Behind the Attraction (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
Star Tours
ANNOUNCER 1: Remain seated, please.
(in Spanish)
Please remain seated.
(lively music)
(elephants trumpeting)
MAN: The love of liberty.
(moans)
(screaming)
NARRATOR: For over 30 years,
Disney Parks guests have embarked
on adventures across the galaxy and back.
First, on Star Tours
As a kid, I 100 percent
bought into the notion
that I had truly stepped aboard
a StarSpeeder.
NARRATOR: and it's continued to evolve
and innovate throughout the years.
As new adventures happened,
it's been updated along the way.
NARRATOR: But the recent addition
of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge?
-(groans)
-Well, that's more than just an update.
If you're wandering through
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge,
a place you've only imagined
in your dreams,
it's better than that.
NARRATOR: And while these
state-of-the-art attractions
may have redefined
modern theme park immersion,
the Disney Parks
have been immersing guests
-in fantasy and adventure
-(shouting)
ever since the very first day
that Disneyland opened.
To all who come
to this happy place, welcome.
NARRATOR: But this story begins
on Disneyland's second day.
Because on that day,
a special young boy attended the park
for the first time of many.
And that boy was George Lucas.
I was there the second day it opened.
NARRATOR: In fact,
there he is right there!
Probably. Maybe. Who's to say?
Now, of course,
being the young ten-year-old perfectionist
that he was,
he wasn't without his criticisms,
especially when it came
to one area of the park.
Tomorrowland, I thought that was
a portion of the park
that had always been a little less than
what it could have been.
NARRATOR: Well, he obviously missed
the Tomorrowland World Clock.
REPORTER 1: Which tells you, incidentally,
at a glance,
the exact time on any spot on the Earth.
NARRATOR: The nerve of that kid!
What did he know anyway?
Well, lightspeed ahead about 30 years
(groans)
NARRATOR: A lot. Yeah, he knows a lot.
Because, after all, along with its sequels
and subsequent mountain of merchandising,
Star Wars really was
REPORTER 2: More than just a movie.
It was a cultural phenomenon
for everyone in that time.
It really changed everything.
NARRATOR: And nowhere more than Hollywood
where the race was on
to create the next sci-fi epic.
But Disney had an ace in the hole,
as it were, with 1979's The Black Hole.
Chock-full of cosmic spectacle,
audiences just weren't
really sucked in by it
-Hello?
-as it were.
And this cinematic slump
wasn't just a problem for Disney Studios,
it also put Imagineers like Tony Baxter
in a bit of a pickle.
When you create a ride based on a movie,
it has to be one
that the audience dearly loves.
NARRATOR: Well, of course.
A movie worthy of a theme park ride
would need to have an exciting story,
iconic characters, and cultural impact.
The Black Hole didn't have that.
-NARRATOR: See?
-Help.
-Little bit of a pickle.
-Mm-hm.
NARRATOR: So, Tony took his grievance
to the top of the flagpole,
straight to Walt's son-in-law
and then Disney CEO Ron Miller.
I had gone to him and said,
"You know, some of the films recently
have not connected with the audience
and they're not the big crowd-pleasers."
NARRATOR: Insulting the boss to his face,
Tony continued.
We got to a point where he realized
we did need to partner with someone,
whether it be Steven Spielberg
or George Lucas.
And Steven being so heavily connected
with our competitor, Universal,
the logical thing was to meet with George.
And he was really open to the idea.
NARRATOR:
Well, of course he was! After all
I've always loved Disneyland.
He says, "I think
what I've been able to do
with the Star Wars series is first rate."
And I think what Disney set up
with Disneyland is first rate.
So a marriage of our two companies
in that regard
seems to be a natural thing.
NARRATOR: Clearly, the feeling was mutual.
And Imagineers like Tom Fitzgerald
couldn't agree more.
We all felt that Star Wars
was a very a Disney film.
Star Wars should be at Disneyland.
NARRATOR: And when it came to exactly
where in the park
they would put Star Wars,
well, that choice was obvious.
I wanted to have an involvement
in Tomorrowland.
I thought that was a portion
of the park that had always been
a little less than
what it could have been.
NARRATOR: Ugh, this again?
Well, the truth is that
while all of the other lands in Disneyland
had remained timeless
throughout the years,
Tomorrowland, by its very nature,
had repeatedly found itself stuck
in time.
Walt's vision of Tomorrowland
was a science factual.
A step into the future with predictions
of constructive things to come.
And, you know,
that gets dated pretty quickly.
REPORTER 2: Here in Disneyland,
the year is 1986. That's way ahead.
NARRATOR: But a Star Wars attraction
could solve all their problems.
(groans)
It'd be science fiction-y, space-y,
whilst, above all else, remaining
-Timeless.
-Great!
Now, how do we do it?
NARRATOR: Well, it would be
the world's first Star Wars attraction,
so, you know, no pressure.
It's a real exciting creative challenge.
NARRATOR: For their first big idea
Well, it's got to be a roller coaster
or some kind of a thrill ride.
NARRATOR: Which isn't exactly
cutting edge. It would need a twist!
Well, we could put a couple
of choice points in the ride.
So, instead of going one way,
you have some choices.
NARRATOR: While definitely innovative,
this idea would create serious issues
with space.
You put three choices
into a roller coaster,
and you suddenly got a building
that's bigger than Anaheim Stadium.
And, by the way, folks,
we already have Space Mountain.
So, we were getting pretty scared about,
you know, how are we gonna deal with this?
And then how do you create
a galaxy far, far away?
A galaxy in any kind of a building?
NARRATOR: Ideas were being struck down.
Until, that is, George visited.
And gave them all a new hope.
Going through the hallways,
George happened to see a storyboard
that was hanging
on one of the walls in the hallway
that showed a series of images
of white water rafts, airplanes,
and he asked what it was.
Turned out that that storyboard
was a result of a trip
that some of our Imagineers
had made to London.
By complete coincidence, Randy Bright,
who worked with the film
end at Imagineering,
had just come back from England.
TONY: And while he was over there,
someone said,
"Hey, you guys are into rides
and all that stuff.
You should go out
and see this industrial company
called Rediffusion."
And he went out there
and he looked at a simulator
that had been used both
for commercial pilots
and military training.
Simulator built like these.
They were interested in getting
into the leisure business,
and so we're looking to see
whether that same technology
could be used for theme park applications.
NARRATOR:
And this all sounded quite good to George.
He said, "I think that might be
an interesting thing for Star Wars."
Pretty soon after that, Tony Baxter and I
were on a plane to London.
NARRATOR: Their mission? To investigate
this "technological terror"
for themselves.
They had this crude mock-up in a warehouse
where they had taken
a few old airline seats,
strapped them to a plywood floor.
I think we all took Dramamine.
We were scared.
NARRATOR: Nevertheless,
the daring and dosed-up Imagineers
dove into the dangerous device.
They had a video projector and a screen,
and they had taken some POV stock footage.
NARRATOR: Cutting-edge stock footage of
A roller coaster.
So, we've abandoned the idea
of doing a roller coaster,
and we're now gonna get in this thing,
and we're gonna watch a roller coaster.
NARRATOR: A roller coaster?
What kind of pilots are they training?
This motion-based simulator
was meant to train pilots
in smooth flights.
(clears throat)
Which was not what we wanted to do.
And, in fact, some of the things
that we asked them
to test for us that day
how fast can it do this,
how fast can it do that
I think broke it.
(clears throat)
With all the flaws and all the problems,
we lived and came out of it,
and we went, "Wow, that was experiences
I've never had before."
We flew back to California very excited
that this was technology
that could be used to put people
into Star Wars.
So, we began working
on how we could flesh that out.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, within Lucasfilm,
people were starting to wonder,
"What's George cooking up with Disney?"
And in hearing about it, it seemed like it
would be a pretty neat thing to do.
But, you know, I didn't even know
what a simulator ride was.
NARRATOR: Oh, but he will,
as would many at ILM.
George's Industrial Light and Magic
were world leaders in visual effects.
They were behind this,
this, and, of course, this.
And much like Walt and his Imagineers,
ILM had a strong creative hierarchy
focused on bringing
George's visions to life.
And in doing so,
everyone knew their roles.
I'm Dennis Muren. On Star Tours,
I was the effects supervisor
slash maybe director,
'cause there wasn't anybody else
around to direct it.
So, you know, that's it.
NARRATOR: No, that's not it.
Dennis also just happens to be
a nine-time Academy
Award-winning visual effects legend!
So, while Dennis figured out
how to split his time between Star Tours
and finding more shelf space,
the Imagineers turned their attention
to figuring out
How does this thing work?
TOM: We were gonna do things
with this machine
that it was never really intended to do.
And what we discovered was
While you're in motion, we're capable
of going 15 feet to the left,
15 feet to the right,
15 feet up, 15 feet down.
And so, it had a precarious feeling in it.
NARRATOR: Or, in other words
-It pretty quickly made you motion sick.
-(groaning)
And that turned out to be
an art and a science
that they had not mastered
that we had to master at Imagineering
so that it is fun and not nauseating.
NARRATOR:
Well, if that didn't make them sick,
the sheer quantity of all
the other problems that they had might.
There were lots of challenges
to making that initial cabin work.
NARRATOR: Oh! Go on.
How are we going to get people
in and out of it?
Because lots of people
are going to want to go on this.
We need capacity. We need 40 people.
We can't have a single door at the back
where everybody has to file out.
We've got to be efficient.
We're gonna have to create doors
and elevators that come down
and are there immediately.
We need to have doors on the left
and doors on the right
because to get that capacity,
we need what we call through-loading.
Okay, that can be done.
NARRATOR:
Phew. Well, that's solved. What else?
It had to be filmed.
'Cause video didn't exist.
NARRATOR: What are you talking about?
Betamax was more than
Mmm, okay. Good point.
We wanna add
a 70-millimeter film projector.
I've got to have a loop cabinet.
NARRATOR: Ah, a loop cabinet.
Well, let's circle back a few years
on that loop cabinet.
TOM: Disneyland had
a Circle-Vision presentation, Circarama,
and there were problems with it.
NARRATOR:
Namely the film in the projector.
They're scratching, they're breaking,
we're losing panels.
NARRATOR: This was a problem
that no one could have projected.
Luckily, a solution had been concocted
by legendary Disney animator, inventor,
and, not to mention, Mickey Mouse
co-creator himself, Ub Iwerks.
A loop cabinet, which is basically
rather than a film being on a spool,
the film is always just moving
through this cabinet
over rollers in a big loop.
The film never touches itself,
so it never scratched.
And it made these presentations
in the park able to run
with less maintenance and better show.
