New photos of Shanghai Disneyland’s Spider-Man coaster have Disney fans arguing over whether it looks like it belongs at a Disney park. The shots, taken by a guest last week, show long runs of bright red track and white steel supports rising behind a construction wall, with almost no theming around them.
“That is the most ‘Six Flags’ Disney coaster I’ve ever seen,” one commenter wrote when the photos were posted on Reddit on October 21. Another said it was “pretty bad” when the Incredicoaster beats it on theming.
The Spider-Man coaster at Disneyland Shanghai looks incredible!
by u/FlawlessC0wboy in disneyparks
The guest who took the photos had a different reaction. They called the ride “absolutely huge” for a Disney coaster and said they assumed the theming was still to come, pointing out that the W.E.B. branding from the Spider-Man rides at Disney California Adventure and Disneyland Paris was already visible.
The Ride Is Not Finished Yet
That second view lines up with where the project actually is. The coaster only recently finished its slow-speed testing, and Shanghai Disney Resort said on October 20 that speed testing was about to begin. Track installation wrapped up in June, the first vehicles were in place by August, and Disney has not announced an opening date or an official name for the ride.
A photo taken now catches the ride before the rest of the land has gone up around it. Fans in the thread made the same point, and one noted that the coaster does have theming, “it’s just not visible in this photo.”
What Disney Has Shown
When Shanghai Disney Resort first revealed the coaster’s Spider-Man theme at D23 in August 2024, it called it a “high-energy thrill coaster” and a “high-speed, fully immersive experience” in which guests follow Spider-Man, who “has gotten himself in a bit of a tight spot,” at very high speeds. It was billed as the park’s first major attraction to tell a Marvel story.
The two renderings released that day show a red coaster train racing past stacked shipping containers alongside Spider-Man, and riders inside a dark, red-lit room facing a giant screen. Neither looks like the bare track in last week’s photos, which is the point fans defending the ride kept making.
The coaster anchors Shanghai Disneyland’s ninth themed land, the first Disney Parks land built entirely around Spider-Man. Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige said at D23 this past August that the Worldwide Engineering Brigade, or W.E.B., will debut in Shanghai with the land, and the resort has also shown concept art of a giant mechanical spider built by Peter Parker and the W.E.B. inventors.
Some of the pushback in the thread was about Disney coasters in general rather than this one. One fan said they wish Disney built “real” thrill coasters, while others said exposed track will always feel out of place in a park known for hiding its machinery. How much of the steel gets covered up should become clearer as the land’s buildings rise around it over the next several months.
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