Walt Disney World is still in the middle of its, somewhat lackluster, 50th anniversary celebration but today is perhaps the biggest day since the celebration began, as the theme park resort’s newest E-ticket attraction, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, has finally opened to the general public. The good news is that the new ride doesn’t have insane wait times, but that’s because there are basically none. The attraction is using a virtual queue and the Individual Lighting Lane system only, and as you can probably guess, those slots are going fast.
There are two ways to get on board Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. The virtual queue option lets Epcot guests use the Disney World app to try and get a slot at 7am, and then again at 1pm. When virtual queues have been used in the past, as they were for Rise of the Resistance for a long time, they were usually all taken up in seconds, so if you weren’t on the ball, or just had a slow internet connection, you were out of luck.
The other way to get on the ride is to use the Individual Lightning Lane system. Through the Disney Genie system, guests can pay money, in this case $17, the most expensive ride in the resort, to reserve a specific wait time. The issue there is that guests at Disney World hotels get access to this system before anybody else, and today, those guests grabbed every available reservation before other guests had a chance.
Okay, looks like LL is out for real now. I will not be eating my hat this morning. pic.twitter.com/eLbyfkmzVdMay 27, 2022
The virtual queue slots that are made available at 1pm will almost certainly vanish as quickly as the first batch did. Although, there are usually more boarding groups made available in the afternoon batch, so that, combined with the fact that many thousand people have already ridden it, increases the odds that guests will make it in the second group. Still, since every day more people that have never ridden Cosmic Rewind will visit Epcot, expect this to be what the attraction looks like for the foreseeable future.
One thing that is new to the virtual queue system with Cosmic Rewind is that it does tell you what your approximate wait time will be when it’s your turn to get on the ride. It looks to be set at about 30 minutes, which isn’t too bad. It’s a nice additional piece of information which at least gives riders the ability to plan the experience a bit better, especially since they may have dining reservations that the new ride doesn’t take into account.
If there’s a silver lining to it all, it’s that, based on reports, the capacity and through put of Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is significant. The ride is simply able to handle a lot of riders. So many in fact that it appears that the pre-show rooms are actually the major bottleneck, as it seems the coaster itself can handle more riders than it’s seeing on opening day.
EPCOT opened 1 hour ago. 4 empty trains in a row. Preshow starves platform bad… Regardless. Groups 1-20 had walk-on experience… Think a standby queue just 10min before park open would have seen 2,000+ for 12 hours & certainly have filled more seats than this pic.twitter.com/ZqsYKW1GmfMay 27, 2022
When it comes to opening day bugs and glitches at Disney Parks, this is probably preferable to overcrowding the ride. As time goes on we will likely see things adjusted on Cosmic Rewind to work a little smoother, and when that happens it may mean even more people can go on the ride in a day.
