New Spider-Man Ride Will Have Customizable Real World Upgrades

Certain video games allow you to spend a few dollars to get add-ons that give you an advantage—and sometimes, it can go a little overboard. Disney is bringing that idea into its theme parks with the new Spider-Man ride opening in June—Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure 

The Marvel-themed attraction will be opening June 4 as the main event inside Avengers Campus, a new section of Disney’s California Adventure. On the ride, guests will shoot webs at bad guys in kind of a moving, interactive video game setting (if you’re familiar with Disney rides, it’s basically like an upgraded interpretation of Toy Story Midway Mania or Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters). What’s new, though, is that fans can buy add-ons to upgrade those webs and change how the ride plays out for them. Basically, you can experience it normally just using your hands and arms, but you can also purchase a “WEB Power Band” and turn it on “attraction mode” that “unlocks multi-fire webs” that “personalize the game play for a cool, new experience on the attraction.” It’s a first for Disney Parks.

The important question is: how much will this set back families who already plopped down hundreds to gain access to the park in the first place? According to the OC Register, the base Power Band is $35 and the Web Tech are $30 each. If you just have the Power Band, you only get the multi-fire webs, but if you upgrade to WEB Tech you get an additional add-on that comes in variations inspired by four different characters: Spider-Man, Ghost Spider, Iron Man, and Rescue. The Spider-Man and Ghost Spider tech will allow you to use electro-dynamic webs (with your palm facing up like Spider-Man), while the Iron Man and Rescue tech gives you repulsor blasts (with your palm facing out like Iron Man). You can see video of all this on the Disney Parks blog, by the way. And of course, you can take these home, display them, and bring them back for future visits.

What’s unclear at this point is whether these souvenir upgrades give you the chance at more points, or if it’s just a cool cosmetic upgrade. We’ve reached out to Disney Parks for that clarification and will update the post if or when we hear back. Nevertheless, the fact is Disney guests will absolutely go wild for these, so the company choosing to utilize loot box-style add-ons is a keen business decision. It makes you wonder what the company could do this for next.

Avengers Campus, complete with Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, opens June 4. Which, by the way, will be busier than initially expected. News also broke this week that Orange County, California, where Disneyland is located, is loosening its covid-19 restrictions. That means while the park had to keep at 25% total capacity when it opened last month, now that number can go up by 40%. Meaning, the parks will now be 35% full starting this week.

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