Soft, fuzzy welcome
Behold Cosmo (and Rocket) in Disney’s Guardians ride
When California Adventure’s Tower of Terror was being remade into Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, nervous Disney fans were promised that the Marvel comic book-inspired thrill ride would have an animated feel.
And, as thousands of park-goers discovered during the attraction’s Memorial Day weekend opening, the key to Mission Breakout’s lighthearted, zany tone is its abundance of furry animals, who act as the perfect bridge between brands.
Without a doubt, the star of the show is Rocket, the talking raccoon-like character who leads guests on the mission (up and down a 193foot tower) to free his fellow Guardians of the Galaxy.
But before guests encounter Rocket, scurrying in his audio-animatronic way amid the bookshelves of an office, they come face to face with another immediately recognizable critter, Cosmo the space dog.
Though based on the animals used in the Russian cosmonaut program, Cosmo is a fictional dog who made his comic book debut in 2008. He was glimpsed in the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” film as a captive in the Collector’s museum. He’s reprising that role at California Adventure and is, of course, also available for purchase in the form of an adorable plushie, further bonding the Marvel and Disney brands in a soft and fuzzy way.
Which some Disney philes may need. As the first Marvel-inspired Disney attraction in North America, Mission Breakout heralds a potentially major change to
the company’s parks. But if superheroes are relatively new to this patch of Anaheim, and arriving with a pop soundtrack that includes tunes from the Jackson 5, Pat Benatar and Elvis Presley, Mission Breakout intentionally turns on plenty of old-school Disney magic, including two adorable audio-animatronics.
“It’s almost like the equivalent of a 1940s cartoon,” said Joe Rohde, the veteran Imagineer behind Mission Breakout.
The ride Mission Breakout is replacing, the beloved Tower of Terror, had none of the nifty robots for which Disneyland is known. When plans for the new attraction were unveiled in summer 2016, Disney die-hards fretted that the relatively quick turnaround meant there wouldn’t be any fancy creations.
But that proved not to be the case, and Disney managed to keep the presence of audio-animatronics relatively secret, in part because of the breakneck schedule. As recently as January, Rohde didn’t know how Rocket would be represented in the attraction.
“This was an exceedingly short production schedule,” he said. “The only way to get it done was literally to make a decision that you were going to do it, and then do it.”
In the attraction’s back story, the Collector (also known as Taneleer Tivan) has acquired a number of living, dead and inanimate objects — among them the Guardians of the Galaxy — and is displaying them for tourists.
Cosmo is presented in the Mission Breakout preshow, tilting his head and wagging his tail inside a vitrine in the lobby of the fortress, which serves as part of the line queue.
Unlike Rocket, Cosmo doesn’t talk, but you can hear him whimper.
And he’s certainly one of the showcase items in the Collector’s assemblage of stuff. The point of the ride is to save the Guardians, and the rest of the captives. (Spoiler: The ending is happy.)
There are more than a dozen items on display in Mission Breakout, many of them hanging above guests’ heads (be on the lookout for the “cocoon of unknown origin”), and Disney has promised that new items will regularly be rotated in and out of the fortress.
But Cosmo is expected to be a permanent, or near-permanent, resident. He is also, for those keeping track, the first audio-animatronic canine at California Adventure. Disneyland attractions are full of dogs — from the skeletal hounds in the Haunted Mansion to the famous mutt with the keys in Pirates of the Caribbean.
But in California Adventure, it’s only Cosmo. Unique too is the fact that Mission Breakout’s audio-animatronics are presented before guests actually buckle up for the ride experience. It’s part of the continued theme park evolution, where increasingly attractions begin the moment guests set foot in line.
“I think this is an expectation that has grown from the audience,” says Rohde. “That a story is going to be presented with a proscenium, where there’s a space for audience and a space for story.”
And space for a space dog.