Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

  • Replay Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

Entrance to Star Tours: The Adventures Continue at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

  • 40in (102cm) or taller
  • Small Drops

Explore a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Board your Starspeeder 1000 and prepare for take off! When a series of mishaps unwittingly causes your starship to launch too soon, protocol droid C-3PO takes the controls.

Suddenly, the ship is intercepted by Imperial—or First Order—forces searching for a Rebel spy. To avoid capture, you’ll embark on a thrilling, unpredictable flight that rockets you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Featuring a flight simulator, digital 3D video, Audio-Animatronics characters and “in-cockpit” special effects and music, this attraction immerses you in the Star Wars mythology for an unforgettable intergalactic adventure.

Will your starspeeder elude capture and make it back to the base? May the Force be with you—always.

Featuring Favorite Star Wars Characters

Always a new adventure.

Find yourself in a unique story again and again—including one inspired by Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Anytime you ride, you might fly into the middle of a furious battle on Crait, dodge blaster fire from TIE fighters on Jakku, swoop into the dreaded Death Star or dive deep under the oceans of Naboo. 

Plus, to celebrate Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , Star Tours now features an all-new destination from the movie—the ocean moon of Kef Bir.”

Because the many story twists are random, you never know where you’ll go or who you may encounter along the way! 

©Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd.

Know Before You Go

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the star tours at disney world

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Star wars : galaxy’s edge — new, even more magic – as you wish, more star wars, safety, accessibility and guest policies, times for star tours – the adventures continue.

the star tours at disney world

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

the star tours at disney world

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Guests Must Be

Age interest.

Kids, Tweens, Teens, Adults

Thrill Level

Small Drops

Accessibility and Other Information - Opens Dialog

Accessibility

  • Must Transfer to Wheelchair, Then to Ride Vehicle
  • Transfer Access Vehicle Available
  • Video Captioning
  • Handheld Captioning
  • Supervise children at all times. Children under age 7 years must be accompanied by a person age 14 years or older.

Service Animals Not Permitted

Indoor, Star Wars

Rider Switch

  • Rider switch offered. More Information - This attraction offers rider switch, which allows 2 or more adults to take turns waiting with children who are too small to ride, without the need to wait in line twice. Please ask a Cast Member at the attraction entrance for assistance. Beginning of tooltip content This attraction offers rider switch, which allows 2 or more adults to take turns waiting with children who are too small to ride, without the need to wait in line twice. Please ask a Cast Member at the attraction entrance for assistance. End of tooltip content

Make the jump to hyperspace on a thrilling 3D space flight to legendary destinations from the Star Wars saga.

C-3PO and R2-D2 on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Explore a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Suddenly, the ship is intercepted by Imperial—or First Order—forces searching for a Rebel spy. To avoid capture, you’ll embark on a thrilling, unpredictable flight that rockets you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Featuring a flight simulator, digital 3D video, Audio-Animatronics characters and “in-cockpit” special effects and music, this attraction immerses you in the Star Wars mythology for an unforgettable intergalactic adventure.

Will your Starspeeder elude capture and make it back to the base? May the Force be with you—always.

A seated audience watches imagery on a screen depicting an aerial chase in which a TIE fighter pursues and fires blasters at the Millennium Falcon

Featuring Favorite Star Wars Characters

Your adventure may take you face-to-face with First Order villain Kylo Ren, menacing bounty hunter Boba Fett, ace pilot Poe Dameron, Princess Leia or Jedi Master Yoda—plus many more.

C-3PO and Darth Vader on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Always a New Adventure

Starting April 5, 2024, embark on exciting new Star Wars adventures featuring characters and locations from some of your favorite Disney+ series. With these additions, you’ll have the opportunity to experience one of more than 250 storyline variations, including a visit to the planet Seatos from Ahsoka . Because the many story twists are random, you never know where you’ll go or who you may encounter along the way!

©Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd.

C-3PO and R2-D2 on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Know Before You Go

This attraction simulates space flight and may affect people who are sensitive to motion—and disturbances in the Force.

Three acrobats in orange monkey outfits perform on gymnastic rings

Play Disney Parks Achievement Available

Download the Play Disney Parks app to earn digital achievements for experiencing attractions and entertainment, including Star Tours – The Adventures Continue! You can also earn achievements for playing games and other fun activities—both in the parks and at home.

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Star Wars : Galaxy’s Edge

Explore a land where you can live your own Star Wars story in a galaxy far, far away.

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Let Disney Genie service summon the attractions, entertainment and dining you love most.

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Discover other galactic attractions, entertainment and shopping at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

  • 8:30 AM to 10:00 PM

Friday, June 07, 2024

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Star Tours — The Adventures Continue

A building with a spaceship and a sign that reads Star Tours

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Guests Must Be

40" (102 cm) or Taller

Age Interest

Kids, Tweens, Teens, Adults

Thrill Level

Small Drops

Make the jump to hyperspace as you ride aboard a 3D, motion-simulated space flight to popular destinations from Star Wars .

Explore a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Blast off on a thrilling tour of the Star Wars galaxy aboard a Starspeeder 1000. Come face-to-face with Kylo Ren, Boba Fett or Darth Vader as you voyage to amazing alien worlds like Jakku, Coruscant, Naboo or even Crait—an all-new planet from Star Wars: The Last Jedi!

Featuring state-of-the-art technology—including a flight simulator, digital 3D video, Audio-Animatronics characters and "in cockpit" special effects and music—Star Tours — The Adventures Continue immerses you in the Star Wars mythology for an unforgettable intergalactic adventure.

Pre-Boarding Hurry along the forest moon of Endor—home to rustic Ewok cottages and a towering AT-AT—and make your way through a sleek Rebel bunker to a bustling Star Tours spaceport. Inside, behold R2-D2 and C-3PO tinkering away on a Starspeeder 1000—your cosmic transportation vehicle—amid a throng of projection screens, glowing scanners and blinking droids.

Weave your way up a ramp past customs and baggage screening before picking up a pair of 3D flight glasses and continuing to your departure gate. Following instructions from an overhead monitor, board your interstellar vehicle for your journey through outer space.

Become a Hero of the Rebellion! As you prepare for lift-off, a series of mishaps unwittingly causes your starship to launch and C-3PO to take control. Suddenly, your space cruiser is intercepted by Imperial forces. Fearing capture, C-3PO pilots your ship on an unpredictable flight that will rocket you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and back!

Tour the Universe During your voyage, interact with many of the otherworldly characters and places made famous in the Star Wars saga.

Hold on tight as you exit hyperspace and find yourself in the middle of a furious battle on Crait. Plunge into the oceans of Naboo and avoid the clutches of monstrous sea creatures. Retreat inside the dreaded Death Star to escape Darth Vader before facing off with Boba Fett.

Will your starspeeder elude capture and safely transport you—and the rebel spy—safely back to the Alliance base? May the Force be with you.

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

  • Replay Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

Cassian Andor with a Star Tours icon

  • 40in (102cm) or taller
  • Small Drops

Explore a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Board your Starspeeder 1000 and prepare for takeoff! When a series of mishaps unwittingly causes your starship to launch too soon, protocol droid C-3PO takes the controls.

Suddenly, the ship is intercepted by Imperial—or First Order—forces searching for a Rebel spy. To avoid capture, you’ll embark on a thrilling, unpredictable flight that rockets you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Featuring a flight simulator, digital 3D video, Audio-Animatronics characters and “in-cockpit” special effects and music, this attraction immerses you in the Star Wars mythology for an unforgettable intergalactic adventure.

Will your Starspeeder elude capture and make it back to the base? May the Force be with you—always.

Featuring Favorite Star Wars Characters

Always a new adventure.

Hold on tight as urgent transmissions from Ahsoka Tano, Cassian Andor, the Mandalorian and Grogu may soon be part of your next Starspeeder flight.

Starting April 5, 2024, embark on exciting new Star Wars adventures featuring characters and locations from some of your favorite Disney+ series. With these additions, you’ll have the opportunity to experience one of more than 250 storyline variations, including a visit to the planet Seatos from Ahsoka . Because the many story twists are random, you never know where you’ll go or who you may encounter along the way!

©Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd.

Know Before You Go

Play disney parks achievement available.

the star tours at disney world

Related Activities

Star wars : galaxy’s edge, even more magic – as you wish, more star wars, safety, accessibility and guest policies, times for star tours – the adventures continue.

WDW Prep School

Complete Guide to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue at Hollywood Studios

Complete Guide to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue at Hollywood Studios

May the force be with you on this thrilling 3D space flight to legendary destinations from the  Star Wars  saga.

You’ll take to the stars with C-3PO and R2-D2. But watch out for some familiar, less-than-friendly faces like Kylo Ren or Darth Vader!

In 2024, more stories and characters will be added to Star Tours at Hollywood Studios. Further details haven’t been announced just yet, but we will let you know about the changes as soon as we learn more.

Blast off with our complete guide to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue!

In this article

New Adventures Coming April 5, 2024

the star tours at disney world

As announced at 2023 Destination D23, beginning April 5, Star Tours will include new locations and adventures from Ahsoka , Andor , and The Mandalorian .

Once added, the ride will have over 250 different adventure combinations for guest to experience.

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue Quick Facts

  • Location:   Echo Lake , Hollywood Studios
  • Height req : 40 inches
  • Suitable for: Anybody 40″ or taller who can handle simulators and some rough movement.
  • Attraction length: About 7 minutes
  • Do we recommend? Yes, especially for Star Wars fans
  • When to visit: 2nd hour
  • Scheduled Refurbishments
  • Tip(s): The exit area is a great Star Wars gift shop that has areas to build LEGO Star Wars characters and affordable light sabers. If this store seems too busy, you may have better luck at Once Upon a Toy store in Disney Springs where you can get the same items.
  • Description: 3D flight simulator that takes guests through one of dozens of different Star Wars experiences including new characters and adventures from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker as well as Star Wars: The Last Jed i and Batuu, the home planet of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is located in Echo Lake near Backlot Express, a Quick Service restaurant.

