Our May 2022 trip to WDW happened to line up with Annual Passholder previews for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at Epcot. I was able to get a preview pass to ride it on our planned Epcot day and went by myself – I was the only one in our group with an Annual Pass. It was a really easy process – I made the reservation online for one of the 30 minute windows, received an email confirming my reservation, and (since I was signed into my Disney account to make the reservation) it automatically linked to my MagicBand.

When I walked to the ride area, there were signs around with arrows pointing to a “Special Event” so I followed those, scanned my Magic Band a few times, and then walked into the ride building. The wait was really quick – maybe 15 minutes before I was in the first pre-show room.

To preface this review, I think it’s important to note my favorite ride at WDW is Rise of the Resistance so it’s more obvious where my thoughts are coming from. Some of my other favorites (sorted by park – not ranked) are:

• Splash Mountain
• Space Mountain
• Tower of Terror
• Slinky Dog Dash
• Expedition Everest
• Na’vi River Journey
• Frozen Ever After
• Soarin’

So, there’s a little variation but typically I’m more of a thrill person.

There are some limited spoilers in this – I’m not going over the whole story line, but if you don’t want to know what the ride is like then I would stop reading. I didn’t take many photos because I was trying to take it all in, but I’ve included a few throughout.

Summary / Overall Thoughts

I felt like the ride was:

• Exciting but not necessarily thrilling
• A great combination of a lot of concepts that have worked well for Disney in the past
• Full of unique ride technology – there’s nothing like it in WDW or Universal Studios, so that makes it exciting
• The perfect addition to World Discovery in Epcot

Queue

The queue for Cosmic Rewind is absolutely fantastic and probably my new favorite queue – beating out Slinky Dog Dash and Toy Story Mania. It was incredibly clever, sets riders up for the pre-show, is entertaining to help pass the time, and is just really modern and cool. I swear, it also currently has the attraction version of “new car smell” (so new ride smell?). The queue is a lot more exciting than some of the other queues at Epcot so I don’t think people will mind waiting compared to some of the other rides at the park.

First Pre-Show

The first pre-show area gives a good, quick explanation of the background of the ride. It wasn’t anything too exciting but was necessary to catch everyone up on “why” we’re supposed to be there.

Second Pre-Show

The second pre-show area is where the big major problem happens, so we have to diverge from our original plan (the plan from the first pre-show). One thing I found interesting was that it wasn’t a super unique concept for a ride in theory; it was more like a combination of other popular rides:

• Have to get somewhere / do something ASAP (Think: Rock ‘n Rollercoaster)
• We’re on a mission and there are bad guys (Think: Rise of the Resistance)
• We’re in space (Think: Space Mountain)

I have absolutely no idea how part of this pre-show worked – the walls kind of disappear in like two seconds while the room is dark and I’m not sure how? So I’m excited to try and pay more attention next time.

Boarding

Kind of like in Rise, there’s a bit of a queue to get from the second pre-show to the boarding area. There are two separate loading areas (a cast member tells people to go left or right, like in Space Mountain) so it moved quickly. The cars were nicer than I expected – there was plenty of leg room.

The Ride

One of the most fun parts of this ride is that the song that plays is randomized – from my brief Google search, there are six possible songs that can play. This randomization is a familiar concept for Disney; some examples:

• Different storylines in Star Tours
• Randomized song at Disney’s California Adventure on Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission BREAKOUT
• Different drop sequences in Tower of Terror

The ride is on a roller coaster track, but it’s really unique because the cars are doing some controlled swiveling throughout the ride so the riders can face different massive screens while riding. This is interesting because:

• It’s unique technology – I’ve never seen this before
• Presumably because of the swiveling, the ride doesn’t go as fast as I would have expected from a ride on a roller coaster track. I think if it also went much faster while swiveling there would be a lot of issues with motion sickness so it makes sense, but since it is a little slower it’s not as thrilling
  • Similarly, I was surprised that the ride doesn’t have any big drops. I think it’s because it wouldn’t really make sense with the ride – why would there be big drops in space? – and again, could have led to more motion sickness
• Again, there are quite a few massive screens to look at throughout the ride. I felt like I didn’t pay as much attention to them as I would have liked to, so I’m excited to ride it again and focus more on those. I don’t think they were actually difficult to see and focus on – I was just distracted by the whole experience and taking everything in
• The length of the ride was decent – from my Googling, it’s about the same amount of ride time as Big Thunder Mountain

Final Thoughts

I really liked the ride but I didn’t feel like it quite lived up to the hype I was seeing online. The queue and pre-shows were awesome, but it felt like a modernized Space Mountain that’s themed for Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m not mad about it and again, I think it was the perfect addition to Epcot and World Discovery, but it didn’t replace Rise as my number 1 ride. I am excited to ride it a few more times and see if it ends up in my list of favorites, though.

Let me know what you think if you’ve experienced it!