2. Justice League: Battle for Metropolis – Six Flags Over Texas

Image: Prayitno, Flickr (license)

Today, there appears to be no shortage of DC Comics-inspired roller coasters and thrill rides, from Batman: The Ride’s steel inverted track to Superman: Krypton Coaster’s floorless ride vehicles and the neighboring Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom’s 400-foot freefall.

Superheroes and supervillains renowned for their abilities of flight and fight are well-suited to such rides, but as for actual story-focused attractions set in the DC universe… well, those have been relatively few and far between. In the early- to mid-2000s, Batman Adventure – The Ride and Batman Adventure – The Ride 2 premiered across Warner Bros. Movie World parks in Australia, Germany, and Spain. Within a few years, however, the motion simulators had all shuttered. Only Australia’s Movie World replaced the attraction with another DC-inspired offering: Justice League: Alien Invasion 3D, an interactive dark ride in which riders were called on to stop deadly Starro spores from spawning and spreading across the city.

Three short years after its debut, Justice League: Alien Invasion 3D became the basis for Six Flags’ own DC dark ride. Justice League: Battle for Metropolis features a strikingly similar queue, pre-show, and format—one in which riders compete against each other to bring down the various foes of Metropolis via EMP blasters—but offers superior graphics and engaging integration of special effects and 3D technology.

Though it may not live up to some of the more advanced attractions developed for the MCU, Battle for Metropolis comes close to delivering the kind of immersive theming and storytelling that befits such a vast range of characters. Better yet: it’s been installed in seven Six Flags parks to date, providing a welcome alternative to some of the more intense DC-based coasters for those who value story over thrills.

3. Ant-Man and The Wasp: Nano Battle! – Hong Kong Disneyland

Image: Disney

Over in Hong Kong Disneyland, the same dark ride/shooting attraction veers in a different direction altogether. Rather than integrating 3D video with practical effects and Audio-Animatronics, as both Justice League rides attempted to do, Nano Battle! eschews screen-based thrills for life-sized props and theming.

In Disney’s first-ever Ant-Man and The Wasp attraction, riders are equipped with EMP blasters aboard ‘Dagger’ vehicles, in which they are soon ferried into one of the labs at SHIELD’s Science and Technology Pavilion. Ant-Man and The Wasp pop up fairly frequently on large screens placed throughout the attraction, but like Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters before it, the majority of guests’ interactions with Arnim Zola’s pesky Swarmbots are built around the ride’s static props and set pieces.

In a twist that feels very true to Marvel canon, riders are subsequently shrunk to the size of their miniscule superhero counterparts as they try to dismantle the Swarmbots’ structure from a molecular level. Wires, communication devices, and miscellaneous equipment suddenly appear enormous, but Ant-Man, The Wasp, and Iron Man reassure riders that they have completed their mission satisfactorily—and will be returned to a normal size before disembarking the vehicles.

Nano Battle! certainly doesn’t rank among the top theme park thrill rides, nor is it the cleverest adaptation of comic book lore (a distinction that might go to the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!). Still, its creativity and attention to detail—and its focus on a lesser-known pair of Marvel superheroes—makes it a can’t-miss attraction among its peers.