Here is the location on the map:

star tours location in hollywood studios

  • Download the PDF

hollywood studios map

How to Ride Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue has a Standby Line and a Lightning Lane. There is no  Single Rider Line .

Do I need to use Genie+ at Star Tours – The Adventures Continue?

Genie+ is available at Star Tours – The Adventures Continue however this wouldn’t be an early priority ride to grab those Genie+ reservations because availability rarely runs out.

star tours lightning lane

This ride is also available for Early Entry to those who qualify.

Be sure to check out our  touring strategies for Hollywood Studios for more Genie+ advice.

Rider Switch/Child Swap

Since you must be 40″ to ride Star Tours – The Adventures Continue, this attraction does offer Rider Switch.

Rider Switch is Disney’s system that allows guests with small children to take turns riding bigger rides, while another person/people wait with the little one.

You can  learn more about Rider Switch  via our handy guide.

What to Expect when you Ride

The queue at Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is designed to resemble a spaceport terminal.

You’ll see posters advertising voyages to different planets with Star Tours and a large LCD screen informing riders of flight statuses and planetary weather forecasts.

star tours hollywood studios

You’ll also see some of your favorite characters like C-3PO and R2-D2, as well as Captain Rex from the original attraction. He occasionally has a power surge and delivers a line from the first Star Tours ride.

Two G2 droids process passengers’ “luggage” on a scanning system that reveals the contents to you as you wait in the queue.

You’ll then retrieve your 3-D “flight glasses” before you are directed by a flight agent to a gate where you’ll wait to board.

star tours hollywood studios

While you wait, you’ll be entertained by a pre-show on the screen above you. C-3PO has been assigned to maintenance on the StarSpeeder 1000 that you’re about to board and he gets trapped in the cockpit after the ship’s captain leaves!

Make sure you then pay attention to the safety instructions before you board.

Play Disney Parks  is available for Star Tours – The Adventures Continue. This free mobile app is only available for select attractions and allows guests to pass the time as they play games, trivia, and earn achievements along the way.

Ride Vehicles

The ride vehicles at Star Tours – The Adventures Continue are large 3D flight simulators.

When the door to your flight simulator opens, make your way inside to the last available seat. There are four rows in the simulator and each row contains 10 individual seats with armrests and a place to store your personal items below.

Make sure you buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Accessibility Information

Guests who wish to ride Star Tours – The Adventures Continue must transfer from their ECV to a wheelchair and then to the ride vehicle.

Keep in mind, Disney has issued a warning that those who ride Star Tours – The Adventures Continue should be in good health and free from high blood pressure, heart, back, or neck problems. Expectant mothers should not ride.

star-tours-the-adventures-continue

Video and handheld captioning are available and those under 40″ are not allowed to ride.

Motion Sickness

Since Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is a 3D flight simulator, this ride is highly turbulent and includes sharp turns and sudden bumps which can aggravate motion sickness.

If you experience motion sickness in general, check out our  guide on motion sickness  for any Disney World attraction.

On the Ride

If you prefer to experience Star Tours – The Adventures Continue without spoilers, make sure you skip over this section!

Board your Starspeeder 1000 and prepare for takeoff! While you’re supposed to be heading off on a relaxing tour (hence Star Tours), a series of mishaps ends up launching you early, forcing C-3PO to take control.

But as soon as it appears that your trip is back on track, your ship is intercepted by Imperial — or First Order — forces searching for a Rebel spy. This spy is chosen from one of the guests on your ride vehicle— it could even be you!

star tours bypass hallway at hollywood studios

To avoid capture and not give up your rebel passenger, you’ll be taken on the ride of a lifetime to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Since the attraction features several different segments that are selected randomly, your ride will be different each time! You may end up facing off with First Order villain Kylo Ren, bounty hunter Boba Fett, Princess Leia, or Jedi Master Yoda.

lando on star tours - the adventure continue

Just a few of the scenes you may encounter is a narrow escape from a battle on the planet Crait, following Scout Troopers as they chase after Chewbacca and a Wookiee warrior on Kashyyk, or discovering the still-to-be-finished Death Star.

With so many story twists, you never know where you’ll go or who you may encounter on your Star Tour! 

May the Force be with you as you and your fellow passengers attempt to elude capture and make it back to the base on Star Tours – The Adventures Continue.

Is Star Tours – The Adventures Continue Kid-Friendly?

The height requirement for Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is 40″ and there can be some dark moments during the action so this ride is more for older kids, tweens, teens, and adults.

We have a list of things that may scare little ones at Disney World that you can check out, if you’d like.

Strollers are not allowed in most queues or theaters at Walt Disney World.

You’ll need to leave your stroller in the designated stroller parking area near the entrance to the queue at Star Tours – The Adventures Continue.

In 1986 Disney and George Lucas, the creator of  Star Wars , partnered on the Captain EO attraction, a 3-D musical film starring Michael Jackson at Disneyland. Since the partnership was so successful Disney then approached Lucas with the idea for Star Tours.

The original Star Tours ride opened on January 9, 1987 in California’s Disneyland. Two years later, Star Tours opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, then known as Disney’s MGM Studios.

star tours opening day at disneyland park

Set in the  Star Wars  universe, the motion simulator attraction sent guests on a tour to Endor, where they got caught in an altercation between the New Republic and an Imperial Remnant. The attraction featured Captain “Rex” RX-24 along with series regulars R2-D2 and C-3PO.

In 1998, Disney began planning to upgrade Star Tours as part of the release of the upcoming 1999 film  Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace , the first film of the new prequel trilogy.

This version would be in 3D and feature new flights. However, since more films for the franchise were in pre-production, officials chose to wait until 2003 when production began on  Revenge of the Sith  before remodeling Star Tours.

star tours ride vehicle from disneyland opening day

In April 2005, at  Star Wars  Celebration III, creator George Lucas confirmed that a revamp of Star Tours was in production. Then at the 2009 D23 Expo it was announced that Star Tours at Disneyland and Hollywood Studios would close in October 2010 for renovations.

The rides would reopen in May and June 2011 as Star Tours – The Adventures Continue.

On August 14, 2010, Hollywood Studios hosted the “Last Tour To Endor” event for Celebration V attendees. This extravaganza included an appearance by George Lucas, character appearances, Jedi Training Academy, Death Star Disco,  Raiders Of The Lost Jedi Temple of Doom: A Fan Film of Epic Proportions  live show, Hyperspace Hoopla, and  Symphony in the Stars  fireworks.

star tours rise of skywalker concept art

It also included the Star Tours shutdown ceremony which was a live show with C-3PO, R2-D2, Boba Fett, Darth Vader, as well as a few Stormtroopers, culminating in the official power-down of Star Tours.

The ride remained open until September 7, 2010, when the attraction held its “Final Flight to Endor” for D23 members.

In Orlando, Star Tours – The Adventures Continue began soft openings on May 14, 2011, with the official opening held at midnight on May 20, 2011.

Since its opening, the planet Jakku from  The Force Awakens  has been added to the attraction as well as the planet Crait from  The Last Jedi  and Batuu, from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Finally, the ocean moon Kef Bir from  The Rise of Skywalker  was added on December 20, 2019, the film’s release date.

In 2023, Disney announced at Destination D23 that Ahoska would be added to Star Tours in spring 2024 .

Other Fun Details

  • Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is inspired by all nine films of the Star Wars Skywalker saga: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Episode IV – A New Hope, Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, Empire VI – Return of the Jedi, Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, and Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker .
  • There are Star Tours attractions at four different Disney Parks around the world: Disney World’s Hollywood Studios, Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland in California.

at at outside star tours

  • The exteriors of all four Star Tours attractions are different in their respective parks. The attraction in Florida is inspired by an Ewok village on the forest moon of Endor.
  • Listen closely just before boarding your spaceship. You may hear a reference to THX1138. THX1138 was in all of the Star Wars movies because it was the name of George Lucas’ first movie, so he included it in all of the Star Wars films as a nod to his origin.
  • Other boarding call announcements in the first area of the indoor wait queue gives names that are actually anagrams for people like  Star Wars  creator George Lucas (“Egroeg Sacul”) and Tom Morrow (“Mot Worrom”). When you reach the baggage check area, many different Disney attractions and franchises like Haunted Mansion ,  Toy Story, Aladdin, WALL-E, The Incredibles , and  Captain EO get cameos as G2-9T scans boarding IDs. 
  • Paul Reubens, perhaps better known for his famous character, Pee Wee Herman, was actually the voice of Captain RX-24 (Rex) in the original Star Tours ride. He was the pilot talking as R2-D2 was being loaded. In the new version of the ride, you can see him in the droid maintenance section in the queue.

c3p0 on star tours

  • Patrick Warburton, who is known for delivering the safety spiel before boarding Soarin’ at Epcot and for also voicing Kronk in Emperor’s New Groove , is the voice of security officer G2-4Ton Star Tours — The Adventures Continue. You can spot him as you pass through a series of security scanners.
  • As part of the attraction, you’ll see scenes with archival footage of Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher. The dialogue, however, is re-recorded. Carrie Fisher collaborated with Imagineers to re-record her dialogue so that it fits the attraction seamlessly.
  • While the original Star Tours ride didn’t open until 1989, Imagineers originally had an idea for a simulator ride themed to another Disney movie. The 1979 live-action film  The Black Hole  followed astronauts investigating a mysterious spaceship inside a black hole, but it was a commercial flop. This, combined with the high costs for the planned ride, led to the concept being scrapped. It wasn’t until Disney partnered with George Lucas and Lucasfilm in 1986, that the simulator idea was revisited, this time with Star Wars in mind.

