Robert Downey Jr. delighted Disney Parks fans at South by Southwest with a surprise appearance and peek behind the curtain at how he helped develop a new Stark Labs ride for Disneyland. Downey joined Marvel president Kevin Feige and Walt Disney imagineering chief creative officer Bruce Vaughn onstage at SXSW‘s “The Future of World-Building at Disney Panel,” bringing with him behind-the-scenes footage from the previously announced Stark Flight Lab attraction.
“It’s the privilege of a lifetime,” Downey said of being invited to help the Disney Imagineering division, which he called the “Area 51 of Fun.” He went on to describe Disney Imagineers as “the living embodiment of the Stark Enterprises missions statement,” with “curiosity, passion, inventiveness, the occasional flair for the dramatic, and most of all the drive to put something good out into the world.”
The new ride, coming to Disney California Adventure, will place guests inside “gyro-kinetic-pods” in Tony Stark’s workshop, and takes inspiration from Stark’s mischievous mechanical assistants from the “Iron Man” films, Dum-E and Dum-U. Downey presented footage of dancers and choreographers working with Imagineers to develop movement patterns for the robot arms in the attraction.
“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,” Vaughn said. “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.”
Downey closed the panel by promising fans they could expect more collaborations between himself and the Imagineers. “I want to stay with you all for the long haul,” he told Feige and Vaughn. “This isn’t a one-time deal. You need more me.”
