Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind

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What It Is
Indoor roller coaster
Our Rating

Current Wait Time
Park is closed

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Appeal By Age
Based our reader surveys. See our Ratings and Research page for details.
Preschool
Grade School
Teens
Young Adults
Over 30
Seniors

Touring Info
Loading speed	Moderate
Wait per 100 people ahead	2.0 minutes
Assumes	All cars running
When to go Grab a boarding group at 7 a.m. Once the ride converts to standby lines, visit in the first 30 minutes the park is open or use Individual Lightning Lane

General Info
Location	World Discovery
Opening Date	May 27, 2022
Duration	4 minutes
Scope and Scale	Super Headliner
Lightning Lane Prices

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Description And Comments

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is EPCOT's newest ride. Its premise is that it's EPCOT's newest World Showcase pavilion, with a twist: you're not visiting another country - you're visiting another planet - Xandar.

You start your interplanetary voyage at the Guardians of the Galaxy building near EPCOT's front entrance, in World Discovery (formerly Future World East). If you're using the standby queue, you'll be directed to doors on the left side of the entrance. If you're using Lightning Lane at Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll enter the pavilion through doors on your right. As at other attractions, you'll skip a lot of the pre-show elements by using the Lightning Lane - but none of what you're missing is needed for the attraction.

Once inside, the pre-show area looks like a cross between EPCOT's current Test Track pavilion and Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur: lots of walkways curved around various display items, from the history of Xandar, to the introduction of the Guardians of the Galaxy cast for those who haven't seen the movies.

The queue is set up to incorporate several holding areas - small rooms through which guests are "pulsed" through in regular intervals. The idea here is that by switching you from lines to rooms to lines again, you'll feel better than if you were just in one long, uninterrupted line.

Eventually, you make it to the final pre-show room, where the ride's actual plot is revealed. Like most modern Disney rides (Rise of the Resistance, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, Remy's Ratatouille Adventure), Guardians of the Galaxy uses the "and then something went wrong" trope. It's facile, it's tired, and it's predictable. In this case, the thing-going-wrong is a villain stealing a very important power supply.

Actor Terry Crews delivers the bad news about the power supply - and let me say that Terry's acting is one of the highlights of the ride; if we ever detect an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, I want Terry Crews to break it to me. Terry tells you to join the Guardians of the Galaxy to get back the power supply. (There are a couple of other neat show elements in this scene: one will be familiar to anyone who's been on the Haunted Mansion; the other will be familiar to anyone who's seen Mickey's PhilharMagic or Avatar: Flight of Passage.)

From there you enter the ride's loading area. It's a large room with loading platforms to your left and your right. Both sides are otherwise identical, and having two distinct loading areas allows faster ride dispatches. That keeps wait times low. The ride begins with a familiar ride element: a backwards launch, very, very similar to the one in Expedition Everest over at Animal Kingdom. Then your ride vehicle turns around to face forward, at the exact moment you're supposed to enter deep space. This might be the best effect in the entire ride. Disney's programmed the ride vehicle to spin and tilt down just a bit, as you enter a massive room, pitch black other than some simulated stars and planets. On our first ride, we felt like we were floating in space - an actual "wow!" moment.

Much of the rest of the ride felt similar to Rock 'n' Roller Coaster: lots of tight turns past a few scenic objects. Guardians of the Galaxy's ride track doesn't have any loops or inversions, though, while Rock 'n' Roller Coaster does. And like Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, you'll get a rock-and-roll soundtrack during your ride. Songs include A Flock of Seagulls' I Ran, Blondie's One Way or Another, and Earth, Wind, and Fire's September.

The ride ends with the Guardians' mission succeeding. The whole on-board ride experience takes just under 3 minutes. That potentially gives Guardians an hourly capacity of around 2,000 riders per hour (if everything goes right), which is better than average for a ride of this type.

Touring Tips

This attraction offers Scheduled Lightning Lane via Individual Purchase.
You must join a Virtual Queue via Disney's app to experience this attraction (unless you pay to use Lightning Lane). There is no standby line.
Open for Extended Evening Theme Park Hours.

Cosmic Rewind will be the highest priority attraction for most guests. Disney is using “boarding groups” (a virtual queuing system) to prevent long standby lines at Cosmic Rewind. Guests can join the day's virtual queue at 7:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m. using Disney's official app. Spots in the virtual queue can disappear quickly on busy days, effectively making the opportunity to ride a sort of lottery. To get a sense of how the process works, see our Step-By-Step Guide (this is for a Disneyland Resort attraction, but the process is analogous). Expect to wait about an hour once you get in the physical line after your boarding group is called.

Alternatively, you can to pay to use the faster Lightning Lane queue. The ability to pay for this individual attraction becomes available in Disney's app at 7:00 a.m. for Disney hotel guests and at park opening for others. On busy days, these individual Lightning Lane spots may sell out quickly each day.

If you are eligible to use Extended Evening Theme Park Hours (EETPH), note that the Guardians virtual queue for a night's EETPH opens up at 6:00 p.m. There is no standby queue during EETPH, so joining a Boarding Group is the only way to ride during that time.