Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
| Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind | |
|---|---|
| Park | Epcot |
| Land / area | World Discovery |
| Type | Indoor roller coaster |
| Opened | May 27, 2022 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 42 in (107 cm) |
| Status | Operating |
Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is an enclosed roller coaster in World Discovery at Epcot in the Walt Disney World Resort, Florida. Opened on May 27, 2022, it was the first roller coaster built at Epcot and the first Walt Disney World attraction themed to the Guardians of the Galaxy characters from Marvel. The ride is presented as the Wonders of Xandar pavilion, described in its story as an exhibition from the planet Xandar installed at Epcot, and it replaced the former Universe of Energy pavilion on the same site.
History
The Universe of Energy, an opening-day Epcot pavilion later centred on the Ellen's Energy Adventure show, closed in August 2017. A Guardians of the Galaxy attraction had been announced at the D23 Expo that summer, as part of a wider multi-year transformation of Epcot that also reorganised the former Future World into the neighbourhoods of World Celebration, World Nature and World Discovery.
Construction reused the original Universe of Energy building as the queue and loading area, while a much larger new show building behind it contains the coaster. Disney stated that building covered more than 200,000 square feet. Opening slipped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ride debuted during the Walt Disney World 50th anniversary celebrations.
For its first years the ride did not use a conventional standby line. From opening until February 2025, access was by virtual queue or paid individual Lightning Lane, one of the longest periods any Disney attraction has operated under that system, before a standard standby queue was introduced.
Ride system
Cosmic Rewind uses a ride system Disney calls an OmniCoaster, a play on the Omnimover system used by classic Epcot dark rides. Each four-person vehicle, called a Starjumper, can rotate a full 360 degrees under computer control as it travels the track, so that riders are turned towards screens and set pieces at the moments the story requires rather than simply facing forwards. The rotation is controlled and gradual, not a free spin.
The coaster also introduced the first reverse launch on a Disney roller coaster. Riders are launched backwards at the start of the main ride sequence before the track continues forwards through the show building. With roughly 5,577 feet of track, it is among the longest fully enclosed roller coasters in the world and the longest in any Disney park. There are no inversions, and the ride reaches speeds of about 60 mph.
Experience
The queue passes through the Galaxarium and exhibition galleries of the Wonders of Xandar pavilion, introducing Xandarian technology and the idea of a Cosmic Generator that allows near-instant travel across space. In the pre-show, Nova Prime Irani Rael welcomes visitors before the demonstration is interrupted: the Celestial Eson has taken the generator and intends to rewind time to remake the universe.
Riders board Starjumpers to follow the Guardians — Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot — in pursuit of Eson. After the reverse launch, vehicles race through projected scenes of deep space, orbit the Moon and the Earth, and pass through jump points while Eson looms over the action, until the generator is recovered and the timeline restored.
Each ride is accompanied by one of six pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s, selected at random, in keeping with the mixtape motif of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. The six tracks are "September", "Disco Inferno", "Conga", "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", "I Ran (So Far Away)" and "One Way or Another". Because riders cannot choose the song, repeat rides can differ in tone as well as in the rotation programme of the vehicles.