NARRATOR: But the Star Wars attraction
had to be the best show!
And so Ub Iwerks' Circarama loop cabinet
would be looped in to Star Tours!
But one particular obstacle went far, far
beyond simply attraction mechanics.
Now we had to find the story.
So, we came up with different concepts.
One was more like a military training
like you were being trained
to go off into battle.
NARRATOR: Nice. Death from above
by way of deadly dogfight.
-(screams)
-Sounds fun.
Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth.
(yelling)
(screaming)
Many Bothans died.
That didn't mesh up as well
with the Disneyland DNA.
NARRATOR: Back at ILM,
the wizards of movie magic
were taking a shot at the story.
An idea I had for it
is that the audience members
who are coming in and sitting down,
once it gets going, you realize
that you are Luke.
NARRATOR: But that idea got tossed,
leaving Tony and Tom with one last idea
tucked up their sleeve.
A tour company.
NARRATOR:
And the tour company was called
Cosmic Winds.
Uh
Like a tour bus with a comedic approach.
-(bus horn honks)
-(people giggling)
The tour company was just a,
you know, wildcard.
NARRATOR: And George,
well, being the joker that he is
A comical tour of the galaxy
was the perfect choice.
He just thought that was more Disneyland.
NARRATOR: Clearly, the best idea had won.
It doesn't matter, really.
You know, we're just doing
People are just coming to see Star Wars.
NARRATOR: But anyway,
don't stress too much about the story.
This attraction was just a film
set inside a re-programmable
hydraulic machine.
They can change the story
anytime they like.
And George liked that idea best.
I think this will give us a big advantage
in being able to upgrade the ride
after a certain period of time.
NARRATOR: So, for now, it's settled.
So, we have a tour company.
It's gonna be an airport-type experience.
And that tour company
was gonna take you to some of the planets.
And, accidentally, you're gonna
get pulled into a battle sequence.
-(screaming)
-NARRATOR: Wait, this again?
-Accidentally.
-Fine.
So, then where would
this accidental battle take place?
The trench.
I've got to be in that somehow.
-Of course.
-Yahoo!
NARRATOR:
This iconic scene would be perfect for
Really? I mean, we did that before.
What could we do differently?
They didn't wanna do any shot
that they had done in one of the films.
But it was important to do.
TOM: That is the climactic moment
as a guest that,
"Yep, I'm in it, and I'm shooting
that shot that takes out the Death Star."
"Yeah, but you've seen it before."
That's what I thought, you know?
And then so we were at a impasse.
NARRATOR: But there was one who could
bring about balance in the Force.
Dennis just said to me, "You're gonna
have to get George to agree to that."
So, George said, "I, I think, kind of,
Tony has a point there, you know?
I feel that maybe we should have that."
And that shows you what Tony and Tom know
because they deal with the public.
It's entirely different seeing it
on the simulator than in the movie,
and you, like, got to have it there.
DENNIS: You've got to.
NARRATOR:
But soon enough, the tables would turn
because the entire premise
of the simulator
was based around iconic Star Wars visuals.
But Imagineers only knew
how to make attractions.
So they turned to Dennis
to make them a movie.
-No, no, no, no.
-NARRATOR: No?
-No.
-It's not a movie.
NARRATOR:
Well, if it's not a movie, then
-It's a window.
-Oh!
It's essentially one shot
from beginning to end.
The window's got to stay the window
the entire time.
If it's a point of view,
you've got no opportunity
to cut away from what's in front of you.
DENNIS: You always are looking
at what's going on.
So, you've got to travel
from the spaceport at Disneyland
(screaming)
and then back home.
TONY: From Dennis' perspective,
the only way to get from a model
to a matte painting or whatever was
Where to put these invisible cuts?
NARRATOR: But Dennis doesn't have
all those awards for nothing.
So, I had to fall back on what we did
in some of the original Star Wars films,
which was a good old laser flash.
DENNIS: You know, one white frame
on the screen, you can do a transition.
And there's a number of those in the show.
There's a number of things
where something goes real quickly
by the camera
RX-24: Comets!
where everything is lost
and blurs in darkness for a frame or two,
and that's points
of making other transitions.
(yelling)
NARRATOR: So, with at least some ideas
on how to pull it off, ILM got to work.
We had to deliver a,
you know, a 5-minute movie.
-NARRATOR: Wait, don't forget.
-It's a window.
NARRATOR: And with the window
quickly closing in on opening day,
Dennis Muren and ILM
began filming this script,
carefully written
and not to be deviated from, because
You have to film something
to match what the simulator can do.
NARRATOR:
Or, more precisely, what it couldn't do.
We learned we were going to have
to create the content
around the limitations
of what the machine can do
rather than the other way around.
NARRATOR: And the biggest limitation was
also the attraction's greatest strength,
that being those powerful
pneumatic pressure hydraulics.
When you exhaust all the cylinders,
and so you're down at the bottom
and you can't give anyone
a thrill, really,
you have to write a scene into the show
that allows you to recover that energy.
So, "Uh-oh,
we're caught in a tractor beam!"
(imitates Star Wars soundtrack)
TONY: And while that music is playing,
we're pulling you back up
to the full extent
of those 15-foot cylinders,
getting the energy back into the system
so we can go for another thrill.
But it was actually fun to find ways
to take advantage
of all these limitations.
NARRATOR: But, of course,
there's no greater limitation
than an unmanned StarSpeeder.
So, who's flying this thing anyway?
As the story developed,
George wanted to have a physical pilot
with you on the ship,
not something on a monitor,
and we had to figure out
what this character would be.
NARRATOR: Well, wonder no more.
Reporting for duty
Hi there!
was RX-24,
or as his friends call him
Captain Rex from the cockpit.
But unlike the other well-known,
beloved droids
of the Star Wars universe
We really only had about, oh,
I don't know, 12 to 15 seconds, maybe,
for you to fall in love
with this new character
because we had to get onto the ride.
NARRATOR: So, how do you do that?
Well, I have to make this character
be a little goofy.
It was my first flight
and I'm still getting used
to my programming!
That raises the stakes of nervousness
for the audience.
"What do you mean?
He's never flown this before
and we're gonna fly with him?"
NARRATOR: But to really grab
a guest's attention
Gonna do a lot of screaming.
(screaming)
NARRATOR: Wait a minute.
A little goofy, screams a lot
(screaming)
Could it be the voice of
Oh, Pee-wee Herman.
R2, lightspeed to Endor!
Paul Reubens giving us a character
that was akin to Pee-wee Herman.
First day, kind of nervous,
funny, and great screams.
(screams)
NARRATOR: So Pee-wee Herman would make
the voice work on this big adventure.
Ladies and gentlemen,
there may be some turbulence up ahead.
Make sure your seat belts are fastened.
NARRATOR: But
How is that robot going to work
all day long, being thrown around?
And, and what How do
You have to think about it differently
than, say, Mr. Lincoln
in the Lincoln show.
TOM: Can't have too many functions,
can't have this be too heavy.
It's going to be bolted down.
But he has to have kind of
a lightspeed kind of moment.
He's got to face the audience.
He's got to have eyes.
He's got to have expression
in his personality,
so his visor is going to be
really important.
You know, all of those things
are adding to the complexity of this thing
that's being shaken
around all day long, every day.
NARRATOR: He's right. Rex was going
to have a lot of first flights.
And as his very first, first flight
and opening day grew closer,
there was one last thing to get right.
That is the first thing guests experience.
The maintenance hangar, as we call it,
when people first enter the attraction,
they will see their friends R2-D2
and Threepio.
Those things take us back
to a comfort zone
and you're about, now,
to enter that experience.
I think George really put it best
the other day
when he got off it and said
Great.
(chuckles)
For about the 300th time,
it was still great.
NARRATOR:
And George's overwhelming enthusiasm
was a good indication
of what was about to come.
C-3PO:
Today is the grand opening of Star Tours.
NARRATOR: The occasion was kicked off
by an exciting grand opening ceremony.
For the most part, it was all exciting.
Wait, "for the most part"?
We affectionately refer to it
as the Darth Vader Ballet.
The what, now?
The Darth Vader Ballet.
You had Disney-style entertainment
combined with the characters of Star Wars.
You kind of have to see it to believe it.
(grunts)
It's rather interesting.
NARRATOR:
And while the performance was a smash,
there were ribbons to be cut
and stars to be toured
by throngs of eager Disneyland guests
who were lined up all the way
to the front gates
The park stayed open around the clock.
NARRATOR: for three straight days!
Because no one
had ever seen anything like it.
I loved it.
It was just the best. It was so good.
(screaming)
It's a film,
but you're moving to the film.
And it's like you're in space.
Aw, this is so cool!
(screaming)
And of course you got out,
right back in line,
got in again, rode it again.
(screaming)
Sorry, folks!
I'm sure I'll do better next time!
NARRATOR:
Rex never really got the hang of it,
but he certainly racked up
some flying hours
Lightspeed to Endor!
NARRATOR: because Star Tours continued
its nonstop flights out of Anaheim
and just outside of Orlando,
followed by Tokyo
and Paris!
(in French)
I am Rex, your captain.
NARRATOR: Well into the next decade,
its legacy stowed securely
in the baggage compartment
of beloved Disney attractions.
(groans)
NARRATOR: And yet, as the years went by,
a distant whisper remained
hung on the wind.
We can upgrade the ride
after a certain period of time.
That was originally the plan.
But from that opening day
in 1987 and beyond,
Star Tours remained untouched.
Because the film that we had in there
was working just great.
And so, from the park perspective
and the guest perspective is,
why would we change it?
NARRATOR: Well, here's one reason
TOM: George went back into Star Wars
and said, "I'm doing the prequels."
-What?
-And we said, "Aha."
We have an opportunity to go in there now
and change the story.
NARRATOR: Great! Now what story?
We knew nothing about the story.
TOM: But George showed us a podrace.
NARRATOR: You couldn't get
a more perfect scene to update Star Tours.
Jumping into action
We came back to Imagineering
and we boarded out a podrace.
NARRATOR:
the Star Tours update sped towards
Well, wait.
What's going to be in Episode II?
I mean, maybe we should wait and see
what's in Episode II
and then we'll decide what we wanna do.
NARRATOR: And so they did,
before then sitting down
to hash out the
-Well
-Ugh!
We might as well wait for Episode III
-and see what's in Episode III.
-NARRATOR: See what's in Episode III.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You wanna be really certain,
when you make a choice,
that you've made the right choice
that this will be the scene from Star Wars
that guests will be so excited
to step into.
NARRATOR: And this presented
the Imagineers with a challenge.
We had 6 episodes,
and we had the difficult task of saying,
"Well, what one story should we do?"
