Avengers Campus

Listen first. Somewhere above you, a jet engine hums from a speaker you cannot see. Boots scrape on a stage nearby. A child shouts a hero's name, and somebody in a red suit turns and waves. The pavement under your feet is pale concrete, scored like a working facility, not a fairy-tale lane. This is Avengers Campus, inside Disney California Adventure in Anaheim. It feels less like a theme park land and more like a base where something is about to happen.

That feeling is deliberate. Most Disney lands ask you to imagine another time or a faraway kingdom. This one asks you to imagine you have been recruited. The story here says the campus is a training ground, a place where heroes and new recruits gather. You are not watching a film. You are a visitor on site, and the characters walking past are supposed to be colleagues, not costumed performers on a parade float.

The land opened in the summer of 2021, after a delay. It was planned for 2020, but the pandemic closed the parks, and the opening waited more than a year. Much of the ground it sits on once belonged to a smaller, gentler area themed around insects, where giant blades of grass and oversized leaves made guests feel tiny. Those plants are gone now. In their place stand steel, glass, and the clean lines of a research complex.

Look up at the tallest building, the one with the dark, angular silhouette. Before this land existed, it was the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, a haunted Hollywood hotel with a dropping elevator. In 2017 it was rebuilt into Guardians of the Galaxy, Mission: Breakout. The hotel facade disappeared under a new skin of metal panels and industrial towers. Here is the surprise many visitors miss — the old drop ride is still inside, wearing a new story.

That story belongs to the Collector, a figure from the Guardians films who hoards rare creatures and objects. His fortress, the tale goes, holds the Guardians captive, and you are there to help free them. Inside, the queue passes display cases of strange artefacts. Then the elevator rises and falls to a pounding classic rock soundtrack. The ride runs several different sequences and songs, so two visits rarely feel quite the same.

Across the plaza, a long, low building houses the land's other major ride, Web Slingers, a Spider-Man adventure. The setting is a workshop run by young inventors, a group the story calls the Worldwide Engineering Brigade. Their initials spell W, E, B, which is a small joke in itself. The trouble, as always, is that something they built has escaped. Little self-copying robots called Spider-Bots are loose, and they need catching.

The clever part of this ride is in your hands. You wear 3D glasses, and the system tracks the movement of your arms. Flick your wrists, and webs appear to shoot from your palms onto the screen. There is no blaster to hold. Your own gestures become the controller. Many riders spend the first minute laughing at how strange it feels, then start aiming with real concentration.

Now keep an eye on the rooftop of the main headquarters building. At certain times, Spider-Man appears up there and leaps across the gap in a high acrobatic arc. It looks like a stunt performer. It is actually a robotic figure, an untethered animatronic that Disney engineers developed to perform flips no human double could safely repeat. Watch the landing closely... the figure never lands in view. The illusion depends on that missing final moment.

The live encounters change through the day, and that is part of the texture here. You may meet characters on the plaza, on rooftops, or at small stages. Near a mossy, temple-like structure with an ornate doorway, the sorcerers of the Doctor Strange films have their corner. The architecture there shifts suddenly from steel to carved stone and warm orange light, as if a door to another world opened between two office blocks.

Food here follows the same playful logic. One counter is themed around the shrinking and enlarging technology from the Ant-Man films. The joke is scale. Pretzels and sandwiches arrive in sizes that are either tiny or absurdly large, as if a lab experiment went slightly wrong. Fans of the films will also spot a nod to shawarma, the meal the heroes famously share in silence at the end of the first Avengers movie.

Pause and look at the small things, because the designers hid a lot in them. Crates carry stencilled codes. Signs use the visual language of a real campus, with arrows, warnings, and department names. Some details reward people who know the films well, and others simply make the place feel used. Nothing here looks brand new on purpose. A little wear on a railing makes the base feel lived in.

It is worth thinking about why a land like this exists at all. For decades, theme parks built worlds from old stories and fairy tales. This one is drawn from films that are still being made, with characters audiences grew up with during the last two decades. That brings a challenge. The stories keep changing, so the land was built to absorb new heroes and new encounters without being torn down.

Before you move on, find a spot near the centre of the plaza and turn slowly in a full circle. You will see the Collector's dark fortress, the long workshop, the stone sanctum, and the sleek headquarters. Notice how the sound changes as you turn, from rock music to whirring machinery to quiet chimes. Then watch the crowd for a moment... somewhere in it, a small child is standing very still, waiting for a hero to look their way.