Avengers… Assemble!
Updated: Apr 3, 2022
Our five favorite things about Avengers Campus
The competition between Disneyland and Disney World continues with the opening of Avengers Campus at Disneyland. This new area is more thematically accurate than A Bug’s Land, which was previously housed in that area, especially since Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT! is the landmark of this side of the park. So in honor of this new land, here are the most “marvelous” parts of Disneyland’s Avengers Campus.
5. Stepping into the Movies
Avengers Campus features several shows that literally bring the movies to life. Visit the Ancient Sanctum on the site of some unexplained occurrences and learn about the amazing Orb of Cagliostro from Dr. Strange. Or, maybe you’d like to watch the Dora Milaje honor Wakanda. Probably the coolest experience at Avengers Campus is seeing Spider-Man test out some new Stark technology as he swings overhead. It may be the most advanced, free-standing animatronic Disney has ever made, but I believe that that’s just Peter having some fun and flipping through the sky.
4. Pym Test Kitchen
Disney makes great food and that’s not a surprise. But what if you took that delicious food and changed its size? That’s exactly what the researchers at Pym Test Kitchen did with the use of Pym Particles to grow and shrink menu items. This leaves you with fan-favorite menu items like the Not so Little Chicken Sandwich and the Impossible Spoonful, which features a plant-based meatball the size of a plate of spaghetti. Plus, we could watch those Quantum pretzels shrink and grow all day long.
3. Meeting Your Heroes
Meet and greets are always special, but now kids can quite literally meet their heroes. Variant Loki, Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Thor, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, The Wasp, and The Guardians of the Galaxy have all been out and about for ~socially distanced~ pictures. The fact that I can one day take a picture with both Chris Evans’ Captain America AND Anthony Mackie's is the most beautiful thing, and I thank whoever was in the boardroom that made that happen.
2. WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure
This much-anticipated, completely new attraction stars Peter Parker and his malfunctioning Spider-Bots, which are stuck in replication mode and trying to escape. You board your web-slinger to try to catch the Spider-Bots before they wreak havoc on Avengers Campus. You basically stretch out your arm and aim at a screen, and webbing “magically” appears on that spot. Think of it as Toy Story Midway Mania or Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin but ~new and improved.~ This ride is for all ages and features tons of Easter Eggs like a graffiti design that spells “Miles Morales,” which hints at his MCU debut.
1. The Fact it Exists
If you frequent Walt Disney World as opposed to Disneyland, you know that there will never be a Marvel-themed land on the Florida property. This is because Marvel made a deal with Universal Studios for the rights to the MCU characters. Universal wanted to depict these characters at future theme parks, like what would become Universal’s Islands of Adventure, more specifically, the Super Hero Island area.
Although Disney bought Marvel in 2009, the original contract still dictates that any characters depicted on Marvel Super Hero Island cannot be used anywhere else east of the Mississippi River, only West. This is why California Adventure has Avengers Campus, and why EPCOT will soon be getting Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT!, because the Guardians are not depicted in Universal Studios. The contract even went so far as to dictate the name of the new land, as the Marvel logo could not be used anywhere, hence the name “Avengers Campus,” and not “Marvel Land.” But in terms of names, we like this better anyway.
In summary, even though Florida will never have a Marvel land, we’re glad it exists in California to differentiate the theme parks so they’re not all the same. Say what you want about Disney, but they know how to theme, and Avengers Campus is no exception.