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DISNEY CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE
Anaheim, California (Abbreviation: DCA)
Walt Disney Theme Parks
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(11/28/2024) Disney California Adventure Submits Plans To Begin Avengers Campus Expansion in Early 2025
(11/9/2024) New Holiday Entertainment Coming To Disney California Adventure
(8/29/2024) Disney California Adventure To Close Red Car Trolley For Avengers Campus Construction
(8/11/2024) New Attractions Themed to Coco, Avengers and Avatar Coming To Disney California Adventure
(8/9/2024) Mock Up For Avengers Dark Ride Vehiclal On Display at D23
Ride Rehabs - These dates are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as refurbishments are subject to change.
Grizzly River Run - Jan 6 through TBD
Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind - Jan. 6 through TBD
 General Park News - (11/9/2024) Disney California Adventure will be adding a couple of new live holiday shows to the park’s entertainment lineup for the holiday season, from Nov. 15 through to Jan. 6, 2025 themed to Coco and Encanto. Look for ‘A Musical Christmas” featuring Miguel from Coco to take place on Buena Vista Street, along with “Mirabel’s Gifts of the Season” taking place in Paradise Gardens. These will join returning favorites at the park such as the ‘World of Color - Season fo Light” and the Viva Navidad Street Party.
It looks like the park is looking to beef up their holiday offerings as they go toe to toe with the already established heavy hitters returning to Disneyland next door, such as the Christmas Fantasy parade and the Believe… in Holiday Magic fireworks show.
(8/29/2024) Disney California Adventure has confirmed that the Red Car Trolley attraction will be closing down in early 2025 to allow for the construction of an expansion to the Avengers Campus area of the park. The exact date of the closing has not yet been announced, but apparently the maintenance / storage barn for the Trolleys backstage is what needs to be removed to allow for the expansion of Avengers Campus.
Avengers Campus was announced at D23 to be added two new rides, a dark ride through the Marvel Multiverse to stop ‘King Thanos’ and a Iron Man themed robo-arm ride. Check out the concept artwork here. Currently the Red Car tracks just sort of barge right into the Avengers HQ building, where a door can open and less them pass through to the maintenance barn hidden behind the building facade. The backstage area in question is expected to be cleared to make way for the new Avengers dark ride building.
(6/14/2024) According to the OC Register, a number of live entertainment performances have been trimmed from the budget of the Disney California Adventure theme park, just as the park kicks off the busy summer season. This includes a reduction in the performance groups: “Warriors of Wakanda” to go dark on Sundays and Mondays and “The Citizen of Buena Vista Street” to be absent on Thursday and Fridays.
For Marvel fans, the unique Doctor Strange: Mysteries of the Mystic Arts live performance in Avengers Campus has been cut entirely, along with the nearby Club Pixar dance shows. It also sounds like more cuts are expected to take place soon across the way within Disneyland itself in the near future.
(4/12/2024) Here is something you don’t see every day… the entire vertical look on the IncrediCoaster at Disney California Adventure has been removed. The roller coaster (formerly known as California Screamin’) closed for refurbishment earlier in the week, and now the reason is quite obvious.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this is the first time that Disney has opted to remove the loop for some kind of the maintenance, as I seem to recall this also taking place at least once before. Now I’m curious if Disney is just removing the track to work on it more easily, or if they are flat out replacing it with some new track sections that might have been fabricated and shipped in. Anyone know more?
(3/16/2024) The Disneyland Resort has confirmed the return of Pixar Fest to the theme parks between April 26 and August 4, 2024.
Disneyland will bring back the “Together Forever - A Pixar Nighttime Spectacular” show at the castle a tonight and see the Pixar Pals Playtime Party show in the Fantasyland Theater.
Disney California Adventure will add the “Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration!” parade, and a nighttime party when “Club Pixar” takes over the Hollywood Backlot.
Plus new themed food, merchandise, special decor and character meet & greet opportunities will be added to both theme parks.
While all this is great news, the return of a nighttime dance party event to California Adventure instantly brings thoughts a former such event that was a huge hit with the guests a long time ago. I’m talking about ElecTRONica… and with Tron: Ares (aka: TR3N) now filming with a December 2025 release window, I can’t help but dream that the possible return of ElecTRONia may be just around the corner if Club Pixar does well.
(2/24/2024) Good news for Disney California Adventure fans! Disneyland has reported that the original Soarin’ Over California ride film will return to the Soarin’ attraction from March 1st to April 22, as a bonus attraction for the park’s Food & Wine Festival event.
(6/10/2023) You may have seen him before, back when Walt Disney Imagineering posted a few preview videos as they were developing the animatronic, but the fully free-roaming “Baby Groot” animatronic figure is now being shown off to guests as a test at Disney California Adventure. The Groot figure is part of something called Project Kiwi, which was an initiative to find a way to bring some of Disney’s smaller characters to life, at actual scale.
