Mission Breakout: The Review

Disclaimer 1: Obviously, I am a Tower of Terror fan.  Naturally, I’m a little bitter that my favorite ride got removed in favor of Mission Breakout.  I tried my best to approach the subject with an open mind.

Disclaimer 2: I am a big fan of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and consider it to be one of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Take the combination of this and the previous disclaimer as you will.

Now, as for the review…

As soon as Mission Breakout opened, I immediately went searching for photos and videos of the ride experience.  After all the speculation, I wanted to know the results of the Tower of Terror’s questionable-sounding makeover.  I was actually tempted to write a review as soon as high-quality video came out, but I decided against it.  I needed to see this thing in person and experience the ride before I felt I could pass proper judgment.

I expected to dislike the ride (due to it taking over Tower of Terror), but possibly enjoy the dropping portion.  After all, I had enjoyed the Maliboomer, which was a completely un-themed drop ride from DCA 1.0.  I didn’t expect much from the theming, since Guardians of the Galaxy seemed such an odd fit for the ride setup.  I really wanted GOTG to get an original ride.

Finally, I was able to get Disney tickets and experience Mission Breakout in person.  My verdict?

The short answer is: It is an utter failure of an attraction that fails to live up to its potential at any point in its experience.  Even parts I expected to enjoy, or at least find serviceable, were utter disappointments.  C- to D grade.  Step up your game, Disney!

Now, if you wish to know why I managed to walk away utterly hating this attraction when I expected it to be at least mildly entertaining, read onward as I analyze this wreck piece by piece.

1. The Exterior

Even before its opening, Mission Breakout’s exterior gained something of a reputation as a hot mess.  While possibly an attempt at Italian Futurism, it looks more like someone got bored and just decided to stick pipes everywhere and borrow the aesthetic of Tomorrowland 1998.  I never thought it looked like anything from the GOTG films.  I also heard complaints that the shiny metallic decorations also caused severe sun glare at certain times of the day.  Based on photos and other people’s reviews, I thought I had an idea of what I was going to see in person.

Street level view, while approaching it

I was not prepared for how terrible Mission Breakout’s façade looks in person.  The color palette is bizarre and clashing, and the colors all seem to muddy together, especially in the lower half of the building.  This seems more pronounced in person than in photos.  At some points it looks like the painters switched between colors without properly cleaning their brushes.  The metal fixtures indeed get rather eye-burning at sunset.

From the Hyperion theater stairs

From near the attraction entrance.  That line out front was the fastpass queue; capacity issues made the line that backed up.

Furthermore, there’s quite a bit of inconsistency in the design and paint scheme of the exterior.  Parts like the domed tower over the pre-show rooms and the columns bordering the exterior queue are given very pretty art deco paint jobs, which seem glaringly out of place among the pipe-covered muddy mess of the rest of the place.  Furthermore, the paint on the columns in particular makes them look even more art deco than before, which seems a strange choice with the apparent attempts to change the aesthetic elsewhere.

A gorgeous art deco column... for a queue that's not supposed to be art deco anymore.

With the exception of the building and its exterior queue, the rest of the building’s grounds are basically unchanged from its Tower days.  This creates a severe clash that borders on nonsensical.  The fastpass stand is the same as before, down to having suitcases as the ticket machines.  Why does the Collector’s Fortress have luggage out front?  Would it have been that hard to change them to crates marked “To: The Collector” or something?

Tower or Guardians?  It shouldn't be this hard to tell

Perhaps the worst part about the Mission Breakout exterior is how it affects the rest of the park.  Due to its great height, it is visible from almost the entirety of California Adventure and even parts of Disneyland.  This means the tacky, pipe-covered, muddy-painted mess now invades sight lines of the Carthay Circle Theater and even Main Street USA.  In terms of practical rather than aesthetic concerns, that eye-burning metallic glare at sunset also reaches everywhere Breakout is visible.

