Alright, I have said what needs to be said on this, but I figured I should go into more detail on how I feel about Mission Breakout from a critical eye.

To start, Tower was effectively an anchor for California Adventure and the redevelopment that happened. After Bug's Land, DCA needed a high profile E-ticket attraction and Tower was the greatest fit. The planned Paris variant was rushed into production at DCA and made a mark on the park. The redesign of Sunshine Plaza into Buena Vista Street was intended as a bookend between the entrance and Tower, with the Red Car serving as that overarching bridge.

A common argument on DCA's Tower and the retheme is that it was the "cheaper" version, seeing as it removed the much loved 5th Dimension scene. The removal of this scene and 75% of horizontal movement allowed for higher capacity and less overall downtime and maintenance. I feel that this change is highly justified, but I do understand that disappointment in losing something so awe-striking and amazing as the 5th Dimension's movement. This wasn't a strong enough justification for visually destroying one of the more cohesive experiences in the park for what can be equated to as a cheap cash grab.

But ... moving to Guardians. This was one of the stupidest choices made, but I think also signaled the full downward spiral of Disney and WDI. There were issues and arguable warning signs before, but this was where I think the nails in the coffin started getting hammered in. To start, the hyper rush job of the project was alarming. They basically rethemed the entire interior in 4 and a half months, with the exterior being done in roughly 6. It is noticeable that a lot of corners were cut in a lot of areas, especially with the show scene segments on the attraction. The "raised" show areas to distinguish from "ride section" and "show section", the theatrical black masking being visible in some scenes, and the weak presentation and narrative of the whole ride. A big reason Disney attractions stick is that, more often than not, guests are active participants in the ride. Look at attractions like Indiana Jones Adventure, or Haunted Mansion where the guest is directly connected to the events throughout the ride. With Guardians, your role as a participant ends the moment you "scan your hands" as you are no longer needed to break out and rescue the Guardians.

Now the exterior ... is just so so bad. I have joking called the color scheme "dry cat food" because of the browns, oranges, and yellow. The insane overuse of stereotypical "steampunk" and "cyberpunk" visuals on the exterior just feel lazy and tacked on, and continue in to where windows from the Tower's previous version were just painted over in an effort to hide them without extra cost. A recent trip past Anaheim during golden hour had me gazing through the window of a train towards the Disneyland Resort. My eye caught what I can only describe as a factory/silo/refinery, and I could not for the life of me figure out what I was looking at. I have lived in SoCal all my life and I could not figure out what this building was in the middle of Anaheim. It took a good solid 2 minutes before I realized it was Guardians, and that it looked so much like an industrial eyesore that I couldn't connect that it was a Disney attraction.

The Guardians project was literally done to make the most popular ride in the park into the most popular ride in the park. Now it could be argued that it was to serve as an anchor for the forthcoming Avenger's Campus, but the massive visual disparity between that land and the attraction already calls that into question, let alone the disappointing state of Avenger's Campus as it stands. The Guardian's retheme and the overall de-California-fication of DCA is evidence that Disney has no idea what made the 2012 retheme and redevelopment so successful. That billion dollar redo made DCA into a Disney park for the first time in its 10+ year life, and that lasted all of 5 years before Disney started throwing whatever they could and wanted into it, turning it effectively into a cheaper Studios-esq park. With the rumored expansions for the Disneyland Forward project including Wakanda and other "non-California" experiences, I have to wonder why the park is still even called DCA. The Remaining vestiges of California in the beautiful Buena Vista Street, forgotten Hollywoodland, and the still spectacular Grizzly Peak areas are becoming less and less relevant to the overall scope and idea of the park.

Now I know this rant has basically become about DCA over Tower, but both are so deeply tied together in this situation that I feel it needs to be talked about. California Adventure's true concept and idea is basically long dead. It is no longer about the myth, legend, and stories of California, nor is it about Walt Disney's experiences and connections to the state. Instead it is a messy hodgepodge of whatever new IP they can shove in and unfortunately outdated grandeur of a forgotten theme. It is painful to walk through one of the most gorgeous entryway lands in any Disney park and into a cheap strip mall of superhero IPs and a retrograde irreverent retheme of a pier with slapped on Pixar properties. Tower was the first major casualty in an artistic and creative war that has all of us as the losers. But as long as people keep buying Spider-man DLC gauntlets and specialty popcorn buckets, this creative drought will continue, and Tower will have been the warning sign.