News The future of Star Tours, Star Wars Launch Bay and Star Wars shows at Disney's Hollywood Studios

[Robbiem]

They should have built Star Tours instead of Iron Man, and Rise of the Resistance instead of the Avengers E-Ticket ride. That, with Hyperspace Mountain and a few tweaks in the land, would have made for a much better and cohesive area than this new Tomorrowland that they mixed with Marvel...

That‘s a great idea. Retheme ant man/buzz to a clone wars shooter and the spinner to x wings around a death star and go all in

 

[SaveDinosaur]

Speaking of Star Tours, does anyone know why Tokyo Disneyland never receives the new stories? It's not like OLC is not willing to invest in updates of their attractions...

 

[Marc Davis Fan]

Also will add in my experience the last few times at either of the parks in the states, it’s not like people are banging down the doors to ride it. Usually a 15 minute wait most if the day. That’s my anecdata at least.

This is interesting, as I've seen the opposite. Every time I go to Disneyland, Star Tours has a fairly long wait for most of the day (usually comparable with Big Thunder), and most notably, riders seem to be having a lot of fun (e.g., they often clap, and when I was there a few weeks ago someone commented at the end "that was a WOW ride!").

As noted, the DHS version has 33% more capacity.

But here's what's really interesting and strange to me... and I was just thinking about this a few days ago... when I ride Star Tours at DHS (rather than at DL or DLP), I'm much less satisfied/impressed - it feels much more "meh." Why would this be? I can think of two reasons: (1) The massive facade overhypes it; even for someone who has done it before, that may unconsciously "frame" my experience. (2) At the same time, the facade is also thematically weak and immersion-breaking: when it was obviously a "movie set," it made sense, but now that they've removed the "movie set" cues, it just looks like the kind of half-finished cheap decoration you'd find at a non-Disney park (and indeed, people in the queue make comments like "they didn't bother to finish the back of that?")... and now the contrast with Galaxy's Edge makes this even more noticeable. Together, I think these two things might be what make DHS's version feel like a weaker overall experience. It seems silly, but much of theme park design is about subtle cues that have a big impact...

 

[MisterPenguin]

Speaking of Star Tours, does anyone know why Tokyo Disneyland never receives the new stories? It's not like OLC is not willing to invest in updates of their attractions...

They're too busy mining goldfish to unlock the higher levels of Star Tours.