But we were never going to satisfy
the Star Wars fans
by only going to one place, right?
NARRATOR: Right! How do you pick between
Tatooine, Utapau, Hoth, Yavin 4,
Mygeeto, Mustafar
-Dantooine.
-thank you,
Endor, Naboo, Coruscant, Geonosis,
Bespin, Cato Neimoidia,
Felucia, Dagobah, Alder
Ah! Maybe not Alderaan.
Kamino or Kashyyyk?
We couldn't figure it out.
NARRATOR: Luckily, the team had
one thing going for them.
New technologies.
-NARRATOR: And now
-TOM: Now we're ready for video,
now we can do 3-D,
and now we can do more storytelling
than we were able to do before.
NARRATOR: Without the heft of
A 70-millimeter film projector.
NARRATOR:
and the subsequent loop cabinet,
the galaxy was their playground.
If we're gonna go to video,
why does it have to be one?
And that led to what I call
the slot machine approach
where you had a first act, second act,
and a finale,
and you could make those the same length
so that you could hop from wheel to wheel.
You could get a lot
of different combinations.
NARRATOR: Well, for example
As soon as you start the story,
you're either gonna get confronted
with Darth Vader
saying that you have a Rebel spy on board.
SCOT: Or the Millennium Falcon's
gonna be there,
they're going to get into some trouble,
and they're going to need to escape,
and we're going to need
to escape with them.
Now, because we're rushing,
we're going to go to lightspeed
without having time to set coordinates.
So, you don't know
where you're gonna end up.
So, we come out of lightspeed,
and now we have more options
of where you could end up.
NARRATOR: And so on, and so on,
before safely returning you
to the spaceport.
There's more variables than,
probably, anyone can ever experience,
and that was the goal.
NARRATOR: But the goal was also
to get George's approval.
We got called up to the ranch.
NARRATOR: Skywalker Ranch, that is.
Lucasfilm's base of operations
at the time.
So, a ton of pressure to go up there
and talk about these new ideas.
Even though it had been 20 years
since we had updated, we had a big idea.
NARRATOR:
Well, being known for big ideas himself
He liked the idea,
he added a few comments.
NARRATOR: As we know about Imagineers
We make the impossible possible.
NARRATOR: So, when George had
a relatively simple request
George Lucas wanted us
to have water spray into the cabin.
(screaming)
NARRATOR:
After considering George's request
Uh
NARRATOR: The Imagineers said
No.
That one we cannot do
because water over time will cause rust,
will cause corrosion.
NARRATOR: But don't worry.
George had other ideas too.
George wanted us to have a spy
in the audience.
What if, actually, we could take a picture
of someone in the cabin
and put it up on the screen
and really let a guest see themselves
as a Rebel spy.
NARRATOR:
And if that didn't grab your attention
In 3-D, we have something
we call "flinch moments"
where I do something that makes you
kind of do this.
And Sebulba, who is the bad guy
in the podrace,
throws a wrench at the windshield,
and we were making
that wrench logical size.
TOM: And George kept pushing it
to make it bigger, bigger,
because he felt it was so fast
that we could take license with it
and it would get a bigger reaction
from the audience.
And he was right.
NARRATOR:
And that's not all George was right about.
We started developing
this character named Ace.
TOM: Kind of like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
Very cocky, very confident.
NARRATOR: Good at shirtless
beach volleyball, probably?
Where nothing would go wrong.
NARRATOR: Until, that is,
it was George's turn to say
No!
TOM: George is not buying this.
He wants a pilot that is nervous,
that can be humorous.
NARRATOR: Scrambling for solutions,
the Imagineers frantically
Wait, we have this character already.
C-3PO: Over here! Hey!
C-3PO.
NARRATOR: Arguably the most nervous and
-(nervous moan)
-humorous droid in the galaxy.
How rude.
But the best part
We have this character.
TOM: We know how to make the robot.
We've got all the tooling.
We just had to figure out
how Threepio got accidentally
(yelling)
launched into the adventure.
You leave in such a rush
that you have an all-new surprise pilot
on board,
and that was C-3PO.
I don't think they could've chosen
a better droid for the job.
-NARRATOR: And don't worry, Rex-heads!
-(chuckles)
Imagineers found a way
to keep your old friend along
for the ride
Welcome aboard
in a slightly diminished capacity
in the queue area of Star Tours:
The Adventures Continue
which opened ballet-less
yet still to some exciting fanfare.
And it was quickly obvious
that their slot machine gamble
had paid off.
We had more than 54 different
story combinations that you could ride.
Oh, yeah!
You know, and everyone
has their favorite sequence.
"Oh, I love Hoth."
"Oh, I love Kashyyyk."
NARRATOR: There was plenty to love
about Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.
And lucky for park guests,
a whole new adventure
was just about to begin.
Because in 2012, after nearly 40 years
of running Lucasfilm,
George was ready to call it a day
and put the keys
to the empire in safe hands.
REPORTER 3: Disney expects to release
Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.
NARRATOR: And it didn't end there.
I'm thrilled to announce the next chapter
between Disney Parks and Star Wars.
-(crowd cheering)
-ROBIN: We saw Bob Iger stand up at D23,
say, "I've challenged the team
to be ambitious."
And we were all sitting
in the audience going
-Yes!
-(crowd cheering)
It really got a lot of Imagineers excited.
Whoops and hollers, I could hear them
from across the building.
NARRATOR: And soon enough,
everyone was scrambling to get assigned
to the new Star Wars attraction.
Like, "Hey, you guys
got to let me in on this.
You got to let me in on this."
I, like, fangirled out hardcore.
NARRATOR: After all, by 2012,
Disney Imagineering was flush with talent
that had spent their entire lives
worshipping at the altar of Star Wars.
CHRIS: It was part of your childhood,
so that opportunity to then go off
and work on Star Wars,
for me, it was just like getting
to build my own playset.
NARRATOR:
Yep, a really big playset, because
I knew from the very beginning
that what we were going to do
with Star Wars was going to be big
because we already had a beloved
Star Wars experience in Star Tours.
But we didn't want to just be in a vehicle
or a transport as passive participants,
we wanted to feel like
we were part of the story.
We wanted it to be a place
where we could push deeper immersion.
NARRATOR: But how could you possibly build
an attraction
that would immerse you
deeper than Star Tours?
This was not gonna be,
"We're gonna do a new attraction."
NARRATOR: Then what would you be building?
We're going to build a land.
-NARRATOR: A whole land?
-Yeah.
Technically, two whole lands.
Both at Disneyland
and also at Disney Hollywood Studios.
We built two at the same time.
NARRATOR: Yep. Disney was going all in.
Now, since Star Tours
is already in Tomorrowland,
you know, it only made sense
to put the whole thing there.
Uh-uh.
NARRATOR: "Uh-uh"?
This is not an addition to Tomorrowland.
That's not what Star Wars is about.
NARRATOR: Well, come to think of it,
you can't get much further away
from tomorrow
than a long time ago.
SCOTT: If anything, it's space fantasy.
It has more in common with Frontierland
than it does Tomorrowland.
It really needs to be its own land.
NARRATOR: Well, what kind of land?
Just gotten the property, yes,
there's talk that there's gonna be
a new set of movies,
but nobody knows anything about it.
There was no Episode VII.
There's no script.
NARRATOR: With no choice but to fly blind,
the Imagineers
began intense brainstorming.
You get a group of writers
and designers in the room and engineers.
NARRATOR:
But it wouldn't just be Imagineers
We were working closely
with the team up at Lucasfilm.
NARRATOR: Just as with Star Tours,
the best and brightest of Lucasfilm
would be along for the ride.
And among them was this guy.
I'm Doug Chiang. I'm the Vice President
and Executive Creative Director
for Lucasfilm.
NARRATOR: Doug was the design director
for The Phantom Menace
and heavily involved
in most of the Star Wars films since.
You know, I provided
the Star Wars designs.
They provided the physical world,
and we will work hand in hand as one team.
NARRATOR: And the objective was clear.
How can we make this experience
authentically Star Wars
and yet fulfilling for the guests?
Based on what we know today,
Episodes I through VI.
That's what we had to work with.
We knew that there will always be Jedi,
there will always be Sith Lords,
droids, ships, aliens and creatures,
because we didn't know
all the details just yet.
We had some ideas, just rough ideas
that we could put up on the board
and start talking about like a Tatooine.
NARRATOR: The team then took
their planetary presentation
to the man in charge.
JOHN: At that point,
we presented it to Bob Iger,
and Bob was like,
"Wow, this is really great stuff, guys,
but these new movies are coming out.
That's what you need to be doing."
NARRATOR: New movies that didn't exist.
Yet.
And it's like,
"Well, okay. Is there a script?"
"Well, it's coming."
NARRATOR: Uh, when?
Good question.
NARRATOR: Well, to finally fill them in
on the upcoming movie,
director JJ Abrams picked up the phone.
How are you?
For, like, an hour,
he pitches the whole film off his iPhone,
and he's, like, flipping
through the storyboards
and the crawl on his phone.
So, he got up and left, and I remember
we all looked at each other
and were like
NARRATOR: Spoiled for choice,
the Imagineers now could consider Jakku,
Takodana, Hosnian Prime
Actually, maybe not Hosnian Prime.
Starkiller Base
I just don't know if there's a planet
that we'd go to that resonates
like a Tatooine.
Whatever we build has to be Star Wars
for everyone.
It can't just be Star Wars
for the 45-year-old fan.
NARRATOR: So after ruling out
all existing Star Wars planets,
something was becoming clear.
Guys, I think it's got to be a place
we've never been.
Maybe you haven't seen it before,
but when you get there,
you would know
this in the Star Wars universe.
And it's not restricted to a vision
that, that they've seen somewhere else.
NARRATOR: All right, then,
but what is this new place?
-Batuu.
-NARRATOR: Oh, gesundheit.
No, the planet Batuu.
-NARRATOR: Ah, that is the place.
-Yeah.
NARRATOR:
So, then, what's the story with Batuu?
Batuu is a remote planet.
ROBIN:
It's kind of where smugglers and villains
and people who want to hide out
end up being.
MARGARET: It's a place that has
its own culture and language.
We wanted to make sure
that we were building an actual place,
an actual planet, an actual town
that you were visiting.
NARRATOR: But it's not just the story
that needed to work from all angles.
The guests aren't going to go
to those two walls,
they're going to go around the corner,
behind the door,
into this other room that's here.
And so we want to make sure
that the illusion of Star Wars
is maintained for all that.
And we did that by basically, you know,
designing it out,
but then we fabricated
a large foamcore model
that was highly detailed,
and we went in with a lipstick camera
to see, "Okay, how are the sightlines?
