With Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout opening to the public this Saturday, May 27th, Disney is now sharing pictures and more from inside of this new attraction that is controversially replacing the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
The queue features many of the Collector’s prized possessions, including Cosmo the Space Dog, brought to life by audio-animatronics technology. Other recognizable artifacts are on display as well from the MARVEL Universe, as well as a few fun Disney Parks references.
The main pre-show experience takes place in The Collector’s office with an escaping Rocket Raccoon.
Theme Park Insider has a fantastic tour of the queue with Imagineer Joe Rohde, who is basically the lead on all of the MARVEL theme park projects. The video includes both attraction pre-shows for you to enjoy, including a look at the AWESOME Rocket Raccoon audio-animatronic figure:
No video of the on-ride portion is available yet, but IGN offers a really good review of the on-ride experience and 4 of the 6 ride profiles/soundtracks:
My favorite part of all this news about the attraction today? These somewhat psychotic press photos of “guests” on the ride…
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission Breakout opens at Disney California Adventure on May 27th, 2017.
Limited Edition Star Wars merchandise was released over at the Disney Store. Many items are only available in limited quantities. Be sure to hurry if you want any!
First up is Disney’s limited run tee shirts. If you looking to save money mix and match the shirts and pay just $22 a shirt. They are offering a unisex, Men’s, Women’s and Kid’s style.
Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia strike a pose crafted to reflect the iconic movie poster in this exquisite, limited edition figurine commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope. A must-have for your collection!
Expand your universe and celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope with this breathtaking set of five limited edition prints featuring poster art from around the world. A must-have for the collector!
This limited edition four-piece set celebrates the 40th anniversary of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope with a production run of only 2,017 pieces. These exquisitely crafted ceramic pieces are inspired by Aunt Beru’s kitchen on Taooine.
Located in the Windtraders shop in Pandora: The World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, guests have the opportunity to be turned into an action figure in the AVATAR Maker experience.
This large kiosk towards the center of the shop is home to the service, offering two stations back-to-back.
The stations are intriguing and hard to miss, so expect to hear a lot of guests asking what this is every time you visit the store.
Several pre-made figures are on display around the space.
Nearby, accessories are sold for the figures. These items can be discounted (annual pass, cast member, etc.).
So, how does the process work? Well, you begin by going to the podium outside of the ACE AVATAR Maker kiosk inside of Windtraders. Once you make a reservation (provided they are available), you then get an RFID enabled card and proceed to paying for the service. The price point is $79.99 and no discounts are applicable, similar to the shoulder Banshee experience.
After you pay, just return to the podium when your reservation rolls around and the cast members will take it from there. After scanning, it does take some time for your AVATAR figure to be made, so you will have to return to Windtraders once again.
The process of scanning your face is simple, but the cast members make it a show experience, playing up story elements and the process as creating your own real-life AVATAR, rather than just an action figure. The scanning doesn’t take long at all and is over in seconds, but the process can take a few minutes between the cast member hamming it up and the guest choosing the body type, hair style, eye color, and facial stripe pattern for their AVATAR.
We recorded video of myself going through the entire process, from sign-up, to scanning, to receiving the figure with my face on it. You can watch the entire experience below:
As you can see in the video, the pick-up process is pretty neat and completes the process with a simple yet effective finale. Kids will be blown away by the tech involved in my estimation, but maybe quite a few parents as well. Figures are typically completed 45 minutes to an hour after you sit in the chair, but not could be longer depending on how busy it is on a given day.
The retrieval station in Windtraders draws a lot of attention even when it isn’t in use, so expect a lot of guests to be watching you play with this thing when you pick up your AVATAR.
The figure doesn’t really have much of your likeness honestly, just the basic shape of your face essentially. Otherwise, you are customizing the remainder of the figure. Since the AVATAR’s in the film also only have a facial resemblance to their host, I guess this makes sense.
The figures are of a good quality and come in a rather nice display tube.
We did have some issues in that the hair that came out was not what I picked, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to get it fixed so I decided not to complain about it. Otherwise, everything was as ordered.
