I totally understand the
intention - and with a lower-profile building like Soarin' you can basically get away with this kind of method. You only really notice that if you're looking for it, and of course people like us are, but it doesn't command attention in a quick glance and it doesn't remind you of itself throughout the course of your visit.
The Guardians building is so massive that the
scale is what calls attention to it - this trick doesn't work on something this large. It's easily noticeable from the farthest reaches of the park because of how big it is. It's taller and wider than 90% of the structures around it. It's anecdotal, but the amount of guests I heard asking about this thing while I was in Epcot earlier this month was greater than I would have expected, even as someone who thinks it's a mistake. It's clearly not going unnoticed.
Insult is added to injury when you remember that this building is attached to what was already the largest Pavilion in Epcot, which has been gutted to be used almost completely as glorified queue space. That they didn't find a way to make better use of the amount of space they're giving to this ride, even after overtaking that building, is astounding.
I should mention that this is really the source of my ire here - it's not just that the show building is so large. It's that it's so large, unthemed, badly "masked", for a ride making poor use of existing space, doing so with an IP that doesn't suit the theme park . . . if the one sin was that it had a showbuilding too large I'd still call it out but perhaps less adamantly. When every single turn of this project seems to be a misstep it's harder to let it go. They're building an ill-fitting forest with ugly trees. Who knows, maybe the ride will be cool, but Epcot needs more than just "a cool ride". And it used to be about so, so much more, AND had cool rides. And none of them were housed in a building as obviously lame as this.
The closest cousin to this is Indiana Jones at Disneyland, which is visible from Downtown Disney and the tram, but isn't as nearly large as the Guardians building, is painted to blend in with the high-growth foliage around it, is not visible from within the park, made innovative use of space in a park that is desperately compact, AND houses an attraction that fits the theme of the land it's in. They also managed to do all of this nearly 25 years ago, and for less money than Guardians is costing - even with inflation:
View attachment 345361
I'm sure if the ride weren't totally great there would be more complaints about it. But they had every opportunity to do improve over these points at Epcot and instead somehow did worse on all of them (quality of ride TBD, of course). At this point it had really better be astounding, or the project will just be a total misfire.
