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Load your web-shooter for all the details on Avengers Campus' new Spider-Man Adventure ride
Today the hedges covering the three entrances into Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure® Park have all been removed and guests can officially become Avengers recruits. Alongside all of the live experiences featuring Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the bespoke food and and beverages created for the land and the existing Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! ride, arguably the biggest attraction at launch is WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure featuring Tom Holland reprising his MCU embodyment of Peter Parker/Spider-Man.
If you've ever run around a playground screaming "pew-pew" as you flicked imaginary webs from your wrist, you are halfway prepared for what this truly state-of-the-art interactive experience is going to serve you. WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure leaps past any other theme park ride that puts you in a seat allowing guests to laser shoot targets for points and bragging rights. WEB SLINGERS wipes away all external reliance for interactivity because your body movements are read to make webs become real as you help dispense of Peter's accidental army of Spider-Bots overrunning the former Stark Industries building (now WEB, or Worldwide Engineering Brigade).
Executive Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering, Brent Strong — one of the creative leads behind the ride — told reporters and SYFY WIRE during the Avengers Campus Media Day that one of the unique hallmarks of this ride are the innovations baked right into its DNA, which allows riders to customize their experience.
"There is a ton of variety inside of Webslingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, but the basic mission is always the same: we are going to save the Campus from those rampaging Spider-Bots," Strong explains about the ride's basic goal. "But what the guests do absolutely determines how that adventure plays out. A lot of times, the first time you go through, there's so much to see, there's so much to do, you see people just slinging as fast as they can at the Spider-Bots. A lot of people don't even realize that the webs can actually interact with the environment that those Spider-Bots are in as well."
As the WEB Slinger vehicle takes you deeper into the complex, new doors open up revealing spaces that quickly become overrun by the Spider-Bots that latch onto everything in the room, while replicating. Flicking webs at them won't be enough so you've got to use your gaming brains instantly to strategize how to clean out the room by using items inside to get bigger points and clear rooms.
"You can start to grab onto shipping containers, open doors, grow things and shrink things in the Pym labs, open up some of those vitrines in The Collector's fortress," Strong hints about how to amp up success rates. "And we've hidden a million Easter eggs and fun little surprises in there for people to discover. There's lots to find, lots to see."
"And as for the technology, behind Webslingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, what was really important to us was to try and make the interface disappear so that guests just have the superpowers themselves," Strong continues. "In order to do that, we did a whole bunch of R&D, and a whole bunch of invention to try and make this technology as un-obvious as possible. Every time you ride Webslingers, we actually have an entire invisible interface that's on that vehicle with you, developed by all of these inventors at WEB. It's an array of cameras that in real-time are able to determine where your head is, where your shoulders are, where your elbows are, where your wrists are. And between that and the 3-D glasses, we're able to create webs coming right out of your wrist every time you gesture. And again, it's a ton of technology. It's a lot of computers. But it should all just go away so that you can live out your favorite Spider-Man moments."
The other added layer of this ride is that you can augment your wrist skills with the help of your favorite Avengers. In the adjacent WEB Suppliers store, guests can buy WEB Power Bands that will change how the ride will respond to your movements.
"Everyone has their own favorite hero, and we wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to play as their favorite hero," Strong explains. "Web Tech accessories are a brand-new line of products so you can actually customize your own power set on the attraction. If Iron Man is your favorite character, you can now have Iron Man powers on that attraction with the Iron Man Repulsor. Each [band] unlocks different abilities, different strengths, different weaknesses, and really changes the way that you play on the attraction, and allows you to roleplay as your favorite superhero on the ride, as well as when you take it home."
For when you are at home, each band features lights, sounds, projections, and webs that eject and retract. And the aforementioned Iron Man and Rescue-inspired Repulsor Cannons change your powers to repulsor blasts on the attraction and at home. And you can practice your repulsor powers with training spheres which makes it a functional toy between park visits.
Here's a look at some of the other things you'll see in the WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure queue before you get on the ride:
(Photo Credit: Paul Terry)