DOUG: How are you experiencing
these different areas?"
We wanted to make sure
when you were in the park
that you didn't see, suddenly,
a power pole or another skyscraper
that was outside the park.
NARRATOR: But what about
the real-world stuff inside the park?
When we designed the walkways
that we actually had tracks
of, you know, various characters,
and R2-D2 and stuff.
We had the opportunity to go up
to the Skywalker Ranch archives,
get the original Kenny Baker
costume droids from the original movie
and take a rubbing of the feet to put
those exact tracks into the ground.
Those details,
not everybody's going to notice them.
NARRATOR: And you'd be forgiven
for rolling right past this next one too.
We had the Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities,
which is one of our stores
that sells all these valuable relics
from around the galaxy.
And, when you first enter,
there was this wall,
and we didn't know what to hang up on it.
MARGARET: And in Revenge of the Sith,
there was this bas relief
and it depicted this great battle
between the Light side and the Dark side.
So, we made a smaller version of that
as if Dok-Ondar had acquired for his den.
NARRATOR: That's a relief.
There are many of those things
that are built throughout the land
for the reason that we want the guests
to self-discover these things
and kind of see all the,
the homework that we did for it.
NARRATOR: With the Imagineers obsessing
over details,
it was clear they had set the bar high.
Now, speaking of bars
Every self-respecting outpost
is going to have a cantina.
ROBIN: I mean, you know,
where else would people go?
NARRATOR:
And like every self-respecting cantina
We don't serve their kind here.
Droids are not really welcome
in the cantina.
NARRATOR: Well, except one
Hi there!
NARRATOR: who appears
to have been brought back online.
ROBIN: Rex is the DJ.
And for those who are fans of Star Tours,
you might remember
that he wasn't a great pilot.
Where are the brakes?
And
he's not a great DJ either.
NARRATOR: But there's more
to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
than just intergalactic beverages.
A lot more! Because
The number one thing that our fans said
that they wanted to do
was have the opportunity to
Bypass the compressor.
NARRATOR: No, it wasn't that.
It was overwhelmingly and resoundingly
Fly the Millennium Falcon.
It's such an unbelievably iconic ship
and, in many ways, certainly,
we think of it as a character.
NARRATOR: Well, whatever this ship
means to you,
the Millennium Falcon is unquestionably
One of the most beautiful designs.
NARRATOR: and the single
most important ship
in the galaxy's welfare.
Yeehaw!
(chuckles)
NARRATOR: And at the heart
of this immersive experience,
a simulator attraction that takes
what was achieved
with Star Tours to the whole next level.
We knew we needed to put you in control.
(whoops, laughs)
You get to be the one that gets
to crew the ship,
to fire the laser blasters,
to be the one to work furiously
to try to keep the bucket
of bolts in working order.
NARRATOR: An idea so exciting,
so ground-breaking
It was a natural fit
for a motion simulator technology.
NARRATOR: it almost seemed
too good to be true.
Wait a minute.
There's only one Millennium Falcon.
There's only one cockpit.
SCOTT: There's, like, six seats
in that cockpit.
Oh, my gosh. The line for this, you know,
it's like, you're going to be able
to only get, like, a hundred people a day.
Um
NARRATOR:
And the more they looked into it
Designing something that
a whole lot of people can ride in an hour?
Very, very hard.
-NARRATOR: the bigger the issues?
-Uh
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen at scale?
NARRATOR:
As the Imagineers' heads were spinning
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen?
NARRATOR: a solution emerged
from a long time ago
in an attraction far, far away.
ANNOUNCER 2: Welcome
to Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress.
NARRATOR: The Carousel of Progress was
A theater in which the audience itself
moves in their seats around the stages.
Such a simple system.
It's just a circular track
that goes click, click, click.
NARRATOR: They'd found a way to create
a unique experience
for every single guest.
And when you cross that threshold
into the cockpit of the Falcon,
you're actually walking
into the Carousel of Progress,
so to speak.
JOHN: But you don't realize
is there's really
5 other pie wedges of theaters
that are watching different scenes
of this same show
at the same time as you load into it.
And doors close, you go on your ride,
and you have your whole experience.
Meanwhile, click, the next pod
comes in, the next people get in.
The magic of it is that when you get off,
there's no one trying to get on.
You truly feel like we're the
only ones getting on it,
and we're the only ones getting off,
it was our ship.
NARRATOR: Your own ship.
You hear that, Chris?
Have the Millennium Falcon now.
It's just full-size.
NARRATOR: And you didn't even have
to put the decals on it.
So they had Imagineered their way
to a workable solution
for high guest turnover.
But for their next issue
This is an experience
that's all about flying in a spaceship.
ASA: You need to be able to see, you know,
fantastical imagery
through that cockpit window, obviously.
NARRATOR:
Obviously, just like Star Tours, but
The fact that we were giving people
the ability to control the ship
meant that this couldn't be a film either.
ASA: It meant that this would have
to be something
that was being created in real time,
being rendered on the fly
based on what people were doing.
NARRATOR: And while that may sound
a lot like a video game
Well, it leverages technology
that is used in the video game industry.
NARRATOR: this attraction
was a game-changer because
The technology that we needed
in order to deliver
Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run
absolutely did not exist in 2015.
-NARRATOR: Definitely a problem.
-Huh.
ASA: The game engines that existed
were not capable of delivering
the pixels we needed
at the frame rate we needed.
So, for many, many years of the project,
when we were in
our mock-up projection dome,
there would be days when we were looking
at imagery that was
one to two frames per second.
It caused us to have to really have trust
that those engineers
would be able to find a way
to fine-tune that engine,
to get the performance
out of it that we needed.
NARRATOR: Luckily,
the software engineering caught up
with the theme park Imagineering.
So, it really wasn't until maybe
the final 6 months of the project
that we were ever able
to actually sit in that cockpit,
fly through the experience
the way that our guests would.
NARRATOR: And what an experience
they were in store for.
CROWD: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
(cheering)
NARRATOR: Because in May of 2019,
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
made its grand opening to the public.
Our biggest fans have dreamt
about being a part of this world
for more than 40 years.
NARRATOR: But Galaxy's Edge
was just getting started.
We, as a company, are still advancing
all of the systems that we use.
NARRATOR: In late 2019,
at Walt Disney World,
and early 2020 at Disneyland,
an attraction so advanced
opened in Galaxy's Edge.
It really needs to be seen to be believed.
Rise of the Resistance is 360 immersion.
There are no hat tricks.
ASYA: You can see everywhere.
There's the Resistance ship,
it's out there.
JOHN: And you actually walk
into this huge 70-foot ship.
Those doors close,
you take off from the planet,
and then you're immediately
getting tractor
beamed into a Star Destroyer.
And when those doors re-open,
you're now
in that Star Destroyer hangar bay.
That's epic.
That's like living the adventure, right?
It's part ride, part role-play.
It's so epic,
I need a ride to get to the ride.
NARRATOR: And once you ride to the ride,
the ride that you'll ride is this ride.
It is an 8-seater troop transport
for the First Order.
ASYA: It has an onboard astromech unit.
It's an R5-J2
for our major fans out there.
Which is important to me
because George Lucas
described Episodes IV through VI
as a period piece told
from the perspective of droids.
(beeping)
Yes, R2. I was just coming to that.
ASYA: And so, the fact that that droid
is your narrator,
just like every Star Wars story,
is what makes it so authentic to me.
NARRATOR: And while Rise of the Resistance
is quite authentic,
right down to the
stormtroopers' betaplast armor,
it's also the culmination of over 60 years
of Disney Parks innovation and technology.
There's so much of our DNA as a company
that we've put into this
and crammed together
into this one amazing experience.
PAUL: These are the building blocks
that the future is based on,
all of the attractions from here on out.
NARRATOR: What the Imagineers achieved
with Galaxy's Edge
and even still to this day
with Star Tours
As the films come out,
it's been updated along the way.
NARRATOR: is truly revolutionary.
However
It is really what Walt, I think, you know,
what he was trying to do in Disneyland
and putting you into the story.
REPORTER 4:
For Disneyland will never be completed.
That is actually very much in the DNA
of going back to Walt Disney himself.
WALT DISNEY: It will be unlike
anything else on this earth.
The concept of immersion into a story
was what Walt set out to do
with Disneyland.
I remember going to Disneyland
and going on the Jungle Cruise,
and that was real.
ROBIN: That was the most, that was
the most immersive three-dimensional thing
that you'd ever done.
NARRATOR:
From Disneyland's very first day,
and its second day
when a young lad visited the park
I was there the second day it opened.
NARRATOR:
and set into motion a relationship
that seemed to be forged in the stars.
YOUNG TONY: This marriage of Disneyland
with Star Wars,
you really can't compare it
to anything else.
I think Walt and George
are probably fairly similar.
DENNIS: They very much know
what the public wants,
which is what they want.
-We created a new
-A new kind of technology.
They're brilliant.
(screaming)
NARRATOR: From the brilliance
of George Lucas and Walt Disney
to those who followed their lead
and brought Star Wars
from the big screen
Stay in attack formation!
NARRATOR: to the simulator screen
Tony and Tom
are two incredibly talented Imagineers.
Star Tours was how we could,
as Imagineers,
bring Star Wars to life back in the '80s.
It made us proud because
It's really, actually,
blown everyone away.
People are still walking through that door
and having goose bumps.
(screaming)
But, wow, when you step
into Galaxy's Edge,
you are truly in the story.
NARRATOR: And for the Imagineers
who walked in Tom and Tony's footsteps,
or droid tracks
We created this together.
NARRATOR: they brought Star Wars
not just off the big screen
(groans)
but into the big, wide world.
DOUG: Star Wars never gets old for me
and it always takes me back
to when I was 15 years old.
I grew up in Michigan in the suburbs,
and I was in the bookstore one day,
and this painting by Ralph McQuarrie
of the X-wing flying down
the Death Star trench
just completely blew me away,
that I realized
that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to learn how to do that.
And that's what the magic
of Batuu is for me,
is that even though I know all
the heartaches that build what we build,
but when I get there,
I can forget all that
and I can experience it
like when I was 15 years old.
CHRIS: I feel like we really did pay off
that childhood dream of getting to step
into this incredible world,
and I have a place in this, in this world.
NARRATOR: A world of villains
Move along, move along.
-rogues
-(mumbles)
and heroes,
but most of all, imagination
(screaming)
and adventure.
If you've ever dreamed
of being an X-wing fighter pilot
or dreamed of being
in the Star Wars films,
now is your chance.
Wow, that was incredible.
Let's get in line again.
