Guardians of the Galaxy Ride Seatbelt TikTok Trend

About

The Guardians of the Galaxy Ride Seatbelt TikTok Trend refers to reports about a dangerous trend on TikTok where riders purportedly loosen their seatbelts during the "Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!" ride so that they lift out of their seats during the drops. The trend reportedly resulted in Disneyland putting new signs outside the ride warning riders to keep their seatbelts secured or risk getting kicked out of the park. While there is evidence online of people loosening or refusing to wear seatbelts on the ride in order to get air-time, there is minimal evidence that the practice was ever a TikTok trend, similar to the supposed Slap a Teacher Challenge in 2021 that was later revealed to be a hoax by the PR firm Targeted Victory.

Origin

The idea of riding Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! without seatbelts, or with a loose seatbelt, has been discussed online numerous times since the ride opened in May 2017. On December 3rd, 2019, Twitter^[1] user @megannross_ retweeted a video of people on a bus flying into the air after going over a bus, writing, "when I forget to put my seatbelt on in the guardians of the galaxy ride." On November 14th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @Franky_Solis posted, "Am I the only one who likes to go on Guardians of the Galaxy with no seatbelt? Shits so fun😂." On February 4th, 2023, Twitter^[3] user @pacificdan made a post claiming he got kicked out of Disneyland for leaving slack in his seatbelt on the ride (examples shown below).

On February 21st, 2023, media outlets (including Mice Chat^[4] and the OC Register^[5]) reported that Disneyland put up new signs around the attraction warning riders to keep their seatbelts on during the ride or risk getting kicked from the park due to a TikTok trend in which users were purportedly encouraged to take their seatbelts off while inside it (new signs shown below).

Spread

Despite the reports, there is little evidence on TikTok of a trend that involves riders filming themselves with loose seatbelts on the attraction. One possible example of a video like this was uploaded by TikToker^[6] @bryker.steadman on February 17th, 2022, captioned, "The Guardians of the Galaxy ride is scary I was going off my seat," although it does not seem to be part of a trend or challenge (shown below). The video gained over 100,000 views in a year.

Some have also speculated that TikTok removed all videos associated with the trend or that the videos have too little engagement to find easily, but no reuploads of the purported videos from the trend have been found as of February 23rd, 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References