Avengers Campus: Howard Stark, Pym Particles, Temporal Anomalies, and the History of the New Land

What do flying cars, Spider-Bots, and temporal anomalies all have in common? More than you think, considering they all play a part in the history and creation of Avengers Campus — now open inside Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort!

Guests visiting the brand-new land will come face to face with an assortment of different Avengers who have made this space their new headquarters to train and recruit the next generation of heroes. Between swinging into the Worldwide Engineering Brigade for an Open House, or stopping by the nearby Pym Test Kitchen for something to eat and drink, there’s plenty to see and experience at Avengers Campus. But how did it all get here in the first place?

Upon entering Avengers Campus, one of the first things you might see is a fading sign for Stark Motors, and that’s where the story begins.

“Before Avengers Campus was a place to inspire and empower the next generation of heroes, this land all used to belong to Howard Stark,” Brent Strong, Executive Creative Director, Walt Disney Imagineering, explained. “He was using this area to build his flying cars, and if you look around, you can see lots of details that harken back to that era.” Nearby signs say that parking is reserved for “H. STARK” and “E. JARVIS” indicating those who used to visit the land frequently. Though the Stark Motors building became WEB things from the bygone era still can be found inside, including old assembly line mechanics for Stark’s flying vehicles.

But what even brought Howard to this location in the first place? Further back in the land, visitors will find the remains of an Ancient Sanctum, which Howard was drawn to thanks to a strange “temporal anomaly.” Mystical Sorcerers known as the Vishanti once built Sanctums on sites of great power throughout the world — including the one here! While the site might be in ruins now, it certainly still got some magical powers…

Sometime later (after the Strategic Scientific Reserve started studying and using the land, too), Tony Stark inherited the space from his father, Howard, bringing the Avengers into the mix. Tony was the one who transformed Stark Motors into WEB and then reached out to some young heroes to utilize the space, including Peter Parker. The students at WEB are working hard to invent new technologies and equip everyday people to become Super Heroes.

And if you’ve got a bunch of young inventors, they’re quickly going to become hungry young inventors. Nearby, Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne have set up shop at Pym Test Kitchen where they are “shrinking problems and growing solutions.” It was actually Scott’s daughter, Cassie, who first came up with the idea to “maximize food resources” using the Pym Particles after doing a school project on them. Just goes to show you that one small idea can have a BIG impact!

Clearly hearing rumblings about this new land full of Avengers, and not wanting to be left out, Taneleer Tivan up and moved his The Tivan Collection from Knowhere to Avengers Campus. Doing this certainly left a big mark on the area in more ways than one, as the ground underneath the relocated fortress started to ooze a glowing liquid. Thankfully, it’s hardened over and won’t cause any issues for visiting guests.