Overall, the ACE AVATAR Maker isn’t the best souvenir available on Pandora, but it does offer quite the experience. I could see a younger guest finding the process fun and thinking that an action figure with their face on it is just about thew coolest thing ever. If the cast member is half as into it as the one that helped me through the process, then I think kids would have an experience that they would never forget and a nice souvenir to remember their time on Pandora. While I still think that adopting a Banshee is a somewhat cooler offering and toy, the AVATAR Maker is also quite unique and memorable, another positive evolution in Disney theme park merchandise.
Now when do I get to be a Star Wars action figure? I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2019???
You may remember that we were not enamored with our first visit to the Daily Poutine at Disney Springs, finding many of the offerings to be lackluster. While this first experience doesn’t leave us rushing back, we did once we saw a new offering at this outdoor stand.
Cheeseburger Poutine, The Daily Poutine at Disney Springs
So, you know that we had to try this, so let’s see how it was…
Cheeseburger Poutine ($9.39)
Cheeseburger Poutine, The Daily Poutine at Disney Springs
Crisp fries topped with ground beef, beer cheese sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion, house-made pickles, mayo, mustard, and ketchup. Finished with fried cheese curds.
The cheese curds are fried as compared to the usual melted cheese on the other dishes here. There’s a great tasting beer cheese slathered across the fries before any of the other toppings are applied, so it has time to soak up into the fries before you bit into them.
The beef is ground and mixed with onions, giving a nice hamburger meat flavor (which you might expect with something that has cheeseburger in the name). There’s ketchup and mustard and all of the cheeseburger essentials, so it’s kind-of-like Canadian and American foods had a cheesy baby.
They’re able to accommodate and remove toppings if needed or wanted as well, just in case there’s a few things in here that you may not want.
This is the perfect mix of comfort foods and far-and-away the best option at the Daily Poutine. Give it a try the next time you are looking for a snack at Disney Springs!
With the opening of Pandora: The World of AVATAR this Saturday, Disney will release 3 new MagicBand 2 designs.
For Annual Passholders, there will be the first-ever Passholder exclusive limited edition teal graphic band featuring the phrase “I traveled to Pandora on May 27, 2017.” This band, available opening day, retails at $32.99.
The purple limited-edition graphic band with scenes from nighttime in Pandora (pictured above), features the artwork of Dylan Cole, co-production designer for the upcoming “Avatar” motion picture sequels. The band retails for $32.99 and was already made available online and at Riverside Depot at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.
And for Avatar fans looking to coordinate their MagicBand with other cool Na’vi merchandise, check out the blue graphic band representing the Na’vi pattern. This band retails for $22.99 and will make any Avatar feel like a Na’vi.
These new bands will be sold in Windtraders on Pandora – The World of Avatar.
Tonight at 9pm, a new nighttime spectacular will debut at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
“Disney Movie Magic” is a new projection show that will perform nightly on the facade of the Chinese Theater before Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular. The show will contain Disney live action movies.
No further details are available at this time, but we will be checking it out this evening, so stay tuned for a live stream of the show!
This 10-minute show is essentially a preshow for the “Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular” fireworks show, though it takes place 30 minutes prior to the start of the fireworks. Disney hasn’t officially announced this new offering, but we expect it to be shown nightly prior to “Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular.” It includes many Disney live-action movies, including recent ones such as Beauty and the Beast, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Jungle Book, and some from the archives such as Tron!
On May 26th, Disneyland Park launched the much-discussed Tomorrowland Skyline Lounge experience, an event meant to be a fireworks dessert party held on the second floor of the Star Wars Launch bay building. Based on the reaction our breaking of this story received, we decided to send someone out to review the very-first night of the experience on Friday.
Check-in took place at the Tomorrowland fruit cart, located underneath the former Observatron/Rocket Jets. The price for this experience was $45 per person, that was not collected on making the reservation for some reason, so they do collect before giving you your lanyard and wristband.
Guests lining up to enter prior to the event start.
