My daughter loves the Marvel movies. She has seen all of them multiple times, and has watched the “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series multiple times too. When I found out the Avengers Campus at California Adventure would open during Disney’s limited capacity and California resident only rules, I (foolishly) believed it would be a good time to go, before all the crowds show up on June 15. Well, as you can tell by the headline, we had to wait more than four hours in a standby line just to enter the new “land” at California Adventure, and even though it was pretty cool, it was decidedly not worth waiting in line for four and a half hours.

Because we bought park hopper tickets, we left the park to switch over to Disneyland after we were done at Avengers Campus, so we didn’t have time to see anything else at California Adventure. Having bitched about that, I will say that the Avengers Campus was the reason we went to California Adventure, and we got to see what we came to see so I shouldn’t complain. (But that hasn’t ever stopped me before.)

There is another way to get into the Avengers Campus more quickly – be one of the lucky few to acquire boarding passes for the new Spider-Man ride, “Web Slingers.” You can get those boarding passes only through the Disneyland app, and you have to have the “fastest finger” – I logged on and was poised to hit the JOIN button at 7 a.m. and noon (the only times you can get passes) and the slots were full within seconds. So we didn’t get to bypass the line, and of course we didn’t get to try the Web Slingers ride either.

Once we made it in, we got in line for the Campus’ other main attraction, the “Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!” This attraction opened in 2017, replacing the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

Because of social distancing rules, the line was outdoors. I think the coolest part of this ride is actually the “museum” indoors, but we sort of had to run through that part. I took a couple photos; among other artifacts, we recognized the astronaut dog in Tivan’s collection from the film. The ride itself is not a roller coaster – instead, it repeatedly drops you 130 feet at 39 mph. (The GotG ride is the tall building behind the Quinjet in the top photo.)

We were looking forward to having lunch at the Pym Test Kitchen but sadly, the mobile ordering for the new restaurant was unavailable by the time we entered the Campus. (It looked really cool though and I was happy to see a lot of vegetarian selections on their menu.) There is also a bar, a shawarma kiosk, and a dessert kiosk, where my daughter had a green churro – I mean a “Sweet Spiral Ration.” (I have celiac, so no Terran Treats for me, but she said it was good.)

We loved the gift shop next to the Guardians ride. They had some great GotG merch and we did make a few purchases there since the Guardians are our favorite. They even play the GotG soundtracks in there which made it that much more fun.

The other gift shops were just OK – the Spider-Man themed gift shop, Web Suppliers, was very small and only sold Spidey stuff, and there was also a kiosk that sold miscellaneous Avengers stuff. I see a fourth Avengers gift shop listed online but we didn’t see it. (I guess it’s possible that we missed it. Somehow?)

We spent just under two hours inside the campus, and saw several costumed characters but did not stand in line to be photographed with them. (We were done with lines by then.) The characters we saw were Loki, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Black Widow, Captain America, Black Panther, Thor, Ant Man and the Wasp, Doctor Strange (more on that in a minute), and three Dora Milaje who put on a show. That was pretty cool.

Spider-Man also does acrobatics on the rooftops (the one that flies through the air is an animatronic Spidey), and there’s a Black Widow and Black Panther stunt show but we didn’t see that. We also did not see the “Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Dance-Off!” I guess the Guardians had the day off when we were there because we didn’t see any.

So there’s another cool area inside the campus called the Ancient Sanctum and I didn’t realize that Doctor Strange would be performing a show there or we would have lingered a bit longer. By the time we caught a glimpse of him, the small area was already packed with people – but they don’t tell you when the next show will be and we didn’t stay long enough to find out.

We went to the park on Monday, June 7, so it’s possible that by the time you read this, they will have a different (hopefully better) method of letting visitors into the campus. I naively assumed we would be able to get in after a short wait even though we didn’t get a boarding pass, because we arrived about an hour early to the park. But a lot of people arrived even earlier. Live and learn.

By the way, we brought my sister and nephew, who aren’t Marvel-obsessed like us, so they opted to forgo the Avengers wait and instead enjoy California Adventure’s other offerings. You would think that because so many were there for Avengers, the rest of the park would be a breeze – especially as the Disney parks were (supposedly) at limited capacity – but they waited in line for 45 minutes to get hot dogs, only to be told they had run out of hot dogs. So it wasnt exactly smooth sailing in the rest of the park.

Also worth noting is that due to social distancing rules, there were no trams running to and from the parking lot, and the parades were cancelled.

My recommendation for Avengers Campus is to go after the crowds have died down a little, and also check it out in the evening if you can – the pictures I’ve seen of the Campus all lit up at night look really awesome.

Galaxy’s Edge

The Star Wars themed land at Disneyland opened in 2019 but we had not seen it yet because our last visit to Disneyland was seven years ago. Galaxy’s Edge is larger than the Avengers Campus – 14 acres to Avengers’ six – and the fact that we did not have to wait in a long line to see Galaxy’s Edge automatically made it that much better. Ha!

Because the same system for the Web Slingers ride is in place for the Rise of the Resistance ride, we didn’t get to go on that either. Boo. But we did go on the Millennium Falcon ride (which is more or less the same attraction as Star Tours – a nausea-inducing motion ride). The area also has costumed characters. We saw a Rey, a Kylo Ren, and some stormtroopers. The shops are very cute and I definitely got the feeling I had been transported to a galaxy far, far away.

For me, costliness and crowds are deterrents to more regular visits to the Magic Kingdom, and it may be another seven years before we return. But the weather was nice (I don’t love the heat so overcast is what I deem nice), the company was good, and it was a pleasant enough diversion on a summer day in Southern California.

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