So I have some mixed feelings about the whole Bugs Land to Avengers Campus transformation. I used to love ITTBAB when I was little, but never went in on my later trips when I was older. The whole area was incredibly charming to walk through, it is akin to WDW's Toy Story Land in the sense that you get to feel like you were shrunk down to the size of a bug or a toy. I liked the animal cracker box building, the popsicle stick benches, etc. I always enjoyed using it to get to Tower of Terror as a little shortcut and to use those bathrooms, but I never really rode the rides. I am excited to see the Spider-Man ride as well as the Pym Particle Brewery, the concepts are exciting to me and I enjoy Marvel as a franchise. With that said, the park loses a lot of charm converting this shrunk down, cute, bug scale area into a downtown building complex. I am not excited for the area aesthetically, the concept art looks like my community college. I wish they would have gone with a different concept to build, something that at least was a little more fantastic / whimsical and played more on the awe and wonder of superheroes, not creating a building to mimic a lab where drones are made. DCA has lots of issues aesthetically, but I think areas like Cars Land and Grizzly Peak are beautiful. Grizzly Peak would be a better comparison to make in terms of talking about Avengers Campus because it is also based in reality, at least in the sense that the College Campus is based in reality. The difference is that Grizzly Peak is an idealized, fantasy, almost caricature of the area it is representing. That isn't really possible to do in Avengers Campus when the source material is a cold, boring college campus that has nothing whimsical and fun about it.
I know this sentiment has been shared here before, and I am excited to check out Avengers Campus when it opens, I really am, I just wish they had come up with a different idea for the location of the land. It reminds me of how people feel about Galaxy's Edge, it's hard to argue that Disney does a bad job executing these ideas, they are really great at building what they design. The problem is that the designs themselves are flawed. The way that GE looks like a war torn, broken down outpost. That's what it's designed to look like, I wish it was designed to look like something more inspiring and imaginative. College campus and war torn outposts are not even close to what I think of when I think of an area in Disneyland (I know Avengers Campus is in DCA but still) I think of romanticized versions of places. Frontierland is a romanticized version of the wild west, I know in real life some western towns were just wooden buildings with dirt roads and nothing amazing, but the whole feel in Frontierland with the beautiful cleaned up, ornate buildings and the big log gate are all things that 1.) don't look worn down and depressing, and 2.) are things from another time that we don't just see every day. Heck, when I went to WDW and got to visit Pandora for the first time last year, I was blown away by the area. I saw Avatar a few times in theaters, mainly for the visuals like most people, so getting to step into the world of the movies was incredibly cool. The whole land is amazingly well done, the sounds and foliage of the area are incredible. But this whole concept works because of the park Pandora is in. Animal Kingdom is a park designed for you to slow down, to walk around and explore the details, and to be sort of immersed in nature (think the trails around the main section of AK). Because of where this land is, it is designed and executed very well, sure the IP is a strange choice but I have heard such high praise of the land and the E-Ticket ride is very fun and brings in consistently massive crowds even with a good hourly capacity.
I really think Disney needs to look at their current Imagineer teams and realize that they have some fundamental differences in how they see theme parks today than Disney did in the past and even how Universal sees them today. Universal created The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and it was incredible. And the entire experience of riding the train into Diagon Alley was next level cool. It really took everything to a new level. Plus, Universal didn't back themselves into a corner by claiming the area is canon in Harry Potter lore. They're able to just create an area that invokes the essence of the franchise without taking itself too seriously. You can go get a wand and cast spells around the area, you can try all the foods and drinks from the stories, and you're able to just have fun experiences because they aren't locked down because the land takes place between books 4 and 5 or something like they did with Galaxy's Edge. I know that this is just an opinion from someone on a Disney fan site and it doesn't hold any true value or merit to anyone at Disney who matters, and they would rather look at the public response to the new additions to Disney Parks and pat themselves on the backs about how "revolutionary" they are and how they're creating experiences "unlike anything you've experienced before" but they really do need to take a look at how they design lands and rides. I mean, I haven't been on RotR yet and I am sure it is incredible to experience and I can not wait until I do so, but it is just embarrassing that their newest ride that they act like is some great reinvention of theme park rides can't even operate reliably, and even if it does, the capacity is so low that such an abysmally low percentage of people who want to ride it every day get to. I truly hope Disney is able to realize these lands need to be designed in different ways at the very least on a park to park basis. There is no reason Galaxy's Edge should have ever been built in Disneyland. The fact that the lands are now Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, New Orleans Square, Critter Country, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge makes me sad. An entire land dedicated to one IP belongs nowhere in Disneyland, sure in Hollywood Studios it is fine and even in DCA it would have been a better fit, but not in Disneyland. I know Disney probably has no intention on not doing this as every land they continue to build is IP specific (Avatar, Galaxy's Edge, Cars Land, Toy Story Land) but they really need to consider how this makes the parks look. The charm of a land with a specific theme rather than specific IP leaves so much more room for creativity, but they seem to be lacking in that department. Who knows, maybe we'll see an expansion in some other park some time that isn't based exclusively on an existing IP, but I won't hold my breath. I won't even begin to fancy the idea of a new ride not based on an IP, at least one that isn't Pixar, Marvel, or Lucas Films. I guess we are getting MMRR but I am just shocked it has taken Disney this long to finally make a real Mickey Mouse ride. And I get that the Fantasyland dark rides were all based on pretty recent Disney movies at the time, I just feel like they have a different feel to what we get now. And we still got things like the Matterhorn, Autopia, Space Mountain, Adventures Through Inner Space, etc. which didn't have any ties to any existing IPs, just rides based on ideas.
but honestly I'd rather have the cheap family area than a land about all things Marvel.
