Monsters After Dark: The Review

What you might want to know before reading: Obviously, I'm a huge Tower of Terror fan.  However, I'm also a big fan of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).  I absolutely hated Mission Breakout, as detailed in my review here.

(Note: in this review "Mission Breakout" reviews exclusively to the normal version of the attraction, while "Monsters After Dark" refers to the Halloween overlay)

Mission Breakout managed to be even more utterly horrible than my already-pessimistic predictions had foreseen.  When Disney announced that the attraction was already getting an alternate version, in the form of a Halloween overlay, in its very first year, I was skeptical.  It could be a chance to fix some errors of the main version... or it could just pile more garbage on top of garbage.

Furthermore, if Disney wanted a Halloween ride in that location... couldn't they have just, you know, left the Tower of Terror as it was?

Like with Mission Breakout, I decided to hold off on my review of Monsters After Dark until I rode it.  I wasn't sure what to expect, since Breakout had set an extraordinarily low bar for what could constitute an "improvement".

My verdict: I legitimately enjoyed it, and it clearly improves on Breakout (although that wasn't difficult).  However, it still doesn't live up to what it could be, and not just because "it isn't Tower of Terror".  I'd grade it somewhere directly between a B- and C+.  It's better, but Disney's still slacking.

Now, to expand upon that verdict:

1. The Exterior

Monsters After Dark (henceforth MAD or "Monsters" for short) does not run all day, like Ghost Galaxy or Haunted Mansion Holiday.  Instead, as its name somewhat hints, it begins running at approximately 5pm, with the ride operating as Breakout during the day.  It's still daylight at 5pm, so if you ride MAD early the exterior is still as much of an absolute trainwreck as it is as Breakout.

Once night really falls, however, it's a drastic improvement.

Breakout's off-putting alien pineapple color scheme is replaced by a projection-mapping based setup.  The palette is now dark blue and purple, with occasional beating-heart-esque pulses of red.  The projections make the building come to life, with sparks and pulses running along the pipe and electrifying the sign.  The different animation sequences make the exterior fun to watch.

The coherent colors and the animation of the architecture vastly improve the exterior appearance.  Interestingly, something like this was what Disney initially promised for Breakout.  During announcements for that attraction, presenters described things running along the pipes and an animated nighttime exterior.  It's an utter waste that they're using this only for a temporary setup, rather than what was promised for the ride year-round.

Furthermore, I couldn't help but find the color scheme a bit... familiar.  Purple and blue, with lightning crackling to make the sign flicker?  Hmmm....

2. The Queue and Preshow

I rode standby for MAD, so I got to see the museum portion of the queue.  The themeing is changed from its normal orderly setup in Breakout.  The lights are darker and red-lit as the building has gone on lockdown in the wake of the Guardians', well, breakout.  The video screen shows "security camera" footage of the Collector’s employees desperately trying to clean up and get out of the wreckage as alarms blare.

Sadly, you get very little time to appreciate the details.  I'm not sure if there's been changes to preshow loading, or if there's now less queue space in the room to let viewers see it, but guests move through the museum very quickly.  You get like 30 seconds at most to take it all in.  It's a shame, since there's some cool movie props in there, and the setup seems to do well to establish the panicked tone of destruction for Monsters After Dark.

In terms of the preshow waiting areas, they're still as poorly decorated as Breakout, but at least MAD inadvertently gives an explanation: maybe those displays look so bad because they've been looted/partially destroyed.

The preshow itself is mostly the same, with Rocket briefing you on your mission.  The difference here is that your mission is now to serve as bait to distract the supposedly-numerous monsters while Rocket rescues Groot.  All my complaints about the Rocket animatronic and its quality still stand, but in terms of story I feel that the MAD preshow is a great improvement over Breakout.

Specifically, there are two improvements.  One, the guests now serve a better purpose in the story of the ride.  Serving as passive bait for space creatures makes more sense than Breakout's weird, awkward, shoehorned-in "we need you to wave your hands to unlock the generator" purpose that is completed within the opening seconds of the ride.  Two, there's now a stronger reason for the lifts to be going crazy.  In Monsters After Dark, the building is in ruins--of course the elevators aren't in top shape!

After the preshow is the boiler room... and it really is the boiler room again this time.  Tower's rumbling boiler room BGM is back in full force, with a few "scurrying critter" sound effects (which sound recycled from the Indiana Jones queue) added in.  The lighting is very dark, punctuated by bright "red alert" lights and searchlights scanning the area.  It's very creepy and atmospheric...almost as if this space was meant to represent a foreboding space in an abandoned building.

The silhouettes of various monsters are implemented as an Easter egg in the lighting.  Every once in awhile you'll see the weird shapes of the creatures cross a light.  This is very poorly implemented, however, due to the way the lighting crosses the areas where guests walk.  It took me a few minutes to realize that the shape in the light was supposed to be a spider-like monster, and wasn't an accidental silhouette from the hairstyle of a guest several feet in front of me.

