Marvel to replace 'A Bug’s Land' at Disney California Adventure

Well, seeing as how they can't do it in Florida due to Islands of Adventure, sounds good to see here.

Curious what we'll get as they can't replicate the ASM Ride from Universal but could put on a different take and so much potential in the other heroes so looking forward to what they come up with.

So they obviously can't copy the ASM ride from Universal so a different type of Spider-Man attraction? Maybe that's the ride concept that was going around, the arm to replicate the "swinging" in front of a huge screen ala Soaring?

So much potential with Marvel and love how they can shift it up from New York to a "Wakandan embassy" for that and I'd love to see some sort of replica of Avengers tower to push it up more.

I think it's very interesting that each park's promotional poster features different characters and building layouts. Hopefully these rides won't be clones of one another, as the press release is pushing some sort of connected universe experience.

The press release also mentions that Marvel Studios is involved, which can be expected after Mission: Breakout. It'll be interesting to see if these ride concepts change to match a post-Infinity War Marvel franchise, given that heroes like Iron Man or Captain America could die in-story.

It's interesting that it didn't mention the New York hotel being built at DLP though I suppose that's old news. And while the PR couldn't mention Epcot's Guardians ride given that WDW can't feature "Marvel" or the Avengers, that could be lumped in as part of this huge Marvel push. I do wonder how the various Marvel lands will handle shifting from location to location -- the Disneyland image for example shows the Collector's tower next to the Avengers base next to Strange's sanctorum. Will guests ignore the discrepancy because of thematic continuity? Basing the lands within the MCU gives it a leg up on IOA's Marvel Island but does pose problems because of that complex continuity.

I'm super excited for all this but it does make me glad that when I visited Disneyland last year I was able to visit a bug's land for the first and now last time.

We've waited a long time for this new phase in DCA's makeover. Hopefully there will be at least one E Ticket, which would be the first new one in the park since RSR.

P.S.: It's Tough to be a Bug is still at WDW.

Finally!!! Will Spider-Man get the new swinging pendulum coaster that was rumored? Considering that they are closing the Bug's theater and reopening in 2020, that's 2 years of construction. It's not enough time for something huge. Maybe that's why they said it is anchored by Guardians Mission Breakout. It could be the best ride in the new land. So no changes in Hollywood Backlot?

Fantastic news! While I never took serious issue with a Bugs Land, this can only be a plus over off the shelf spinners and bumper cars. Looks like DCA will continue to be my preferred Disney Theme Park for the foreseeable future.

spidey's chew chew train?

Going by the comment of how guests are being recruited "starting" in 2020, with new experiences to follow, it sounds like the land will be open in 2020, but I'm guessing major rides (Spider-Man and Avengers rides) will come at a later point as they add to the land. So 2020 is just the start of the land.

I thought this had already been announced. Just broken early on this site I guess.

Any news on when the rest of bugs land will close, I have some friends visiting in a couple of weeks (not that they'll be missing much). I will miss the show though, I always kind of enjoyed it.

Also, do they have enough space in bugs land to do anything for, or will they have to build out into Hollywood land

That's exciting, though it will greatly diminish the park's appeal for families with children under 40''. The only remaining little kids rides will be the Ferris Wheel, Ariel, the Zepplin, the Carousel, Midway Mania (which they can't really do) and the two cars land rides.

I understand they want the new land to be hear the GotG ride, but why knock out a functional part of the park when you have acres of dead space in the Hollywood Craplot?

Hum, so DCA is becoming DHS. I'm sure if they tried they could find IP and give Grizzly Peak a Hollywood makeover and then ship the retired Earful Tower in and boom, Disney Studio Park. Oh and one more thought. Take the area that's being left as Paradise Pier (Silly Swings, etc.) and re-theme it as Cartoon Classics.

Let's go to the Google Map!

The area in the middle, covered with the big fake clover, is the Flik's Fun Fair section of It's a Bug's Land.

It's about the same acreage as the GotG:MB footprint. It's Tough to Be a Bug is the theater show building to the upper left of Flik's Fun Fair. That's also land in play here, as is the wooded area in front of the show building.

There's not enough space here for atmospheric land and a big, E-ticket dark ride building, or really any type of major coaster. But you could get a flying theater in here, easily. Or a Monsters Inc.-sized show building plus a lot of atmosphere space.

And there's space available in a parking lot to the south of Mission Breakout, as well. But that creates some back-of-house issues, so I'd see that as a phase two of the new land, if anything.

The artwork shows a "new" taller building that's forward and at 90 Degrees facing Mission Breakout. It looks partially like Stark Tower and Dr. Strange's sanctuary building with the circular window. Before the Towers will be the new courtyard where you get the character meet and greets and the Spider-Man bus. The new courtyard will take up half the space of the current Bug's Land on the north east corner.

