I thought this ride was highly over-rated. I had heard only great things about this ride, and then all the deaths on it seemed to add to the buzz about it. I finally got a chance to ride it and I was quite disappointed. I chose the orange "killer" version of the ride to get the full experience. I was really suprised at how much everyone was being discouraged from riding the intense version. There was a message playing before the preshow that sounded so dramatic that if it would have had the same effect if they were saying "if you value your life, ride the less intense version of the ride!" But then again, it worked well for me. The intense version was walk on while the toned down version had at least a 20 minute wait. After seeing Ltn. Dan doing a preshow looking like he was badly hung-over, I finally got onto the ride. The capsule closed and the screens lit up. The first thing I noticed was the cheap CGI. This is a Disney ride. I was expecting some top notch graphics on this ride, but it looked like an old video game to me. The g-forces during the liftoff and landing parts of the ride really didnt bother me at all. It felt like Ive been on some roller coasters in the past that gave more gs than this. The zero gravity part was just plain cool though. I also had some slight issues with the story of the ride. At times you seemed to be on a training drill to become an astronut. At other times it seemed to be treated like you were on an actual space mission. It also seemed like too much was tried to fit in too short of a time frame. The whole hypersleep segment seemed to be a cheap way out of not figuring out how to make a better transition between earth and mars. Then the whole landing asteroid part seemed like it could have been a whole ride in itself, but it was fit into the last minute of the ride.
It would have been nice too if those controls actually did something to make the ride somewhat interactive, thus giving it better reride value.
Overall, it was fun, but nothing worth reriding in my opinion. I thought it was a big disappointment from Disney.
One last thing. What happened to the education in EPCOT? This ride seemed to be science fiction for the most part with very little science. It needed a whole lot more science...
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