Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind - General Discussion

[JungleSkip]

Rode on Friday with the virtual queue.

In opposition to my thoughts about the entire package of TRON at MK, this feels like a big budget Disney addition. Impressive queue, preshows, funny bits, and all of it feels high quality.

That being said, while I think TRON is an unequivocal home run in the ride department, Guardians has a lot of issues for me. The ride is just *too* chaotic. The near-constant movement of the cars, the blaring music, and audio/visual your ostensibly supposed to be paying attention to is so disorienting. I've been on almost 200 roller coasters, and this is easily one of the ones that has made me the most sick. I feel like they needed to dial back the car spinning and the screens/dialogue they apparently want you to pay attention to. Because it's hard to enjoy the actual ride with those two elements.

Still, it's nice that EPCOT has a real coaster, and I'd still ride every time I could...but I could never ride this more than once in a day, while I could marathon TRON.

 

[Alicia]

Rode on Friday with the virtual queue.

In opposition to my thoughts about the entire package of TRON at MK, this feels like a big budget Disney addition. Impressive queue, preshows, funny bits, and all of it feels high quality.

That being said, while I think TRON is an unequivocal home run in the ride department, Guardians has a lot of issues for me. The ride is just *too* chaotic. The near-constant movement of the cars, the blaring music, and audio/visual your ostensibly supposed to be paying attention to is so disorienting. I've been on almost 200 roller coasters, and this is easily one of the ones that has made me the most sick. I feel like they needed to dial back the car spinning and the screens/dialogue they apparently want you to pay attention to. Because it's hard to enjoy the actual ride with those two elements.

Still, it's nice that EPCOT has a real coaster, and I'd still ride every time I could...but I could never ride this more than once in a day, while I could marathon TRON.

After 5 or 6 times riding I finally don’t get sick anymore. Once you know where the moves are you can finally just enjoy the ride and it’s much more fun. But my first 3 rides I got super queasy… and I’m the person who’s ridden Forbidden Journey 4 times back to back with no motion sickness.

 

[JungleSkip]

After 5 or 6 times riding I finally don’t get sick anymore. Once you know where the moves are you can finally just enjoy the ride and it’s much more fun. But my first 3 rides I got super queasy… and I’m the person who’s ridden Forbidden Journey 4 times back to back with no motion sickness.

It was my sister's second time riding when I rode, and she said she felt way less sick than the first time, so hopefully that's the case for whenever I get back on the ride.

 

[Scott W.]

I wonder if there’s some kind of placebo effect going on as it’s been well documented to make people feel queasy and having that in mind when riding for the first time could be playing tricks on the body.

 

[Alicia]

I wonder if there’s some kind of placebo effect going on as it’s been well documented to make people feel queasy and having that in mind when riding for the first time could be playing tricks on the body.

It’s disorientating af

It’s like if you tried to develop the most disorienting attraction on purpose, you’d end up with this.

The only way you could outdo it, is if you added strobe lights and heavy metal music to the kuka arms on Forbidden Journey.

 

[Freak]

It’s disorientating af

It’s like if you tried to develop the most disorienting attraction on purpose, you’d end up with this.

The only way you could outdo it, is if you added strobe lights and heavy metal music to the kuka arms on Forbidden Journey.

I’m not gonna lie, to me this sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

 

[Nick]

I've never had a problem with any sickness feeling with this ride, but I know many people do. I'm mostly motion sickness desensitized at this point.

 

[Scott W.]

It’s disorientating af

It’s like if you tried to develop the most disorienting attraction on purpose, you’d end up with this.

The only way you could outdo it, is if you added strobe lights and heavy metal music to the kuka arms on Forbidden Journey.

I was quite anxious before riding the first time but it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be and subsequent rides have been fine.

Compared to Mickey's Fun Wheel, it's quite tame.

 

[Nick]

I was quite anxious before riding the first time but it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be and subsequent rides have been fine.