Other Attractions in Echo Lake

  • For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
  • Indiana Jones™ Epic Stunt Spectacular!
  • Mickey Shorts Theater
  • Star Tours – The Adventure Continues

Disney's Star Tours - The Adventures Continue

the star tours at disney world

Disney's Star Tours - The Adventures Continue improves on the original attraction in every way—and sets a new standard for motion simulator rides. What had become a slightly tired trip to a Star Wars galaxy far, far away is now a giddy jaunt to... well, half the fun is you never know where in hyperspace the ride will whisk you.

  • Thrill Scale (0=Wimpy, 10=Yikes): 4.5. Relatively mild motion simulator thrills. Those prone to motion sickness may experience discomfort (although closing your eyes should quell any queasiness). The ride also offers Star Wars -style action. It makes our list of Disneyland's most thrilling rides .
  • Location: Disneyland , Disney's Hollywood Studios at Disney World , Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland.
  • Height requirement: 40 inches

Disney Raises Its Own Bar

When it debuted at Disneyland in 1987, the original Star Tours was the first major motion simulator attraction at a theme park, and the newfangled virtual reality concept ushered in a new era for park attractions. If theme parks are about escaping from the everyday world, motion simulators offer an ideal means of escape. Using seats that move in sync with filmed action projected onto a screen, the destinations are only limited by the imagination of the attraction's designers. Star Tours was also a bold departure for Disney which, up until that point, had used its own content as the basis for its attractions.

Since the ride film made its debut, developers have added Omnimax screens (such as The Simpsons Ride ), roving motion base vehicles (such as Transformers: The Ride 3D ), and other features to enhance the you-are-there experience. The movie ride space cowboys at Walt Disney Imagineering, Lucasfilm, and Industrial Light & Magic (Lucasfilm's visual effects mavens), have upped their own ante with a retooled version of the attraction that launched in 2011.

The impetus for the re-imagined ride dates back to the late 1990s when Episode 1 of the Star Wars prequel trilogy was being filmed. According to Tom Fitzgerald, executive vice president and senior creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering , "George Lucas contacted us and said the pod racing scene in the movie would be perfect for Star Tours." Anyone who has seen the movie would agree; the largely point-of-view sequence, with the hover vehicles tearing through a desert course, seems tailor-made for a park ride. So what took so long? "We needed to raise the bar," says Fitzgerald. Thankfully, the bar has indeed been raised.​

3-D Without the Gimmicks

The infrastructure of the attraction remains essentially unchanged. Guests still make their way through a mythology-packed "spaceport" en route to their Starspeeder 1000 boarding gate and an allegedly uneventful journey to some friendly planet. Star Wars stalwarts R2-D2 and C-3PO are on hand to help ready the vehicles (and entertain riders stuck in line). After some pre-flight safety instructions, guests enter the familiar Starspeeder cabins and buckle up for a bumpy ride.

Once the ride begins, however, it's clear that this is not the same Endor-bound Star Tours that lurched ad nauseam through the cosmos for 24 years. Speaking of clear, the super high-def clarity of the digitally projected film is remarkably crisper than the original ride. And by adding 3-D to the mix, the attraction offers a vivid sense of depth, while the dorky 3-D goggles don't noticeably dim the alluring brightness of the images.

Unlike the gotcha gimmickry of most 3-D park rides, the extra dimension of the spiffed-up Star Tours is more understated. With its easy availability at the local cineplex, the novelty of 3-D has long since worn off. Wisely, the Imagineers have seamlessly incorporated the effect in a largely unself-conscious and elegant way that helps bring Lucas' alternate-universe to life.

You Are There. But You Never Know Where.

The most compelling improvement over Star Tours 1.0 is the ride's random sequence generator. By slicing together many different destinations and transition scenes, Disney says that there are over 50 possible story combinations. No two rides, therefore, would likely be the same (unless uber-fans boarded Star Tours a lot ). That keeps the attraction fresh and makes it eminently re-rideable. It also makes other motion simulator attractions, with their fixed been-there, done-that plots, seem so 20th century.

Like the original Star Tours (and nearly every other motion simulator ride), what all versions of the attraction have in common is that things very quickly go horribly wrong. Rookie pilots R2-D2 and C-3PO are unexpectedly drafted into action, rebel spies are discovered lurking among the passengers, and the Starspeeders must periodically engage in evasive maneuvers and travel to distant planets to avoid certain calamity. Other destinations include the ice planet of Hoth, Naboo, and the ominous Death Star.

It's quite impressive to experience the attraction more than once and be treated to an entirely unique story arc each time. Different characters (which might include, among others, Boba Fett, Yoda, Princess Leia, and supreme baddie Darth Vader), different missions, different locations, and even different gags will have you marveling at the audacity of the ride. "It was a challenge to sync everything," says Spiegel, referring to the on-the-fly nature of the stitched-together film, the corresponding motion sequences, and the in-cabin effects. “We wanted to be able to take guests to many places in the Star Wars universe. And now we can."

Even More Places to Visit

Because it is screen-based, Disney has the ability to add sequences and make updates to the attraction, which it periodically does. For example, in late 2019, the parks introduced new scenes inspired by Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , the latest installment in the movie franchise. Among the places added to the Starspeeders' itineraries was the ocean moon Kef Bir.

Since the introduction of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge , the groundbreaking lands at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it has been a bit disconcerting to have Star Tours exist outside of the contained Black Spire Outpost, the trading port on the planet Batuu. It is especially strange at the Disney World park, where Star Tours is just a couple of blocks away from Galaxy’s Edge. Disney has explained the disconnect by saying that the Star Tours attractions pay homage to the movies and mythology while Galaxy’s Edge represents the “real” Star Wars lands.

It may be some time before we actually have the technology to fly off to faraway stars. Until then, the mighty impressive technology that fuels Star Tours - The Adventures Continue can virtually transport us, if only for a few minutes at a time, to places that were previously unthinkable.

As is common in the travel industry, the writer was provided with complimentary services for review purposes. While it has not influenced this review, TripSavvy believes in full disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest. For more information, see our  Ethics Policy .

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Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

Star Tours

Star Tours – The Adventures Continue is a 3D motion simulator that takes guests on a lightspeed journey through the Star Wars universe. Guests enter the Starspeeder 1000 for a scenic tour courtesy of Star Tours. This tour is quickly halted due to the presence of a spy from the Rebel Alliance. Guests are taken on a whirlwind tour of the Star Wars universe. Because the attraction is randomized, you never know where you might end up.

Guests may visit Coruscant, Naboo, or even the Death Star, in addition to other locations. You may even end up being chased by a bounty hunter like Boba Fett! On your Star Tours tour, you will be piloted by C-3PO and R2-D2. In addition to these characters, you may encounter Princess Leia, Admiral Ackbar, Darth Vader, Jar Jar Binks, Chewbacca, or any of a variety of other Star Wars characters. There are over 50 combinations of Star Tours adventures with scenes from all of the Star Wars films, even The Force Awakens. You can experience unique adventures nearly every time you ride Star Tours, making it a ride that can be enjoyed again and again.

Ride Information   Restrictions   Location   Fun Facts   Top 5 Tips

Ride Information

Opening Day: December 15, 1989

Type of Ride : Flight Simulator

Age Recommendation: School-age children, Teens, and Adults

Duration of Ride: 7 minutes

Typical Queue Time: Moderate to Long;   35 – 40 minutes on a typical day

Single Rider Line: No

Chicken Exit Available:  Yes

Baby Swap Available:  Yes

Type of Vehicle:  Simulator

Type of Restraint:  Lap Belt

Attraction Open During Early Theme Park Entry: Yes. See our Early Theme Park Entry page for more information.

Ride Photo Available For Purchase:  No

the star tours at disney world

Ride Restrictions

Height Requirements: 40″

Flash Photography or Video Allowed: No

Other Rides/Attractions In the Area:  This attraction is located in the Echo Lake area of Hollywood Studios. Nearby Attractions include Indiana Jones Stunt Show and Muppet Vision 3D .

Shopping: Star Tours exits into Tattooine Traders, a Star Wars gift shop. Star Wars merchandise is available for purchase at Launch Bay Cargo in the Star Wars Launch Bay.

Dining/Refreshment: The Backlot Express is next door to Star Tours.

Restroom:  Restrooms are located across from the attraction, next to the Olaf meet and greet location.

Smoking Location: Permitted in designated smoking areas only. Disney parks are smoke-free.

Star Tours – The Adventures Continues Fun Facts

Did you know.

  • Star Tours closed and re-opened in May 2011 with new adventures and randomized scenes.
  • In the queue, look to the left in the baggage check area. You can see the droid Rex, the pilot of the original Star Tours.
  • Anthony Daniels, the original C-3PO continues his role in the attraction.
  • If flight simulators make you nauseous, sit towards the middle of the attraction for a less aggressive ride.
  • When The Force Awakens released, scenes changed in the attraction.

Hidden Mickeys:

  • Look for a white Hidden Mickey on a tree trunk in the Ewok Village portion of the queue.
  • In Tattooine Traders, the gift shop, look for a Hidden Mickey with bullet hole “ears” on a counter.

Top 5 Tips for Star Tours – The Adventures Continue

  • Sit in the middle of the simulator to avoid motion sickness.
  • Prepare in advance by watching a few Star Wars films.
  • Pose for a photo on a speeder near the entrance of the attraction.
  • Ride it again for different experiences!

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Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

An Attraction in Hollywood Studios

Last updated: June 7, 2024

At a Glance

Based on the Star Wars saga, this was Disney’s first modern simulator ride. Guests ride in a flight simulator modeled after those used for training pilots and astronauts, experiencing dips, turns, twists, and climbs. The ride film, projected in high-definition 3-D, has more than 50 combinations of opening and ending scenes, including clips from The Force Awakens. You could ride Star Tours all day without seeing the same scenes twice. The downside to Star Tours is that it’s not in Galaxy’s Edge.

