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Rumors...

In early 2016, a very strange rumor began to spread. Sources began to report that Guardians of the Galaxy, a surprise hit Marvel superhero movie from 2014, would take up residence inside the Towers of Terror in the United States.

To be clear, the rumor was instantly derided as insanity, and many fans (this writer included) wrote it off as a prank. So outrageously stupid did it sound that a futuristic sci-fi superhero movie would take over a 1920s art-deco hotel reigning over a newly-redesigned Golden Age California park, many in the Disney Parks fan community literally, sincerely imagined that the rumor was cooked up just to see how much fury and chaos such an obviously fake rumor could provoke.

Image: Disney

A decade ago, maybe! Back then, Disney’s California Adventure was a creative mess, and it would’ve made sense for Disney to throw anything at the wall just to see if it would stick. They could've made the floundering California Adventure into a west coast Hollywood Studios, serving as a catch-all for any intellectual property that wouldn't reasonably fit in the other parks. Big, boxy tan showbuildings lend themselves to such a strategy, since it can be excused away as being a “movie studio” where cohesive themes, immersive environments, and intellectual properties need not be treated with much reverence.

But California Adventure was fixed! It was saved! No more irreverent jokes, no more modern music… It had a new lease on life with a refreshed, reverent, historic California story. Guardians of the Galaxy taking over the California-set Twilight Zone Tower of Terror? Decimating the careful continuity and storytelling Disney just spent over a billion dollars to craft? A sci-fi superhero ride looming over a 1920s Los Angeles? A 1950s High Sierras national park? Pushing Marvel super heroes into California Adventure when next-door, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland is as creatively desolate and in need of new stories as California Adventure used to be?

It sounded unthinkable.

Condemned

Image: Disney / Marvel

At the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Joe Rohde (the Imagineering figurehead behind Disney's Animal Kingdom and its Pandora - The World of Avatar) was on hand to announce that Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! would replace the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney California Adventure in 2017. The detailed lobby, library, and boiler room would be gutted and redesigned as an industrial futuristic prison owned by the enigmatic Collector from the 2014 film. Of course, the drop ride within would be retained and reprogrammed, but everything around it would be completely redesigned and not an ounce of Tower of Terror would remain in the brand new attraction...

...Unless you count the exterior clearly being a 1920s art deco hotel affixed with pipes and satellite dishes, reskinning it to capture "the beauty of an oil rig."

Image: Disney / Marvel. Click and expand for a larger, detailed view.

Rohde explained that the hotel would become an interdimensional “warehouse fortress power plant” (his words, not ours) with the queue and ride rebuilt entirely to incorporate the “irreverent” superhero team from the PG-13 movie and feature its 1970s and '80s musical soundtrack... Yes, in a park that just spent a billion dollars to get rid of irreverence and modern pop music.

As it is, it seems deeply odd that Rohde – an otherwise revered Imagineer known for his inexhaustible taste for detail, storytelling, and authenticity – would buy into the idea of scrapping the 1940s Hollywood area of a California-themed park to replace it with a superhero prison... and yet... 

Image: MintCrocodile, Magic Eye Disneyland Resort Pictoral Blog (Used with permission)

In a most astounding and unthinkable move, Disney began to literally disassemble the attraction while it was still operating, pulling down the neon “THE HOLLYWOOD TOWER HOTEL” sign and the ride’s rusted blue domes in September 2016, and covering the entire hotel in tarps by October.

All the while, they initiated a “Late Check-Out” promotion wherein the ride itself took place in pitch-black darkness after dusk each night, with the Silver Lake Sisters of Buena Vista Street fame performing live in the lobby, earning multi-hour waits for the starring attraction. It didn’t matter.

The transformation continued. On January 2nd, 2017, the last of the Hollywood Tower Hotel’s guests ascended into the Twilight Zone.

Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!

Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! opened May 25th, 2017 at Disney California Adventure – less than six months after Tower of Terror's closure. That sci-fi space warehouse based on the beauty of an oil rig now reigns over Disney California Adventure, visible from Buena Vista Street, Grizzy Peak, Pacific Wharf, Pixar Pier...

Inside the fortress, guests are toured through the Tivan Collection of interdimensional artifacts (from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a few nods to Disney Parks history) gaining security clearance to access the Collector's newest and most prized addition: the Guardians of the Galaxy themselves. But Rocket – ever the escape artist – has a plan, and it involves you.

Image: Disney / Marvel. Click and expand for a larger, detailed view.

In Tivan's office (a re-themed library), Rocket explains via an amazing Audio Animatronic that he'll hitch a ride atop the Gantry Lift meant to carry us to the Guardians... and the massive generator that's keeping all of those locked cages closed. When the time's right, he'll cut the power to free his friends.

Strapped into a Gantry Lift, Rocket unplugs the power and plugs in the Walkman, sending the Lifts past two action-packed floors (brought to life through Parallax screens) to the sounds of Pat Benatar, the Jackson 5, or Elvis. Re-rides earn you new songs, new scenes, and new elevator drop profiles in this high-action thrill ride that trades Tower of Terror's eerieness and subtlety for in-your-face irreverence and yo-yo'ing chaos.

