Disney gives a glimpse of its upcoming ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ attraction
Walt Disney Co. has received a lot of negative reaction to its plan to overhaul the popular Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction at California Adventure Park, remaking it to feature Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” heroes.
Disney on Monday released new images of the proposed attraction, hoping pictures of a scale model of the new ride, dubbed Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout, will win over fans.
Tower of Terror, an elevator-drop ride that has drawn a strong following, is scheduled to close in January and reopen as a Marvel superhero attraction in the summer. Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment and its characters for $4 billion in 2009.
The new attraction will resemble a futuristic power plant, said Joe Rohde, portfolio creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. The building, the back story goes, is the fortress of a Marvel character named the Collector, who stockpiles living beings from around the universe.
“It really has a lot different design elements that all come together and create what’s really a very striking building,” John Mauro, executive director of Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a video released Monday. “It’s going to look like a brand new attraction.”
But even Disney’s new images of the overhaul were not enough to sway hardcore Tower of Terror fans. Comments posted on the YouTube page were mostly negative.
“This really does look like a pile of trash from the dump,” said one critic.
Said another critic: “I’ll give Disney a mission: to breakout of the trend of reskinning classic rides into flavor of the week IPs,” referring to the intellectual property for Marvel characters.
A petition on the website Change.org has been signed by more than 35,000 people urging Disney not to overhaul the ride.
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