Kerrie and Nathan ride EPCOT’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” for their 1st time.
Before I start, I do have to say that to get access to this ride we didn’t pay the $17 each which gets you straight to the front of the queue but we woke up at 7AM, fired up the Disney World App and joined the “Virtual Queue” – by 7:02 AM the virtul queue system was full and so you really need to make sure you persevere day on day – it’s certainly not easy to get on this ride for free. Anyway, here’s my blog…
So today we went to EPCOT, and one of the Disney rides that we wound up going on was the Guardians of the Galaxy ride. If you’ve not been before, I definitely recommend that you give it a try. My brother and sister had been on this last October and had told me all about it and today, on an Easter break from Uni, it was my turn to give it a try. Here’s a blog about My first ride on EPCOT’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”
If I had to tell you one thing about this ride, it’s that you’re not just going on the ride. There’s a whole epic little story-cutscene type thing before you go on. It’s all based on the Guardians of the Galaxy universe. I’ll try and explain it as best I can!
So, obviously, the Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the groups in the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now and I found out today that I was the only one in the family who had actually watched any of the films. It’s got Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana – and Groot. The opening segment is all about a special group called the Nova Corps who crop up in the movies. They’re like an intergalactic police force, and your group is part of the first group of “Terrans” (their term for humans) who are going to teleport up to one of their ships to try their technology to jump across space through wormholes.
Anyway, that’s the basic idea behind the beginning bit of the segment. If there’s one thing I can say about Disney World it’s that they try to give you a pretty immersive experience. We all walked into a room, and this opening movie played on a big screen up above. It was a proper little sequence with the actors from the movie playing the role of Nova corps officials, which was really cool.
Once that’s done, you go into the teleport area. It looks amazing, honestly, and it’s clearly been done up to look like a proper teleport pad. When you get in, you’re greeted by Terry Crews, and he’s playing the guy who’s going to teleport you up to the ship.
The teleportation sequence is really cool too. There are a lot of flashing lights and technological-sounding noises, but it only lasts for a couple of minutes, and then you’re on the ship. That’s when you get a little more backstory and explanation. Essentially the planet that the Nova Corps come from is powered by a giant battery-generator type thing. Unfortunately, just as we’re getting ready to use the wormhole technology, all the lights go out… and the battery is stolen.
Yeah, there’s a plot twist. The battery is stolen by this giant rock energy monster, so the Nova Corps call in the pros – the Guardians of the Galaxy themselves! This was really cool because it was actually the actors themselves doing their roles – Chris Pratt himself was leading the charge.
The ride is almost here, but for now, there’s a little more plot to get through. It turns out that the rock monster is going to make a wormhole back to the past and wipe out life in the universe, and that’s obviously not going to be acceptable, so it’s up to the Guardians (and us) to stop him.
From there, we were led to the ride, and it was time to finally get to the main event. The ride itself is amazing and a lot of fun. You’ll start it off in “escape pods”, and then eventually, you’ll go into the wormhole itself, and start heading backwards through time. This is where a lot of the normal Guardians of the Galaxy stuff starts to come into play – for example; every ride has a different soundtrack. We had “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire.
The ride itself was fast, exciting and a lot of fun. You’re in the dark for a lot of the ride, which is cool, because that gives all the visual effects time to shine. There are lights, and flashing parts, and the whole time that you’re on the ride, there’s a sequence playing out on the screens around you. You can see the characters interacting and moving around, and it really adds to the immersion.
As a ride, it goes fast enough that you feel like you’re having a good time but not so fast that you can’t appreciate what’s going on. It does strike a good balance between speed and immersion. I was able to keep up with the story as the ride was going on because they’d clearly put a lot of time into making it work.
The ride is a reasonable length. It’s not the longest ride out there, but that’s okay because you can actually come back and go on it again, and then you’ll hear a different song. I think there are six or seven different soundtracks for the actual ride, so it might be fun to try and see if you can listen to all of them.
The ride finishes with a little bit of dialogue between the Guardians. You become an honorary member of the team once the ride is over, the day is saved, and the generator is returned back to the Nova Corps.
So, what did I think about this ride? Well, I really loved it. The ride itself was amazing; there was a lot going on, and it was fast, fun, immersive, and had some good visual effects. However, I really do have to give points to the build-up. The story and “world building” that led to getting on the ride itself were really well done. You really felt like this was an entire universe with characters, and to see those famous faces on the screen was a real treat.
Obviously, the buildup to the ride is probably quite similar every time, but the music for each ride is different, and that’s fun. They’re all popular, famous songs, which is what Guardians of the Galaxy loves to do. However, it really was a lot of fun. It’s definitely a ride that I’d recommend you try if you’re visiting Disney World because it’s a real treat to see the enthusiasm and energy from the actors and the special effects. You need good special effects, and these felt like they could’ve come straight out of a Marvel movie.
After we all exited the ride, we had to do a bit of larking around with some of the Merch in the Guardians of the Galaxy shop and all in all, the others were absolutely right. This is indeed now my new favourite Disney ride and I just “have” to go on it again.
Author: Nathan Potts. Exclusive Private Villas.
