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Credit: DisneyA regular Disneyland Resort visitor spoke out on social media this week after a petrifying experience on WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure.
As part of the newest addition to Disney California Adventure Park, Avengers Campus, WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure is one of the most popular Disney Park attractions. Guests of all ages can spin and dash on this interactive quest to shoot webs at Spider-Bots skittering around the Avengers Campus!
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“When Peter Parker’s helpful but otherwise buggy Spider-Bots get stuck in replication mode and escape from a WEB Workshop, Spider-Man must stop the rampaging robots before they wreak total techno-havoc across Avengers Campus,” Disneyland Resort writes. “Problem is, they’re rapidly leveling up and becoming tough to beat! Your task? Hop aboard a WEB Slinger vehicle and help weave a frenzied web to trap these friendly neighborhood sidekicks in true Spidey style. It’s up to you to unleash your inner hero and save the Campus from complete chaos!”
A frequent Avengers Campus explorer, Redditor u/cheddar_goldfish_03 thought nothing of hopping in line for WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure. But just ten seconds into the ride, things went horribly wrong.
“Our car partially derailed,” the guest recalled. “The car gets flung Mater-style around the next turn, hurtling at high speed within millimeters of walls – it was terrifying. My logical brain knows there are safety redundancies built in, but all I could think was ‘how many bones will I break if we hit this wall at this speed?’”
The guest expected the ride vehicles–full of guests of all ages– would immediately stop after the malfunction. Unfortunately, Disney cast members didn’t notice the mayhem.
“This continued for almost the entire 2+ minute ride – the derailed car flinging terrifyingly towards corners and walls at high speed,” the guest wrote. “Somehow, no human or machine noticed this was happening for more than two minutes. They finally stopped the ride right before we ‘finished’ the final scene (I put finished in quotes because we couldn’t actually engage with any of the scenes since we were like perpendicular to the screen every time).”
“After being stopped for 20ish mins w/o any communication, they didn’t walk us off like I expected – they had each car complete the ride and debarked us at the normal platform,” they continued. “We [overheard] them saying that other cars had also derailed.”
The guest was incredibly disappointed by Disney’s response to their experience. When they finally debarked, an “unhappy-seeming” cast member “gruffly” asked if any of the guests wanted to ride again. Unsurprisingly, everyone declined the offer.
“That was it,” they concluded. “No [acknowledgment] of what had just happened, no fast passes, nothing. I even said to the [cast member] at the vehicle exit ‘hey our car derailed and it was really scary’ and he said ‘I know, we’re trying to fix it.’… I’m at a loss for words. Aside from the almost unfathomable number of ride ops protocols that were violated, my previously-unshakeable faith in the safety of Disney rides is… shooketh. I go to DL almost weekly and I don’t know how to make sense of this.”
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The guest’s experience shocked Disney Parks fans, especially on a child-friendly ride with no height requirements. One Disney cast member tried their best to explain what likely happened but agreed that the situation was handled inappropriately.
“Although I am surprised you nearly got through the whole ride before they cycled out this sounds more like a failure of the ride system,” u/Manic_sapphic3 wrote. “So much of a ride operators job relies on sensors… Normally these systems are extremely reliable and shockingly smart but they can make mistakes. Once [you are] out of view… it’s on the sensors, the system, and the person who reads any warning that the ride says. [They] could have responded better for sure… I’m sorry this happened to you and hope the situation is reviewed so better action can be taken if this ever happens again.”
Have you ever had a scary experience on a Disneyland Park or Disney California Adventure Park ride? Share your story with Inside the Magic in the comments.