Compared to Mickey's Fun Wheel, it's quite tame.

Yeah, fun wheel is probably about as nauseous as I get.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

I rode for the first time in September and absolutely loved it - to the point that begrudgingly, we bought a Lightning Lane for a 2nd ride of the day. lol

 

[Alicia]

It’s more disorientating than physically nauseating. Brain gut disconnect, your eyes can’t make sense of what your body is feeling.

 

[HandsomePete]

I’ve found there’s two way to combat the feeling of motion sickness for me (this is also the only ride I feel that way, excluding Mission Space which I just don’t ride anymore):

1) Try as much as possible to look the direction that the vehicle is traveling down the tracks. Where things get rough is when your head is turned looking at one thing, the car is going another direction, and it’s also spinning.

2) I’ve found the front row of each ride vehicle to be better, likely because your head is much closer to the axis of spinning. The front row is closer to spinning like a figure skater while the back row is spinning more like a teacup.

Edit to add: this picture shows what I mean about front row/back row… pivoting around the axis as opposed to getting slung around the axis makes a big difference.

 

[Alicia]

I’ve found there’s two way to combat the feeling of motion sickness for me (this is also the only ride I feel that way, excluding Mission Space which I just don’t ride anymore):

1) Try as much as possible to look the direction that the vehicle is traveling down the tracks. Where things get rough is when your head is turned looking at one thing, the car is going another direction, and it’s also spinning.

2) I’ve found the front row of each ride vehicle to be better, likely because your head is much closer to the axis of spinning. The front row is closer to spinning like a figure skater while the back row is spinning more like a teacup.

Yep. The front cars are easier to watch the track, which helps you keep track of where you’re actually going, which reduces the disconnect.

 

[tielo]

If there is a disconnect between what you see and what you feel, even if it's a millisecond, you will get motion sickness more easily.

 

[biggerboat16]

If there is a disconnect between what you see and what you feel, even if it's a millisecond, you will get motion sickness more easily.

I rode in the back car (front for backwards launch) and somehow didn’t get motion sickness whatsoever. I’m a coaster junkie who’s taken on all of the cedar point, six flags, seaworld etc headliners but screen rides always get to me. I was a little worried going in that the screens and spinning would get to me but I found the movements to be perfectly synced with the screens and I had a very pleasant ride. Out of sync screens are a recipe for disaster. I got a ride on forbidden journey with a one second lag between the screens and the motion of the kuka arm and it just about ruined my day!

 

[boomerthom]

Just rode this for the first time using an individual lightning lane. Was hoping to get two rides by using the virtual queue, but it ran out in the morning by 7:00:20am (short delay on my part because I picked up a LL for Remy, but good god almighty). Was on the app at 1:00pm absolutely sharp for the afternoon drop, refreshed the page, the option at the bottom changed from “refresh” to “join group” or whatever, and I tapped with the fury of a thousand suns only to be told that I was unable to join. A quick refresh later and it said there were no more VQ spots. This system is complete malarkey and I’m flabbergasted that people put up with it, especially if they’re paying a ton of money to visit from out of town.

I’m of two minds about this ride. On one hand, if we’re just talking the pure ride experience, this is probably my favorite ride at WDW now. I got Everybody Wants to Rule the World as the song, and I can’t describe the experience as anything other than euphoric. This is by far the smoothest coaster I’ve ever been on, almost to the point where it doesn’t even feel like a coaster, more like you’re effortlessly gliding/flying through space. There’s a great sense of speed throughout the ride with lots of twists and turns, and I didn’t experience any motion sickness (full disclosure - it’s never been an issue for me). Sitting in row 5, I found my head/eyes naturally tracking the cars ahead during the helixes, and the inside of the show building, while still pretty dark, was plenty bright enough to identify the track and the rest of the train. Aside from a couple seconds in the middle of the ride where the car rotates and moves backwards, I didn’t have much trouble telling which direction we were going. Overall, the ungodly smooth motion of the train, the sense of speed, and the music combine to make for complete sensory overload. I was laughing the whole time which doesn’t really happen to me on rides aside from ToT. I can’t imagine what it would be like with a more upbeat song like Disco Inferno.