Good night, and may the Force be with
(upbeat music)
(in Spanish)
Please remain seated.
(lively music)
(elephants trumpeting)
MAN: The love of liberty.
(moans)
(screaming)
NARRATOR: For over 30 years,
Disney Parks guests have embarked
on adventures across the galaxy and back.
First, on Star Tours
As a kid, I 100 percent
bought into the notion
that I had truly stepped aboard
a StarSpeeder.
NARRATOR: and it's continued to evolve
and innovate throughout the years.
As new adventures happened,
it's been updated along the way.
NARRATOR: But the recent addition
of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge?
-(groans)
-Well, that's more than just an update.
If you're wandering through
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge,
a place you've only imagined
in your dreams,
it's better than that.
NARRATOR: And while these
state-of-the-art attractions
may have redefined
modern theme park immersion,
the Disney Parks
have been immersing guests
-in fantasy and adventure
-(shouting)
ever since the very first day
that Disneyland opened.
To all who come
to this happy place, welcome.
NARRATOR: But this story begins
on Disneyland's second day.
Because on that day,
a special young boy attended the park
for the first time of many.
And that boy was George Lucas.
I was there the second day it opened.
NARRATOR: In fact,
there he is right there!
Probably. Maybe. Who's to say?
Now, of course,
being the young ten-year-old perfectionist
that he was,
he wasn't without his criticisms,
especially when it came
to one area of the park.
Tomorrowland, I thought that was
a portion of the park
that had always been a little less than
what it could have been.
NARRATOR: Well, he obviously missed
the Tomorrowland World Clock.
REPORTER 1: Which tells you, incidentally,
at a glance,
the exact time on any spot on the Earth.
NARRATOR: The nerve of that kid!
What did he know anyway?
Well, lightspeed ahead about 30 years
(groans)
NARRATOR: A lot. Yeah, he knows a lot.
Because, after all, along with its sequels
and subsequent mountain of merchandising,
Star Wars really was
REPORTER 2: More than just a movie.
It was a cultural phenomenon
for everyone in that time.
It really changed everything.
NARRATOR: And nowhere more than Hollywood
where the race was on
to create the next sci-fi epic.
But Disney had an ace in the hole,
as it were, with 1979's The Black Hole.
Chock-full of cosmic spectacle,
audiences just weren't
really sucked in by it
-Hello?
-as it were.
And this cinematic slump
wasn't just a problem for Disney Studios,
it also put Imagineers like Tony Baxter
in a bit of a pickle.
When you create a ride based on a movie,
it has to be one
that the audience dearly loves.
NARRATOR: Well, of course.
A movie worthy of a theme park ride
would need to have an exciting story,
iconic characters, and cultural impact.
The Black Hole didn't have that.
-NARRATOR: See?
-Help.
-Little bit of a pickle.
-Mm-hm.
NARRATOR: So, Tony took his grievance
to the top of the flagpole,
straight to Walt's son-in-law
and then Disney CEO Ron Miller.
I had gone to him and said,
"You know, some of the films recently
have not connected with the audience
and they're not the big crowd-pleasers."
NARRATOR: Insulting the boss to his face,
Tony continued.
We got to a point where he realized
we did need to partner with someone,
whether it be Steven Spielberg
or George Lucas.
And Steven being so heavily connected
with our competitor, Universal,
the logical thing was to meet with George.
And he was really open to the idea.
NARRATOR:
Well, of course he was! After all
I've always loved Disneyland.
He says, "I think
what I've been able to do
with the Star Wars series is first rate."
And I think what Disney set up
with Disneyland is first rate.
So a marriage of our two companies
in that regard
seems to be a natural thing.
NARRATOR: Clearly, the feeling was mutual.
And Imagineers like Tom Fitzgerald
couldn't agree more.
We all felt that Star Wars
was a very a Disney film.
Star Wars should be at Disneyland.
NARRATOR: And when it came to exactly
where in the park
they would put Star Wars,
well, that choice was obvious.
I wanted to have an involvement
in Tomorrowland.
I thought that was a portion
of the park that had always been
a little less than
what it could have been.
NARRATOR: Ugh, this again?
Well, the truth is that
while all of the other lands in Disneyland
had remained timeless
throughout the years,
Tomorrowland, by its very nature,
had repeatedly found itself stuck
in time.
Walt's vision of Tomorrowland
was a science factual.
A step into the future with predictions
of constructive things to come.
And, you know,
that gets dated pretty quickly.
REPORTER 2: Here in Disneyland,
the year is 1986. That's way ahead.
NARRATOR: But a Star Wars attraction
could solve all their problems.
(groans)
It'd be science fiction-y, space-y,
whilst, above all else, remaining
-Timeless.
-Great!
Now, how do we do it?
NARRATOR: Well, it would be
the world's first Star Wars attraction,
so, you know, no pressure.
It's a real exciting creative challenge.
NARRATOR: For their first big idea
Well, it's got to be a roller coaster
or some kind of a thrill ride.
NARRATOR: Which isn't exactly
cutting edge. It would need a twist!
Well, we could put a couple
of choice points in the ride.
So, instead of going one way,
you have some choices.
NARRATOR: While definitely innovative,
this idea would create serious issues
with space.
You put three choices
into a roller coaster,
and you suddenly got a building
that's bigger than Anaheim Stadium.
And, by the way, folks,
we already have Space Mountain.
So, we were getting pretty scared about,
you know, how are we gonna deal with this?
And then how do you create
a galaxy far, far away?
A galaxy in any kind of a building?
NARRATOR: Ideas were being struck down.
Until, that is, George visited.
And gave them all a new hope.
Going through the hallways,
George happened to see a storyboard
that was hanging
on one of the walls in the hallway
that showed a series of images
of white water rafts, airplanes,
and he asked what it was.
Turned out that that storyboard
was a result of a trip
that some of our Imagineers
had made to London.
By complete coincidence, Randy Bright,
who worked with the film
end at Imagineering,
had just come back from England.
TONY: And while he was over there,
someone said,
"Hey, you guys are into rides
and all that stuff.
You should go out
and see this industrial company
called Rediffusion."
And he went out there
and he looked at a simulator
that had been used both
for commercial pilots
and military training.
Simulator built like these.
They were interested in getting
into the leisure business,
and so we're looking to see
whether that same technology
could be used for theme park applications.
NARRATOR:
And this all sounded quite good to George.
He said, "I think that might be
an interesting thing for Star Wars."
Pretty soon after that, Tony Baxter and I
were on a plane to London.
NARRATOR: Their mission? To investigate
this "technological terror"
for themselves.
They had this crude mock-up in a warehouse
where they had taken
a few old airline seats,
strapped them to a plywood floor.
I think we all took Dramamine.
We were scared.
NARRATOR: Nevertheless,
the daring and dosed-up Imagineers
dove into the dangerous device.
They had a video projector and a screen,
and they had taken some POV stock footage.
NARRATOR: Cutting-edge stock footage of
A roller coaster.
So, we've abandoned the idea
of doing a roller coaster,
and we're now gonna get in this thing,
and we're gonna watch a roller coaster.
NARRATOR: A roller coaster?
What kind of pilots are they training?
This motion-based simulator
was meant to train pilots
in smooth flights.
(clears throat)
Which was not what we wanted to do.
And, in fact, some of the things
that we asked them
to test for us that day
how fast can it do this,
how fast can it do that
I think broke it.
(clears throat)
With all the flaws and all the problems,
we lived and came out of it,
and we went, "Wow, that was experiences
I've never had before."
We flew back to California very excited
that this was technology
that could be used to put people
into Star Wars.
So, we began working
on how we could flesh that out.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, within Lucasfilm,
people were starting to wonder,
"What's George cooking up with Disney?"
And in hearing about it, it seemed like it
would be a pretty neat thing to do.
But, you know, I didn't even know
what a simulator ride was.
NARRATOR: Oh, but he will,
as would many at ILM.
George's Industrial Light and Magic
were world leaders in visual effects.
They were behind this,
this, and, of course, this.
And much like Walt and his Imagineers,
ILM had a strong creative hierarchy
focused on bringing
George's visions to life.
And in doing so,
everyone knew their roles.
I'm Dennis Muren. On Star Tours,
I was the effects supervisor
slash maybe director,
'cause there wasn't anybody else
around to direct it.
So, you know, that's it.
NARRATOR: No, that's not it.
Dennis also just happens to be
a nine-time Academy
Award-winning visual effects legend!
So, while Dennis figured out
how to split his time between Star Tours
and finding more shelf space,
the Imagineers turned their attention
to figuring out
How does this thing work?
TOM: We were gonna do things
with this machine
that it was never really intended to do.
And what we discovered was
While you're in motion, we're capable
of going 15 feet to the left,
15 feet to the right,
15 feet up, 15 feet down.
And so, it had a precarious feeling in it.
NARRATOR: Or, in other words
-It pretty quickly made you motion sick.
-(groaning)
And that turned out to be
an art and a science
that they had not mastered
that we had to master at Imagineering
so that it is fun and not nauseating.
NARRATOR:
Well, if that didn't make them sick,
the sheer quantity of all
the other problems that they had might.
There were lots of challenges
to making that initial cabin work.
NARRATOR: Oh! Go on.
How are we going to get people
in and out of it?
Because lots of people
are going to want to go on this.
We need capacity. We need 40 people.
We can't have a single door at the back
where everybody has to file out.
We've got to be efficient.
We're gonna have to create doors
and elevators that come down
and are there immediately.
We need to have doors on the left
and doors on the right
because to get that capacity,
we need what we call through-loading.
Okay, that can be done.
NARRATOR:
Phew. Well, that's solved. What else?
It had to be filmed.
'Cause video didn't exist.
NARRATOR: What are you talking about?
Betamax was more than
Mmm, okay. Good point.
We wanna add
a 70-millimeter film projector.
I've got to have a loop cabinet.
NARRATOR: Ah, a loop cabinet.
Well, let's circle back a few years
on that loop cabinet.
TOM: Disneyland had
a Circle-Vision presentation, Circarama,
and there were problems with it.
NARRATOR:
Namely the film in the projector.
They're scratching, they're breaking,
we're losing panels.
NARRATOR: This was a problem
that no one could have projected.
Luckily, a solution had been concocted
by legendary Disney animator, inventor,
and, not to mention, Mickey Mouse
co-creator himself, Ub Iwerks.
A loop cabinet, which is basically
rather than a film being on a spool,
the film is always just moving
through this cabinet
over rollers in a big loop.
The film never touches itself,
so it never scratched.
And it made these presentations
in the park able to run
with less maintenance and better show.
NARRATOR: But the Star Wars attraction
had to be the best show!
