tivan, The Collector (Benicio Del Toro will appear, as will several Guardians film actors), who has captured the Guardians as part of his collection. The storyline for the ride has an escaped Rocket Raccoon ask for your help in freeing his friends, only for all of the various aliens and creatures in the collection to be freed with chaotic results.
Rohde described the Tower of Terror as having been, “A mystery ride. It invested more than half of its entire time in building mystery," referencing the early portion, as you sat on the ride and viewed the hotel guests "vanishing” on one of the floors, before the elevator you were in began to rapidly rise and fall, providing the true thrills.
For Guardians, Rohde explained, "This is a comedy, action-adventure, prison break. We need none of that [set-up once on the ride]. We invest immediately in movement... Everything that happens on the ride, from the moment you take off, happens in the context of this very physical chaos. The escape is happening, the other animals are escaping, everything in the collection is loose. The guards are trying to stop them. Rocket is trying to control the vehicle that is out of control because he blew the control tower to open the cages. It’s just insane chaos. But really funny, really fun chaos that ensues for the rest of the ride."
Music will play during the ride, evoking Star-Lord’s “Awesome” mix from the film – with a mixture of songs actually heard in Guardians of the Galaxy and some new, but era-appropriate, additions. What song you hear will vary if you go on the ride multiple times, as will the visuals you see while the ride is moving.
In Tower of Terror, a big moment came when the elevator doors opened as you were suspended high up, with a view looking out onto the park and seeing the drop below. Asked if this will happen during Mission: Breakout, Rohde explained, “Well… Yes and no! Sometimes the doors might open. Sometimes the doors might not open because something else will happen. Many things will happen on this ride… It’s a very dynamic ride.”
Rohde showed us what the Disney team refers to as “ride profiles” - essentially line graphs showing the movement of Mission: Breakout as it rises and falls. There were three different ones for the new attraction, depicting the variations guests will experience. All three notably had a lot more rapid movement from the start than Tower of Terror, whose profile we were shown alongside the new ones.
As Tower of Terror is overhauled into Mission: Breakout, the exterior is being altered from a 1930s-era hotel into an ornate sci-fi structure befitting the Collector, who Rohde described as “an arrogant, proud, glitzy kind of figure.” That’s raised eyebrows among some Disneyland aficionados, given the building no longer matches any of the setting around it in California Adventure, but Rohde said that was very much part of the intended scenario.
“The [Guardians] world terminates and terminates very abruptly,” said Rohde, regarding the building standout from its surroundings. “That’s part of the whole ‘kaboom’ of this. As we know from many of these films, someone just unzippers the reality and giant, automated snake dragons come from somewhere. Or someone steps through a circle and disappears to the other side of the planet” When it came to the Collector’s warehouse, the idea was this thing has just ‘Kablam!”, appeared out of nowhere.”
We were taken through the beginning of the interior portion of the queue, in what was once the Tower of Terror’s hotel lobby (and currently is still being dismantled from its previous look). For Mission: Breakout, it will be a walkthrough of the Collector’s museum-like collection, and filled with artifacts on the walls and in display cases – many of which will be very familiar to Marvel fans. On a table we were shown Rocket’s gun, a Chitauri blaster, a Nova Corp helmet and Asgardian weaponry, which were just a small sample of the way that elements from Marvel films and TV shows will be incorporated into the attraction.
Said Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer, Joe Quesada, “What’s wonderful about the collection is you have so many recognizable items there from movies, from TV shows, new things there that might be deriving from stories later to come. But even in a deeper dive you might see things there that only appear in comics. If you’re a Marvel die hard, you’ll recognize it. If you’re not, it’s a cool artifact. It’s a wonderful melding of all our universes to create this new world and this new collection.”
The queue will net move into the Collector’s office - the area that used to be the Tower of Terror hotel library. As was the case with Tower, this is will you will get your most direct instructions on what you need to do for the ride’s storyline. Though now, it won’t be Rod Serling speaking to you, but Rocket Raccoon. I asked Rohde how we will see Rocket and he replied, “We are still working on the Rocket depiction because we want to try to find a way to stretch the metaphor of it. The idea is that he’s loose in the ducts [above the guests] and is running around in here. When we see it on the outside, you’ll see a vent that’s been pried open. We want to get the idea that he’s in the system. He’s rewired everything. He’s rattling around in the system.”
In the office is the Collector’s desk and we were told, “His desk will be packed with stuff. If you’re interested, I recommend on opening day you look carefully at all the stuff everywhere because it will be packed with every conceivable Easter egg we can imagine.”
The final portion of the queue will be the least-changed from Tower of Terror, as the original boiler room setting – albeit with some new signage and additional components on top of it -- works well for the industrial look Rohde said they wanted at this point of the attraction.
Regarding what it’s like for Quesada to see Marvel have an attraction inside the Disneyland Resort, he remarked, “It’s an amazing feeling. I’ve been on a junket for the last two weeks at the Iron Man Experience as well, so I got to see that come to life. I keep telling people, I’ve been involved [with Marvel] for a very long time and coming to Disney and being a part of this company has been a dream come true. And actually being able to bring our characters to life in a different medium no less inside of a Disney Park, which is just…. We’ve all grown up with these parks. It’s an absolute thrill. And to me, one of the biggest thrills has been working with Joe. I’ve had the pleasure of learning so much from Joe and I don’t think anyone can say they’ve had a personalized tour of the Magic Kingdom to be shown how things work. You walk through the parks, you experience the parks, but how does it work? What are the theories behind how things are done? And why certain rides are rides and why certain rides are a story and a ride. The latter really interests me and there’s no one better than Joe to be doing that and it’s a fantastic learning experience. I don’t know what else I can say about that except it’s a thrill. Marvel, theme park, three dimensional, here we are.”
Asked whether other characters were considered for the ride before the Guardians, Rohde replied, “Very early in any conceptual exploration, you float these ideas. There’s a lot of Marvel characters you can imagine. You’re like, ‘Oh, Spider-Man!’ But there’s a super compressed little space. And you’re like, ‘What is he doing in this tiny little space?!’ Usually what happens is you hit on something and a bunch of little dominoes go clack, clack, clack and then, ‘That’s going to work! That’s not a stretch! That’s going to work!’ Because thething! Because the ride!”
He added, “This is a laugh ride. That’s why it's Guardians. Because it’s funny and you scream and you laugh and the music.”
Considering all the Marvel Easter eggs and references planned – and especially when you consider the final post-credit scene of Guardians of the Galaxy – I couldn’t resist asking if Howard the Duck would be a part of the attraction in some manner. Said Quesada, “No comment!”
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