I’m sure the arrival of “Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout” isn’t news to you, with as many radio ads, billboards, posters we have been bombarded with these past few months, it may feel like you’ve already ridden it. Hopefully, in addition to our review, we can give you some helpful tips on how to minimize your time in line!

I feel like it’s necessary to preface this post by telling you that Tower of Terror was one of my favorite rides, so I think regardless of what replaced Tower, I will always be a bit bitter towards it. However, riding a new ride at Disneyland is fun no matter what, even if it means that blood sucking Marvel land is taking over your hopes and dreams. Okay, thinking happy thoughts now…

THE RIDE:

There’s no denying that no expense was spared in the creation of this ride. The shining gold tower can be seen from any part of the park, gleaming and taunting your inner Tamatoa. The details of this ride were also really well done, from the collector’s collection to the plants in the courtyard, we felt very immersed in the Guardians world. Not as much as we did with Tower, but we will take what we can get. Once you get in the actual building you are taken through the Collectors “collection” and shown a video of the guardians in their captivity.  It is definitely an immersive and fun experience.

 

 

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THE LINE AND FAST PASS TIPS:

Your best bet for the shortest lines (at least on weekends) is to get there EARLY. And by early we mean before the park opens.. maybe even way before the park opens. We left with the goal of getting there before 9, when California adventure opened. We arrived to get in line to enter the park and were ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE DISNEYLAND GATES, what in the world?! I’ve never seen anything like it before. They were slowly letting people in before the park opening to get up to the rope drop. We did not get into the park until 9:02ish AM which means we were probably in line to get in the park for a good 30 minutes. After this we divided and conquered, Kelsey got in line for fast passes, I got in line for the actual ride, and somehow we lost Kaitlin but figured we would find her eventually. When I got in line for the ride they estimated the wait to be around 220 minutes. While the fast pass line was still long, Kelsey joined us in the main ride line around 9:30 and our fast passes were for 11:45. Fast passes ran out at about 11:15 as an FYI. We were determined to stick out our time in line since we had already invested our morning, but we spent almost three hours in line even for have gotten in line right as the park opened. For anyone who has been on Tower before, you know the line is pretty miserable, as you’re stuck in the courtyard area for a good hour. We resorted to playing “Heads Up” on our phones for a good majority of that time, and we probably would have gone crazy without it. If you want to ride Guardians this summer, you have to be in the mindset of knowing you are going to be waiting in line. Now that you’re in the know, it’s up to you choosing which lines you DO stand in. We suggest getting to the park an hour before it opens, this means you can be first in line for the fastpasses as well as for the ride. However, fast pass users beware, when we went back to use our fastpasses, the line just for there was 45 minutes. Nothing fast about it, and since we wanted to vomit at the mere thought of being in line again, we gifted our fastpasses to the first group we saw wearing Marvel shirts. Hopefully the fastpass karma comes back to us soon!

 

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Look, its not Tower. Which will be so severely missed that I can’t really think about it for too long. Many people will tell you it is an “upgrade”… and I can see what they are saying. The technology is amazing, and the ride itself has a much less predictive track, fun music and a cool story is definitely pretty awesome. Trying to compare the ride to Tower is comparing apples to oranges. It may stand in the same place as our favorite Hollywood Hotel, it may carry some remains of all the good times we had there… but it isn’t the same. Ultimately, I am still pretty bitter that Tower is gone, but I don’t hate that this exists.