And so Ub Iwerks' Circarama loop cabinet
would be looped in to Star Tours!
But one particular obstacle went far, far
beyond simply attraction mechanics.
Now we had to find the story.
So, we came up with different concepts.
One was more like a military training
like you were being trained
to go off into battle.
NARRATOR: Nice. Death from above
by way of deadly dogfight.
-(screams)
-Sounds fun.
Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth.
(yelling)
(screaming)
Many Bothans died.
That didn't mesh up as well
with the Disneyland DNA.
NARRATOR: Back at ILM,
the wizards of movie magic
were taking a shot at the story.
An idea I had for it
is that the audience members
who are coming in and sitting down,
once it gets going, you realize
that you are Luke.
NARRATOR: But that idea got tossed,
leaving Tony and Tom with one last idea
tucked up their sleeve.
A tour company.
NARRATOR:
And the tour company was called
Cosmic Winds.
Uh
Like a tour bus with a comedic approach.
-(bus horn honks)
-(people giggling)
The tour company was just a,
you know, wildcard.
NARRATOR: And George,
well, being the joker that he is
A comical tour of the galaxy
was the perfect choice.
He just thought that was more Disneyland.
NARRATOR: Clearly, the best idea had won.
It doesn't matter, really.
You know, we're just doing
People are just coming to see Star Wars.
NARRATOR: But anyway,
don't stress too much about the story.
This attraction was just a film
set inside a re-programmable
hydraulic machine.
They can change the story
anytime they like.
And George liked that idea best.
I think this will give us a big advantage
in being able to upgrade the ride
after a certain period of time.
NARRATOR: So, for now, it's settled.
So, we have a tour company.
It's gonna be an airport-type experience.
And that tour company
was gonna take you to some of the planets.
And, accidentally, you're gonna
get pulled into a battle sequence.
-(screaming)
-NARRATOR: Wait, this again?
-Accidentally.
-Fine.
So, then where would
this accidental battle take place?
The trench.
I've got to be in that somehow.
-Of course.
-Yahoo!
NARRATOR:
This iconic scene would be perfect for
Really? I mean, we did that before.
What could we do differently?
They didn't wanna do any shot
that they had done in one of the films.
But it was important to do.
TOM: That is the climactic moment
as a guest that,
"Yep, I'm in it, and I'm shooting
that shot that takes out the Death Star."
"Yeah, but you've seen it before."
That's what I thought, you know?
And then so we were at a impasse.
NARRATOR: But there was one who could
bring about balance in the Force.
Dennis just said to me, "You're gonna
have to get George to agree to that."
So, George said, "I, I think, kind of,
Tony has a point there, you know?
I feel that maybe we should have that."
And that shows you what Tony and Tom know
because they deal with the public.
It's entirely different seeing it
on the simulator than in the movie,
and you, like, got to have it there.
DENNIS: You've got to.
NARRATOR:
But soon enough, the tables would turn
because the entire premise
of the simulator
was based around iconic Star Wars visuals.
But Imagineers only knew
how to make attractions.
So they turned to Dennis
to make them a movie.
-No, no, no, no.
-NARRATOR: No?
-No.
-It's not a movie.
NARRATOR:
Well, if it's not a movie, then
-It's a window.
-Oh!
It's essentially one shot
from beginning to end.
The window's got to stay the window
the entire time.
If it's a point of view,
you've got no opportunity
to cut away from what's in front of you.
DENNIS: You always are looking
at what's going on.
So, you've got to travel
from the spaceport at Disneyland
(screaming)
and then back home.
TONY: From Dennis' perspective,
the only way to get from a model
to a matte painting or whatever was
Where to put these invisible cuts?
NARRATOR: But Dennis doesn't have
all those awards for nothing.
So, I had to fall back on what we did
in some of the original Star Wars films,
which was a good old laser flash.
DENNIS: You know, one white frame
on the screen, you can do a transition.
And there's a number of those in the show.
There's a number of things
where something goes real quickly
by the camera
RX-24: Comets!
where everything is lost
and blurs in darkness for a frame or two,
and that's points
of making other transitions.
(yelling)
NARRATOR: So, with at least some ideas
on how to pull it off, ILM got to work.
We had to deliver a,
you know, a 5-minute movie.
-NARRATOR: Wait, don't forget.
-It's a window.
NARRATOR: And with the window
quickly closing in on opening day,
Dennis Muren and ILM
began filming this script,
carefully written
and not to be deviated from, because
You have to film something
to match what the simulator can do.
NARRATOR:
Or, more precisely, what it couldn't do.
We learned we were going to have
to create the content
around the limitations
of what the machine can do
rather than the other way around.
NARRATOR: And the biggest limitation was
also the attraction's greatest strength,
that being those powerful
pneumatic pressure hydraulics.
When you exhaust all the cylinders,
and so you're down at the bottom
and you can't give anyone
a thrill, really,
you have to write a scene into the show
that allows you to recover that energy.
So, "Uh-oh,
we're caught in a tractor beam!"
(imitates Star Wars soundtrack)
TONY: And while that music is playing,
we're pulling you back up
to the full extent
of those 15-foot cylinders,
getting the energy back into the system
so we can go for another thrill.
But it was actually fun to find ways
to take advantage
of all these limitations.
NARRATOR: But, of course,
there's no greater limitation
than an unmanned StarSpeeder.
So, who's flying this thing anyway?
As the story developed,
George wanted to have a physical pilot
with you on the ship,
not something on a monitor,
and we had to figure out
what this character would be.
NARRATOR: Well, wonder no more.
Reporting for duty
Hi there!
was RX-24,
or as his friends call him
Captain Rex from the cockpit.
But unlike the other well-known,
beloved droids
of the Star Wars universe
We really only had about, oh,
I don't know, 12 to 15 seconds, maybe,
for you to fall in love
with this new character
because we had to get onto the ride.
NARRATOR: So, how do you do that?
Well, I have to make this character
be a little goofy.
It was my first flight
and I'm still getting used
to my programming!
That raises the stakes of nervousness
for the audience.
"What do you mean?
He's never flown this before
and we're gonna fly with him?"
NARRATOR: But to really grab
a guest's attention
Gonna do a lot of screaming.
(screaming)
NARRATOR: Wait a minute.
A little goofy, screams a lot
(screaming)
Could it be the voice of
Oh, Pee-wee Herman.
R2, lightspeed to Endor!
Paul Reubens giving us a character
that was akin to Pee-wee Herman.
First day, kind of nervous,
funny, and great screams.
(screams)
NARRATOR: So Pee-wee Herman would make
the voice work on this big adventure.
Ladies and gentlemen,
there may be some turbulence up ahead.
Make sure your seat belts are fastened.
NARRATOR: But
How is that robot going to work
all day long, being thrown around?
And, and what How do
You have to think about it differently
than, say, Mr. Lincoln
in the Lincoln show.
TOM: Can't have too many functions,
can't have this be too heavy.
It's going to be bolted down.
But he has to have kind of
a lightspeed kind of moment.
He's got to face the audience.
He's got to have eyes.
He's got to have expression
in his personality,
so his visor is going to be
really important.
You know, all of those things
are adding to the complexity of this thing
that's being shaken
around all day long, every day.
NARRATOR: He's right. Rex was going
to have a lot of first flights.
And as his very first, first flight
and opening day grew closer,
there was one last thing to get right.
That is the first thing guests experience.
The maintenance hangar, as we call it,
when people first enter the attraction,
they will see their friends R2-D2
and Threepio.
Those things take us back
to a comfort zone
and you're about, now,
to enter that experience.
I think George really put it best
the other day
when he got off it and said
Great.
(chuckles)
For about the 300th time,
it was still great.
NARRATOR:
And George's overwhelming enthusiasm
was a good indication
of what was about to come.
C-3PO:
Today is the grand opening of Star Tours.
NARRATOR: The occasion was kicked off
by an exciting grand opening ceremony.
For the most part, it was all exciting.
Wait, "for the most part"?
We affectionately refer to it
as the Darth Vader Ballet.
The what, now?
The Darth Vader Ballet.
You had Disney-style entertainment
combined with the characters of Star Wars.
You kind of have to see it to believe it.
(grunts)
It's rather interesting.
NARRATOR:
And while the performance was a smash,
there were ribbons to be cut
and stars to be toured
by throngs of eager Disneyland guests
who were lined up all the way
to the front gates
The park stayed open around the clock.
NARRATOR: for three straight days!
Because no one
had ever seen anything like it.
I loved it.
It was just the best. It was so good.
(screaming)
It's a film,
but you're moving to the film.
And it's like you're in space.
Aw, this is so cool!
(screaming)
And of course you got out,
right back in line,
got in again, rode it again.
(screaming)
Sorry, folks!
I'm sure I'll do better next time!
NARRATOR:
Rex never really got the hang of it,
but he certainly racked up
some flying hours
Lightspeed to Endor!
NARRATOR: because Star Tours continued
its nonstop flights out of Anaheim
and just outside of Orlando,
followed by Tokyo
and Paris!
(in French)
I am Rex, your captain.
NARRATOR: Well into the next decade,
its legacy stowed securely
in the baggage compartment
of beloved Disney attractions.
(groans)
NARRATOR: And yet, as the years went by,
a distant whisper remained
hung on the wind.
We can upgrade the ride
after a certain period of time.
That was originally the plan.
But from that opening day
in 1987 and beyond,
Star Tours remained untouched.
Because the film that we had in there
was working just great.
And so, from the park perspective
and the guest perspective is,
why would we change it?
NARRATOR: Well, here's one reason
TOM: George went back into Star Wars
and said, "I'm doing the prequels."
-What?
-And we said, "Aha."
We have an opportunity to go in there now
and change the story.
NARRATOR: Great! Now what story?
We knew nothing about the story.
TOM: But George showed us a podrace.
NARRATOR: You couldn't get
a more perfect scene to update Star Tours.
Jumping into action
We came back to Imagineering
and we boarded out a podrace.
NARRATOR:
the Star Tours update sped towards
Well, wait.
What's going to be in Episode II?
I mean, maybe we should wait and see
what's in Episode II
and then we'll decide what we wanna do.
NARRATOR: And so they did,
before then sitting down
to hash out the
-Well
-Ugh!
We might as well wait for Episode III
-and see what's in Episode III.
-NARRATOR: See what's in Episode III.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You wanna be really certain,
when you make a choice,
that you've made the right choice
that this will be the scene from Star Wars
that guests will be so excited
to step into.
NARRATOR: And this presented
the Imagineers with a challenge.
We had 6 episodes,
and we had the difficult task of saying,
"Well, what one story should we do?"