I’ve seen some arguments that the partially-destroyed-looking Tower of Terror exterior wasn’t necessarily “pretty” either.  However, destroyed section aside, Tower still looked like a nice hotel over most of its exterior.  It was also a California-themed building visible above a California-themed park.  It was classy, even the “ugly” parts of its exterior made sense for the ride… and didn’t burn people’s eyes out at sunset.

2. Queue and Preshow

From what I can tell, the exterior queue was mostly unchanged, aside from having different plants and a few posters around.

What was noticeably changed about the exterior queue was the wait time I had to spend in it.

I rode Mission Breakout using a fastpass.  I still estimate I had a 20-minute wait, and the fastpass line was winding through the entire fastpass gardens.  The standby wait time was around 50 minutes.  With Tower of Terror, even with comparable standby wait times, the fastpass queue didn’t move so slowly or require the extended fastpass garden.

I soon found out why this was the situation—the ride was literally running at half capacity—but I’ll cover that when I get to that portion of the attraction.

Unfortunately, fastpass barely gets a glance at the museum portion, which is a shame since I wanted to see the movie props.  I’ll be riding Breakout again on standby just to get a better idea of this section, so this might possibly be updated.

The only glance fastpass guests get at the museum

The waiting areas were poorly decorated.  The walls just seemed to have a lot of random props nailed to them, but in a way that still made the space seem “empty”.  The props seemed like afterthoughts rather than proper exhibits.

Random un-labeled props on the wall

The former crashed-elevator wall feels especially awkward now.  The architecture still emphasizes it, but now it only has a portrait of The Collector and a random set of props.

The Collector’s Office preshow room seemed a bit too small for a person of The Collector’s ego, but it was well decorated and included Easter Eggs from the movies.  Of course, the real star of the preshow is the advanced Rocket Raccoon animatronic.

I was looking forward to seeing Rocket, since I appreciate well-done animatronics, especially in a world of increasingly screen-based rides.  Unfortunately, the animatronic disappointed in person.  While his movements were very fluid, his fur looked super cheap, dry, and unconvincing.  His eyes were even worse; they were very dark and blank, and looked like plush toy eyes.  The eyes looked very dead.  In general, Rocket looked like someone stuck advanced mechanics inside a low-budget plush, and the results were decidedly underwhelming.  Clearly Disney put work into this figure, but failed to carry the effort all the way through, making it seem all the worse.

Only one out of the two preshow rooms appeared to be running while I visited.

After the Collector’s office is the…well, I’m not sure what this area is called now.  It used to be the boiler room, and, by all appearances, still is.  Almost nothing was changed here with the exception of a coat of darker paint on the walls and a few props here and there.  The most noticeable is the addition of light strings that occasionally flicker.  These look, once again, very cheap—like someone just strung Christmas lights around.

Waiting for the ride is the same.  Just stand on the number on the floor (it’s the same bronze plaques as before).  The elevator dial has been replaced by a “security scanner” light, but the doors themselves look the same.

3 out of the 6 ride vehicles seemed to not be receiving any guests.  This, combined with one preshow room being out, leads me to believe the ride was running at half capacity, either due to a breakdown or to try and save on staff.  This led to the unusually long lines.  Apparently Mission Breakout has been running at reduced capacity quite often.

One thing I can vaguely commend Breakout on is that it tries to incorporate the load-unload setup into a canonical structure, unlike Tower.  It no longer hides the exit hallway; instead, the first set of doors is a “security scanner” and the second is the actual lift doors.  The fact the two both have the doors of a 1930s elevator somewhat ruins this attempt, however.

Now, more than anything else, I expected to enjoy the actual ride portion of Mission Breakout.  I heard that the sequence was more intense with bigger drops than Tower—a claim that certainly appealed to me as a thrill ride enthusiast.  Furthermore, I figured it was nearly impossible to mess up the simple setup of a drop ride.

3. The Ride

It was, in fact, possible to mess up a drop ride.

I maintained my high hopes for this portion of the attraction even as it launched.  Indeed, the start of the ride sequence felt very promising.  Rather than Tower’s slow climb, Mission Breakout opts to shoot upwards in a manner reminiscent of Maliboomer.  This initial big upswing was promising.  It was thrilling, and I thought it would pay off with an equally dramatic set of drops.  

