While there's going to be a lot to see when Avengers Campus opens at Disney California Adventure, the one thing that most guests at the theme park will want to experience first is the land's marque attraction, WEB-SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure. The ride will give every guest the ability to be Spider-Man, slinging their own webs in a 3D environment. It promises to be a lot of fun.
There are a lot of questions regarding just how WEB-SLINGERS is going to work. The attraction is a game, not unlike Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and Toy Story Midway Mania, where guests score points for taking out rampaging Spider-Bots. Having been able to finally experience the new ride for myself, I have at least a few of the answers, so here's what you need to know before going into WEB-SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure.
WEB-SLINGERS Is More Co-Op Than Competitive
While game-style attractions like Toy Story Midway Mania and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters have you compete against other people in your ride vehicle (who are likely also friends or family), WEB-SLINGERS works a little differently. While each individual player does get their own score to lord over their friends, all the scores are ultimately added together to create one score for a group of up to four players.
This combined score is the only score that gets posted on screens anywhere, so odds are you'll forget your individual score pretty quickly unless you're one of those incredibly competitive guests when it comes to these games. Instead, you want to work together with the people in your vehicle to put together a great total score.
This also means that if you want to put the best possible score on the board, you'll want to ride with a group of four. Parties will likely be combined once pandemic restrictions lift. But when this attraction first opens, guests will only be put on the ride with their own group, which means that if you're a party of two, you'll be at a disadvantage of putting up a high score compared to a party of three or four. If you want to win, you need the right crew.
The use of the communal score also potentially changes the way the WEB Tech merchandise impacts the attraction. In the WEB Suppliers gift shop, guests can purchase toy web-shooters that can also be used on the attraction to give you special abilities. While many have complained about the practice of selling merchandise as a way to pay to get the high score, the combined score means that one person using a WEB Tech device isn't likely to have a massive impact on the total outcome. Four people using them, however, might be another story.
WEB-SLINGERS Gameplay Area Is Huge, And The Targets Are Not
While WEB-SLINGERS owes a debt to those attraction games that came before, this new attraction ups the design in a couple of major ways. The most obvious is that there's no longer an interface device between you and the screen. There's no gun to shoot at the targets, but the equally impressive difference is just how big the game space is. You're always firing at close-to-point-blank range on Midway Mania or Astro Blasters, but not here.
The 3D screen environment you're given here is just a lot bigger. There's a depth to the 3D that we don't have on Midway Mania. This also means that when the spider-bots are back in that depth of field, they're awfully small. Hitting them is still possible thanks to the incredibly accurate aiming that you're capable of doing, but you'll need to use that capability to its fullest extent. Aiming in the general direction of a target won't be good enough.
Use The Environment To Your Advantage
Once the attraction itself gets underway, you will be encouraged to start flinging webs at all the different spider-bots crawling all over the place. But here's a tip: don't feel limited to only shoot the bots. Your webs will stick to anything you shoot them at, and that can lead to some interesting opportunities. You can shoot a web at a bot, or you can shoot a web at a crate covered in bots and pull, flinging the crate off into even more spider-bots.
The spider-bots themselves can also be used to create chain reactions. There are multiple types of bots on the ride, and the attraction keeps track of how many of each you take out, if you want to find even more ways to compete with your friends. Hitting each different kind of spider-bot can cause a different effect, so look for ways to use them to help you take out even more bots.
Keep Your Eyes Open For Easter Eggs
With so much going on and so many targets at which to shoot, it's difficult to do anything else but fire webs at bots. But as you're scanning the screen looking for the next spider-bot to target, pay attention to everything that's going on around you, as there are a lot of easter eggs to be found on WEB-SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure.
WEB-SLINGERS will take you through multiple scenes to find the spider-bots, and each one has a different Marvel connection. The idea is that the spider-bots get loose in Avengers Campus, so there are areas dedicated to Ant-Man, as well as Taneleer Tivan's fortress, because those characters can be found throughout Avengers Campus. Some easter eggs might be obvious, others might only show themselves if you find them by interacting with the environment. If you're not worrying too much about your score, this could be another way to entertain yourself on WEB-SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure.
WEB-SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure is an impressive achievement for Walt Disney Imagineering. It's a great ride that takes concepts that have been explored previously and makes them even better. Any fan of Disneyland Resort is going to want to check this one out, as will any fan of Spider-Man. Avengers Campus opens at Disney California Adventure on June 4.
