Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!
| Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney California Adventure |
| Land / area | Avengers Campus |
| Type | Drop tower dark ride |
| Opened | May 27, 2017 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 40 in (102 cm) |
| Status | Operating |
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! is a drop tower dark ride in Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure in the Disneyland Resort, California. Opened on May 27, 2017, it reuses the building and ride system of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which had operated on the site from 2004 to 2017, rethemed to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy films. The tower stands 183 feet (56 m) tall and is among the tallest structures at the resort.
History
The California Tower of Terror opened on May 5, 2004, a smaller-budget counterpart to the Florida original. In July 2016, at San Diego Comic-Con, Disney announced that the California tower would instead become the Collector's fortress, the first major Marvel attraction at the park. The Tower of Terror closed on January 2, 2017, and the conversion was completed in under five months.
Mission: Breakout! opened on May 27, 2017, shortly after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The surrounding land was at first still Hollywood Land; the tower was formally absorbed into Avengers Campus when that land opened in 2021, which resolved the visual mismatch of a Marvel fortress standing apart from the park's Marvel area.
Experience
The queue is a tour of the collection of Taneleer Tivan, the Collector, whose cages and cases display creatures, artefacts and, in the preshow, the captured Guardians themselves. Rocket, who has escaped, appears to enlist riders in a rescue: they are to board a gantry lift, raise their hands to be scanned, and trigger the shutdown that frees the team.
The lifts seat 21 riders and rise and fall through the shaft in one of six ride profiles, each built around a different song from the films' repertoire of 1960s and 1970s recordings, among them "Hit Me with Your Best Shot", "Free Ride" and "Burning Love". Screens at each stop show the Guardians fighting through the fortress as the lift accelerates up and down, with drops of up to 130 feet (40 m). Because the profile is not announced in advance, repeat rides differ in both music and motion.
Monsters After Dark
For the Halloween season, a variant called Guardians of the Galaxy – Monsters After Dark runs in the evenings. It continues the story immediately after the main ride: the Guardians have escaped but Groot has been left behind, and riders return into a fortress overrun by the Collector's freed creatures, to a heavy-metal score written for the overlay.
Design
The conversion kept the tower's three-shaft structure and its accelerated drop system, in which motors pull the lifts downward faster than gravity alone would. The exterior was entirely reskinned, replacing the 1930s Hollywood hotel facade with a brightly coloured, pipe-covered fortress topped by antennae and dishes.