First Look: Spider-Man Ride Vehicle For New Disneyland Attraction

We've known for a while that a Spider-Man attraction is coming to Disney California Adventure and Disneyland Paris as part of the company's embracing of Marvel properties in its theme parks. Now, a new piece of concept art has surfaced which reveals our first look at the Spider-Man ride vehicle from the new attraction. Check it out below, and get the lowdown of everything we know about the ride so far.

WDWNT brings us our first piece of concept art from the attraction's interior, revealing that after winding their way through the bowels of "Stark Motors," riders will be seated in the red and blue pod-looking vehicles on the right side of the image. It appears as if the entrance to the individual vehicles may be accessed through a side hatch (maybe a sliding door?), because it looks like the pods are enclosed with a glass window in front of each vehicle.

It also looks like the vehicles will be riding on top a track instead of dangling below one – that's somewhat surprising to me, since one of the big points of this ride is to immerse the riders into the feeling of what it's like to swing like Spider-Man. When we wrote about Disney's early patent a couple of years ago for a "Track-Based Swing Ride with Long Arm Pendulum," it came with this description:

One goal in designing the ride system was to deliver an experience similar to what it would feel like to be with Tarzan or a similar character swinging between trees of a jungle on a vine or with Spider-Man or a similar character swinging on webs between buildings as you move down streets of a city. [The ride is] intended to have swinging sensation provided while also having forward travel along a ride path in a direction of travel and for the swinging sensation to feel thrilling and fun.

Reading that, I assumed the swinging sensation would be derived from the vehicles physically hanging from a swooping track, but now I'm wondering if the sensation might be achieved by using projections onto the glass at the front of each vehicle. Maybe that's the "brand-new, cutting-edge interface" they touted in a previous announcement. We also previously speculated that this ride, which promised to be "interactive," might feature individual mounted web-shooters for each rider to shoot digital targets as the ride progresses, similar to Toy Story Mania. But at least in this new piece of concept art, it doesn't look like there are any mounted firing devices anywhere to be seen. The mysteries continue.

Meanwhile, here's what we know about one story element Disney is introducing with this ride:

The Avengers are setting up new Headquarters and training facilities around the globe to inspire all potential recruits willing to step up and become something more. As part of this global initiative, Tony Stark has founded the Worldwide Engineering Brigade — or WEB for short— to develop advancements in super-powered technology, including new enhancements to Spider-Man's suit as their debut project. By bringing together the world's brightest young inventors, the WEB is creating new interfaces that will empower all of us to join the ranks of Earth's Mightiest.

We know Disney is looking to create an interconnected experience between these Marvel attractions in its theme parks similar to how they've created a connected cinematic universe, and WEB is just one part of a larger global Avengers Initiative which narratively links attractions like the Iron Man Experience, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle!, Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission – BREAKOUT!, and more.

This Spider-Man attraction doesn't have a ride description or official name yet (a French site claims it'll be called Spider-Man: Slingshot, but that's not confirmed), but we'll likely learn more information about it at next month's D23 Expo. The Spidey ride is set to open at Disney California Adventure sometime in 2020 and at Disneyland Paris sometime in 2021.