Check-in began at 7:45pm and you are allowed up into the lounge at 8:00. You check-in (again) at the bottom of the ramp of the former-Innoventions building (now Star Wars Launch Bay on the bottom floor) where you are escorted up to the second level.
You then receive a free drink of your choice. Coke products, coffee, tea, etc., and you also receive your dessert box before being seated in one of the lounge areas. There were 4 or 5 different areas in all with several couches and chairs. At the very end of the balcony, there were several high-top tables if you would rather sit there. You were grouped with other parties, so you did have to share the space if you have a smaller group.
Once seated, you could charge your phone at one of the many charging stations, which is nice. Games were available to play such as Jenga, Connect Four and Checkers, because nothing says Tomorrowland like classic board games. You are in Disneyland, where you can play in essentially the world’s greatest playground, but hell, LETS GO FOR IT, CONNECT FOUR!
PhotoPass photographers were available to take pictures with the beautiful Tomorrowland scenery in the background, which is actually really neat. The views from up here are great, incase you have never been up on this patio (which I can’t imagine in many cases as it was open to the public for years).
Mickey and Minnie even made an appearance for a short meet and greet, the pair also available for photos. Blankets were provided by cast members if you were a bit chilly as well.
This being Disneyland, there is a good chance that the nightly fireworks are cancelled due to high winds and such. Needless to say seemingly, fireworks ended-up being cancelled due to high winds for this very first night of the experience.
The lounge itself was nice enough. The couches were nice and there were plenty of places to charge devices.
The dessert tray, while very tasty, was extremely rich. It includes:
Mickey Cloud Cake – Cream-filled Sponge Cake
Chocolate Eclipse – Cream-Filled Chocolate Cake drenched in Chocolate
Coconut Comet – Coconut-Strawberry Iced Sponge Cake filled with Cream
Planetary Pie – Mini Cherry-Filled Pie
Moon Rocks – Boursin Herbed Cheese, Cream Cheese, Shredded Cheddar, and Jack Cheese, Chives Pimento, and Bacon
No one sitting in our group finished any of their desserts. Again, not because they were bad, but just incredibly sweet. The Coconut Comet was basically a Hostess Zinger pumped up to eleven, and if you don’t know what a Zinger is, please head to the grocery store and rectify that. The Moon Rocks were probably the highlight of the offerings; a delicious cheese spread covered in bacon with an assortment of crackers.
The fancy-Zinger
This is a nice offering and is at a low cost in comparison to the World of Color or Fantasmic dessert party packages. However, without fireworks, it’s a giant waste of time. Disneyland Park has the most unreliable nighttime spectacular of all U.S. Disney Parks, making it a gamble each night whether the show will be performed. Even the slightest amount of wind can cancel a show due to the proximity of the park to nearby neighborhoods. Seriously, only half of the Celebrate America Fourth of July fireworks shows ever scheduled at Disneyland, have actually happened.
You could always do this with the Jenga game if the fireworks don’t happen, I guess…
This is probably why event organizers decided to call it Tomorrowland Lounge rather than a fireworks dessert party, to try to ease some of the complaints that are going to come regardless when the fireworks are cancelled. We were even told several times by cast members that the fireworks were only an addition to the experience and that the lounge is the experience by itself. Large disclaimers on the website when booking this alls make it unmistakebly clear.
$45 for dessert and Connect Four? Just come to my place and I’ll host you for $20 a person, buy a box of Zingers, and play a Fireworks video on my TV for you.
In our opinion, you would be better off just spending your $45 on the many other delicious snacks in the park and grabbing a spot on Main Street, even if you do have to be around other people. It will result in less time lost from your day if the fireworks do not actually go off. On a side note, if you are on Main Street, you could have seen the short projection show that takes place on the front of the castle when the fireworks are cancelled. You’re also not going to see the awesome projections on Sleeping Beauty Castle if Remember… Dreams Come True does perform…
In review, unless you have the strong urge for a fancy Zinger and a rousing game of Jenga (which I hoped ironically would have been the Tower of Terror version), you should probably skip the Tomorrowland Skyline Lounge at Disneyland Park.
