Guardians of the Galaxy Testing New Queue Pattern

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in EPCOT has been testing new queue patterns for the second pre-show. We stopped in on January 2nd to grab some current photos of the process now being tested.

If you’ve ridden Guardians of the Galaxy in EPCOT before, you’ll remember there is an initial pre-show with Terry Crews as Centurion Tal Marik. The second pre-show is where we see the theft of the cosmic generator and our need to recover it before the universe is doomed. Now that so many guests have either ridden Guardians or have learned about ride “hacks” on the internet, most every guest moves into the second pre-show and immediately lines up on the far right of the room where the final doors will open and lead to the ride. Over time, the triple doors opening has become a bit of a Pamplona-style barreling and less of a zipper merge that we think designers envisioned.

The excellent example of cartography above shows how the three lines would merge into a sweaty ball of chaos once the doors would open and guests would hustle to the hallway leading to the ride ramp.

When we visited on January 2nd, the middle door was marked “out of service” and there were ropes and Cast Members keeping guests from lining up at the center path.

We hung back a bit once the doors opened so we could observe the new line flow. The guests on the left had a natural gap before entering the hallway since it is closer to the doors on the right. EPCOT was enjoying a very busy Crowd Level 7 that day and we’re happy to report this new queue structure seems to be making the line less hectic at the merge point.

We’ll continue to keep an eye out for changes to the queue in the weeks ahead.