Here's an official glimpse at what awaits inside the new Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!: 

Don't be surprised when the "gantry lift" doors open to reveal the same bird's eye view of the resort with Rocket now narrating by saying, "Disneyland?! That's thematically inconsistant!" It's obviously a nod to (or perhaps an "irreverent, MTV-attitude" jab at) fans and how very silly they are for caring about old-fashioned things like continuity and subtlety. 

Let's be clear: Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! is a rip-roaring thrill ride adventure that's stylish, loud, and fun. Far from the dismal failure some fans hoped and predicted, BREAKOUT is an E-Ticket that only Disney could conjure with all the comedy, action, music, and characters you love from Guardians of the Galaxy. 

It's too bad that it looks, feels, and sounds like the wrong place for them all.

Image: Disney / Marvel

Some insiders offered that Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT may make more sense in the coming context of the Avengers Campus, a new mini-land dedicated to Marvel heroes that is set to officially open at the park in 2020... Surely, being officially annexed to an Avengers land will at least make more sense than the ride's current placement in a 1940s Hollywood (even if that will leave Hollywood Land without an anchor attraction at all). Somehow, that's not very comforting for fans who just saw Disney California Adventure earn and then erase a billion-dollar rebirth on Californian stories and settings...

VACANCY


Image: Disney

For a few years now, we’ve been slowly building our library of Lost Legends – the in-depth stories of rides that were beloved and celebrated icons of Imagineering and storytelling; guest favorites that were taken too soon. To be clear, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is another legend lost. And if you ask many fans, its also a grim harbinger of change for the future. 

While Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! is a fun, loud, gleeful, thrilling E-Ticket in its own right, few would bother arguing that it's a smartly-backed concept fueled by a long-term vision. It feels like a knee-jerk race to get a hot intellectual property into Disney Parks as quickly as possible. And that's exactly what it's supposed to be. Guardians is neither the first nor the last example of Disney's newest strategy: packing the parks with current box office hits come hell or high water... even if it means that ride lifetimes are measured in seasons rather than decades. 

It's a strategy that many industry fans will recognize... 

Image: Universal

It's what Universal has been doing nonstop for the last decade, cannibalizing their own classic attractions (Kongfrontation, Jaws, Back to the Future: The Ride, Earthquake, Twister) for whatever's hottest (The Mummy, Harry Potter, The Simpsons, Fast & Furious, and Jimmy Fallon, respectively). Sure, the strategy has catapulted Universal's parks into the limelight with earth constantly moving... but nothing – and we mean nothing – is sacred, and Universal will topple any opening day favorite to get a hot intellectual property in. 

But Disney's caught onto this new strategy, literally reading off of Universal's playbook... perhaps without accounting for the fact that Disney Parks were special precisely because they played the long game and had thoughtful, timeless, spectacular rides such that even movie-based rides amount to much more than "riding the movies." People feel a deeper connection to Disney's rides than to Universal's, and – admittedly – expect more from Disney. With Guardians, it may feel that they're getting less in the form of a more short-sighted IP-invasion at the expense of a ride that could've been a star for decades.

As for the new ride, we can't say whether or not Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! will still feel like a good choice in 10, 15, or 20 years. Frankly, it probably won't last that long. The plug-and-play design makes it easy to update this adventure to whatever's new and next in the Marvel universe... just like Universal would. 

Image: Disney / Marvel

Still, when we look up at the towering art deco prison painted in stripes and silver pipes rising above Disney California Adventure blaring The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" though sliding elevator doors, we'll wonder if this was the best course for Disney's underdog – the reborn park given a new lease on life, now risking it all on an unexpected intellectual property.

If you made it through our most in-depth Lost Legends entry yet, you're just the kind of Disney Parks fans to make the jump to our In-Depth Collections Library where the full stories of closed classics come alive. As always, we invite your thoughts and comments below. We want to know your memories of California Adventure’s Tower of Terror and your thoughts on the new Marvel attraction that’ll take its place. All Twilight Zone stories end with a moral lesson – what will we as fans learn from Disney’s twist ending here?

We’ve done our best here to capture the story behind the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and celebrate its magnificent presence in a park tailor-made for it. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t say goodbye with a friendly word of warning – something you won’t find in any guide book: the next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you know just what kind of vacancy you’re filling, or you may find yourself a permanent resident… of the Twilight Zone. 

Image: Disney

 
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In reply to by Bob Connor (not verified)

That's the rumor, but tbh if they're going to replace any ride in Disney World with the only Marvel movie that they can use (at this point), they should gut and retheme the Rockin' Roller Coaster in Hollywood Studios: in all blunt honesty, Aerosmith is pretty much irrelevant these days (they're pretty much a quintessential example of what us millennials call "dadrock") and on top of that, they can theme it to the Awesome Mix (both Vol. 1 and a couple tracks from Vol. 2).

IMHO, that would be a fair compromise insofar as Orlando getting a Marvel attraction and the Tower of Terror there is safe. I could even go so far as to say they could potentially truncate the Mission: Breakout material and adapt it for a roller coaster, but that might be more work and money than what Disney is willing to spend on such a thing.

As for Ellen's Energy Adventure, they could replace that with an Inside Out-themed ride. I know people will gripe about "muh originality", but given Disney is trying to implement their properties more into the parks these days, that's probably a better choice and fit for Epcot over GOTG.

I am unbelievably saddened to see this ride go. Really a bizarre move on Disney's part.

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