While the rest of the word lined up for the new-fangled WEB Slingers Spider-Man ride in Avengers Campus, I revisited The Amazing Spider-Man ride in Islands of Adventure out of morbid curiosity.
A little background for those unfamiliar with the complicated world of Marvel theme parks: The reason a Marvel Super Hero Island exists in Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure is because a lot of the theme-park attractions in Islands of Adventure and Universal Orlando alike are licensed properties from other studios.
There’s a Jurassic Park-themed Island, the Harry Potter one, a Doctor Seuss world, a comic-strip land, a King Kong-inspired Skull Island, and the Lost Continent, a vaguely Medieval-Greco-Roman-Arabian themed place that used to have a few miscellaneous attractions that didn’t belong anywhere else, though these days, it only hosts a stunt show and an interactive fountain.
or Japan Disneyland is exempt from those rules because it’s west of the Mississippi River, which is why Disney squeezed Avengers Campus into the comparatively tiny Disneyland, instead of placing it in the more sprawling Walt Disney World.
Instead of replicating movie sets from the MCU, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, or Venom, the decor of the Marvel island is full of giant comic-style images of characters, and the buildings are stylized with big, bold bright colors to emulate that feel.
The retro vibe could be jarring, but because those specific characters only make up a small portion of Marvel Super Hero Island, it’s easy to look past them.
It also does help that Marvel Island is a hop-skip away from Toon Lagoon, the area of Islands of Adventure dedicated to comic strips and old-timey cartoon characters like Popeye and Dudley Do-Right, so visitors can seamlessly transition from one pen-and-ink world into another.
It is pretty funny that both Marvel Super Hero Island and Avengers Campus opened up with Spider-Man rides — The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure, and WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure at Disneyland.
Like the rest of Marvel Super Hero Island, the ride was designed to evoke the comics, and it visually resembles the 1994 animated series more than it mimics any movie featuring Holland, Tobey Maguire, or Andrew Garfield.
Waiting in line for The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man takes me around the back of the Daily Bugle offices.
Everything is also tinged with grey, which I guess is supposed to continue the comic book look and evoke newspaper comics, but it just looks a little washed-out.
We grab some “night-vision goggles” , then load up into the vehicle, which whisks us off into a Manhattan back alley, portrayed in comic-book style.
Elements like Scream’s flowing hair might look a little stiff, but when real fire blasts out of the walls and water splashes on the riders, that’s not really what you’re paying attention to.
The effect is similar in the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, but the Spider-Man ride is notable for doing it first, and still being just as much fun.
The fire and water — the “4D effects” — could be gimmicky, but they’re well-integrated into the storyline — and also, when a man made of water is taking a swipe at you, it’s okay to be a bit cheesy.
Because the story of the ride is all animated, and because it’s so self-contained in Spider-Man lore, without any references to other heroes or villains, it’s easy to forget the MCU version of Spider-Man and his whole interconnected universe.
Actually, maybe it holds up because it’s trapped in a weird time limbo, just as much of a period piece of Marvel lore as it is a fun ride.