In a video clip you can see the Groot figure appears to be in some kind of dance-off performance piece with Star Lord, and is able to perform some interesting dance moves, walk around the stage and even announce, “I Am Groot!”.
???? - Coco Dark Ride - Confirmed - (8/11/2024) Disney confirmed that a new dark boat ride themed to the film Coco would be coming to Disney California Adventure in the near future. Climb aboard and go on a musical journey across the veil to see the land of the dead. Construction will begin in 2026.
???? - Avengers Campus Expansion - In Development - (11/28/2024) According to various posts, Disneyland has submitted their plans to begin work on the Avengers Campus expansion in early 2025. As expected, this will involve the removal of the small backstage parking lot and CM office trailers that have been sitting there for years in order to build the massive new Avengers attraction building required for the Marvel dark ride experience.
(8/11/2024) Disney has confirmed that construction to add two new attractions to the Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure will begin in 2025. We’ve heard about the Avengers themed dark ride, which is now called Avengers Infinity Defense. Guests will jump between worlds to stop the rise of “King Thanos”.
The second attraction is called the Stark Flight Lab, where you can sit in a two-person pod with a friend, which will be grabbed by a robot arm that will then begin to toss and whirl your around in a simulation of flight. In short, if you’ve seen a Robocoaster where riders are thrown-around by a giant Kulka arm, then this looks to be the same kind of concept. The difference is, according to concept art, is guests are loaded in one pod, while riders in a second pod experience the attraction, so it looks like the arm will disconnect from one pod to attach to the other, increasing the overall guest capacity.
(8/9/2024) D23 is happening in California this week, and visuals of a ride-vehicle mock-up for the future Avengers dark ride coming to Avengers Campus was on display. For anyone who had doubts, you can see based on the design that this dark ride vehicle looks very similar to the dark rides you’ve probably see at Universal theme parks, such as the Adventures of Spider-Man or Transformers: The Ride.
Disney also put a similar ride system to use on their new Peter Pan themed ride that just opened at Tokyo DisneySea this Summer. The high side walls on the vehicle are to focus the rider’s attention forward at whatever scene or projection-screen is in front of the vehicle, rather than allowing them to look all around the room.
(9/9/2023) Work is moving forward on that long-promised Avengers attraction for the Avengers Campus in Disney California Adventure. According to a new piece of teaser artwork released, we get our first view of the “world jumping” ride vehicle that will transport guests throughout the Marvel Multiverse.
While this may simply just be a piece of concept art showing the back-end of an Avengers themed flying vehicle, the mention that the ride experience will include traveling through the Multiverse does give us an important piece of information about the theme of the ride. The use of the Multiverse concept will easily allow access to all of the popular Marvel characters, no matter how far apart they are, including revisiting popular heroes who may have died (like Iron Man or Blank Panther) as well as “variant” characters that may currently only exist in other parallel universes (like Captain Carter, Deadpool or the Spider-Man variants).
The concept is also a brilliant one that could be used to update the attraction moving forward, as future Marvel productions introduce all new characters in the years to come, without breaking the overall theme of the ride. Much like what we have with the current version of Star Tours, all characters from any point Marvel history will be fair game to mix and merge for use in a wild romp through Marvel’s vast Mutliverse.
As for the ride itself... little is known. A previous Avengers themed concept also apparently involved a bit of teleporting around the Multiverse to defeat a threat known as King Thanos, from an alternerate universe where Thanos defeated the Avengers and won. This attraction was thought to be something of a hybrid between Disney’s Rise of the Resistance dark ride but with more multi-media and projections to convey the action, not unlike Universal’s Transformers dark ride. Based on the look of the vehicle shown in the concept art, we’ve moved on from a “ground” based vehicle to a themed flying vehicle with tall sidepanels, which looks very similar in nature to the layout of the new Peter Pan ride coming to Tokyo DisneySea next year. If you’ve been on Universal’s Transformers or Universal’s Spider-Man dark rides, then you’ll remember that they also feature high side panels to help focus the rider’s view on what is happening in in the scene or screen front of them.
(9/11/22) After rumors had been floating that the proposed Phase-2 attraction for Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure had been put on the shelf, Disney itself has confirmed that they’re not done with Avengers Campus. In a tweet posted yesterday Disney appears to be back on track with planning a 3rd attraction for Avengers Campus that would include a “brand-new story that will bring guests into battle alongside their favorite Super Heroes.” This is a reflection of the strong performance and demand being seen for the company’s theme park division.
(3/11/22) During the Disney shareholders Q&A session the other day questions arose about a couple of attractions Disney had announced, but hasn’t made any forward progress with yet. In this case, the previously announced Mary Poppins attraction at Epcot’s UK pavilion and an Avenger’s attraction meant to come as a Phase 2 for the Avengers Campus lands.
As one might expect from such a meeting, the answers were a bit of a mixed bag that started off by deflecting the question a bit to point out all the attractions they have opened or were about to open in the near future. Then they confirmed that these projects were essentially put on hold some time back due to the pandemic. Lastly, it was implied that maybe the projects could be put back into play in the future as the financial performance of things returns more back to normal, but there was no promise to do so.
