Inside Disney California Adventure’s new Avengers Campus

On a sunny Southern California afternoon, I found myself inside Disney California Adventure Park in a state of disbelief. Before me stood a half-completed attraction celebrating the one-and-only Spider-Man. The thing is, I grew up in the ’80s reading Marvel comics when doing so could get you mocked—or worse. In fact, I’d hid comics in my middle-school textbooks just so I could read them on the bus undisturbed. So, I never dreamed that Marvel would become mainstream cool and materialize inside an actual Disney park.

Yet, here I was inside the new Marvel superhero–themed Avengers Campus, which opens at Disney California Adventure on June 4. And if I had any doubts that my eyes were deceiving me, the land’s executive creative director, Brent Strong, put them to rest. “This is a place where you can become the hero,” he said. “We are going to empower you. You get to live out your superhero fantasy.”

At the time of this behind-the-scenes visit—in March 2020—we thought the new land would open in a matter of months. Of course, that didn’t happen. The pandemic would soon bring the world to its knees, and Disney California Adventure and Disneyland would shut down for more than a year—the longest closure, by far, since Disneyland opened in 1955.

Fortunately, both parks reopened this spring, and now, Avengers Campus is ready for its close-up. The immersive new land, which is dedicated to “discovering, recruiting, and training the next generation of Super Heroes,” brings the world of Marvel to life with two key attractions, WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure and Guardians of the Galaxy–Mission: Breakout!, which opened in 2017. A number of superheroes will interact with guests—or “recruits”—around Avengers Campus. Four spots will offer food and beverages, and two shops will sell merch. The 6-acre “campus” occupies the former site of A Bug’s Land, the kid-friendly home of Flik and friends that closed in September 2018.

Superheroes in history

With the massive health emergency, economic freefall, and other challenges brought on by the pandemic, one might question whether there’s still a place in the world for superheroes. If the past is any guide, the answer is a resounding yes. After all, Captain America, Marvel’s first best-selling superhero, provided a vital dose of optimism during World War II, when Cap battled Nazis and urged readers to invest in war bonds. Now, 80 years later, classic superhero themes such as empowerment and victory over adversity might be more relevant than ever—and certainly more so than when the Imagineers began to dream up this new land in 2017.

Back then, the Imagineers working on the project at their Glendale, California, campus faced a difficult question: The Marvel Universe is the product of tens of thousands of comic book stories and dozens of movies and TV shows. How could Imagineers narrow that expansive universe to a single theme park experience?

In the end, they decided to focus on essential elements that have defined Marvel since the company sprang to life in 1939. “We didn’t follow any one story line that was in a comic or in a film,” said Scot Drake, portfolio creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. Instead, the Imagineers focused on “the core values of the Marvel characters,” he said, while also making sure they “delivered on the superpowers, but also the levity and the humor” that are distinctive to Marvel storytelling.

The campus is composed of several key spots, each tied to a different Marvel character or team. In addition to Spidey’s WEB Slingers, visitors will find the Ancient Sanctum, a luminous outdoor ruin inhabited by Doctor Strange. 

Across the way is the Pym Test Kitchen, a restaurant that uses Ant-Man and The Wasp’s growing and shrinking super-tech (a.k.a. Pym Particles) to offer food in strange and abnormal sizes. And at the center of it all is Avengers Headquarters, accented with the signature “Avengers” logo on the facade and, on the rooftop, a Quinjet—the sci-fi jet that carries the Avengers from one battle zone to another.

Spidey senses

All of this sounded good to me, but what really spoke to my inner nerd was WEB Slingers, in which riders travel around a track on vehicles and “shoot” virtual webs at interactive screens. While the story line is simple—help Spidey capture his out-of-control Spider-Bots before they wreak havoc on the campus—the technology behind the attraction is inordinately complex. The Imagineers wanted to create the experience of slinging webs, but without guests using handheld devices, as they do on Toy Story Midway Mania! In short, the Imagineers wanted riders to feel like they had superpowers.

The Imagineers spent 2 1/2 years researching ways to accomplish this. In the end, they developed gesture-tracking technology that’s built into each ride vehicle. Sixty times per second, cameras identify the location of riders’ heads, shoulders, elbows, and wrists, so that when they reach out an arm to sling a web, a virtual web shoots from their wrists onto interactive screens. Guests can sling webs to pull doors off shipping containers, to activate conveyor belts, or to grab objects and move them around. “The level of control that you have is amazing,” said Strong, the executive creative director. “It feels just like being Spider-Man.” That’s a compelling draw, I thought. After all, as Strong put it, “Spider-Man is such a wonderful gateway for all of us to take our first steps into being a hero.”

Now may be the best time to take those first steps. Shortly before the pandemic hit, Dave Bushore, vice president of Franchise Creative and Marketing at Marvel Studios, waxed rhapsodic about the new land under development: “The optimism inherent in Avengers Campus captures the diversity, power, and teamwork these extraordinary characters possess, and now they come together to unite people from all over the world under one guiding principle: We are stronger together.”

At the time, the statement seemed little more than a good sound bite. But since then, the world has waged an unprecedented battle against the deadly coronavirus, and today, his words seem almost prescient. Superheroes still matter because they remind us that strength—the kind required to defeat powerful, even deadly enemies—comes from working together. Along with delivering fun and thrills, Avengers Campus just might help drive home that stirring message—at a time when we all need to hear it.

Eat and drink like a hero

Disney has gone all out to create a menu of Marvel-themed food and drinks at Avengers Campus. Will these items give you superpowers? Probably not. But they do make for some eye-catching—and tasty—fare. Some highlights:

At Pym Test Kitchen, where Ant-Man and The Wasp have developed unusually sized foods, The Not So Little Chicken Sandwich features a giant breaded chicken breast on a tiny bun, with teriyaki and sriracha mayo, and pickled veggie slaw. 

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