A special feature exclusive to customers who buy the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” Blu-ray at Target includes some new information on the Millennium Falcon attraction coming to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in 2019.
The ride will have “immersive” and interactive elements, such as allowing guests to explore the chess room of the Falcon to requiring them to interact with the ship as part of the experience.
“There are 200 some odd buttons, knobs and switches on the inside of the cockpit and they all do stuff,” said Asa Kalama, executive creative director for the attraction. “If you’re the gunners in the center there and you don’t fire back on those TIE Fighters fast enough they’re going to riddle the hull with laser bolts, the engineers in back, it’s really up to them to keep the whole Falcon in working order so they’re back there furiously working away at their various systems.”
The story behind the ride is you’re sent on a quest by Hondo Ohnaka, a pirate and smuggler depicted in the “Star Wars Rebels” and “Clone Wars” animated series, to find some sort of loot.
The outcome of your mission will affect other interactions around Black Spire Outpost, the village providing the setting inside Galaxy’s Edge.
“If you bring back all the loot and there’s not a scratch on the ship and Hondo is really happy when you bring it back, you might find yourself with some extra Galactic Credits in your account,” said Scott Trowbridge, portfolio creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, “but do a poor job, you lose the cargo, you smash up the ship, you might come back owing more money than you started with, the bossman might not be too happy and when you roll across to the local cantina the bartender might lean over and say ‘hey, word on the street is your name’s been put on the list of a local bounty hunter, I’d watch out if I were you’ so how well you do on this mission really does have an impact on your overall, land-wide story.”
How Disney will pull off these promised features remains to be seen. Disney World attractions have experimented with some level of interactivity before. In Epcot’s Mission Space, for instance, guests are directed to press buttons within the simulator at certain times during the ride, but the ride experience is the same no matter what the guests do.
The Millennium Falcon attraction is one of two rides which will be featured in the new “Star Wars”-themed land along with one depicting a battle between the First Order and the Resistance.
Galaxy’s Edge will open first in Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. in the summer of 2019. The version at Disney’s Hollywood Studios will open in the late fall of next year.