Even worse: This is the only time guests encounter monsters (plural) in Monsters After Dark.  Despite the title, there is only one monster in the entire ride sequence.

Speaking of that ride sequence...

3.The Ride

Loading for the ride goes much as normal.  The intentionally choppy automated safety warning goes well with the tone of a building in ruins.

Tower of Terror's spooky background loop for loading has also been reinstated, and guests hear subtle screams and wooshing "dropping" noises as they buckle their seatbelts.  This does a great job of setting up an ominous feel... but, of course, it did so for Tower as well.

The magic happens as the ride starts.  Instead of the terribly un-entertaining, potentially nauseating Breakout, guests get...an actually enjoyable experience!

The first place that Monsters is vastly superior is its drop set.  Unlike Breakout, Monsters actually has proper drops --including a couple of airtime elements.  There's still some awkward moments with the flow of the drop sequence, like some pauses and times where the sequence seems to emphasize going up more than down, but it's miles ahead of its non-Halloween form.

The second part of Monsters I must address is the story element.  Unlike Breakout's bizarre hard-to-follow cutaway scenes, Monsters has a clearer and simpler story about us distracting a dragon while Rocket and Groot run from it.  Stops at the screen do not do the "hover" effect nearly as much as Breakout, thus drastically cutting down on motion sickness as well.

One major problem I have with the drop set and story element, though, is that Monsters never uses the "generator room" floor.  All scenes are at the screen floor.  Why did the designers not use the generator?  It would have been very easy to include it for a scene with Rocket searching for Groot, or even a generic "power going out" horror cliche.

The third element of Monsters After Dark is its soundtrack.  Unlike Breakout’s various “Awesome Mix” soundtrack selections, MAD sticks to one original, mostly-instrumental composition (the sole lyric seems to be “Monsters After Dark”, chanted a few times).  This song is much more enjoyable than the Awesome Mix selections.  The fact that it was composed to create a specific atmosphere and complement the ride alone makes it a much better fit than the hastily-applied licensed pop songs.

Furthermore, you can actually hear the music.  Despite Breakout being advertised as a music-centric experience, it is nigh-impossible to hear the soundtrack during the ride.  In MAD, the soundtrack is loud and clear, from its 40s-esque spooky opening, to the sample of the Psycho soundtrack, to the blaring electric guitars of the main tune.  The actions of the elevator also sync to the music well, therefore delivering the fun, thrilling, music-based experience that Breakout was supposed to deliver.

The ending of the ride sequence will seem very familiar to Tower of Terror fans.  The final surge up to the top of the shaft and drop down are the same as Tower’s “final charge”.  Furthermore, as the ride vehicle pulls in to unload, the music changes once again to some 1930s-40s esque music, Tower’s “pipe clank” ending sound effect plays… and the tower gets struck by lightning.

Interestingly, that ending might have been a change from when MAD first opened.  A few videos I watched from opening day didn’t seem to feature the lightning strike, although they did feature the pipe sound effect.  The ending certainly caught me by surprise when I rode Monsters.  I also cannot figure out what purpose the strike has, other than as a shout-out to Tower.  One of the loading cast members made a vague reference to “the generators acting strange” but this potential plot point wasn’t mentioned consistently enough to be a clear explanation.  The strike serves as an effective final jump scare, so it’s entirely possible that it was added for one last thrill, but story-wise it’s rather out-of-nowhere.

Personally, I found that ending sequence rather bittersweet.  On one hand, it was almost like having Tower back for a few seconds.  On the other hand, it was a big glaring reminder of my favorite lost ride, and the better-suited Halloween ride that existed in that location.

Despite my mixed feelings over the ending sequence, I really enjoyed riding Monsters After Dark.  Unlike its abysmal non-Halloween form, I actually would enjoy riding this attraction multiple times.

So, if I liked the ride so much, why only give it a B-/C+ grade?

Personal feelings about that ending sequence aside, Monsters after Dark fails to take advantage of its own available resources.  At no point does it use the generator floor, despite there being a multitude of ways the designers could have incorporated it.  Perhaps even worse is the discrepancy between the title, preshow, and actual ride.  The title and preshow both promise monsters, plural, while the ride only ever features one dragon.  Sure, the other monsters technically appear in the form of silhouettes in the boiler room, but as I noted the silhouettes were so subtle that they were nearly Easter eggs.  Given that Mission Breakout features different ride sequences, I expected Monsters to do so as well--perhaps with different creatures for different sequences.

In short, Monsters after Dark is a very enjoyable ride experience and incredibly superior to Mission Breakout, despite not taking full advantage of its resources.  It is an utter shame that Disney has relegated it to a seasonal overlay, when this is the attraction that Mission Breakout could and should have been from the start.