Ever since Marvel Avengers Campus was announced for the Disney California Adventure Park, I was super excited to go! Disney World in Orlando isn’t able to incorporate much Marvel into their parks thanks to Universal previously owning the rights and having some of the intellectual property in their Florida park. It’s kind of a confusing agreement, but if you’re interested in more details about that, you can read all about it here.
Avengers Campus is fantastically themed – from the moment you enter the land, you are fully immersed in the Marvel world. Spiderman does a cool stunt show that’s not to be missed and you’ll find a variety of characters hanging out on top of the Quinjet area. Dr. Strange has his own corner and often characters are just out walking around with no announced meet and greet. This really sets the California park apart from the Florida park!
There are also fun Marvel themed restaurants. We enjoyed both our meals at Pym’s Test Kitchen and Shawarma Palace. Prices are reasonable for theme park food and it tastes good, which isn’t always the case in some parks.
But there’s more to DCA than Marvel, although that was definitely the highlight of that park for me! There’s also Pixar Pier, which includes the best ride at both DCA and Disneyland – the Incredicoaster. This is one of Disney’s most intense rides and it actually take you up and into a loop, which was really fun. The theming is great as you chase Jack Jack through all the twists and turns of the coaster.
San Fransokyo Square, the newest area of DCA and themed after the “Big Hero Six” movie. There are lots of great food options here and we ate at the Lucky Fortune Cookery, which isn’t new, but has been reimagined a bit. You can also find Baymax meet & greets here, take a bakery tour and find lots of fun photo ops. It’s super pretty at night with all the lights and the water setting!
Cars Land was another cute area if the park and one that kids and adults are sure to both enjoy. Radiator Springs Racers, which is a lot like Test Track in Disney World, was by far the most popular ride and had the longest wait times. We unfortunately had to wait almost two hours even though the posted wait time was much shorter when we got in line. They’ve obviously planned for that because the queue line is incredibly well designed but extremely long. It also didn’t help that they were letting hundreds of fast pass riders in before the people in the regular line. I think Disney needs to improve that process a little bit…
We were also able to snag tickets to Oogie Boogie Bash, which was quite a fiasco when they went on sale this summer. After waiting in an online queue, which went down after about 20 minutes, I was somehow able to bypass that step and purchase them through the app like regular theme park tickets – a glitch that was NOT supposed to happen. However, Disney decided to honor those tickets and others had been able to get them that way too.
It was a really fun Halloween party featuring Mr. Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas. The parade was pretty awesome and lots of villains were out that you normally don’t see around the park any other time of year. There were trick-or-treat stations all over the park, plus Guardians of the Galaxy had a Monsters After Dark ride overlay which far surpassed the Tower of Terror in Disney World.
Of the two parks on the west coast, DCA was by far my favorite of the two and I can’t wait to go back someday when Avengers Campus has more added to it. Be sure to check out my vlog for more from our day at DCA and Ooogie Boogie Bash!