As you may have guessed from the tone of this review thus far, the drop profile did NOT in any way pay off for the dramatic start.  Instead, what followed was a bunch of jerky, small steps down that were neither thrilling nor enjoyable.  Occasionally, the ride vehicle made bouncing stops at a screen showing the Guardians in some sort of battle… but from the handful of stops, I couldn’t really tell who they were fighting or what was going on.  I knew from the premise of the ride that they were breaking out, but nothing really gave any proper indication of what was going on beyond that.

Also, the ride vehicle doesn’t really “stop” in front of the screen, instead sort of hovering up and down awkwardly in front of it.  For some people, this causes them to have a seasickness-like response, as they try to focus on the stationary screen while the vehicle moves.

Other than the screen “stops”, the ride vehicle also made a bunch of weird, awkward pauses during the drop sequence.  It seemed like an in-shaft effect was supposed to trigger, or another door was supposed to open, but nothing happened.  Just an awkward pause in the dark.  These pauses really ruined the flow of the drop sequence, making it very unpleasant and jarring and exacerbating the motion sickness for some riders.  For a couple of these pauses, I actually wondered if the ride was malfunctioning.

Furthermore, Mission Breakout has been billed as something of a music-based ride experience, and does not deliver on that promise either.  There are supposed to be 6 different profiles, each dedicated to a different song from Star Lord’s Awesome Mix.  The profile I rode was for the song “Free Ride”, but I barely heard enough notes of the song to recognize which profile I’d ridden.  The music is nigh-impossible to hear in the drop shaft--a major faux paus for something that’s supposedly dedicated to its soundtrack.

A drop ride is a really difficult model to make unenjoyable, but Breakout’s awkward, stilting, motion-sickness-inducing presentation managed to make it fail.

Also, I should emphasize that it really can induce motion sickness, even in those who usually don’t get it.  I am rather hardy when it comes to rides; I was able to handle the original version of Mission Space at Epcot.  However, Mission Breakout’s jerky, hard-to-focus-on ride sequence managed to make me woozy.

4. The Exit and Gift Shop

The exit corridors are basically unchanged from Tower, with the exception of the posters being changed to fictional “Employee of the Month” pictures and the fake corpse being removed from under the stairs.

The photo viewing area is kind of dull.  The old display cabinets have just been covered over with metallic-looking paneling.  This is a real missed opportunity; Disney could easily have repurposed the displays to have more props from or references to the various Marvel movies, which would have made the room more interesting.  Instead, it just feels sort of… empty.  Like the space is entirely too large for having just one row of televisions on the wall.

The gift shop has the same layout as before, but with a palette recolor and obviously new merch.  However, the merch available, especially the Breakout-specific merch, is rather disappointing.  Many of the available items are general Marvel merch, which can be found in many other places, both on and off Disney property.  

Photo purchase desk in the gift shop

When it comes to Breakout merch, it’s disappointingly hard to spot.  Much of it looks like generic Guardians of the Galaxy designs, but with a subtle “Mission Breakout” title along the bottom rather than just saying “Guardians of the Galaxy”.  Only one shirt I could find showed the actual ride… and even then, 90% of the building was hidden behind Chris Pratt.  It seems like even the merch designers didn’t like the ride, and tried to put as little of it into the designs specifically meant to commemorate the attraction.

Conclusion:

Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout is a poor effort from start to finish.  Despite many chances to deliver a quality experience, Disney seemingly opted for the cheap route every time.  It feels almost like nothing went through quality control or a second draft.  It’s downright insulting to fans of both the Tower of Terror and the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise; it not only ruined a near-perfect attraction, but also wasted a potentially great ride IP on a steaming heap of trash.

I cannot recommend this as an attraction to visit at the Disneyland resort.  Perhaps stop by once to see the movie props and/or experience this trainwreck for yourselves, and then dedicate the rest of your time to far more worthy attractions.