  • Lightning Lane via Genie+
  • Physical Considerations
  • Handheld Captioning
  • Video Captioning
  • Must Transfer to Standard Wheelchair and then to Ride Vehicle
  • No Service Animals

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Touring Tips

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Star Tours: Inside the Secret History of Disney’s Classic ‘Star Wars’ Ride

The Disney Parks attraction’s origin and evolution is an adventure all its own

Star Tours promo image

Earlier in January, Star Tours turned 35.

The groundbreaking attraction has been a favorite of Disney Parks visitors the world over, and it would prove an influential part of the “Star Wars” mythology, even today. In Jon Favreau’s “The Book of Boba Fett” (streaming now on Disney+) a familiar-looking droid has been dealing cards in the cantina/casino hideout The Sanctuary in the Tatooine village of Mos Espa. The droid looks like Rex, the inexperienced pilot of the original version of Star Tours. Predictably, fans went nuts.

In fact, the influence of Star Tours has been felt strongly in the current era of “Star Wars” on both the big and small screen. Rex previously appeared in an episode of animated series “Star Wars: Rebels,” and the Star Tours spaceship the Starspeeder made blink-and-you’ll-miss-it background appearances in J.J. Abrams two sequel trilogy installments, while Rian Johnson admitted a looser influence over his installment, “The Last Jedi.” The sequence where the Millennium Falcon is careening through the crystalline caverns of Crait was inspired by the original ride film’s trip through a craggy comet.

But the story of how Star Tours was developed – how it came to be, what technology was employed, and the profound implications for both the Disney Parks and George Lucas’ Lucasfilm – might be even more thrilling and complex than the actual ride, which was heavily retrofitted in 2010 now goes by the name Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.

So, without further ado, lightspeed to Endor !

the-book-of-boba-fett-temuera-morrison-ming-na-wen-image

A Long Time Ago …

Long before there was any kind of official partnership, Lucasfilm and Disney Parks were linked, thanks mostly to some fortuitous timing. George Lucas’ “Star Wars” hit theaters on May 25, 1977, intoxicating audiences with its depiction of bold heroes, dastardly villains, fussy droids and otherworldly creatures. Those that saw it went back again and again but itched for something more . Thankfully for Southern California audiences, Space Mountain, an adaptation of an attraction that opened at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom two years earlier, opened at Disneyland two days after “Star Wars.” Folks would go see “Star Wars” and then book it to Disneyland for a chance to ride Space Mountain, nestled in the far corner of Tomorrowland. The line for the attraction snaked from that distant part of Tomorrowland all the way up Main Street, U.S.A. Even if their pairing was still a decade away, Lucasfilm and Disney Parks were already strongly bound by the Force.

But if the actual Lucasfilm/Disney enterprise had a point of origin (something that we are painfully aware that George Lucas just loves ), it was when Michael Eisner, then the head of Paramount, decided to green light “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” As Brian Jay Jones recounts in his biography “George Lucas: A Life,” Lucas’ financial terms for the movie were aggressive and mirrored those of the “Star Wars” sequels. Lucas would fund the movie himself and the studio would “distribute the completed film in exchange for profits.” While many of the studios passed right away, Warner Bros., who had clumsily distributed Lucas’ first film “THX-1138,” initially wanted to make it, but they were ultimately usurped by Paramount and Eisner.  “George came over to my house,” Eisner later said, “and he said, ‘Let’s make the best deal they’ve ever made in Hollywood.’”

On November 7, 1979, Paramount announced an agreement with Lucasfilm – they’d agreed to Lucas’ demands and would be making “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Eisner believed in George Lucas, even when other studios didn’t. This is baffling, after the astronomical success of “Star Wars” just two years earlier, but true. “Eisner was no dummy,” Jones says now. “Professionally, they spoke the same language. They got the cultural sensibilities.”

Eisner’s decision to help Lucas out on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” would have far reaching ramifications; for one, it would lead to Paramount releasing one of the most successful franchises (after Lucas’ own “Star Wars”) of all time. It would also ultimately assist in the rehabilitation of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated brands, which by the early 1980s had fallen into disrepair and disinterest.

book-of-boba-fett-episode-3-ming-na-wen

Rebellion Reborn

In 1984, after greenmail attempts by corporate raiders, the Walt Disney Company got a fresh transfusion of new executive talent in the form of Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and (a few months later) Jeffrey Katzenberg. As CEO and Chairman of the Board, Eisner set his sights on strengthening the company’s bottom line and refreshing the brand, which in the nearly 20 years since Walt Disney had died, became a creaky dinosaur, badly out of step with modern audiences and accompanying cultural shifts. (The year before Eisner became CEO, the top grossing Disney movie was “Never Cry Wolf,” with a whopping $29.6 million .)

Similarly, the Disney Parks had been badly neglected despite accounting for nearly 70% of the company’s annual revenue, in part because of the wobbly, extremely over-budget opening of EPCOT Center in Florida, but more pressingly because Disney wasn’t producing anything that could be adapted into rides, shows, or attractions at the parks. While Katzenberg looked to return the studio’s feature animation unit to its former glory (it existed, in the early 1980s, as a partially mothballed group that was in constant danger of shuttering completely), Eisner looked to the parks. “You couldn’t walk through the theme parks and not recognize that they lacked contemporary development. But when Frank and I walked down Main Street for the first time, Frank turned to me and said, ‘There’s so much here. There’s so much potential,’” Eisner recounted in “The Imagineering Story” documentary on Disney+.

Imagineering had reached out to Lucas before Eisner had been installed. Marty Sklar had set up a meeting between Ron Miller, who was president and CEO of Disney before Eisner (he was also Walt’s son-in-law), and Imagineer Tony Baxter. Baxter was, and remains, a superstar of Walt Disney Imagineering, the kind of persona that Disney fanatics dress up as at Disney fan conventions. (Seriously.) At the time, Baxter wasn’t even 40 and had already contributed to the Disney portfolio in meaningful, some would argue profound, ways. He was behind the Journey into Imagination pavilion at EPCOT Center, which featured some truly next-level technological breakthroughs alongside a whimsical story about the power of creativity; and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland, a runaway train thrill ride that would become instantly beloved and replicated at Disney parks the world over. Miller was still stinging from the failure of “The Black Hole,” Disney’s bid to challenge “Star Wars,” but agreed with Baxter that “Disneyland did need an infusion of new IP for younger generations of visitors” (according to Baxter). Miller suggested that they meet with Lucas at Miller’s Silverado Ranch. In addition to Sklar and Miller, Imagineers Rick Rothschild and Gary Krisel were also at the meeting. “There was no lag time between those initial agreements at the Silverado Vineyard, the subsequent leaving of Ron Miller, and Michael and Frank’s arrival in September 1984,” Baxter said. (Another former Imagineer had told me that after that initial meeting, “those discussions went nowhere.”)

Star Tours concept art

Interestingly, before Eisner was hired, Disney board members had originally turned to Lucas to run the entire company in the early 1980s. “It wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life,” said Howard Roffman, who was the chief operating officer of Lucasfilm, in The Cinema of George Lucas by Marcus Hearn. Instead, the board offered the job to Eisner, the man who had the guts and the creative ambition to back “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Now Eisner quietly reached out to Lucas about projects with the Disney Parks. Lucas had been a lifelong Disneyland fan (his family had first visited the park on July 19, 1955, two days after it had opened), making annual treks to the resort. And just as Eisner had gotten behind a lucrative deal (in Lucas’ favor) for “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” he offered Lucas an equally eye-popping arrangement for his services: for every Lucas-originated project, the filmmaker would get $1 million per attraction per park per year. Lucas happily agreed. This arrangement even applied to later attractions Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril (a fairly off-the-shelf rollercoaster with the Indiana Jones name) located in Disneyland Paris, and Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull (essentially a clone of the Disneyland attraction) at Tokyo Disney Sea.

Boba Fett Montage

According to Baxter, during their first week at Disney, Eisner and Wells asked several Imagineers to come in on a Saturday and pitch “everything we had in conceptual design.” For Baxter, that meant he showed off the “Star Wars” project and what would later be known as Splash Mountain. (This is the infamous meeting where Eisner brought along his son Breck. Eisner told Baxter that Breck “loved theme parks” and Michael knew little about theme parks.) Both Star Tours and Splash Mountain were “given the green light” during Baxter’s presentation but according to Baxter executives were “disturbed” by the proposed 3-year production time designated for Star Tours. Famously, Eisner willed the teen-oriented dance club Videopolis into existence at Disneyland in a mere 100 days, partially due to architect Chris Carradine salvaging structural elements from the 1984 Olympics. He wanted things in the parks and he wanted them now .

With Lucas onboard for a Disney Parks “Star Wars” attraction, Imagineering began spit-balling ideas. At a National Fantasy Fan Club meeting in July 1988 legendary Imagineer David Mumford, whose notable work includes the Land pavilion at EPCOT Center and the Mermaid Lagoon section of Tokyo DisneySea, spoke of a cutting-edge “Star Wars” rollercoaster that was originally proposed. In this attraction, guests in the ride vehicle would vote on whether they would follow Yoda and become a Jedi or instead choose the path illuminated by the Emperor, embracing the dark side of the Force. Depending on that decision, you would rocket past show scenes featuring animatronics of your favorite characters (Boba Fett, Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt on one path or Leia, Luke and Han Solo on the other). It was a wonderful idea, utilizing interactivity and good old-fashioned Imagineering magic, but Mumford said that it would take at least five years just to design the complex mechanism that would allow the ride to work. They needed something sooner.