But we were never going to satisfy
the Star Wars fans
by only going to one place, right?
NARRATOR: Right! How do you pick between
Tatooine, Utapau, Hoth, Yavin 4,
Mygeeto, Mustafar
-Dantooine.
-thank you,
Endor, Naboo, Coruscant, Geonosis,
Bespin, Cato Neimoidia,
Felucia, Dagobah, Alder
Ah! Maybe not Alderaan.
Kamino or Kashyyyk?
We couldn't figure it out.
NARRATOR: Luckily, the team had
one thing going for them.
New technologies.
-NARRATOR: And now
-TOM: Now we're ready for video,
now we can do 3-D,
and now we can do more storytelling
than we were able to do before.
NARRATOR: Without the heft of
A 70-millimeter film projector.
NARRATOR:
and the subsequent loop cabinet,
the galaxy was their playground.
If we're gonna go to video,
why does it have to be one?
And that led to what I call
the slot machine approach
where you had a first act, second act,
and a finale,
and you could make those the same length
so that you could hop from wheel to wheel.
You could get a lot
of different combinations.
NARRATOR: Well, for example
As soon as you start the story,
you're either gonna get confronted
with Darth Vader
saying that you have a Rebel spy on board.
SCOT: Or the Millennium Falcon's
gonna be there,
they're going to get into some trouble,
and they're going to need to escape,
and we're going to need
to escape with them.
Now, because we're rushing,
we're going to go to lightspeed
without having time to set coordinates.
So, you don't know
where you're gonna end up.
So, we come out of lightspeed,
and now we have more options
of where you could end up.
NARRATOR: And so on, and so on,
before safely returning you
to the spaceport.
There's more variables than,
probably, anyone can ever experience,
and that was the goal.
NARRATOR: But the goal was also
to get George's approval.
We got called up to the ranch.
NARRATOR: Skywalker Ranch, that is.
Lucasfilm's base of operations
at the time.
So, a ton of pressure to go up there
and talk about these new ideas.
Even though it had been 20 years
since we had updated, we had a big idea.
NARRATOR:
Well, being known for big ideas himself
He liked the idea,
he added a few comments.
NARRATOR: As we know about Imagineers
We make the impossible possible.
NARRATOR: So, when George had
a relatively simple request
George Lucas wanted us
to have water spray into the cabin.
(screaming)
NARRATOR:
After considering George's request
Uh
NARRATOR: The Imagineers said
No.
That one we cannot do
because water over time will cause rust,
will cause corrosion.
NARRATOR: But don't worry.
George had other ideas too.
George wanted us to have a spy
in the audience.
What if, actually, we could take a picture
of someone in the cabin
and put it up on the screen
and really let a guest see themselves
as a Rebel spy.
NARRATOR:
And if that didn't grab your attention
In 3-D, we have something
we call "flinch moments"
where I do something that makes you
kind of do this.
And Sebulba, who is the bad guy
in the podrace,
throws a wrench at the windshield,
and we were making
that wrench logical size.
TOM: And George kept pushing it
to make it bigger, bigger,
because he felt it was so fast
that we could take license with it
and it would get a bigger reaction
from the audience.
And he was right.
NARRATOR:
And that's not all George was right about.
We started developing
this character named Ace.
TOM: Kind of like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
Very cocky, very confident.
NARRATOR: Good at shirtless
beach volleyball, probably?
Where nothing would go wrong.
NARRATOR: Until, that is,
it was George's turn to say
No!
TOM: George is not buying this.
He wants a pilot that is nervous,
that can be humorous.
NARRATOR: Scrambling for solutions,
the Imagineers frantically
Wait, we have this character already.
C-3PO: Over here! Hey!
C-3PO.
NARRATOR: Arguably the most nervous and
-(nervous moan)
-humorous droid in the galaxy.
How rude.
But the best part
We have this character.
TOM: We know how to make the robot.
We've got all the tooling.
We just had to figure out
how Threepio got accidentally
(yelling)
launched into the adventure.
You leave in such a rush
that you have an all-new surprise pilot
on board,
and that was C-3PO.
I don't think they could've chosen
a better droid for the job.
-NARRATOR: And don't worry, Rex-heads!
-(chuckles)
Imagineers found a way
to keep your old friend along
for the ride
Welcome aboard
in a slightly diminished capacity
in the queue area of Star Tours:
The Adventures Continue
which opened ballet-less
yet still to some exciting fanfare.
And it was quickly obvious
that their slot machine gamble
had paid off.
We had more than 54 different
story combinations that you could ride.
Oh, yeah!
You know, and everyone
has their favorite sequence.
"Oh, I love Hoth."
"Oh, I love Kashyyyk."
NARRATOR: There was plenty to love
about Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.
And lucky for park guests,
a whole new adventure
was just about to begin.
Because in 2012, after nearly 40 years
of running Lucasfilm,
George was ready to call it a day
and put the keys
to the empire in safe hands.
REPORTER 3: Disney expects to release
Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.
NARRATOR: And it didn't end there.
I'm thrilled to announce the next chapter
between Disney Parks and Star Wars.
-(crowd cheering)
-ROBIN: We saw Bob Iger stand up at D23,
say, "I've challenged the team
to be ambitious."
And we were all sitting
in the audience going
-Yes!
-(crowd cheering)
It really got a lot of Imagineers excited.
Whoops and hollers, I could hear them
from across the building.
NARRATOR: And soon enough,
everyone was scrambling to get assigned
to the new Star Wars attraction.
Like, "Hey, you guys
got to let me in on this.
You got to let me in on this."
I, like, fangirled out hardcore.
NARRATOR: After all, by 2012,
Disney Imagineering was flush with talent
that had spent their entire lives
worshipping at the altar of Star Wars.
CHRIS: It was part of your childhood,
so that opportunity to then go off
and work on Star Wars,
for me, it was just like getting
to build my own playset.
NARRATOR:
Yep, a really big playset, because
I knew from the very beginning
that what we were going to do
with Star Wars was going to be big
because we already had a beloved
Star Wars experience in Star Tours.
But we didn't want to just be in a vehicle
or a transport as passive participants,
we wanted to feel like
we were part of the story.
We wanted it to be a place
where we could push deeper immersion.
NARRATOR: But how could you possibly build
an attraction
that would immerse you
deeper than Star Tours?
This was not gonna be,
"We're gonna do a new attraction."
NARRATOR: Then what would you be building?
We're going to build a land.
-NARRATOR: A whole land?
-Yeah.
Technically, two whole lands.
Both at Disneyland
and also at Disney Hollywood Studios.
We built two at the same time.
NARRATOR: Yep. Disney was going all in.
Now, since Star Tours
is already in Tomorrowland,
you know, it only made sense
to put the whole thing there.
Uh-uh.
NARRATOR: "Uh-uh"?
This is not an addition to Tomorrowland.
That's not what Star Wars is about.
NARRATOR: Well, come to think of it,
you can't get much further away
from tomorrow
than a long time ago.
SCOTT: If anything, it's space fantasy.
It has more in common with Frontierland
than it does Tomorrowland.
It really needs to be its own land.
NARRATOR: Well, what kind of land?
Just gotten the property, yes,
there's talk that there's gonna be
a new set of movies,
but nobody knows anything about it.
There was no Episode VII.
There's no script.
NARRATOR: With no choice but to fly blind,
the Imagineers
began intense brainstorming.
You get a group of writers
and designers in the room and engineers.
NARRATOR:
But it wouldn't just be Imagineers
We were working closely
with the team up at Lucasfilm.
NARRATOR: Just as with Star Tours,
the best and brightest of Lucasfilm
would be along for the ride.
And among them was this guy.
I'm Doug Chiang. I'm the Vice President
and Executive Creative Director
for Lucasfilm.
NARRATOR: Doug was the design director
for The Phantom Menace
and heavily involved
in most of the Star Wars films since.
You know, I provided
the Star Wars designs.
They provided the physical world,
and we will work hand in hand as one team.
NARRATOR: And the objective was clear.
How can we make this experience
authentically Star Wars
and yet fulfilling for the guests?
Based on what we know today,
Episodes I through VI.
That's what we had to work with.
We knew that there will always be Jedi,
there will always be Sith Lords,
droids, ships, aliens and creatures,
because we didn't know
all the details just yet.
We had some ideas, just rough ideas
that we could put up on the board
and start talking about like a Tatooine.
NARRATOR: The team then took
their planetary presentation
to the man in charge.
JOHN: At that point,
we presented it to Bob Iger,
and Bob was like,
"Wow, this is really great stuff, guys,
but these new movies are coming out.
That's what you need to be doing."
NARRATOR: New movies that didn't exist.
Yet.
And it's like,
"Well, okay. Is there a script?"
"Well, it's coming."
NARRATOR: Uh, when?
Good question.
NARRATOR: Well, to finally fill them in
on the upcoming movie,
director JJ Abrams picked up the phone.
How are you?
For, like, an hour,
he pitches the whole film off his iPhone,
and he's, like, flipping
through the storyboards
and the crawl on his phone.
So, he got up and left, and I remember
we all looked at each other
and were like
NARRATOR: Spoiled for choice,
the Imagineers now could consider Jakku,
Takodana, Hosnian Prime
Actually, maybe not Hosnian Prime.
Starkiller Base
I just don't know if there's a planet
that we'd go to that resonates
like a Tatooine.
Whatever we build has to be Star Wars
for everyone.
It can't just be Star Wars
for the 45-year-old fan.
NARRATOR: So after ruling out
all existing Star Wars planets,
something was becoming clear.
Guys, I think it's got to be a place
we've never been.
Maybe you haven't seen it before,
but when you get there,
you would know
this in the Star Wars universe.
And it's not restricted to a vision
that, that they've seen somewhere else.
NARRATOR: All right, then,
but what is this new place?
-Batuu.
-NARRATOR: Oh, gesundheit.
No, the planet Batuu.
-NARRATOR: Ah, that is the place.
-Yeah.
NARRATOR:
So, then, what's the story with Batuu?
Batuu is a remote planet.
ROBIN:
It's kind of where smugglers and villains
and people who want to hide out
end up being.
MARGARET: It's a place that has
its own culture and language.
We wanted to make sure
that we were building an actual place,
an actual planet, an actual town
that you were visiting.
NARRATOR: But it's not just the story
that needed to work from all angles.
The guests aren't going to go
to those two walls,
they're going to go around the corner,
behind the door,
into this other room that's here.
And so we want to make sure
that the illusion of Star Wars
is maintained for all that.
And we did that by basically, you know,
designing it out,
but then we fabricated
a large foamcore model
that was highly detailed,
and we went in with a lipstick camera
to see, "Okay, how are the sightlines?
