A festive day today in Disneyland Resort Paris (France) as the long awaited new theme zone ‘Avenger Campus’ finally opens at the Walt Disney Studios. The new zone, which is based on the super heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, contains several rides, meet-and-greets and a restaurant. One of the highlights of the campus is the new interactive dark ride Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure.
In 2008, Marvel Comics started a cinematic franchise based on their comics, starting with Iron Man (2008) and leading up to The Avengers (2012). Halfway through this production, at the end of 2009, Marvel Comics was acquired by The Walt Disney Company. The franchise turned out to be wildly popular and the many more films and TV series that have been created around the universe since were produced by Disney.
The popularity of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe gave Walt Disney Imagineering the opportunity to create rides for Disneyland parks around the world. Avenger Campus at Walt Disney Studios is the newest addition of Marvel Comics-based theme park experiences. The zone contains two major rides: roller coaster Avengers Assemble: Flight Force (a retheme of the former Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster) and the brand new dark ride Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure.
Visitors of the Avengers Campus are invited to enter the Worldwide Engineering Brigade (W.E.B.) during its open day. W.E.B. is a company founded by Tony Stark (alias Iron Man) and focuses on the engineering of live saving equipment. Visitors are guided by Peter Parker (alias Spider-Man) when he accidentally releases a swarm of mechanical spiders that are trying to take over the campus. Together with Spider-Man, riders must board the vehicles and use new W.E.B. technology to fight the spiders and free the campus.
Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure is an interactive dark ride that does not feature any weapons or other shooting devices. Instead, riders are supposed to make hand gestures, comparable to those of Spider-Man, shooting his webs. The ride is almost an exact copy of WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure in Disney California Adventure that opened last year in a similar Avengers Campus themed zone, although the version in Paris is mostly in the French language. The attraction contains a pre-show featuring Spider-Man actor Tom Holland. The ride itself takes about 4 minutes.
Today is the first day that the Avengers Campus and Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure are open to the public. Walt Disney Studios began test running the new rides on July 9th for a select group of invitees, and for passholders yesterday. Starting from today, all park guests will now be able to visit and experience the new themed zone.
