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From Peggy Carter to Shawarma: The MCU Easter eggs to look for at Disney's Avengers Campus
With the official opening of the Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure® Park this week, there's plenty of food, beverages, live action experiences and two major rides to tackle if you plan to help christen the park this summer in Anaheim, California. But there's a whole other level of fun to be had just by looking closely at everything in every corner, and nook and cranny of the Campus because there's one heck of a game of eye-spy to be played.
From top to bottom, there are Easter eggs featuring call backs to all 23 films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe everywhere. Some are easy to spot, while some are deep cuts only to be discovered in off-the-beaten path locations.
SYFY WIRE attended an early Media Day on June 2 where some of the creators behind the Avengers Campus revealed the placed Easter eggs that tickled them the most. And while they said picking just one was like picking favorite children, each could readily provide a few examples including, Michele Gendreau, Director of Food & Beverage Experience Integration at Disneyland Resort, who explained that every food or drink item in the Pym Test Kitchen are all part of a big extended story that connects back to Hank and Hope Pym playing with their Quantum tunnel and particle generators to create the menu.
"I like that we've been able to tell different stories through Ant-Man and the Wasp and through the Pym experiments," Gendreau said. "For instance, Doctor Strange invites Thor for a cup of tea, but Thor's not your kind for a cup of tea, so we put in reverse-fill beer systems as a nod to that." The Asgardian certainly likes his ale and there's plenty of IPA and microbrew choices within the Tasting Lab that lands that particular joke well.
Scot Drake, the Portfolio Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, said his favorite Easter egg is actually one that originates as a mention in Avengers: Endgame. "There is a tease [about] the Quinjet that we designed specifically for Avengers Campus; that's how close we've been working with our Studios partners. Not only are we providing Easter eggs that link back to the film, but we're starting to see this connected growth of the universe where now we are teasing things from the park."
And the end credits tag scene from The Avengers is still reaping rewards with the inclusion of two separate Shawarma food carts in, and near, the Campus footprint. In the lore of the park, the carts are owned by the same guy who invited Earth's Mightiest Heroes in for their post New York battle meal. Now his carts in the Campus are wrapped with all kinds of deep dive material relating to all of the superheroes.
Brent Strong, Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering, said he picks the carts as his top thing to investigate. "I love when you look closely at the Shawarma cart while you're ordering your food, because every single item that the proprietor of that cart has collected is an Easter egg calling back to the movies, or the comics, or even some of our other attractions like the Stark Expo in Hong Kong. I just love the density and the interconnectedness of that."
But there are plenty of other delighful things to spot all over the various sections of Avengers Campus. Just the like existing Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! experience—which is overflowing with items collected by Tanaleer Tivan and seen in both Guardians of the Galaxy films—the new areas are brimming with items that cover the gamut. Here are some of our favorites you can see in our exclusive slideshow below:
1) The Pym Menus boards are actually Scott and Hope's phones, and if you watch the screens, you'll see them get texts and messages from some of their famous friends like Tony Stark.
2) Near the front of the Stark Industries building (now WEB Workshop), there's a special parking spot for a close friend of both Howard Stark and Peggy Carter.
3) There's a two-part Easter egg outside of the Stark Industries building (now WEB Workshop). Look for a spigot near the base of the building....
4) Step back from the Gamma Radiation spigot and you'll see the effects of what that spillage has done to the tree in front of it. Tree ANGRY!
5) Across from old Stark Industries building there's a map of the entire Stark Industries Complex back in the day. And if you look closely, you can compare the footprint of the current Campus to what used to exist.
6) In the alcove across from the Web Workshop, the SSR is honored, and the woman who eventually ran it: Peggy Carter.
7) In the queue to attend the Open House at WEB (Worldwide Engineering Brigade), you'll see other bright inventors like Peter Parker who have been assembled by Tony Stark to invent new technologies and equip everyday people to become Super Heroes.
8) There's an old blueprint of the flying car tech Howard Stark was working on in Captain America: The First Avenger inside the queue for WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure (with annotations by Peter Parker).
9) Peter Parker's white board musings are inside the WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure queue and they might have been featured already inside the Spider-Man films.
10) Tucked into a corner of the WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure queue is a classifieds board with all kinds of interesting ads for services that could be used around the MCU.
11) The formal main entrance for Avengers Campus is a huge circular space that has an arc reactor embedded into the flooring. At night, the reactor lights up in the traditional blue which honors the man behind the whole endeavor.
12) On the WEB Workshop building, where Spider-Man does his web gymnastics for the recruits, there's a graffiti wall sporting a very specific tag that will please fans of Miles Morales.
13) Inside the Web Supplies shop, the shelves are literally crammed with every kind of science and engineering geek Easter egg. In particular, there's a whole storage case full of science secrets from the smartest minds within the MCU. Look at the labels...
14) Bruce Banner had a thing for the beverage Pingo Doce in The Incredible Hulk. Avengers Campus goes all in with the green drink with visual references near work stations and even the drink itself available in the Pym Testing Kitchen.
15) Down a dead end corridor in the Stark Industries building (now WEB Workshop), look for a wall of lockers that honor a lot of the VIPs of the MCU universe in a more subtle, and colorful way.
