I think the Falcon ride experience is ultimately disappointing. For all of Disney's talk about how immersive and detailed Galaxy's Edge would be, the setup of the Falcon is so unrealistic that it actively hurts the ride experience.
By "actively hurt" I mean that it's virtually impossible for the Falcon's gunner and engineer roles to do their jobs *and* watch the action at the same time. Their seats are facing forward, toward the (small-ish) screen. But all of their controls are rotated 90 degrees from the screen. As a result, you're constantly looking away from either the screen or your controls, to see what's happening with one or the other.
Similarly, Disney divided the flight controls on the Falcon so that one pilot controls left and right, and the other pilot controls up and down.
It's horrible ergonomics. No flying machine would ever be designed like that. AND WE KNOW THE FALCON DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.
It's so implausible that I gave up trying, because coordinating the actions of six people isn't fun - it's like being in a human random number generator experiment.
Also, the gunner positions aren't anything like what we know the gunners look like from Episode 4. Like the engineer, the gunner sits in a seat whose push-button controls are situated 90 degrees from the screen. It's not the real Falcon, the ergonomics are horrible, and it ultimately feels like anything you try is hopeless and frustrating.
The movie script is so hilariously similar to every Disney simulator ever made, with the same tropes, that it's actively distracting: even during the first ride, part of me was saying "This is Star Tours and Mission: Space." The same plot points, the same tempo, the same kind of dialog.
If you've ever been on a Disney simulator, you've experienced the cliche where the action pauses for a second, but you know the ride isn't over, and then something unexpected happens, right? I called the "here's where something goes wrong" point to Guy on our initial ride, right before the script actually says "...That was unexpected." First-timers shouldn't be able to predict the plot like that - it's a bad sign that I was even trying to, but that's how bad the script is.
It didn't need to be this way. Disney had the talent, time, and money to make the gunner positions more realistic, to make better consoles for the engineers, to figure out a better set of responsibilities for each pilot, and hire someone to write a fresh script (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!)
There's only one Falcon. Everybody loves it. Everyone knows how it's supposed to work. It's a precious thing. Disney wasted it on a C-ticket ride.
I'd give it 3 1/2 stars.
