'Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge's Millennium Falcon Ride Flies To Corellia On Randomized Missions
New rumored details about Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge reveals the queue and story for the land's Millenium Falcon attraction, including how many different experiences the ride will allow, and more on the possibility of premium early access entry into the world.
Making Star Wars has learned a bunch of new information about the upcoming Star Wars land coming to Disney theme parks, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and more specifically, the yet-to-be-named Millenium Falcon attraction. It should be noted that all of this information was obtained through sources, and while MSW has proven themselves to be very reliable in the past — until confirmed all of the following should be taken as a rumor. I'll break down the new intel, give you my reaction, and even drop a couple of never-before-reported bits I've heard in here as well:
Early Access to Galaxy's Edge
A commercial was recently filmed for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge featuring BB-8 and Batuu natives, centering around offering "early access" to the land. Although its unclear is early access means some kind of sweepstakes opportunity (like the year they offered a night in the Disney Dream Suite to contest winners) or more likely an extra ticket charge to get access to the land on top of the regular Disneyland and Hollywood Studio tickets. We have reported on this rumor in the past as it has been around for some time, and the thought is that they would be doing this for the first month or more, making the land a premium experience.
This seems like a departure from what we've seen from Disney in recent decades, but remember the park started out selling ticket books for the rides. Also, the House of Mouse has been testing early access events at Disneyland Resort with expensive day-early parties for Mission: Breakout and Incredicoaster. It's possible this will be a very extended version of that. The immersion and interaction between guests and this new land are supposedly on a level never seen before in themed entertainment, and I would think that Disney will have to keep capacity down for it all to work. The real question is, will this premium Star Wars ticket idea be only for a limited time, a more significant period such as until the end of the year. Or could it be permanent?
Hondo Ohnaka Sends You On A Mission To Corellia
The featurette revealed on the Target edition of Solo: A Star Wars Story Blu-ray revealed that Hondo Ohnaka, a Weequay pirate featured in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, would be in charge of the journey for the Millenium Falcon attraction. This new report gives us some new details on how this will be themed. Don't read any further if you're not interested in possibly learning more about the ride queue experience and the story of the attraction.
Hondo is the owner of Hondo Ohnaka's Transport Solutions sending your crew on mission to Corellia. Before you enter the ride, you will see the Falcon outside. As you go in and have some sort of encounter with Hondo you board the Falcon from underground on Batuu. We assume the idea is that the ship lowered underground to let you board that way.
This is interesting because it would allow you to see the Millenium Falcon exterior in full in the docking bay, and then later board the interior underground. We saw in the Blu-ray video that the queue would allow you to enter the Falcon interior and explore it in full, which is very cool. Actually, the images of the Falcon interior in the header and below are actually from that featurette. These are not set photos from the movie; these are actually photos of the Falcon interior queue you'll be able to walk through on the ride. How cool!
I also wonder if Hondo will be giving this mission on a screen or if Disney is ambitiously added a costumed character meeting (or possibly animatronic) Hondo to the beginning of the experience. We saw that they were developing a practical Hondo head in the behind the scenes videos. We know that the ride is being built on a bunch of rotating carousels allowing many different ride pods to be happening at once as the next crew gets their mission from Hondo, allowing for a very functional guest flow.
This Will Take Place Between Last Jedi and Episode 9 (But Not Forever)
Your experience in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge will take place between the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: Episode 9, at least at the time of opening. Not in MSW's report, but I've heard that the land might eventually develop seasons, with experiences, and storylines around the world changing on say a yearly basis. But for now, it's set between the events of those two films.
Anyways, last time we saw Corellia it was in Solo: A Star Wars Story as Han was trying to escape his home planet, which was under the totalitarian control of The Empire. The world is now conquered by The First Order and is being used to build their weapons like AT-ATs, Star Destroyers, and TIE Fighters.
The Millenium Falcon Ride Will Offer One Of Three Randomized Missions
Hondo is sending you and your crew to the dangerous planet of Corellia for our mission, which is actually one of three randomized mission experiences: "As always with Hondo, he leaves out pertinent details about the mission and your crew will have to wing it if they want to survive and complete the mission." Here are the details of the missions from the MSW report:
The Ride Experience Will Be Insane, But Could it Be Too Rough?
As we've reported in the past, guests will be in full control of the Falcon ride experience — this is not a ride film like Star Tours, but more of a video game. You can succeed in your mission and get credits to spend elsewhere in Batuu, or if you destroy your ship in the process, a bounty may be put on your head and continue with you as you enter the Cantina.
Their source says the movement of this new ride "is awesome and it makes Star Tours 2 look like the Peter Pan ride." We've heard from Jim Hill in the past that early tests of the Falcon pods led to some motion sickness, and this new report suggests they are still "tuning the hydraulic system" to make it a comfortable experience for most guests. EPCOT's Mission: Space had some similar problems when it opened, and they neutered the ride so guests could experience it with no issue. I don't expect it will be a huge problem when the ride opens with the land.
Also, that photo above is not a set from the movies, but an image of the Millenium Falcon cockpit from the ride. Are you excited yet? Hondo has added two extra seats to the cockpit for this mission. The two seats in the front are for the pilots, the two in the middle row are for the gunners, and the two seats in the last row are for the engineers. You can see more footage from that featurette, in this video from Fresh Baked Disney (who have been doing an insane highly detailed job covering Galaxy Edge updates on the ground at Disneyland).