I would assume that you can go behind the 2 towers to find new attractions.

Wow, that is a small space. This is a joke but Disney might want to consider consulting Knott's park designers who are the master of cramming big rides into a shoebox. If you can't go out, you can always go up.

The other day I was looking at the Disney Wiki page for the late Pixar and Disney animator Joe Ranft, who voiced Heimlich. It had a picture of him and his young children at the grand opening of A Bug’s Land, just three years before his death. Its sad his voice will no longer be heard on the Choo Choo Train. At least we can still hear it in the movie. His performance was one of the best things about the movie, and his death is probably why it is the only Pixar movie before Ratatouille without a sequel.

I'm pretty sure that at least part of Hollywood Land is going to become "Marvel Land" and not just A Bug's Land. They have already indicated as much. If you consider that there's plenty of room for an "atmospheric" land. I think its just the easiest way to start off. Plus Bugs Land needed to go away for better traffic flow. There's enough room behind Collector's Tower for a ride. A lot of that area isn't really being used for much.

The use of Spiderman at DCA might be deliberate. I thought the deal with Universal was in part to prevent them from cloning the then hot Spiderman attraction at IOA. That forced Universal to create Transformers for USH. Back then I doubt there was any assurance that Marvel would be a long term box office success. They were more worried about what Universal was doing in Orlando.

As people have said, the car park area behind GotG is pretty big. You could get a ride in there with the parking underneath (or offsite). Two years is a pretty short time frame, but they wouldn't have to do the kind of appeals building needed for Star Wars or Pandora. I'm kind of excited for this (if they put in at least one more e-ticket - 2 would be awesome), just hope they do it too it's potential.

I could actually see all of Hollywood Land becoming a part of the Marvel expansion as well, but we will see......

Rumor is there will be groundbreaking technology featuring a giant rearview mirror so that visitors can see Univeral Creative.

I also think Hollywood Land (or at least a substantial part of it) will be used for Marvel land new attractions.

I think A Bugs Land was the most likely candidate of any area in the park to close early....for anything.....so it makes sense that's the logical choice to start.

I don't think they'll limit to just that area....Hollywood Land was already rumored to be revamped. I think we'll see Marvel ease into that area shortlty after.

Better late than never, this expansion can’t come soon enough. Disney is firing on all cylinders these days - and constantly raising prices to prove it.

It seems that Flik's Flyers will be relocated to the old Maliboomer spot at the far end of the Incredicoaster at Pixar Pier. In the concept art it looks exactly the same, just rethemed. Pixar Pier will keep the kiddies entertained with Bug's Land gone.

I'm very deeply offended by the pro slavery connotation of mission breakout. Disney was happy to host a slave master, the collector.

Not politically correct, at all. very offensive. mission breakout has to go, in the name of social justice

Given the two year timeframe for this to open, I am going to speculate that the rides are going to use existing proven ride systems already used by Disney. In fact I would not be surprised if they repackaged the ride systems used for Buzz Lightyear and Star Tours like they did at HKDL for Iron Man and the Ant Man rides

There was a rumor a couple of years ago that they were going to build an Avengers ride using the same ride system as Shanghai's TRON Lightcycle Power Run ride but with added dark ride special effects. As for Spiderman attraction, I wonder if it will be a motion-simulator? IMO that'll just open it up to comparison with the original at IOA. There's also supposedly a recent Disney patent for a swinging dark coaster so we'll have to wait an see. Hopefuly we'll get more info at Comic-Con. It's probably just artistic license but from the art work it looks like the it's going to be big city setting with the Avengers ride (entrance) next to the Tower in what is now the back of Bugs Land, Spiderman and/or Ant Man going into what is now the Hyperion Theater and the non-Hollywood sides of Animation Academy getting an industrial-deco exterior makeover.

I hope davedisney is kidding...

I'm surprised how quickly this is being built, but I suppose Disney wants to get it into the parks as quickly as possible. After all, if half the main MCU characters don't survive Avengers 4, who knows how strong the MCU will be afterward. I suppose the insane popularity of Black Panther says people will still keep seeing the movies as long as they have some unique appeal.