Enter Mark Eades. Eades was a young Imagineer who had moved over from the Walt Disney Studios to work on EPCOT Center. In the days after EPCOT Center’s opening, when Imagineering’s ranks shrank and viable new projects became scarce, Eades was tasked with researching motion simulator technology. He visited army bases and tested out rudimentary versions designed for entertainment purposes (including “one where they basically stuck a camera on a rollercoaster”). At the end of his exploratory journey, he wrote a memo outlining the potential uses of the technology in the parks (he notes that, contrary to much reporting, the technology was never looked at for a “Black Hole” attraction, but rather “The Black Hole” was thought of as a potential overlay for the aging Mission to Mars). “We either a) treat it as a Tomorrowland attraction where we talk about how the pilots of tomorrow are being trained and you get to go train with them,” Eades said of the simulator technology. “Or there could be other stories if we’re willing to not admit that it’s a simulator. One of them could be in the ‘Star Wars’ universe.” At the end of the memo, he even suggested a possible narrative, should the ‘Star Wars’ idea actually be chosen: “Take a ride on the Millennium Falcon and when we get off we can go over to the Mos Eisley cantina.” This exact idea would be recirculated, 30 years later, at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

At the urging of Imagineer Randy Bright, Baxter went to Retifusion London, a test facility, to see if the flight simulator technology could successfully be used “for entertainment purposes.” (According to Baxter, Bright had stopped at the facility following an Abbey Road recording session for some new orchestral elements for EPCOT.) “I took several leaders from Disneyland operations & maintenance along on the trip to validate the practicality,” Baxter said. Imagineers might design the attractions, but operations and maintenance keep it running. Baxter and the small group seem to have watched the same “rollercoaster” ride film that Eades had also seen. “The simulator was limited in what it could mimic, but we were impressed enough to begin the project in earnest,” Baxter said. Disney made a deal to buy one of the simulators. It was housed in a custom-designed building in the parking lot of Imagineering’s Glendale headquarters.  

In Spite of ‘Captain EO’

Captain EO

While work progressed on Star Tours, Michael Jackson had approached the company about joining forces for a new project. Jackson loved Disneyland and Walt Disney World (later he would fashion a Disneyland-style theme park at his home, Neverland Ranch). Eisner and Katzenberg were both dazzled by big name stars and made the Jackson project a priority. At the same meeting where Splash Mountain and Star Tours were greenlit, the executives first brought up the possibility of a Jackson project (according to Baxter). “Imagineering was challenged to give Michael Jackson three concepts to choose,” Baxter said. In his memoir, Eisner describes the concept: “Our notion was to put him in an extended 3D music video.”

One pitch had the entertainer at Disneyland after dark, when various attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean would spring to life. (It was deemed too similar to his beloved “Thriller” music video.) Another version had Jackson inhabiting the role of a Peter Pan-type character who battled an ice queen, eventually melting her heart. And yet another, dubbed the “intergalactic ‘Music Man’” had him visiting a cold, distant planet and bringing music to the people, literally transforming them. Jackson liked the space idea but had a list of demands, including hiring either George Lucas or Steven Spielberg to help oversee what would ultimately become a cumbersome, costly, 17-minute 3D film (a “miracle of a movie” according to Whoopi Goldberg in the “Captain EO: Backstage” episode of “The Disney SundayMovie”). Spielberg was busy with “The Color Purple.” But Lucas had just signed on with Disney and was happy to oblige. At the very least, it would mean another $1 million per year per park.

Instead of helming the project himself, Lucas would install Francis Ford Coppola, one of his oldest friends, in the director’s chair. And Jones pointed out, not only would Lucas be spared the drudgery of daily production (“Return of the Jedi” had nearly killed him), handing Coppola the Disney project meant that he’d be “giving his mentor a much-needed job” (this after the middling response to Coppola’s costly “The Cotton Club”). Since it was technically a film, the production for what was now known as “Captain EO” (named by Coppola after Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn) was handled mostly by the film studio and therefore overseen by Katzenberg. Initially, at least, Imagineering was consulted (they’d be brought back later to design the in-theater effects and motion). “I’d talked to them about it. I’d done an estimate and said it was going to cost $17 million,” Eades said. “The studio people said it would cost $10 million. I said, ‘Make that movie.’ They spent a lot more than $10 million and they spent a lot more than I said it would cost.”

the star tours at disney world

As it turns out, considerably more than what Eades had quoted. The production of “Captain EO” was long and difficult, with original actress Shelley Long dropping out of the role as the evil queen because of the extensive prosthetics (Anjelica Houston replaced her) and Coppola struggling with the complicated requirements of shooting in 3D. (Coppola would lean on Lucas for guidance when it came to the visual effects and creatures.) Behind schedule, the production went over-budget and had to cut corners. On an episode of the “I Was There Too” podcast, comedian Doug Benson talked about his time as an extra on the movie; the production was so over-budget that they couldn’t afford to pay actual dancers anymore. Benson had to stand in the background and gyrate. While most cite the $17 million budget as the final cost, Eades told TheWrap that the actual figure was more than $22.7 million – “and that was in real money in those days.” At the time, per minute, it was the most expensive movie ever produced. Imagineers, still hard at work on Star Tours, printed out custom memo templates that read Star Tours – In Spite of EO .

The Star Tours team was assembled, involving some of Imagineering’s key talents, led by Baxter, and including Eades. Bruce Gordon was the original producer on the project and had, according to Baxter, “as to what you could and could not do in programming events to physically simulate an experience.” “You cannot just write a story and then film it. It’s impossible for many kinetic options to dovetail into one another, due to the limitations of the hydraulic system,” Baxter said. “After we matched the capability of the simulator to a list of ‘Star Wars’ ‘stunts,’ their running order became a dictate of what capabilities were available after the completion of the preceding stunt. The most notable example was being caught in a tractor beam . This motionless backward tilt was the only capability that could be achieved after exhausting the hydraulics in the preceding ice cave sequence.” They had worked out the runtime of the ride: 4 minutes and 35 seconds. “This was the maximum time before an increasing nausea curve would begin ticking upwards,” Baxter said. The Imagineers also learned that they had to put in story pauses every 45 seconds or so, “to let riders regain their bearings.” He also notes that this fact was ignored when developing Body Wars, a sort of “Fantastic Voyage”-type experience that would open with the Wonders of Life Pavilion at EPCOT Center in 1989. Guests got so sick that several seconds of the ride film were removed after Body Wars opened.

For Star Tours, Imagineering had some key collaborators in the form of the wizards at Industrial Light & Magic, the groundbreaking effects house that Lucas had started for the first “Star Wars,” although getting them to grasp the concept of the project (which Eisner wanted to call Star Ride) was difficult. There was a meeting beween Imagineering and ILM, where George Lucas, ILM artists Dennis Muran and Dave Carson (who would serve as the “directors” for ILM), and Imagineering personnel like Tom Fitzgerald, Randy Bright, Marty Sklar and Eades, discussed the project. Eades remembered the scene: “Dennis starts talking to George, ‘We could cut to this angle, cut to that angle.’ And I’m a neophyte at the time. I’m not even 31 years old. I’m the new kid on the block and I’m listening to this and thinking, They’re wrong . I stopped at one point and actually said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. You guys don’t understand. This isn’t a movie. This is a window like in a jet. We can’t cut.’ And I’m looking right at Dennis. ‘However long this is, it’s a continuous take.’ He sat back and looked at me and said, ‘Gee, George. He’s right.’”

The concept of the attraction, where Star Tours was one of several “commercial companies have started business to take people across the galaxy” following the events of “Return of the Jedi,” coalesced quickly and stayed mostly in place. “That way we can give people a ride going through a ‘Star Wars’ movie without giving them a ‘Star Wars’ movie,” Eades explained. Other things remained in flux. The voice of Captain RX-24 (“Rex”), originally described by Lucas as a frazzled Clone Wars veteran named “Crazy Harry,” remained elusive, until Eades (also working as the casting director for the project) saw “Flight of the Navigator.” “Flight of the Navigator” (released by Disney) featured a UFO voiced by Paul Reubens, who had yet to gain fame as Pee-Wee Herman. Eades knew that Reubens was the perfect voice and urged Tom Fitzgerald to see “Flight of the Navigator.” After watching the film, Fitzgerald agreed. Reubens was in production on the first season of what would become the fabled television series “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” “We got ahold of [Reubens] on set and he agreed in principle, and we sent a recording to George and he said, ‘That’s it,’” Eades said.

At one point, Baxter and Muren went to Las Vegas to watch a demo of HD digital technology. They came back “pushing for the use of HD media rather than 70mm film.” “That decision was predicated on Sony being a sole source supplier of equipment. A safer decision was made to go with 70mm film rather than Sony HD, but it would set the variability of the ride experience back for 20 years,” Baxter said.

The troubled production of “Captain EO” actually gave the Star Tours team some cover. “They were so focused on ‘Captain EO’ and we were doing this thing and working with ILM and we were kind of ignored. Which was great for the team,” Eades said. “We had a budget and we stuck to the budget. We figured out how to get the most bang for our buck.” Somewhat amazingly, Eades explained: “We actually had Star Tours done first but they wanted to open ‘Captain EO’ and open Star Tours the next year. It was great because it gave the simulators some time to get some run time on them.”

After an equally arduous post-production, which saw Disney executives shocked at the number of crotch-thrusts Jackson squeezed into the choreographed dance numbers (amongst other woes), “Captain EO,” the tale of a singing, dancing space fighter (Jackson) and his band of puppet-y confederates, opened on Sept. 12, 1986 at EPCOT Center (then in desperate need of a starry attraction) and Sept. 18, 1986 at Disneyland. It had two new songs by the King of Pop that you could only hear in the movie (one of the songs would be reworked for “Bad”). An hour-long television special dedicated to its opening and featuring a laundry list of celebrities, including such 80s staples as Judge Reinhold (“I want to know how to dance leaving that theater”) and, um, OJ Simpson (with Nicole on his arm), aired nationally. Disneyland stayed open for 60 hours and ran the 3D film continuously just to meet demand. Disneyland was not only popular again; it was also hip .

Star Tours

Before Star Tours officially opened, Eades was joined by a clean-shaven Lucas, Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom (who told me that he came up with the famous Star Tours “chime”), and many of the Imagineers who had worked on the project, for a soft opening. Eades had a good feeling about it but an attraction like Star Tours was the first of its kind. Nobody knew how guests were going to react. “The first group came off and I heard this guy say, ‘Can you imagine how many miles of track Disneyland had to build under the park for this ride?’” Eades remembered. The guest thought that he was actually moving through space. Eades and the rest of the team knew they had a hit.

