Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind SPOILER Thread

Giss Neric

Well-Known Member
The more I think about this, the more I really don't like that there's such an unbalance between the presentation of the queue and the ride itself (ONLY projection and lighting effects) and the story told within the ride portion. ALL of the story during the ride is dictated through onboard audio dialogue. If you can't hear the dialogue, then there is absolutely nothing in the visuals that will convey any sort of story to you. Compare this to Mission Breakout, where you would get the gist of what's happening even without any audio.
During the preshow, we learned that Eson stole the cosmic generator. During the ride, right after the backwards launch, you can clearly hear Rocket saying "We got the generator!" so the problem has already been resolved and I'm pretty sure the rest of the ride is just us trying to distract Eson from the Guardians while they are trying to "contain" him, which we also see during the second half before the spiraling down the moon section. Literally all the dialogue you hear during the ride portion are just usual banters between the Guardians.
 

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
The Studios might be giving EPCOT a run for its money:
  • Rock 'n' Roller Coaster: 85 minutes/day, 2,000 riders
  • Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway: 48 minutes/day, 1,250 riders
  • Slinky Dog Dash: 30 minutes/day, 800 riders
  • Tower (even in its degraded state): 38 minutes/day, 500 riders
  • Rise of the Resistance: 120 minutes/day, 3,150 riders
That's 7,900 riders/day on some of the most popular rides. It's losing a little less than half of Rock 'n' Roller Coaster every day, even while Tower is at half capacity.
Do you think your theory of "part time staff vs full time staff" is the primary driver of this, do you think they've cut back on preventative maintenance post pandemic, or do you think there's something else entirely going on here?
 

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
If it's dead, why do they keep mining it for nostalgia?

Why keep the name EPCOT? Why recycle iconography from the past? Why sell retro merch and keep making a connection to the past?

Disney is incapable of killing EPCOT because they don't have the financial or creative capacity to do so. They also know that EPCOT is itself a recognizable IP that has proven its worth for 40 years and would be stupid to remove altogether.

So now we're stuck with a park that has Living with the Land and Frozen in it and told it all fits because...they said so.
They believe that there's a little bit of money to be made mining for nostalgia and a lot of money to be made mining for IP. The problem is that they haven't figured out is that there's also money to be made by simply building quality attractions irrespective of IP and in some cases the IP is largely irrelevant. Guardians has a much bigger merchandise opportunity than say Ratatouille for example.
 

Anteater

Well-Known Member
Primeval Whirl has entered the chat.
Goofy's Sky School has entered the chat.
Those two coasters were my kids' first coaster. I remember how much they LOVED them. Even 17 years later, they insisted on riding them. They talked about them the whole trip, comparing them to other rides. Never underestimate the importance of "lame" coasters to kids.

I gotta admit, I really liked PW myself. But, I liked the whole Hester & Hesters carnival theme.
 

kalel8145

Well-Known Member
Those two coasters were my kids' first coaster. I remember how much they LOVED them. Even 17 years later, they insisted on riding them. They talked about them the whole trip, comparing them to other rides. Never underestimate the importance of "lame" coasters to kids.

I gotta admit, I really liked PW myself. But, I liked the whole Hester & Hesters carnival theme.
Absolutely. Fun is relative to the rider. My kid loved Goofy's when was a little kid. Had to ride multiple times each trip. He's a big kid now and still loves to go on it.
 

Thelazer

Well-Known Member
I agree with what you're staying to an extent -- I think the fact that Xandar is another planet with an alien species (even though they are indistinguishable from humans) is the aspect that would be most incongruous with classic EPCOT in that scenario. If you removed the Guardians and Eson and had the ride itself just be a journey through space, then replaced Xandar with some sort of fake future scientific organization from Earth, it would probably work better.

God if ONLY we could have had that... hell they could have changed engery's pre-show to make some reference to the Guardians.

Picture this, you enter the "then" current pre-show, at some point, that signal fades out and a signal transmission takes place.

The Guardians break in with some kinda nonsense the world is about to end, climate change, yadda ydaa.

Then they say something like, "lets take YOU back in time, to see why moving forward with a greener energy is the right thing to do"
You enter to the "old" load area, but revised of course as you get into the roller coster cars instead of the theater cars.

The room goes dark, and BANG, back you go thru the Dino's, then out to the new show (err, I mean screen filed building with plenty of CGI FUN!) and then into, theater 3 (the old unload) which could easily go something like this: The lights come up and the "CLASSIC" old energy "feel the flow" starts playing... your coaster car then slowly rolls to the proper unload area of the station and exit out.

Okay rough draft, but Jesus how hard is that to think up?

I mean, hell it would save a ton of money too, you don't really need to do much work to existing ride space
(think when they put mummy into the old kong building at U/O)

It's almost like, with this project the mantra was, "how do we RIP OUT EVERYTHING HA HA HAA and shove it in there face that we DID RIP IT OUT HA HA HA.... Oh and if that is not enough lets insert a throw away line {See the veggie fruit fruit} which is so out of place, we will MOCK THEM EVEN MORE, those old Epcot Purest's.. HA HA HAA" (insert Zach evil grin)
 

Casper Gutman

Well-Known Member
What are the guest satisfaction numbers on those rides?

