Disclaimer; this is my view of the Anaheim version but I was asked to post in both forums.
Its big. As a design the buildings look great. Huge amount of detail. As a land it’s odd. The rise area is almost like it is not part of the land. This isn’t helped by the landscaped berm; it gives the whole area an unfinished feeling. You go from elaborately detailed alleyways to a wasteland with lamp posts.
As I said we found the buildings to be hugely detailed inside and out. We walked around, looked inside and out, walked the market area and yes, it’s a market. No, they didn’t get one dime from us. I felt strangely unaffected by being in Star Wars Land. I had no connection. I was a huge fan as a kid, and still am to a certain degree. Maybe it’s IP fatigue. Maybe it’s because it’s the Disney version and not the “real” version. We were also lucky to be toured by someone from Glendale who worked on the majority of the land and an gained interesting insight into it and it’s details.
The Falcon ride... again, it’a big. Again, I felt disconnected. It’s the Disney version. We wanted to be mentored by Han Solo and have Vader chasing us. Again, detail was everywhere but to what end? We felt the overall experience to be lacklustre. The boarding cards weren’t explained. The plot was confusing (and a Disney plot). I was a pilot and got lucky; other party members were sat further back and complained of the view (or lack of). My biggest gripe aside from plot was the projection system. It’s too dark. On Star Tours anything naturally lit (like a planets surface) is blindingly bright. On this it’s muddling mediocre. It all seemed false, like the projection it is. And I know how it works and how complex the system is, this isn’t just an uninformed comment. Explosions should be blinding and crisp. They just looked like being projected by a worn out projector. Overall I expected more (and Ive said on these boards in the past). The queue was a D. The ride... a D. Just. Which came as a surprise knowing the engineering complexities behind it. We had no desire to ride again, even when the wait time was consistently lower than the parks E tickets.
Overall, it felt like a land trying to please to hard. Not enough to actually do beyond the fluff. Rise will go some way to remedy this (it’s virtually ready; the dates are a corporate decision) but some of the bigger issues run deeper. We ended up visiting the land more to use it as a path from Frontierland to Critter Country more than we did to go in it.
