Fly like Iron Man on Stark Flight Lab ride coming to Disneyland
Marvel fans who want to fly like Iron Man will be snatched up by an auto factory robotic arm and whirled around like a paint mixer on a new ride coming to a superhero themed land at the Disneyland resort.
Construction will begin in 2025 on the Stark Flight Lab attraction as part of the expansion that will double the size of Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure.
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The new attraction in the Marvel themed land will be set inside Tony Stark’s workshop where the Avengers invent, develop and test new technologies needed to defend the universe, according to the backstory for the attraction.
Riders will be briefed by the billionaire genius playboy inventor before they are loaded into two-person pods for a test flight. Robot arms will grab the pods and whirl riders around in a simulated flight.
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Robert Downey Jr., who will play the supervillain Doctor Doom in “Avengers: Doomsday” in 2026, will reprise his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man for DCA’s Stark Flight Lab.
Stark Flight Lab looks like two rides in one — featuring a stationary Kuka RoboCoaster motion simulator and a separate tracked ride experience.
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Concept art for Stark Flight Lab shows a multi-step process with riders loading into a two-person pod, docking with a base attached to a track, detaching from the base for the Kuka robot arm experience and reattaching with the dock to continue along the track.
Six stationary Kuka robot arms are located in a horseshoe section of the track visible from the loading station, according to the concept art. Riders wear over-the-shoulder restraints as they turn, twist and dip from side to side.
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Concept art is just that — artist renderings of conceptual ideas in development designed to give fans a sense of what to expect from the proposed attraction. The final ride could be far different than the drawings.
Kuka RoboCoasters have been used on Knights Tournament at Legoland California, Sum of All Thrills at Epcot and the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey motion-based dark rides at several Universal parks.
The Kuka 6-axis robot arms can be programmed with a variety of motion profiles and can even allow riders to adjust their thrill levels.
The Sum of All Thrills attraction that operated at Florida’s Epcot until 2016 allowed riders to customize their experience by adjusting the intensity, acceleration and inversion levels.
The intensity level ranged from gentle to extreme on the Knights Tournament ride that ran at Legoland through 2019.
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Construction will also begin in 2025 on a second new attraction in DCA’s Avengers Campus — the Avengers Infinity Defense E-ticket dark ride that has been in development since 2019.
Opening dates have not yet been announced for Stark Flight Lab or Avengers Infinity Defense.
Disneyland has not yet announced if the two new Avengers Campus attractions will open at the same time — but that’s unlikely. Separating the opening dates by a year or two would give Disneyland the opportunity to market each of the rides individually — and get more bang for its buck.
Concept art for the Avengers Campus expansion shows the new buildings for the attractions stretching out into the last remaining section of the original Disneyland parking lot behind the Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout drop ride.