Now, extend Goofy’s until it is 3 minutes long and add a soundtrack of beloved, upbeat pop classics. How do you think it scores now?

Once you’ve got the coaster (by Vekoma) and the soundtrack (by Blondie, Earth, Wind, & Fire, etc) you’re a very, very long way to a guest-pleasing attraction. How much value did Disney add with the rest of that $450 million?
 

UNCgolf

Well-Known Member
Primeval Whirl has entered the chat.
Goofy's Sky School has entered the chat.

Primeval Whirl kind of proves my point -- people loved it! Look at all the people who complained here about Disney taking it down.

And I considered breaking kid out coasters into a separate category, but I thought it went without saying. Kids love those small coasters, so they're still serving as a fun attraction for the target audience.
 
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Touchdown

Well-Known Member
Okay. So after close to 20 rides, I've figured it out. The left side is Conga, Everybody Eants to Rule the World, and Disco Inferno. Right side is One Way or Another, I Ran (So Far Away), and September.
Doubt it, each side merged into one track, and when an odd number of trains is running the trains will switch sides.
 

Epcot82Guy

Well-Known Member
So having watched this a bit more. I think I figured out my biggest issue with the story here - and it ties to their weird merch decision.

The biggest reason this doesn't work in Epcot is because they are literally destroying the "Epcot" this story is set in. Here's the placesetting story - The Xandarians created this pavilion to showcase their technology to align with Epcot's pavilions showcasing and inspiring great technology and cultural achievement. The main issue - THAT IS THE EXACT STORY THEY ARE TAKING AWAY FROM EPCOT. It simply demonstrates how they don't understand the park or have a cohesive direction for it.

If Cosmic Rewind was the only example of this, and they were going to reinvest in the other parts to restore the "Epcot-ness", then maybe it would be different. (And, who knows, maybe it will.) But, the more they add IP and divert from Epcot's original theme, the less and less the Guardians story and fit makes sense.
 

celluloid

Well-Known Member
So having watched this a bit more. I think I figured out my biggest issue with the story here - and it ties to their weird merch decision.

The biggest reason this doesn't work in Epcot is because they are literally destroying the "Epcot" this story is set in. Here's the placesetting story - The Xandarians created this pavilion to showcase their technology to align with Epcot's pavilions showcasing and inspiring great technology and cultural achievement. The main issue - THAT IS THE EXACT STORY THEY ARE TAKING AWAY FROM EPCOT. It simply demonstrates how they don't understand the park or have a cohesive direction for it.

If Cosmic Rewind was the only example of this, and they were going to reinvest in the other parts to restore the "Epcot-ness", then maybe it would be different. (And, who knows, maybe it will.) But, the more they add IP and divert from Epcot's original theme, the less and less the Guardians story and fit makes sense.

Yeah, in that sense it is the ultimate gigantic budget version of the Rex Pilot joke from Star Tours. A prequel joke, that you can only really get if you experienced the former. Pandering to what was there. It is baffling and confusing.

By its own, that makes Guardians' storyline a parody of the World's Fair type atmosphere, which Men In Black: Alien Attack at Universal does the pavilion parody concept a lot better.
 

celluloid

Well-Known Member
Once you’ve got the coaster (by Vekoma) and the soundtrack (by Blondie, Earth, Wind, & Fire, etc) you’re a very, very long way to a guest-pleasing attraction. How much value did Disney add with the rest of that $450 million?

Long term yes, I agree one is still very far away from making a great Disney level theme park hit, but Disney is banking on that alone helping the general public with fun. Particularly with nostalgia leans and guests expecting less and less for the last decade. An accessible to most ages and guests rotating coaster in the dark with music that is even lightly themed to a popular Marvel property is never going to be an easy hate for the average. It is not webslingers bad just by default at that point.

This is why Rip Ride Rockit can do more than decently at Universal. I hate what that thing brought to Universal Studios, but it is an(ugly) easy fun sell to most day guests because it is a coaster with music. So you can get a base level fun ride with a decently designed coaster and soundtrack. It is certainly not up to par of most previous decades portfolios of course.
 
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Epcot82Guy

Well-Known Member
Yeah, in that sense it is the ultimate gigantic budget version of the Rex Pilot joke from Star Tours. A prequel joke, that you can only really get if you experienced the former. Pandering to what was there. It is baffling and confusing.

By its own, that makes Guardians' storyline a parody of the World's Fair type atmosphere, which Men In Black: Alien Attack at Universal does the pavilion parody concept a lot better.

That's a good analogy. It really does baffle me since there were a lot of simpler stories that actually would work much better. (Though, as some have said, this seems to have suffered from too many teams, too many directors, too many edits.)
 

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