News Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind attraction confirmed for Epcot

Mike S

Well-Known Member
It is below grade. It is not lined in concrete in this picture, it's just sheet pile. Concrete walls were installed later.

Here is a wider shot where you can see that area is at the same level as the rest of the park. As other have pointed out, you can build below grade in Florida, it's just more difficult then in other areas.

View attachment 345201
Here is a picture where they have started to put in the concrete walls.

View attachment 345202
giphy.gif
 

kthomas105

Well-Known Member
It bothers me when people say you can’t build below grade in Florida because of the water table. You run into the same water table issues all the way up and down the eastern seaboard. It’s just a matter of cost. There were many options they could have chosen to minimize the skyline impact. I think they chose the cheapest...paint
 

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
It's hidden by trees and not visible from the parking lot or elsewhere in MK.

Not sure how this is a good example.
It's before the canopy for the queue went up in 1972.
Wait a second . . . hold on everybody . . .


. . . Here we go, now we have a more apt comparison:


Haunted Mansion Guardians Show Building.jpg


The issue isn't the the Guardians ride has a showbuilding. It's that the Guardians building is super intrusive AND ugly to look at. I can accept an ugly building if it's hidden from guest view, or an intrusive building that's at least themed to the nines.

Never before has Disney let a building so big and visually undressed intrude on the guest experience both outside AND inside the park.
 

GoofGoof

Premium Member
Wait a second . . . hold on everybody . . .


. . . Here we go, now we have a more apt comparison:


View attachment 345304

The issue isn't the the Guardians ride has a showbuilding. It's that the Guardians building is super intrusive AND ugly to look at. I can accept an ugly building if it's hidden from guest view, or an intrusive building that's at least themed to the nines.

Never before has Disney let a building so big and visually undressed intrude on the guest experience both outside AND inside the park.
If the building stays as is currently I would agree with this statement. There’s still some time to at least hide a portion of the building from most places inside the park using landscaping and tall trees. They could also remove Wonders of Life pavilion and build something directly in front of this building that blocks in park views. EPCOT hotel? New ride pavilion with better looking building? I’m not saying any of this is definitely going to happen or is even likely, just that we need to wait to see the final product before crowning this the most intrusive thing ever created.
 

Demarke

Have I told you lately that I 👍 you?
I think something like a long row of Italian cypress trees (pretty sure they go 50 feet or so up and have foliage all the way) could help conceal/break things up. Not just in front of the building (that would probably just draw even more attention to the building), but a long row extending well before and well after the building behind the show buildings as far as you can get toward Test Track. I haven’t photoshopped the skyline to confirm, but from a standard decently far away viewpoint, I think an essentially “privacy hedge” might help things.
 

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
If the building stays as is currently I would agree with this statement. There’s still some time to at least hide a portion of the building from most places inside the park using landscaping and tall trees. They could also remove Wonders of Life pavilion and build something directly in front of this building that blocks in park views. EPCOT hotel? New ride pavilion with better looking building? I’m not saying any of this is definitely going to happen or is even likely, just that we need to wait to see the final product before crowning this the most intrusive thing ever created.

I think something like a long row of Italian cypress trees (pretty sure they go 50 feet or so up and have foliage all the way) could help conceal/break things up. Not just in front of the building (that would probably just draw even more attention to the building), but a long row extending well before and well after the building behind the show buildings as far as you can get toward Test Track. I haven’t photoshopped the skyline to confirm, but from a standard decently far away viewpoint, I think an essentially “privacy hedge” might help things.

Unfortunately, the Guardians building is 130 feet tall, so 50 foot cypresses wouldn't even reach halfway up.

I would think that if there was a longer-term plan to disguise this building by putting something new in front of it one of our trusted voices on this site would have spoke to that plan instead of echoing the frustration of it being as bad as it is. No one's even hinted at that, so it seems overly giving to presume.

The outside of the building is being covered with panels in a consistent paint scheme. A lame, blue and green one, but a paint scheme nonetheless. This IS the final product. If they improve it, more power to them, but nothing they're doing now is intentionally temporary.
 

DisneyDodo

Well-Known Member
It seems that a lot of people here don't fully understand the strategy of painting the building sky blue. Most of the posts about the building's impact on sight-lines are treating the color as an unsuccessful attempt at tricking the eyes (i.e. because the color is similar to the sky in the background, guests' eyes won't be able to discern the building when they look at it). This is obviously ridiculous - the building is massive and will never perfectly match the color of the sky. However, that's not how this strategy is meant to work. In actuality, it's meant to play a trick on the brain - your brain is conditioned to expect certain shades of blue in the background, and so it subconsciously filters out things of those colors.