A few months after “Captain EO,” on Jan. 9, 1987, Star Tours would open at Disneyland. Lucas and Eisner were on hand, with Mickey and Minnie in their iconic silver space suits (with the rainbow on the chest), joined by C-3PO. Instead of a pair of oversized scissors, they used a lightsaber to cut the ceremonial ribbon. Just like “Captain EO,” they left the park open for 60 hours straight to meet demand. It was a smash out of the gate. But the success of Star Tours ultimately derailed an aspect of the attraction Eades had designed for the project: that every three years, the ride film would change. (That’s right, he said at some point you were actually supposed to get to Endor.)

In the early 1980s, Disneyland management and Imagineering had noticed an uptick in guests visiting multiple times a year, so Eades and his team had a refresh built into their proposal so that Star Tours would never get stale. “But because the damn ride was so popular, the parks said, ‘Why do you want to spend money, because you don’t need it,’” Eades said. ”And they were right.” Undoubtedly the decision to go with 70mm film also set the multiple-planets conceit back, as Baxter previously alluded to. It would be much trickier to switch out the ride film or the projection system. And he was right: it would be decades before that idea would be revisited.

Galactic Expansion

With two successful Lucas-led projects, both Disney and the filmmaker were emboldened. This was especially heartening for Eisner, who was about to open a risky new theme park in Florida dedicated to the behind-the-scenes aspects of the entertainment business.

Disney-MGM Studios, as it was then known, was designed to be many things: a working, world class film and television production facility (complete with a satellite animation studio designed with animators in mind), a theme park, and giant middle-finger to Universal Studios, which was planning to open its own multiday resort in Orlando. (Eisner, while still at Paramount, was supposedly in the meeting where Universal executives revealed the Florida project and by 1985, just a year after he assumed power at Disney, Eisner had begun work on what would eventually be Disney-MGM Studios.) The debut of Disney-MGM Studios would also serve as the opening salvo for an ambitious, 10-year effort to rejuvenate the Disney Parks brand and expand that brand worldwide. Eisner would later publicly refer to this initiative as the Disney Decade.

By the end of 1989, Star Tours would be open at Tokyo Disneyland and Disney-MGM Studios in slightly modified configurations. Instead of the Disneyland version, which took over a pre-existing attraction (Adventure Thru Innerspace) and was converted under the supervision of legendary Imagineer Tom Morris, the Disney World version was a blank slate. This new Star Tours was just around the corner from the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, also based on a Lucas property, which also opened in 1989. A more intricate façade was developed with a full-sized AT-AT walker (that at the time shot water from its moving turrets) and forested Ewok village and a show building that still maintained the “backlot” look of the rest of the park. It’s just an illusion, this new show building said, but what an illusion.

The Japanese version of Star Tours was even more ornate. As Kevin Rafferty recalls in his memoir “Magic Journeys,” he was tasked with Astrozone, a “unique-to-Tokyo Disneyland part of the Star Tours complex.” This new area was to include an “enclosed skyway bridge that connected Star Tours and a new two-level dine-in restaurant,” hosted by an adorable animatronic alien and eventually dubbed the Pan Galactic Pizza Port. In 1992, Star Tours would open, with a full-sized X-Wing, at the Euro Disney theme park (now known as Disneyland Paris). Fun needs no translation.

Star Tours The Adventures Continue

But the biggest change for the attraction would happen in late summer 2010, when both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World versions of Star Tours would shut down completely. Years of rumors persisted that the attraction would be shuttered and reopened, this time themed around the pod-racing sequence from 1999’s prequel film “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.” As it turned out, the plans were much more ambitious.

Instead of a single new theme, the ride would be re-conceived, with the idea that Eades, Baxter and the other Imagineers had concocted during the blue-sky phase of the attraction’s development. You wouldn’t just be going to one planet, you would be going to all of your favorite “Star Wars” planets, including Tatooine (hello pod-race!), the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, underneath the opulent planet of Naboo, and on the snowy planet of Hoth, made famous by the opening battle sequence from “The Empire Strikes Back.” Incredibly, you don’t visit Endor, the Ewok-filled planet that you were attempting to visit in the first iteration of the ride, despite the fact that early marketing materials suggested the forest moon would be part of the new version of the attraction.

This new Star Tours, now dubbed Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, allowed guests, thanks to a cutting-edge randomization feature, to visit many planets in the course of a single trip aboard your new Starspeeder. The new version of the ride featured additional in-theater effects and C-3PO as your new in-cabin pilot, as well, and the digital projection of the ride film could be enjoyed in 3D.

In 2011, Star Tours – The Adventures Continue opened at Disneyland and Walt Disney World (it would reach Tokyo Disneyland in 2013 and Disneyland Paris in 2017). Further randomization was added when planets and characters from the new “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, including Jakku and Kef Bir, were included. And in a full circle moment, there was a sequence now devoted to Crait from “The Last Jedi,” the planet that was inspired by the original version of Star Tours.

On Friday, May 20, 2011, there was an opening celebration at Walt Disney World for the new Star Tours – The Adventures Continue. The park that was once Disney-MGM Studios was now called Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but Star Tours was just as important to the park. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, who had succeeded Eisner, was there to inaugurate the new version of the attraction, as was Lucas. Darth Vader was on stage too, as was the creator of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Dave Filoni, who would go on to shepherd “The Mandalorian.”

“Star Tours is a timeless adventure,” Iger said at the event. “Guests will be immersed in the Star Wars galaxy like never before.” He touted the “over 50” combinations that this new attraction would deliver, plus the fact that the Disneyland version would be open the following month. Lucas called the new attraction “amazing.” “It turned out better than we could ever imagine,” Lucas said. Lucas also cited the original plan to switch out the original ride film every few years. “This time we figured when we did it, we would give you all the reprogramming in one event,” Lucas said. He also referred to “secret cookies,” which were further randomizations (in one version you narrowly miss Jar Jar Binks who is seen swimming underneath Naboo, in another version you hit him dead on). These weren’t turned on until the “Force Awakens” additions in 2015.

After the event in Florida, Lucas and Iger convened to have lunch at the park’s Brown Derby restaurant. According to Iger, this is where he first floated an intriguing idea to Lucas – what if Disney bought Lucasfilm? Lucas listened. A few years later, he agreed. This conversation would lead to, amongst other things, the production of the sequel trilogy and the design and construction of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a 14-acre land that would feature the Millennium Falcon simulator attraction Eades had dreamed up all those years ago, along with Rise of the Resistance, one of the most technologically innovative and immersive attractions in the history of Walt Disney Imagineering. There’s even a “Star Wars”-y cantina, which, just as Eades had imagined it, is a few steps from the Millennium Falcon.

That cantina’s DJ might seem familiar. It’s Rex from Star Tours, once again voiced by Paul Reubens. Wonder if he ever made it to Endor.   

star-wars-jedi-fallen-order

Star Tours - The Adventures Continue: Every Possible Combination You Can Experience On The Disneyland And Disney World Ride

Every place you can currently visit on Star Tours.

C-3PO and R2-D2 in Star Tours

The Opening Sequence

First destination, the message, second destination, optional ending.

When Star Tours first debuted at Disneyland in 1987 it was an immediate hit. The first Star Wars theme park attraction made guests feel like tourists in the galaxy, far, far away, traveling to Endor before things went terribly wrong. Star Tours used a lot of cutting-edge technology at the time, but there was still a lot that George Lucas and Walt Disney Imagineering wanted to do they were never able to accomplish, like sending guests to different locations over time.

In 2011, Star Tours was given a major redesign and reopened as Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. More than 20 years later, technology had advanced to allow the ride to use video rather than film for its simulator experience, which allowed Star Tours to finally achieve a previous dream. Star Tours is now a randomized experience, where every ride can be different.

There are so many different things that can happen on Star Tours now that having the same ride twice is quite unlikely. Its variety is what makes it one of the best rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. If you’ve only been on the ride a couple of times, however, that means there’s a lot you’ve never seen. With the recent additions to Star Tours , that's even more likely, so here’s a rundown of everything that’s possible to see and feel on the ride.

As your speeder gets ready for takeoff you discover that your pilot is nowhere to be found. Instead, C-3PO, who had simply come on board to do some maintenance, is stuck in the pilot seat. From here, there are a few things you might see.

Darth Vader

Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Darth Vader and some Imperial stormtroopers arrive looking for a Rebel spy on board the StarSpeeder. When R2-D2 tries to fly off, Vader uses The Force to hold the ship in place. R2 then tries to blast Vader, forcing him to let go of the ship to deflect the blasts with his lightsaber. The ship escapes and goes to hyperspace.

Kylo Ren looking on in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This option essentially plays out the same way as the Darth Vader sequence, but it’s done with Kylo Ren and First Order stormtroopers instead.

Imperial/First Order Droid

Probe droid on hoth in The Empire Strikes Back

In the third opening option, a droid suctions itself to the viewscreen of the StarSpeeder and stormtroopers are looking for the Rebel spy. In the background, there are also stormtroopers investigating the Millennium Falcon. The Falcon tries to escape at the same time the Star Tours ship does, and riders follow it out of the dock and jump to hyperspace.

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There are a couple of slight variations on this scene. The Falcon can be piloted by either Rey or Han Solo, and the stormtrooper look changes accordingly. In the newest variation, the ship isn’t the Falcon at all, but Ahsoka Tano’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle.

Following the jump to hyperspace, the Star Tours ship arrives at one of several planets, allowing guests to experience variations on sequences from their associated films.

Obi-wan Kenobi walks through Tatooine in Obi-wan Kenobi

Arriving on Tatooine, the Speeder finds itself in the middle of a pod race. One racer explodes near the ship, causing its engines to get thrown and lodged on the Speeder. C-3PO wins the race before dumping the engines and flying off.

