SXSW: Robert Downey Jr. Crashes Disney Experiences Panel with Avengers Campus Updates

Marvel fans, assemble! At SXSW 2025, Robert Downey Jr. made a surprise appearance, hinting at a brand-new Tony Stark experience coming to Avengers Campus at Disneyland Resort. It was also shared about how Disney plans to bring Iron Man back into the MCU-inspired theme park experience.

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Make way, because a genius, billionaire philanthropist is setting up shop in Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure park. 

Announced at last year’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, two new thrilling attractions will be joining the growing campus at Disneyland Resort.  Today, during The Future of World-Building at Disney panel at SXSW, President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, and President and Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Imagineering Bruce Vaughn let the crowd in on more of the storytelling and extensive new technology that will bring these attractions to life. 

With the one attraction, Avengers Infinity Defense, you’ll assemble with the Avengers and battle King Thanos across multiple worlds. Join alongside the likes of Black Panther, Ant-Man, Hulk, and so many other favorites to save the universe – again.

But you can’t just wake up one day and know the ins and outs of battling like an Avenger, you know? You’ve got to train. The second attraction going into Avengers Campus, Stark Flight Lab, will put you inside Tony Stark’s workshop to check out some of the new tech he’s working on and allow you to test it out yourself. And who better to show off his tech than Tony Stark himself?

With thunderous applause, Robert Downey Jr. made a surprise appearance at SXSW, calling the Imagineers working on these new experiences, “the living embodiment of the Stark Enterprises mission statement.”

“The curiosity, the passion, the inventiveness, the occasional flair for the dramatic, most of all a drive to put something good out into the world to make life better, at the minimum more fun by a mile, ” Downey told the crowd. “It’s the privilege of a lifetime to be invited to participate.”

Downey was also pretty excited just to be invited into the Imagineering world, joking about the stealth of WDI headquarters. “You wannna talk about a closed set? It’s the Area 51 of fun!”

In Stark Flight Lab, guests will sit in “gyro-kinetic pods” and roll along a track before stopping in front of a giant robot arm. This robot arm will hoist you into the air where you’ll make several high-speed maneuvers inspired by Iron Man and some other Avengers. (“That I will select based on merit and whomever picks up my FaceTime calls on the first ring,” Downey joked.)

“Transferring from a track to a robot arm and then back again – nothing like this has ever been done before in a theme park, and we’re so excited about it,” Bruce explained. “Usually, we hide all the tech behind the scenes so you can focus on the story. Here, the tech IS the story, so we’re putting it front and center.”

One piece of tech that has become important to Tony Stark’s lore is his beloved little robotic friend, DUM-E. When Downey first visited Imagineering, he commented how much the robot arm for Stark Flight Lab looked like DUM-E, and that quickly worked its way into the attraction.

Using dancers and motion capture, the team made a “virtual mirror” to incorporate some of these movements into early ride mockups. The Imagineers want to make sure the robots in Stark Flight Lab feel as lifelike as possible, just like DUM-E.

And this is only just the beginning of what guests will soon see in Avengers Campus. “Even after we finish with the Flight Lab, I want to stay with you all for the long haul,” Downey told Feige and Vaughn amid screams from the crowd, “This isn’t a one-time deal. You need more me.”

Miss any Disney Experiences updates from SXSW? Catch up on all the exciting announcements now! 

But do you want more Imagineering? We’ve got more Imagineering.

Come along as we pull back the curtain on the latest episode of “We Call It Imagineering,” and take you behind the scenes of the Ride Studio. What’s the Ride Studio? Great question — it’s the birthplace of many vehicles just seen in the SXSW presentation in a space dedicated to design and engineering. 

Join us as we take a deeper dive into the evolution of some of the most beloved attractions, from Haunted Mansion to the upcoming Stark Flight Lab! Catch a brand new episode this Monday only on the Walt Disney Imagineering YouTube.

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