Credit: gardener41, FlickrDisney news, particularly regarding attractions, spreads quickly regardless of location or time zone. Changes like new attractions or the demolition of old ones spark immediate conversations that continue until the opening day of the new ride. This is especially true for beloved formats like the drop tower, which Disney has mastered and creates a strong sense of anticipation among guests.
The Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is one of the most consistently praised attractions Disney has ever built. The version that was converted to Guardians of the Galaxy– Mission: BREAKOUT! at Disney California Adventure remains one of the more controversial decisions Disney has made in recent memory, not because the new attraction is bad, but because the original was so good. The format works. The scares work. The storytelling works. And now Disney is building another one, this time at Hong Kong Disneyland, with a Marvel skin and Spider-Man leading the charge. Demolition has officially begun in Tomorrowland at Hong Kong Disneyland, and the construction activity visible on the ground this week confirms that the project has moved past the planning phase and into the park’s physical transformation of the park.
For fans who have been following the long and complicated development history of the Stark Expo expansion at Hong Kong Disneyland, this week’s demolition activity is a meaningful milestone. The road to this point has been longer than anyone expected when the original announcement was made.
Demolition Begins for Spider-Man Tower of Terror at Hong Kong Disneylandhttps://t.co/cdG479Z7QE
— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) April 3, 2026
What Is Actually Happening at Hong Kong Disneyland Right Now
Demolition activity has begun in Tomorrowland at Hong Kong Disneyland, with large gray construction walls and tarps now blocking a significant stretch of the land from guest view. The construction walls run from the Space Traders gift shop adjacent to Space Mountain through to the Expo Shop, blocking the Tomorrowland Stage and the NRG POD snack kiosk from view. The gray tarps erected in front of the Tomorrowland Stage suggest demolition work is underway specifically on the stage and kiosk.
The construction walls themselves have been decorated with large white and red Stark Expo decals advertising new pavilions coming soon, which keeps the Marvel theming of the overall project visible even while the actual construction work is hidden behind them. A crane continues to tower over the Tomorrowland skyline in the background, and construction vehicles have been spotted behind the walls during recent observations of the site.
The Long Development History Behind This Disney Project
Hong Kong Disneyland announced the Marvel-themed Stark Expo expansion to replace part of Tomorrowland back in 2016, making this one of the longer-running announced projects in the Disney parks pipeline. The Iron Man Experience opened in 2017 as the first major addition under the Stark Expo concept, followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle in 2019, which replaced the park’s Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters attraction.
The next major piece of the expansion was supposed to be an E-ticket Avengers Quinjet attraction, with Autopia closing in 2016 specifically to make space for it. The 2023 target came and went without the attraction materializing, and the project entered a prolonged period of silence that left fans wondering whether the concept had been quietly shelved. Hong Kong Disneyland eventually confirmed the Stark Expo expansion was still planned and unveiled a significant creative update that changed the direction of the project considerably.
The Quinjet concept was out. A Spider-Man attraction was in. And the format confirmed through concept art is a Tower of Terror-style drop tower, bringing one of the most effective ride formats in theme park history into the Marvel universe at Hong Kong Disneyland for the first time. The attraction will feature more Marvel characters than Spider-Man alone, though the specifics of the character roster beyond the wall-crawler have not been fully detailed.
Why This Matters Beyond Hong Kong and Disney
The development of a Tower of Terror-style Marvel attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland is worth tracking even for guests who have no immediate plans to visit that particular park. It represents another data point in Disney’s ongoing exploration of how to deploy the Marvel intellectual property across its global parks portfolio, a strategy that has produced wildly different results depending on the location and the creative approach.
The drop tower format at the center of this project is one Disney knows intimately and has executed at a high level across multiple parks. Adding Spider-Man and the broader Marvel character universe to that framework gives the creative team a rich set of storytelling tools to work with, and the Stark Expo theming that has been developing in Hong Kong’s Tomorrowland since 2017 provides an established in-park context that the new attraction can build on rather than having to establish from scratch.
The demolition activity visible this week is the beginning of whatever that attraction ultimately becomes. The Tomorrowland Stage and the NRG POD kiosk are being cleared to make way for construction following demolition, and the crane already visible over the skyline suggests the vertical build phase is not far behind.
Hong Kong Disneyland has been patient with this project across a very long timeline. The activity happening on the ground right now is the clearest signal yet that the patience is about to start paying off.