DOUG: How are you experiencing
these different areas?"
We wanted to make sure
when you were in the park
that you didn't see, suddenly,
a power pole or another skyscraper
that was outside the park.
NARRATOR: But what about
the real-world stuff inside the park?
When we designed the walkways
that we actually had tracks
of, you know, various characters,
and R2-D2 and stuff.
We had the opportunity to go up
to the Skywalker Ranch archives,
get the original Kenny Baker
costume droids from the original movie
and take a rubbing of the feet to put
those exact tracks into the ground.
Those details,
not everybody's going to notice them.
NARRATOR: And you'd be forgiven
for rolling right past this next one too.
We had the Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities,
which is one of our stores
that sells all these valuable relics
from around the galaxy.
And, when you first enter,
there was this wall,
and we didn't know what to hang up on it.
MARGARET: And in Revenge of the Sith,
there was this bas relief
and it depicted this great battle
between the Light side and the Dark side.
So, we made a smaller version of that
as if Dok-Ondar had acquired for his den.
NARRATOR: That's a relief.
There are many of those things
that are built throughout the land
for the reason that we want the guests
to self-discover these things
and kind of see all the,
the homework that we did for it.
NARRATOR: With the Imagineers obsessing
over details,
it was clear they had set the bar high.
Now, speaking of bars
Every self-respecting outpost
is going to have a cantina.
ROBIN: I mean, you know,
where else would people go?
NARRATOR:
And like every self-respecting cantina
We don't serve their kind here.
Droids are not really welcome
in the cantina.
NARRATOR: Well, except one
Hi there!
NARRATOR: who appears
to have been brought back online.
ROBIN: Rex is the DJ.
And for those who are fans of Star Tours,
you might remember
that he wasn't a great pilot.
Where are the brakes?
And
he's not a great DJ either.
NARRATOR: But there's more
to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
than just intergalactic beverages.
A lot more! Because
The number one thing that our fans said
that they wanted to do
was have the opportunity to
Bypass the compressor.
NARRATOR: No, it wasn't that.
It was overwhelmingly and resoundingly
Fly the Millennium Falcon.
It's such an unbelievably iconic ship
and, in many ways, certainly,
we think of it as a character.
NARRATOR: Well, whatever this ship
means to you,
the Millennium Falcon is unquestionably
One of the most beautiful designs.
NARRATOR: and the single
most important ship
in the galaxy's welfare.
Yeehaw!
(chuckles)
NARRATOR: And at the heart
of this immersive experience,
a simulator attraction that takes
what was achieved
with Star Tours to the whole next level.
We knew we needed to put you in control.
(whoops, laughs)
You get to be the one that gets
to crew the ship,
to fire the laser blasters,
to be the one to work furiously
to try to keep the bucket
of bolts in working order.
NARRATOR: An idea so exciting,
so ground-breaking
It was a natural fit
for a motion simulator technology.
NARRATOR: it almost seemed
too good to be true.
Wait a minute.
There's only one Millennium Falcon.
There's only one cockpit.
SCOTT: There's, like, six seats
in that cockpit.
Oh, my gosh. The line for this, you know,
it's like, you're going to be able
to only get, like, a hundred people a day.
Um
NARRATOR:
And the more they looked into it
Designing something that
a whole lot of people can ride in an hour?
Very, very hard.
-NARRATOR: the bigger the issues?
-Uh
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen at scale?
NARRATOR:
As the Imagineers' heads were spinning
How do we make this happen?
How do we make this happen?
NARRATOR: a solution emerged
from a long time ago
in an attraction far, far away.
ANNOUNCER 2: Welcome
to Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress.
NARRATOR: The Carousel of Progress was
A theater in which the audience itself
moves in their seats around the stages.
Such a simple system.
It's just a circular track
that goes click, click, click.
NARRATOR: They'd found a way to create
a unique experience
for every single guest.
And when you cross that threshold
into the cockpit of the Falcon,
you're actually walking
into the Carousel of Progress,
so to speak.
JOHN: But you don't realize
is there's really
5 other pie wedges of theaters
that are watching different scenes
of this same show
at the same time as you load into it.
And doors close, you go on your ride,
and you have your whole experience.
Meanwhile, click, the next pod
comes in, the next people get in.
The magic of it is that when you get off,
there's no one trying to get on.
You truly feel like we're the
only ones getting on it,
and we're the only ones getting off,
it was our ship.
NARRATOR: Your own ship.
You hear that, Chris?
Have the Millennium Falcon now.
It's just full-size.
NARRATOR: And you didn't even have
to put the decals on it.
So they had Imagineered their way
to a workable solution
for high guest turnover.
But for their next issue
This is an experience
that's all about flying in a spaceship.
ASA: You need to be able to see, you know,
fantastical imagery
through that cockpit window, obviously.
NARRATOR:
Obviously, just like Star Tours, but
The fact that we were giving people
the ability to control the ship
meant that this couldn't be a film either.
ASA: It meant that this would have
to be something
that was being created in real time,
being rendered on the fly
based on what people were doing.
NARRATOR: And while that may sound
a lot like a video game
Well, it leverages technology
that is used in the video game industry.
NARRATOR: this attraction
was a game-changer because
The technology that we needed
in order to deliver
Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run
absolutely did not exist in 2015.
-NARRATOR: Definitely a problem.
-Huh.
ASA: The game engines that existed
were not capable of delivering
the pixels we needed
at the frame rate we needed.
So, for many, many years of the project,
when we were in
our mock-up projection dome,
there would be days when we were looking
at imagery that was
one to two frames per second.
It caused us to have to really have trust
that those engineers
would be able to find a way
to fine-tune that engine,
to get the performance
out of it that we needed.
NARRATOR: Luckily,
the software engineering caught up
with the theme park Imagineering.
So, it really wasn't until maybe
the final 6 months of the project
that we were ever able
to actually sit in that cockpit,
fly through the experience
the way that our guests would.
NARRATOR: And what an experience
they were in store for.
CROWD: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
(cheering)
NARRATOR: Because in May of 2019,
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
made its grand opening to the public.
Our biggest fans have dreamt
about being a part of this world
for more than 40 years.
NARRATOR: But Galaxy's Edge
was just getting started.
We, as a company, are still advancing
all of the systems that we use.
NARRATOR: In late 2019,
at Walt Disney World,
and early 2020 at Disneyland,
an attraction so advanced
opened in Galaxy's Edge.
It really needs to be seen to be believed.
Rise of the Resistance is 360 immersion.
There are no hat tricks.
ASYA: You can see everywhere.
There's the Resistance ship,
it's out there.
JOHN: And you actually walk
into this huge 70-foot ship.
Those doors close,
you take off from the planet,
and then you're immediately
getting tractor
beamed into a Star Destroyer.
And when those doors re-open,
you're now
in that Star Destroyer hangar bay.
That's epic.
That's like living the adventure, right?
It's part ride, part role-play.
It's so epic,
I need a ride to get to the ride.
NARRATOR: And once you ride to the ride,
the ride that you'll ride is this ride.
It is an 8-seater troop transport
for the First Order.
ASYA: It has an onboard astromech unit.
It's an R5-J2
for our major fans out there.
Which is important to me
because George Lucas
described Episodes IV through VI
as a period piece told
from the perspective of droids.
(beeping)
Yes, R2. I was just coming to that.
ASYA: And so, the fact that that droid
is your narrator,
just like every Star Wars story,
is what makes it so authentic to me.
NARRATOR: And while Rise of the Resistance
is quite authentic,
right down to the
stormtroopers' betaplast armor,
it's also the culmination of over 60 years
of Disney Parks innovation and technology.
There's so much of our DNA as a company
that we've put into this
and crammed together
into this one amazing experience.
PAUL: These are the building blocks
that the future is based on,
all of the attractions from here on out.
NARRATOR: What the Imagineers achieved
with Galaxy's Edge
and even still to this day
with Star Tours
As the films come out,
it's been updated along the way.
NARRATOR: is truly revolutionary.
However
It is really what Walt, I think, you know,
what he was trying to do in Disneyland
and putting you into the story.
REPORTER 4:
For Disneyland will never be completed.
That is actually very much in the DNA
of going back to Walt Disney himself.
WALT DISNEY: It will be unlike
anything else on this earth.
The concept of immersion into a story
was what Walt set out to do
with Disneyland.
I remember going to Disneyland
and going on the Jungle Cruise,
and that was real.
ROBIN: That was the most, that was
the most immersive three-dimensional thing
that you'd ever done.
NARRATOR:
From Disneyland's very first day,
and its second day
when a young lad visited the park
I was there the second day it opened.
NARRATOR:
and set into motion a relationship
that seemed to be forged in the stars.
YOUNG TONY: This marriage of Disneyland
with Star Wars,
you really can't compare it
to anything else.
I think Walt and George
are probably fairly similar.
DENNIS: They very much know
what the public wants,
which is what they want.
-We created a new
-A new kind of technology.
They're brilliant.
(screaming)
NARRATOR: From the brilliance
of George Lucas and Walt Disney
to those who followed their lead
and brought Star Wars
from the big screen
Stay in attack formation!
NARRATOR: to the simulator screen
Tony and Tom
are two incredibly talented Imagineers.
Star Tours was how we could,
as Imagineers,
bring Star Wars to life back in the '80s.
It made us proud because
It's really, actually,
blown everyone away.
People are still walking through that door
and having goose bumps.
(screaming)
But, wow, when you step
into Galaxy's Edge,
you are truly in the story.
NARRATOR: And for the Imagineers
who walked in Tom and Tony's footsteps,
or droid tracks
We created this together.
NARRATOR: they brought Star Wars
not just off the big screen
(groans)
but into the big, wide world.
DOUG: Star Wars never gets old for me
and it always takes me back
to when I was 15 years old.
I grew up in Michigan in the suburbs,
and I was in the bookstore one day,
and this painting by Ralph McQuarrie
of the X-wing flying down
the Death Star trench
just completely blew me away,
that I realized
that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to learn how to do that.
And that's what the magic
of Batuu is for me,
is that even though I know all
the heartaches that build what we build,
but when I get there,
I can forget all that
and I can experience it
like when I was 15 years old.
CHRIS: I feel like we really did pay off
that childhood dream of getting to step
into this incredible world,
and I have a place in this, in this world.
NARRATOR: A world of villains
Move along, move along.
-rogues
-(mumbles)
and heroes,
but most of all, imagination
(screaming)
and adventure.
If you've ever dreamed
of being an X-wing fighter pilot
or dreamed of being
in the Star Wars films,
now is your chance.
Wow, that was incredible.
Let's get in line again.
Good night, and may the Force be with
(upbeat music)