Anyway, I'm going to put on my Armchair Imagineer hat and make a few predictions (primarily for DCA's version):

-Marvel Land will begin in front of the Hyperion Theater, then extend toward Guardians of the Galaxy and beyond it to the area currently occupied by A Bug's Land. The front part of A Bug's Land (the section bordering Mater's Junkyard Jamboree) will not be part of Marvel Land, but will be a transition zone.
-The area will be themed to the Los Angeles cityscape, but will feature prominent buildings from the Marvel Universe. The idea will be that some of the Avengers have relocated to the West Coast following the events of Phase 3 of the MCU.
-The introductory portion of Marvel Land (the section near Guardians) will be mostly facades to lead into the area. Wandering characters may be seen here, but otherwise this will just be a walkway.
-The main potion of the land will occupy what is currently A Bug's Land. Nothing from that area will be re-used for the new area. There will be at least one restaurant and one major shop here, as well as a couple meet and greet areas (probably Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange), plus possibly a stage for performances.
-The main attraction to open with Marvel Land will be the Spider-Man attraction. This will be located inside the Tough to Be a Bug theater and will be either a D-ticket dark ride or some sort of motion simulator. It will be tied into the Spider-Man sequel coming out next year.
-The main E-ticket attraction for the area will be a dark ride/roller coaster hybrid built on the parking lot behind Guardians. It will not open with the land, but will open in 2021/2022 to celebrate DCA's 20th anniversary (or the 10th anniversary of DCA 2.0). This attraction will be Avengers themed and will only feature the characters that are still prominent in Phase 4 of the MCU.
-The full details of all three Marvel Lands will be announced at D23 2019. This is where the attractions within each one will be revealed, as well as more specifics about when certain attractions are opening.
-All three Marvel Lands will be completely canon, and as a result there will be no duplication between the lands. While the same characters may appear at multiple parks, the attractions and settings will be different.

In regards to whether or not any of this is gonna be canon, James Gunn (director of GOTG) confirmed that Mission: Breakout isn’t part of MCU canon, but a separate “theme park canon” on Twitter back when it first opened, so WDI probably won’t be beholden to the MCU’s timelines and character deaths

2 years does seem like a really short build timeline for Disney. I'm definitely leaning towards AJ's ideas here. They can probably tear down Flick's Fun Fair pretty quickly (maybe 2-3 months), but building an e-Ticket ride and complete a surrounding land within 2 years would be a monumental achievement, especially if it also involves moving back of the house facilities/parking. The vagueness in this announcement seems to indicate that Marvel Land will open in phases with an initial opening of a smaller attraction (in the Tough to be a Bug theater) by the 2020 deadline with future expansions down the road. The real question is what will that first attraction be? Given the space of the current theater, it can't be anything really huge, so it's either a similar 4-D movie style attraction or a motion theater (or perhaps a small footprint omni-mover or motion base dark ride).

I do find it interesting that Disney decided to announce the permanent closing of an attraction a day after it closed for good. Not that It's Tough to Be A Bug is a landmark attraction, but why couldn't they at least give people a week to visit the park for one last viewing? It makes me wonder if something happened behind the scenes to allow Disney to green-light this new project so suddenly that they had to move immediately or if something within the current attraction irreparably broke. The suddenness and lack of specific details regarding the new Marvel Land is quite curious.

“It's Tough to Be A Bug” isn’t played regularly. It’s often preempted for movie previews. I saw Cars and Beauty and the Beast previews there. I suspect it wasn’t actually used when it closed.

I hope they carefully remove the remaining Bugs Land and create a similar land at Animal Kingdom. They are awfully short of kids friendly rides at Disney World. They also have the “It's Tough to Be A Bug” attraction in the Tree of Life so they will pair up nicely.

Again, my guess is that the big ride is a Spider-Man thing with a big moving arm carrier to replicate the swinging in front of a huge screen. But the fact they boast different characters in each poster hints it might be different for each park which makes sense as some places will have more land to use.

Do we not think the ITTBAB replacement might just be a near-clone of Paris' Avengers show? It would be quite typical of Disney to not announce it until after its DLP debut, so as to avoid stealing thunder.

And while Paris' show won't quite have taken 2 years to refit, it will still have been about 15 months from the closure of Cinemagique to the opening of the new show.

I'm persuaded by Russell's logic - if something broke, and the attraction's days were numbered anyway, they probably just decided to save maintenance costs and call it quits on the day. (Or maybe the Flik and Hopper animatronics are getting redeployed for Pixar Pier?)

Swinging Spider Man ride? Sounds like the car on a stick show at Universal. How would it work? You're on Spidey's web the whole time? Sorry to see Tough to Be a Bug go, it was always fun to see other people's reactions to the bugs under the seat. Maybe they can rename the park Disney's Hollywood Studios, that name is changing anyway to Disney Cinemagine Park - ugh! What about the planned expansion into what is now the bus drop off area? I guess that went away, or at least delayed with the cancellation of the Eastern Gateway.

Ha the only thing from A Bug's Land I'd miss are the giant clover/lights and the bamboo. Forget DAK they should repurpose those at the Pixar Pier Hotel (currently known as the Paradise Pier Hotel.)

I heard a rumor about Flik's Flyers being moved to Pixar Pier (in the former Maliboomer space) and retheme as Inside Out-themed ride