An AT-AT walking on Hoth in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Arriving on Hoth, the ship finds itself in the middle of a battle between the Empire and Rebellion. The Star Tours ship flies through the legs of Imperial AT-ATs before getting stuck on the edge of a cliff, teetering and falling before the engines get re-engaged and the ship flies off.

The Battle of Kashyyyk in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Coming out of hyperspace and seeing a planet of green means you’re coming onto the Wookiee planet. The ship gets involved in a speeder bike chase among the stormtroopers and Wookiees. Chewbacca gets thrown from his bike and hits the viewscreen. Then you fly through treetops causing minor havoc before heading back into space.

Rey flying the Millennium Falcon from inside the cockpit in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Jakku can be easily mistaken for Tattooine on approach, but instead of pod racing, you’re following Rey and Finn on board the Millennium Falcon as they try to out run First Order TIE Fighters. You chase after the fighters in pursuit of the Falcon, entering a derelict Star Destroyer. You briefly lose power and hit the ground, watching some scrappers at work before getting back in the air and taking off.

Rey and Kylo Ren lightsaber dueling in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

In a moment reminiscent of the original Star Tours, you fly right past Endor, but then find yourself above the oceans of Kef Bir. Ocean waves send the ship into the remnants of the second Death Star, where you must contend with some angry dianoga before heading to space.

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in Star Tours

Once the StarSpeeder returns to the stars, the ship receives a holographic message. The gist of the message is the same, with a Star Wars character asking Star Tours to transport the Rebel spy to a secret location, and sending the appropriate coordinates. However, the message itself can be conveyed by a number of different characters listed below:

  • Admiral Ackbar
  • Princess Leia
  • Poe Dameron
  • Lando Calrissian
  • Ahsoka Tano
  • Cassian Andor
  • The Mandalorian And Grogu

Once the message has been received and the coordinates are given, you’re off into hyperspace once again to the next location.

Coruscant in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

As seen in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith , you travel to Coruscant, flying through the sky of the city and frequently going the wrong way and having to dodge to avoid traffic. Finally, you come in for a rough landing on a platform, that then lowers the ship into the hanger. One of two minor differences that can be found here,:in one version, the hangar is full of StarSpeeders, and in another, the Millennium Falcon is here.

The Battle of Naboo in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Arriving at Naboo in the middle of a battle, the Star Tours ship flies through the air before diving into the ocean. You go past the Gungan city before being attacked by massive sea creatures. Escaping from the largest one, you find the hanger and have another rough landing. One of two things can happen in the end, with the tip of an N1 Starfighter either breaking when the Star Tours ship hits it or the tip “breaks” the glass of the viewscreen.

Obi-Wan Kenobi's Jedi fighter flying toward Geonosis in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

One option actually doesn’t have Star Tours land on a planet at all. Instead, the ship ends up in the orbit of Geonosis, where Jango Fett attacks the ship in an attempt to kill the spy. Star Tours evades, but is then attacked by TIE Fighters, and the still-under-construction Death Star is discovered. The StarSpeeder enters the unfinished battle station, and then flies out, only to be met by Jango Fett again. Fett drops a Seismic charge but R2 ricochets it back at Fett before jumping to hyperspace and finding the Rebel fleet.

Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi

The finale of Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the location of this possible outcome. With some help from Poe Dameon, you attack the First Order and fly though a cave of crystals that was actually inspired by the original Star Tours .

Army of Star Destroyers in the sky in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ends with an army of resistance fighters from all over the galaxy taking on the Emperor’s army of Star Destroyers. This segment of the ride simply includes the Star Tours ship as part of that ragtag militia.

Purgill flying in the sky in Star Tours

The one major segment not specifically based on a Star Wars movie includes Rosario Dawson reprising her Disney+ role as Ahsoka Tano. The section takes place on Seatos, and we fly among Purgill. It’s quite peaceful at first before Ashoka’s ship flies past and she asks for our assistance. We fly through the star whales and take on the enemy ships, ultimately saving Ahsoka with some Purgill assistance.

The original segments for Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, which were all based on the Prequel movies, each have their own landing sequences, but the segments added since from the Sequel Trilogy and Ahsoka see the ship jumping to hyperspace one final time, leading to one of two endings.

Spaceport THX1138

Darth Vader in Star Tours

One option has the ship returning to the spaceport, where you previously dealt with Vader and/or Kylo Ren with stormtroopers, and nearly colliding with another ship before coming to a stop. The pilot of the Star Tours vessel that got left behind is seen angrily walking toward the ship.

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run exterior

The second option sees the ship fly to the planet Batuu , the location of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. You fly over the Black Spire Outpost before landing just outside the urban area.

As of now, that’s everything that can happen on Star Tours. Of course, several of these segments were added years after the ride opened, so new additions to Star Tours as upcoming Star Wars movies get released are likely to happen.

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.  Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.

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Disney’s Star Wars hotel Galactic Starcruiser was torpedoed by bad app design

I was there, Gandalf

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A woman in a green alien costume poses by a lavish bar, trimmed in gold and neon, in Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser

Earlier in May, filmmaker and critic Jenny Nicholson released the four-hour YouTube documentary The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel . The video has since commanded nearly 6 million views, and spawned dozens of follow-up thinkpieces, ranging from fervent hand-wringing over the diminished nature of the modern theme park experience, to critics arguing against the continued commercial viability of the Star Wars brand itself, to genuine surprise at consumer appetite for long-form video content on YouTube . I personally don’t have a lot to add to the discourse, other than this: Nicholson is right about the app. There was no hope for the hotel with that app.

I was there, Gandalf, during an abbreviated tour of Galactic Starcruiser hosted by Disney Parks in February 2022. As I made clear in my review of the Star Wars hotel , Polygon was invited to the four-hour event on Disney’s dime. In fact, you can see footage from the very same tour that I was on around the two-hour mark in Nicholson’s video.

At no time during that junket were the many influencers or the handful of press present on board the Galactic Starcruiser, known as the Halcyon, given access to the Datapad app. Instead, the junket was verbally annotated by Disney’s tour guides as though we had been using the app all along. Cast members directed us to certain in-fiction events and performances as though we had been welcomed into those spaces by the app. But Nicholson’s investigation, based on her own firsthand account of the full experience as well as anecdotal reports posted on social media by dozens of other guests, paint a damning picture of a piece of software that simply didn’t work as intended.

The Galactic Starcruiser Datapad, itself baked into the larger My Disney Experience app, was supposed to be the conduit that connected guests to the storyline of their choice during their stay at the Star Wars hotel. In practice, however, it’s clear that the app only worked some of the time. As a result, a significant portion of the guests that attended the (at minimum) roughly $5,000 two-day experience were set adrift, left untethered from whatever levers were available to the staff on site to properly involve them in the goings-on aboard the starship. The only solution for some guests was to step outside the fiction, pick up the phone or get in line with a customer service representative at the hotel, and complain the old-fashioned way.

What killed Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser? I don’t think it was the presence of Rey and Kylo Ren or any of the other trappings of the modern-day trilogy. And I don’t think it was the dearth of engaging things to do at the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park either, although that probably didn’t help matters much. What ultimately torpedoed the Star Wars hotel was bad app design, a buggy piece of software that was never quite up to the task.

Sadly, the Star Wars hotel is no more. The Halcyon took guests on a final voyage last year in September . It’s a shame, because some of the performances — especially those involving Rey and her allies in the Resistance — were extraordinary. There’s clearly only so much heavy lifting that a dedicated team of actors can do when the digital director driving the action fails as spectacularly as the Datapad app did here.

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The Acolyte on Disney+ review: the force isn't strong with this Star Wars spin-off

So we’re back in a galaxy far far away (again) with the sixth spin-off show of the Disney + Star Wars era.

The Acolyte, comes with a great cast – from His Dark Materials star Dafne Keen to The Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg , and Lee Jung-jae, who stole the show as the lead in Squid Game. Plus, there’s the iconic Carrie-Anne Moss, who has graduated from the Matrix to using the Force as Jedi Master Indara.

But the record for Star Wars spin off shows has been mixed: for each Mandalorian and Andor , there is a Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka . So where does this one sit? The answer, frustratingly, is probably somewhere in the middle.

The Acolyte plunges viewers back in time when the Galactic Empire was but a twinkle in Emperor Palpatine’s eye: 100 years before its beginnings. The Jedi reign supreme, but because it would be boring to live in a utopia, the Sith are still there, just training in the shadows, waiting for their moment to strike.

Into this powder keg steps Osha (Stenberg), a former Jedi who has turned from the path and now makes a living as a ship’s mechanic. You can tell she’s a goodie because she has the requisite cute droid, in this case named Pip.

Osha just wants a quiet life but trouble comes knocking when she’s arrested for the murder of a prominent Jedi.

Of course, it’s not her, but is in fact her evil twin Mae (also played by Stenberg), from whom she was separated as a child and who has turned to the Dark Side to seek revenge for some mysterious events that happened in their past. And so Osha escapes and sets off to reconnect with Mae and figure out why she’s so dead-set on offing some of the Galaxy’s best and brightest.

This is all with the help of a gang of Jedi misfits and rogues headed up by her previous mentor Sol (Lee) and Jecki (Keen, drowning slightly under all her makeup), his Padawan.

Fortunately, this ramshackle team work well together. The acting is solid – Stenberg is especially good as both the conflicted Osha and malicious Mae – but the same cannot always be said for the plot, which pings around the galaxy for the first few episodes, with little more reason but to cram as much of the Galaxy into viewers’ eyeballs as possible.

And there is a lot of it. In The Acolyte we see the insides of sandy temples, frozen wastelands and the Jedi home planet of Coruscant, all of which looks gorgeous (worldbuilding has always been one of Star Wars’ strongest points) featuring aliens that could have been ripped straight from the 1970s.

But there are plenty of Force-related contrivances which will leave many rolling their eyes, chief among them the visions Mae and Osha have of each other, which conveniently lead them into compromising locations.

