Guardians of The Galaxy ride sticks out at Disney California Adventure because they meant to do that

Have you not seen that disney is using this to anchor a new Marvel themed section? It's been discussed in this very thread. Eventually the area around it will be turned similarly.

I should also mention, for those not familiar, that even though it is in Hollywood land and even though it towers over almost everything else at the entire complex, it is in the very corner of Hollywood land right on the border with Bug's Land. If you took the map, changed the color of the path, and labeled it Marvel Land, it would not seem out of place (besides the fact that Marvel Land would only have one attraction).

Tekwardo said:

Have you not seen that disney is using this to anchor a new Marvel themed section? It's been discussed in this very thread. Eventually the area around it will be turned similarly.

Then spend a few dollars more, add a shop, a restaurant and perhaps another small attraction and launch the new land instead of feeding everyone the PR line that is "intended to look out of place."

It's a 20 story building. Even if/when they do that the building will look out of place in the skyline. If it's not your cup of tea, I get it, but acting like the company is throwing stuff out to see what sticks just isn't the case.

Yeah, I don't buy that this entirely random. I mean, Tower of Terror in Florida is the color it is because it blends in better with Morocco when seen from Epcot. There's a bigger picture, I just don't think we have it all yet.

Simply a question, not a judgement. I'm neither a Disney or Marvel fanboy, but...

If they wanted a tall building that fits in with a soon to be created Marvel land, why not go with the Stark Tower seen in the first Avengers movie?

Of course, the answer is probably that they have another Avengers ride already in the making, so chose to theme this one differently.

I agree with Tommy. When you have a structure this big, why not make it into a building that is recognizable or iconic? The Tower of Terror is/was extremely iconic, and I hope it won't be removed at the Orlando location.

A Stark Tower would be really cool, and I think Guardians of the Galaxy would've been better fit for some space flight simulator style ride rather than this drop tower because one of the things that sets Guardians of the Galaxy apart is the fax that their films have a lot of "Star Wars style" space chases and space battles.

It doesn't matter. Whatever any of you said above it doesn't matter.

At the park this morning, there was an instant 2 hour wait before the official park opening time at 9:00 am (pre-entry allowed for crowd control, and a 45 minute wait (8:30-9:15 am) to bang the fast pass machine (return time 11:50 am). The line to get FP's stayed 40 minutes long, including an area backstage, until they cut it off, and Fast passes were totally gone by 11:30 am. Standby line reached 3 hours and 20 minutes shortly after lunch. Averaged 120 -150 minutes for most of the day, dropping to 90 at closing.

People are eating it up and buying all the GotG souvage they can get their hands on. Especially young people, for whom TZ has no resonance. It's a cheap but well done conversion. The building is not as hideous as I thought it would be (honestly DCA's tower was never pretty to start with anyway). I actually enjoyed the attraction, and I'm not a GotG fan, thus I missed half of the jokes/Easter eggs. Ride program we got was more aggressive than the prior TZToT program running in Cal.

Will it be here in 20 years? Who knows, who cares, it's printing money for Disney right now

Really? A brand new, heavily marketed Disney ride has a long line at opening so the long term is automatically fine?

How Do you define long term, and his much dies that affect success/ROI?

The previous version of the ride only lasted 13 years. This one is obviously very modular/changeable.

I mean, the building is there regardless. They could put a new facade and theje with new scenes every decade and I'd imagine they'd still get a good ROI.

My only point was that the length of the line during opening week does not invalidate any of the points made earlier in the thread like creditwh0re suggests.

My point is it doesn't matter. Disney has shown that they can do a decent conversion in less than 6 months and it's successful. People are loving it. Who cares if it can't last 20 years. If the money flow stops they can/will change it again. At the moment the surveys are off the charts high. It's bringing people into the parks in crazy numbers, and it's an in-house license rather than paying for someone else's IP. Thus it really doesn't matter what we think. For once (in the last 2 decades) Disney has proven to be very nimble, and it's paying off.

Today was essentially no different than yesterday. Huge crowds, FP's gone by 10:30, 2 hour lines all day long. Even more important is the reaction of riders who are Loving it. They're bemoaning the fact that they can't do it again (no FP's and Standby is too long) so they WILL eventually come back. For a locals park, you couldn't ask for more

Tekwardo gets it. Quality, quick conversion equals huge spike in ridership and souvenir sales. If it lasts 5 years before needing an update it's a huge improvement over TZToT.

For those of you not from SoCal, the original ride did NOT spike attendance, or souvenir sales. It was relegated to a small piece of a failed park. It wasn't until the $1B plus overhaul of DCA that anybody cared about the park. It was essentially overflow for DL. It's now a full day park that people will actually buy a one day ticket to attend. This change amps that up tremendously

Agreed. I visited the Disneyland resort in 2005 during the holiday season. DCA was the park we went to when DIsneyland was at capacity and wasn't letting anybody else in. We visited again in 2014 and DCA was a completely different park. Added since are visit included Cars Land, Little Mermain, and Toy Story Mania. We spent an almost an equal amount of time between Disneyland and DCA. I dare say I actually preferred DCA to Disneyland on our last visit.

I was a fan of Tower of Terror and the Guardians of the Galaxy ride looks pretty meh based on seeing the videos of the ride on YouTube. We are visiting next week and I'd like to ride Guardians but if I don't I'm fine with that too. There's so much that both parks have to offer and we'll definitely be back in a few years when Star Wars land opens...unless the Marvel expansion is right around the corner. Besides the point of this trip is to show a WDW nut that there actually is a great (IMHO better) resort on the other side of the country.

In my opinion Guardians is not worth a 2 hour line. But then I'm reluctant to wait two hours for any attraction. It is a fun, dynamically more aggressive ride than TZToT, and if the opportunity affords it, it's well worth doing

Especially for West Coasters who never had the randomized programs that WDW's Tower had, it's a new twist.

My point is that they could poop in a box, stamp a Marvel property on it, stick it in a completely non-coherent location and it would still draw lines like that during its opening week. I'm not saying that's what they did. I'm saying that opening week crowds are not correlated to ride quality, longevity, or park enhancement, especially with the amount of marketing they're doing.

Back in the day, I would happily wait for hours on end to ride the newest ride. Not any more.

I have yet to ride Goliath at Six Flags Great America; I'm just not willing to wait for hours to get on a ride. A couple of years ago, they had a single rider line, but the employee on duty wasn't interested in, well, doing his job. "I guess if you want to wait awhile I can go see if they have any lanyards available." No, I don't want to wait "awhile".

I'd be interested in knowing what the lines for GotG are in September.