Galaxy’s Edge is Disney’s most ambitious storyland expansion, and it will contain two big rides and an
“Adventure. Heh! Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things,” Yoda instructs Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
The long wait — which may have begun with “playing” “Star Wars” as a kid on the school playground — is almost over. A large and ambitious storyland opens this summer at Disneyland, in California, and at Disney World in Florida in the fall. Opening dates have not been announced, and the two locations will be nearly identical.
The new hope and promise is to do the one thing that 10 (and counting) feature films, shows, books, games and more have never been able to deliver: a fully physical and immersive experience with the look, feel, sounds, smells and even tastes of “Star Wars.” It’s a detailed and architecturally accurate 14-acre playground with character interactions, unique food and shopping you won’t find outside the parks. And of course, rides.
Like a film review, this preview of Disney’s largest single-themed land expansion in the parks’ history contains spoilers. If you want to enter the park without knowledge of the destination’s backstory, its design and some of its Easter eggs, save this story for after you go for the first time.
For now, you can go to sleep on your vintage “Star Wars” bedsheets, reassured that many smart and talented Lucasfilm, Disney Parks and Imagineering (the creatures and rides division) superfans were recruited for the planning and execution of what will be the parks’ most immersive experiences, built to delight and inspire the hardcore “Star Wars” lifers as much as the visitors who don’t know their Jabba from their Jawa.
Let’s start with where this place is located in the far, far-away galaxy. The park is calling the expansion Galaxy’s Edge, and like all the films, it will introduce most of us to a new planet.
This one is called Batuu, an Earth-like planet full of giant ancient petrified tree stumps (up to 135 feet in the parks), located in the uncharted Outer Rim. Its main town, Black Spire Outpost (named after one mysteriously dark tree stump), was once along the main trade route but has now become more of a haven for smugglers and traders.
The First Order has also just arrived, looking for evidence of the Resistance. A theme park attraction doesn’t normally require a story or timeline — and for some guests, it won’t matter — but this is “Star Wars,” which is, foremost, an epic myth. To be authentic, a fictional destination like Batuu needs to fit on a galactic map and within the established narrative timeline. In this chapter, however, you are invited to be a character.
There will be two interactive attractions (aka “rides”) at both parks that combine and propel the tech mastery of Lucasfilm and Disney into hyperspace. Each is massive in scale.
One is called Rise of the Resistance, and it’s a “cinematic experience” with a ride inside, as Disney Executive Creative Director John Larena described it. Your adventure will take you inside the corridors of a rebel base in ancient sacred caves (shades of the base on Yavin 4) and onto a troop transport ship where you will be captured by a Star Destroyer and then thrown in a prison cell block, where you belong, rebel scum.
Many of the surprises of Rise are still under wraps, but cameos include Rey, Poe, Finn, Kylo Ren and BB-8, a John Williams score, those classic blue Rebel light panel battle maps, a full-size AT-AT transport walker and a massive Star Destroyer hangar bay with a window looking out into space.