It feels very Star Wars, but also a little old... as does the dialogue, which veers towards the grandiose and convoluted. “Attack me with all your strength!” one person cries repeatedly at the start of every battle. Sure.

It does deliver some rollicking adventure, and all the tropes you’d expect in a Star Wars show – from lightsabres to beeping droids – but doesn’t really offer anything new to the universe in the way that Andor did, and ultimately feels a bit forced.

Stenberg, though, is eminently watchable: a twin threat who manages to elevate the series above all the hamminess. If only the lines were better.

The Acolyte is streaming on Disney+

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'Boy Meets World' star Trina McGee reveals she's pregnant at age 54

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Trina McGee is ready to meet her fourth child.

The 54-year-old actress , who played Angela Moore on " Boy Meets World ," revealed Monday on Instagram that she is expecting.

"At the tender age of 54 I have found myself pregnant," she shared. "Please bless us with your prayers for a safe delivery."

McGee added the song "Baby Love" by the Supremes along with the text and wrote in the caption that she will be signing off social media "for a bit."

"Thanks for your prayers and well wishes in advance," the actress wrote.

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McGee has been married to actor Marcello Thedford for 16 years after they met on the movie "Daylight" starring Sylvester Stallone, according to People . The actress was in her late 20s when she joined "Boy Meets World" in Season 5 and is 10 years older than Rider Strong , who played her love interest.

"It was really surreal playing a high schooler, college freshman, and I really would go home to three kids," she said on " Good Morning America " in 2022.

'Boy Meets World' cast reunites: William Daniels poses in photos with Danielle Fishel, other stars

McGee also revealed on TikTok in 2022 that she was secretly pregnant at one point during the series' run, zooming in on her baby bump in a 1998 episode.

"That time I played a teenager but in reality I was 6 months pregnant," she wrote.

According to the Mayo Clinic , there is a higher risk of complications that could lead to a C-section delivery in pregnancies after age 35, and "babies born to older mothers have a higher risk of certain chromosomal conditions, such as Down syndrome." The risk of pregnancy loss also increases with age.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released in 2023 showed that the number of births by women aged 45 and older rose by 12% from 2021 to 2022.

Da Brat, Hilary Swank welcomed children in their 40s

McGee is the latest star to become pregnant later in life. Last year, Da Brat welcomed her first child with wife Jesseca "Judy" Harris-Dupart at the age of 49.

"I can't BELIEVE he came out of me!" she told People . "Feels like a dream. He's PERFECT in every way."

Also in 2023, Hilary Swank was 48 when she gave birth to twins. "It wasn’t easy," she said on Instagram . "But boy (and girl!) was it worth it."

Contributing: Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY

'The Acolyte' Is Disney+'s Most Watched Premiere of 2024

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The Big Picture

  • The Acolyte is the most-watched Disney+ show launch for 2024, with 4.8 million viewers in 24 hours.
  • The series explores a peaceful Jedi era with a dark secret and has been well-received by critics.
  • Disney+ has more exciting projects in store for 2024, including another Star Wars series and a WandaVision spin-off.

The Force is strong with The Acolyte , which has now become the most watched launch of a Disney+ show for 2024. Disney has officially announced that the two-episode series premiere of The Acolyte attracted 4.8 million views within 24 hours, thus beating out other 2024 premieres like X-Men '97 by a good margin. The viewership news is certainly promising news for Disney and Lucasfilm, especially since the reported budget for the Star Wars prequel series is reportedly the most expensive Star Wars series ever made at $22.5 million per episode .

As Star Wars continues to explore new ways of adding a fresh coat of paint to the established sci-fi formula, The Acolyte is really hitting the streaming platform at a perfect time. For the first time ever in live-action, The Acolyte explores an era of Star Wars that takes place long before the prequel trilogy, instead focusing on the era of peace and prosperity that the Jedi enjoyed after allegedly eradicating the Sith. However, the seemingly peaceful society is harboring a sinister secret, as a dark side acolyte named Mae ( Amandla Stenberg ) and her mysterious master are targeting prominent Jedi throughout the galaxy. The perplexing murder mystery has been overall well-received by critics, despite the series also becoming an unfortunate target of review bombing .

What Else Can We Expect from Disney+ in 2024?

The Acolyte 's successful premiere leads a somewhat quiet month for the Disney+ platform, but that doesn't mean the streamer doesn't have some other projects in store that could possibly outdo the Star Wars show's current viewership record. As for more Star Wars content alone, another live-action series will hopefully be releasing in 2024, that being Jon Watt 's Skeleton Crew . Set during the New Republic era of Star Wars , set in between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens , Skeleton Crew focuses on a small group of children who become stranded in space and must fight to survive. No specific release date has been given for Skeleton Crew , but the show is still expected to release some time in 2024 (though a delay to 2025 is always possible).

Switching gears to Marvel, the long-awaited WandaVision spin-off Agatha All Along will be enchanting its way onto Disney+. The new series follows Kathryn Hahn 's troublesome witch as she reunites with her old coven, though whether she'll stay a sadistic foe or become a more approachable magic-user remains to be seen. Agatha All Along is currently slated to premiere later this September.

New episodes of The Acolyte premiere at 6:00 P.M. PT every Tuesday .

The Acolyte

The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.

Watch on Disney+

IMAGES

  1. Star Tours The Adventures Continue Complete Experience

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  3. Disney Hints at NEW Star Tours Scenes

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  4. Star Tours®

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  5. PHOTOS: Star Tours Reopens at Disney's Hollywood Studios with New In

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  6. PHOTOS, VIDEO: Star Tours Blasts Back Into Orbit with Physical

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VIDEO

  1. Lucas shows off his Jedi Skills against Darth Vader

  2. Star Wars space movie experience in Florida

  3. 🏰4K Disney World☞ Star Tours

  4. Thank you for Flying Star Tours Buh Bye at Hollywood Studios

  5. Disney's All-Star Movies Tour

  6. Star War Tours

COMMENTS

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    For Walt Disney World dining, please book your reservation online. 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. Guests under 18 years of age must have parent or guardian permission to call. Board Star Tours - The Adventures Continue, a 3D, motion-simulated flight to exotic locales from the 'Star Wars' saga—at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

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    For assistance with your Walt Disney World vacation, including resort/package bookings and tickets, please call (407) 939-5277. For Walt Disney World dining, please book your reservation online. 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. Guests under 18 years of age must have parent or guardian permission to call. Make the jump to hyperspace on Star ...

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  7. Complete Guide to Star Tours

    Two years later, Star Tours opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, then known as Disney's MGM Studios. Set in the Star Wars universe, the motion simulator attraction sent guests on a tour to Endor, where they got caught in an altercation between the New Republic and an Imperial Remnant. The attraction featured Captain "Rex" RX ...

  8. Review of Disney's Star Tours

    The impetus for the re-imagined ride dates back to the late 1990s when Episode 1 of the Star Wars prequel trilogy was being filmed. According to Tom Fitzgerald, executive vice president and senior creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, "George Lucas contacted us and said the pod racing scene in the movie would be perfect for Star Tours."." Anyone who has seen the movie would agree ...

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    Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. Opened: December 1989. Reopened: May 20th, 2011. Ride length: 5 minutes. Information on Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple. Overview/History: NEW! In the spring of 2024, Ahsoka will become part of this attraction! A lot of long-time Hollywood Studios fans were dismayed at the prospect of their beloved Star ...

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  14. Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

    Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. Based on the Star Wars saga, this was Disney's first modern simulator ride. Guests ride in a flight simulator modeled after those used for training pilots and astronauts, experiencing dips, turns, twists, and climbs. The ride film, projected in high-definition 3-D, has more than 50 combinations of opening ...

  15. Star Tours

    Star Tours was a motion simulator attraction at several Disney theme parks, based on the successful Star Wars film series created by George Lucas.Set in the Star Wars universe, the attraction sent guests on an excursion trip to Endor, whilst being caught in an altercation between the New Republic and an Imperial Remnant.The attraction featured Captain "Rex" RX-24 along with series regulars R2 ...

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  20. Smuggler's Run is half the ride Star Tours is. : r/WaltDisneyWorld

    With Star Tours, it's predefined videos, so engineers can sit in the room and fine tune the room's coordination frame-by-frame and the output will be identical for every ride. With Smuggler's Run, the room's coordination is correlated to the dynamic XY coordinates input by the players, and the video has to correlate to that as well.

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    Prepare to board the next flight into fun and fashion with this premium zip hoodie evoking the cast member uniforms of the Star Tours attraction in Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios. Deluxe, pieced color block patterns and faux epaulets highlight the design, with metallic ink logos and icons screened on front and back. Book your trip today!

  22. Disney's Star Wars hotel was DOA thanks to a terrible app

    I was there, Gandalf, during an abbreviated tour of Galactic Starcruiser hosted by Disney Parks in February 2022. As I made clear in my review of the Star Wars hotel , Polygon was invited to the ...

  23. Sheraton Vistana Villages Resort Villas Near Disney World: 2-Bedroom

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  26. The Acolyte on Disney+ review: the force isn't strong with this Star

    The Acolyte, comes with a great cast - from His Dark Materials star Dafne Keen to The Hunger Games' Amandla Stenberg, and Lee Jung-jae, who stole the show as the lead in Squid Game. Plus ...

  27. Trina McGee pregnant: 'Boy Meets World' star expecting at age 54

    Brendan Morrow. USA TODAY. 0:00. 1:29. Trina McGee is ready to meet her fourth child. The 54-year-old actress, who played Angela Moore on " Boy Meets World ," revealed Monday on Instagram that she ...

  28. 'The Acolyte' Is Disney+'s Most Watched Premiere of 2024

    The Acolyte is the most-watched Disney+ show launch for 2024, with 4.8 million viewers in 24 hours.; The series explores a peaceful Jedi era with a dark secret and has been well-received by critics