A review of The Marvel Experience in Scottsdale AZ

Review of The Marvel Experience

Overall I am glad I went and my kids were glad they were taken. However I highly doubt I will return next year if it comes back to town. The cost is too high for what you receive and the lines are to long for what you are waiting for.

With the ticket cost starting at $27.50, there is not nearly enough to do. Add that to the $10 dollars they charge for parking, which was an unnecessary gouge. The value of this event is really more of a $15-20 dollar entry fee with free parking.

I do not know exactly how many people are let in every half hour, from what I saw, I guess it is about 50 that entered with my group. I suggest buying tickets on line to reserve your preferred entry time. As we arrived to the gate at 1100 hours and even though they let another group in every 30 minutes could not get tickets until 1630 hours.

They also were out of the RFD tracking bracelets; however whether you have one or not, did not seem to make any difference except your scores can be pulled up online after the event. The way the website made me think was the tracking would make you a part of the show, it does not.

First you are let into a tent where they have screens briefing you on each hero’s origin story: there is a green screen photo op as well. You then receive a brief from Nick Fury on why you are being recruited and what your mission is. They let you into this room approx 10-15 minutes before your ticket time.

At the time of your “showing” for your tickets you are then let into another room where you assist in assembling an Adaptoid and have the opportunity to review museum style displays of the hero’s and villain’s weapons. This is basically another holding area. After you have spent a few minutes here you enter the area where the interactive “training” begins.

The Hulk Smash and Iron Man Flight Simulator are basically Xbox Kinect games. For these two you can expect about a 30 minute line for what seemed like a 1 minute experience.

There was no line for the “calling a superhero to duty” activity. This is also basically a Kinect games where you pose like the hero you want to pull up on the screen to stand next to you for a quick photo op.

The Photon Blaster training allows 24 participants in at a time, which is the main issue I found with this training exercise. This is basically a laser shooting gallery. The issue I found was that with 24 people in there who all had little tiny circles with their number on the screen you could not see where your number was to tell how far off the target you were. So you basically just pint and pull the trigger with no real idea what you are hitting if anything and not really able to compensate because you cannot see your dot amongst the 23 others. The line for this was approx 45 minutes for what seemed like a 2 minute experience.

The Spider-Man Climbing wall and the Black Widow Agility Laser Maze are both over an hour wait. The Spider-Man Climbing wall has a 50lbs weight minimum and so smaller kids are not heavy enough to move the vertical treadmill. The wall is also only about 10 feet tall so if you are a full grown adult, especially above average height this rock wall limits you on foot and hand placement because you pretty much cover the spread of the wall.

Black Widow’s Agility Laser Maze was in my opinion the best training activity there. You enter a room and like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment maneuver your body through a room of lasers. It is like playing Twister, as you circumvent the alarm and try to reach the check point without breaking a laser and “setting off an alarm”. You are scored on time and for every Laser you break you receive a time penalty. With an hour wait though you do not really want to have a second try.

In the training area there is also a “café” basically hot dogs, chips, chili and mac n cheese. It is $7 dollars for a decent tasting hot dog with a bag of potato chips. For another $2 you can add mac n cheese or chili to the hotdog. I do not usually purchase food at these events but as we had been inside for 3 hours already and about 1/3 of the way through the training activities, the kids needed food and drink. $3.50 for a bottle of water is a needless gouge they can sell them for $2 and still more than triple their cost. Also the bottles they gave us were frozen so we could not even drink them.

After you are done with all the training activities (or before if you are tired of waiting in lines) you move through the Quinjet into a 3-D movie dome. The movie was not bad; you are standing and have to turn in circles to follow the action. It could have been longer felt like maybe 3 minutes. If you get motion sickness you might have a little issue with the hyper reality wreaking havoc on your senses.

Then you move into the 4-D ride, there is a little bit of a neat surprise here. This also was not bad but could be improved upon with making it a little longer and making the movie aspect 3-D.

All in all what should have taken about 90 minutes to be a worthwhile experience took us 6 hours; 4 extra hours of waiting in lines that needs resolved. They need to figure out how to shorten the lines, either by setting up more stations or by letting fewer people in at a time and only letting more in as more leave. The second solution however just means you would wait at the gate in line instead of inside in a line.

After the 4-D ride you exit through a gift shop. You expect gift shops to be overpriced, so no real complaint there. They offer a 3D printed statue of you with your favorite hero, kind of neat souvenir. Overall the gift shop was sad; for being a Marvel event you would expect more figures and maybe even comic books available. It basically had posters, hats and shirts.

Like I said at the beginning, I am glad I went. However, I will not return without significant changes in cost and entertainment value as well as a solution for the excessively long lines.

Suggestions to improve the Marvel HyperReality Experience:

• They should sell less tickets per show, to cut down on lines.
• Tickets should cost about half for what is offered.
• They should also have more training stations so more people can participate at once, cutting down on lines.
• They should have more entertainment or a movie on the dome in the training area to keep you occupied while in line.
• The 4-d ride should have a 3-D movie, not a 2-D movie.
• Should not charge for parking.
• More, More, More in the gift shop.
• Cheaper, unfrozen bottles of water or available drinking fountains.

The tour will stop at 14 + cities over 2015

Dallas , TX - January 15th - February 1st 2015
Del Mar, CA - February 7th - February 22nd 2015
San Francisco, CA - February 27th - March 22nd