While Disney could easily just opt to forget about the proposed Mary Poppins project entirely, it won’t be as easy to keep an Avengers project on hold, especially as the characters and themes are pre-built into the Avengers Campus lands, leaving guests already clamoring for the expansions to get under way. If not in the original form intended, we’ve heard there may be an alternate project or two (likely at a lower budget) being held for possible consideration. So long as Disney continues to put out Marvel movies, there will always be a demand for more Marvel themed experiences in the parks.
(8/24/20) BlooLoop has posted an update about the Avengers Campus attraction under construction at Disney California Adventure. With construction moving ahead once again Disney released an updated look at the land, including the new Quinjet that has been installed. The arrival of the Quinjet is an important feature that will play heavily into the theme of the major attraction set to be installed in the second phase of the land, which is rumored to be an Avengers themed ride experience.
(8/27/19) Disney also confirmed that there will be a Phase 2 to the Avengers Campus, which will indeed be that promised new Avengers themed ride. The latest details on this attraction coming later is that guests will board a Quinjet and fly off to help the Avengers battle a new threat in Wakanda. This will all take place inside a brand new structure that will be the actual Avengers Headquarters. Disney wont say exactly what kind of ride this will be, only that they are working on developing an “all-new innovative ride system” to bring the experience to life.
???? - Avatar Land - (8/11/2024) At the D23 Expo last night, a presentation focused on new attractions confirmed that an entire Avatar themed land would be coming to Disney California Adventure. This land will be different from the one built in Florida, which was inspired by the first film. The land in development for California Adventure will be themed more to fit in with the areas seen in Avatar 2 (The Way of Water) as well as the upcoming Avatar 3 (Fire and Ash).
Where this will fit into Disney California Adventure remains to be seen, thought one of those expansions over Disneyland Drive to re-take one of the parking lots would seem to be a necessity given the scale of this project. On the attraction end, itt isn’t clear how many attractions may fit in here, but concept art showing off a unique boat ride was shown. Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if this attraction ends up using the unique flume system Disney created for Shanghai Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, able to float through real-world scenes as well as able to rotate the boat in order to focus attention on projection based scenes along the way as needed.
No timeline was given, so I wouldn’t expect to see this one happen until at least 2030 as other projects closer to happening were also confirmed.
(4/4/2024) New concept art revealing a look at a possible new land themed to the AVATAR film series was released by Disney this week. The land does look very different from the one built in Walt Disney World, and features a look at an outdoor boat ride.
(3/6/2024) Disney CEO, Bob Iger, has confirmed himself that the Avatar “experience” that they’ve been planning for the Disneyland Resort will actually be a Avatar themed “land” for one of the theme parks. According to the quote posted over at Blooloop, “”We have one Avatar-based land, Pandora, in Florida. We’re going to put a second one in California.”
Because of the previous words chosen to initially describing their plans to bring the Avatar IP to California, many were cautiously expecting this to be some kind of single attraction, or maybe just a walk-through IP based area, sort of like the “Star Wars Launch Bay”, rather than hold out hope for copy or evolution of the “Pandora” land build for Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
So now that we know Disney is planning to bring an Avatar themed land to one of the California theme parks, I guess the next two questions we all want answered are: “Which Park?” and “Where Exactly will this go?”
If I had to guess right now, my gut says it would be somewhere in Disney California Adventure, simply because the original Disneyland park already has Tomorrowland and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge as SciFi based attraction areas, while the closest thing DCA has would be the Avenger’s Campus area. Plus at IAAPA in November somie unconfirmed comments were made that apparently name dropped DCA as the location. Just don’t ask me where it will go however, because the only real open space available is south of Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, and that space has long been earmarked for the in-development Avengers themed dark ride. Otherwise, this could be one of those long-term Disney plans they were walking about where the parks would each expand over Disneyland Drive to add new additions into areas currently used as parking lots.
(11/14/2023) Is the next “Avatar” themed attraction going to be built in the Disney California Adventure theme park? There are several posts online today claiming that something was said at the Disney Imagineering Lunch & Learn event that took place as part of the IAAPA Expo 2023 in Orlando earlier today, that the new Avatar experience would be coming to DCA.
No further details were said, so we don’t know if they meant it would be another full land, much like the one at Disney’s Animal Kingdom or a stand-alone attraction, possibly just a copied segment of the existing attraction, or if this would be a completely unique attraction. It very well could simply be a walk-through experience, not unlike the Journey of Water attraction they just opened at Epcot, but themed to the world of Pandora.
That said… and despite what everyone wants to think, I’ve also read that Disney has officially reached out to a few blogger types to deny that anything was announced on behalf of the Disneyland Resort at all regarding an Avatar attraction. While I’m not at all sure what was said today at the IAAPA event, it does make me wonder if this is a case of someone talking about something they aren’t supposed to mention yet, or a case of someone speaking factually about a design that has not been given the green light.
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