Meet the 3 Marvel flight instructors on Disneyland’s Iron Man thrill ride

Iron Man, Captain America and Captain Marvel will serve as flight instructors during an Avengers training exercise that will toss riders around like ragdolls on the business end of a paint mixer when the new Marvel thrill ride debuts at the Disneyland resort.

Stark Flight Lab will debut in 2028 as part of an expansion of Avengers Campus that will double the size of the Marvel themed land at Disney California Adventure.

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Marvel stars Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Anthony Mackie (Captain America) and Brie Larson (Captain Marvel) will reprise their Avengers superhero roles on DCA’s new Stark Flight Lab attraction.

Walt Disney Imagineering unveiled a scale model of the twin-seat ride vehicles in the Horizons: A Carousel of Progress pavilion during the D23 fan convention in August at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Riders will wear over-the-shoulder restraints as they turn, twist and dip from side to side on the thrill portion of the attraction.

Stark Flight Lab combines two ride systems that have never been used together in this way.

“Nothing like this has ever been done before in a theme park,” Imagineering Chief Creative Officer Bruce Vaughn said at SXSW 2025 in Austin, Texas. “We’re so excited about it.”

Riders will sit in the gyro-kinetic pods atop a chassis transport system that will travel along a roller coaster-like track with the help of linear synchronous motors.

The train of 12 cars — each with two seats — will stop in front of a dozen Kuka RoboCoaster motion simulator robot arms. After attaching to the pods, the robot arms will lift the riders into the air where they will make several high-speed aerial maneuvers inspired by Iron Man.

After the thrill portion of the ride, the robot arms will transfer the pods back to the chassis base and the riders will travel along the track back to the station.

Unlike most Disney rides, Stark Flight Lab will celebrate the technology behind the attraction rather than hide it — making the robotic tech highly visible and part of the experience.

“Usually, we hide all the tech behind the scenes so you can focus on the story,” Vaughn said at SXSW. “Here, the tech is the story, so we’re putting it front and center.”

Stark Flight Lab 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 Iron Man, Captain America or Captain Marvel before they are loaded into their pods for a test flight.

The Kuka robots will play the role of the DUM-E hydraulic robotic arm in Tony Stark’s workshop.

Stark Flight Lab will debut in 2028 alongside the new Avengers Infinity Defense E-ticket dark ride in the expanded Avengers Campus.