This is a very similar phenomenon to how your brain works in regards to your nose. Whenever your eyes are open, you can technically see your nose, but your brain filters is out so you don't notice it. Of course, when you try to look at your nose, you will see it clearly. That's why anyone looking at the GotG building to determine how much of a monstrosity it is is inherently getting a biased view. The color is meant to prevent guests from intentionally looking at the building, not to prevent them from seeing it when they do. Most guests outside of these forums do not visit the park with the intention of looking at the GotG show building, so the illusion works much better on them. That's not to say that those on here who find the building to be a major obstruction are wrong, but just that they should recognize that they are immune from an illusion that should be quite effective on most guests.
 

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Take this with a grain of salt, especially considering Peter Quill was abducted in 1988 and Buzzy appeared in the parks in 1989



I think it's not entirely outside of the realm of possibility for a pre-show where Rocket runs around Epcot stealing stuff (Buzzy, redressing the journey into imagination vehicles as the new vehicles, etc.). All as part of his "master plan".

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. But I really expect the ride will have some self-awareness of where it is, based on the other Marvel attractions so far.
 

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
“Wow, Epcot has a lot of beautiful scenery, but instead of enjoying that, I’m going to go out of my way to look at a blue box and get mad at it.”

Come on people.
"Wow, Epcot has a lot of beautiful scenery, it's such a shame that the people in power no longer respect it enough to keep from building anything that might detract from that experience".

We're all here, consciously or otherwise, because Disney got us where we live by being exceptional. They certainly charge for an exceptional experience. So when they do something so massively unexceptional - and detracts from the exceptional work around it (though Future World is not the paragon it used to be) - it's worth calling them out on it in the hope that they'll do better going forward.

I'm not losing any sleep over this, I promise, but I see no need to pretend this should get a pass. This is lame work from a company that's never been so financially primed to do great work.
 

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
It seems that a lot of people here don't fully understand the strategy of painting the building sky blue. Most of the posts about the building's impact on sight-lines are treating the color as an unsuccessful attempt at tricking the eyes (i.e. because the color is similar to the sky in the background, guests' eyes won't be able to discern the building when they look at it). This is obviously ridiculous - the building is massive and will never perfectly match the color of the sky. However, that's not how this strategy is meant to work. In actuality, it's meant to play a trick on the brain - your brain is conditioned to expect certain shades of blue in the background, and so it subconsciously filters out things of those colors.

This is a very similar phenomenon to how your brain works in regards to your nose. Whenever your eyes are open, you can technically see your nose, but your brain filters is out so you don't notice it. Of course, when you try to look at your nose, you will see it clearly. That's why anyone looking at the GotG building to determine how much of a monstrosity it is is inherently getting a biased view. The color is meant to prevent guests from intentionally looking at the building, not to prevent them from seeing it when they do. Most guests outside of these forums do not visit the park with the intention of looking at the GotG show building, so the illusion works much better on them. That's not to say that those on here who find the building to be a major obstruction are wrong, but just that they should recognize that they are immune from an illusion that should be quite effective on most guests.
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:

Indiana_Jones_show_building.jpg



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.
 

seascape

Well-Known Member
I was staying out of this debate until I saw the finished product. However, even though it is not finished yet, I have to agree it is absolutely 100% horrible. Putting the lift hill outside makes it even worse than just a rectangular building with sky blue paint. It stands out like a sore thumb. It is even worse than Test Track which also ruins the natural balance of EPCOT. The ride may end up being great but they need to fix the outside design. Disney still has time to fix this and I hope they do. They have the money and a million or two spent properly would fix this mess.
 

jt04

Well-Known Member
I was staying out of this debate until I saw the finished product. However, even though it is not finished yet, I have to agree it is absolutely 100% horrible. Putting the lift hill outside makes it even worse than just a rectangular building with sky blue paint. It stands out like a sore thumb. It is even worse than Test Track which also ruins the natural balance of EPCOT. The ride may end up being great but they need to fix the outside design. Disney still has time to fix this and I hope they do. They have the money and a million or two spent properly would fix this mess.

It wouldn't be a million of two to theme the outside of something you have to be looking for to notice from inside the park. Jurassic Park's show building looks over IoA much more intensively but who gives it a second thought these days?

Complaining about the lift hill is clearly just complaining to complain.
 

OG Runner

Well-Known Member
We are currently fixated on the size of the building, as it is going up. Take time to look at the photos of the attraction from the front of
the entrance building. That is what people are going to see. I have been taken off of Splash Mountain due to a breakdown. The front
of the ride is really well themed. The back of the building looks like factory building. Even as big as this building is, when you are going
to ride this ride, you are not going to be worrying about the building in the back.
 

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
We are currently fixated on the size of the building, as it is going up. Take time to look at the photos of the attraction from the front of
the entrance building. That is what people are going to see. I have been taken off of Splash Mountain due to a breakdown. The front
of the ride is really well themed. The back of the building looks like factory building. Even as big as this building is, when you are going
to ride this ride, you are not going to be worrying about the building in the back.
The backside of Splash Mountain isn’t visible from Tomorrowland.
 

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