So that’s the good. While the ride experience is beyond excellent for me, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure because let’s be honest here, this is kind of just a coaster in a big ol’ ugly box. The first minute or so of the ride is just going through empty black rooms with screens on the wall, and the theming on the ride isn’t anything to write home about - the actual screens after the launch are pretty ignorable imo. The facade for the ride is nearly nonexistent, and the multiple preshows feel overlong and unnecessary. I think this would benefit from a regular line from the entrance to the station with just some monitors setting up the story (I’m one of the ones who cheered when Hagrid’s preshow was taken down during the pandemic, just not my bag on these types of highly reridable coasters). With all that in mind I would hesitate to call this the best “attraction” at WDW (as in the complete experience from entering the queue to getting off the ride - ToT still wins for me there), but if we’re just comparing ride segments of attractions, this is pretty hard to beat imo.

Aside from a few misgivings this ride is a total win imo. I suppose the only other thing I dislike about it is that it makes me want to visit Epcot.

 

[GA-MBIT]

Yeah, the adjacent structures around the coaster (VQ, the multiple pre-shows, the long winding queue) all work together to turn what would be a wonderful Everest-style reride machine into something you can really only do like 1-2 times per day if you really give it your all. That's a big shame, because the ride itself is really good fun.

I do like the preshows the first few times around, but I really wish there was a cutscene skip button like some video games have haha! Judging how most crowds hug the right wall of the second one, I think most tourists agree with me.

 

[boomerthom]

Yeah, the adjacent structures around the coaster (VQ, the multiple pre-shows, the long winding queue) all work together to turn what would be a wonderful Everest-style reride machine into something you can really only do like 1-2 times per day if you really give it your all. That's a big shame, because the ride itself is really good fun.

I do like the preshows the first few times around, but I really wish there was a cutscene skip button like some video games have haha! Judging how most crowds hug the right wall of the second one, I think most tourists agree with me.

As someone who doesn’t really get into the stories of rides (don’t sue me, I just find it cheesy most of the time) I have to wonder what percentage of guests really care about it to the point where they enjoy these long preshows. Like, just give me some decent context and a fun ride. Preshows can be fine for me if they’re short and sweet (or memable, hello ET Adventure and Dinosaur) but something like GotG or FoP? Idk mang

Side note, but it occurred to me that Cosmic Rewind is kinda what I wanted Gringotts to be when it was announced to use a ride system of coaster trains with controlled spinning…as in, Cosmic Rewind does actual roller coasting with spinning.

 

[Tobias]

Yeah, the adjacent structures around the coaster (VQ, the multiple pre-shows, the long winding queue) all work together to turn what would be a wonderful Everest-style reride machine into something you can really only do like 1-2 times per day if you really give it your all. That's a big shame, because the ride itself is really good fun.

I do like the preshows the first few times around, but I really wish there was a cutscene skip button like some video games have haha! Judging how most crowds hug the right wall of the second one, I think most tourists agree with me.

Cosmic Rewind is easily one of the best examples that coasters should NOT have multiple pre-shows. The coaster itself is very re-ridable, but the pre-shows are becoming a slog, and you just keep reading and seeing more and more folks just crowding the right side of the second room cuz' they don't wanna' wait. And I can't recall any other ride where people do that.

 

[NotPennysBoat]

Preshows are line holders. If there was no preshow, then you would just be standing in line anyway. The reason why people hug the right side of the 2nd preshow in GOTG is so that they can be first to join the line near the ride entrance and not be behind everyone else in the preshow room, not because they don’t like preshows. I enjoy the preshows, but I hug that right side as well.