Day 2 (omg finally, Galaxy's Edge!!!!)
We overslept. And by overslept I mean we missed EMH/magic morning at Disneyland. But, when you're exhausted, you sleep. (And then consume half the coffee in the resort, if you're me.) We make it just after opening, and it's surprisingly not that crowded. We weren't surprised Friday wasn't crowded because CA schools are still in session, but since it was a weekend, all bets were off.
I had gone downstairs before breakfast and bought a relatively inexpensive Disneyland sweatshirt. (Sidenote: TWDC should put me in charge of merchandise. Their hoodie selection is paltry and I am the undisputed queen of schlub-wear.) I really wanted a spirit jersey but was I willing to drop $70 on one? Of course not! That's what the sale section at shopdisney is for.
Our trip through Disneyland that morning was largely the same as all other days - fastpass the mountains, ride It's A Small World, make fun of the Matterhorn, etc. We also did some more character hunting, which scored us visits with Sleeping Beauty and later at DCA, Goofy. (Yesterday we met Pluto, Mary Poppins, and the Evil Queen from Snow White. The Evil Queen was hands down the best character interaction we have ever had. Second place was when Goofy tried to steal my grandmother in 1999.) I know you're all chomping at the bit for my take on SW:GE, so I'll just skip the rest of Disneyland (tl;dr: more Dole Whips) and get down to the entertaining part.
We were able to pick up our wristbands for SW:GE starting at 9 AM at Launch Bay. We were required to have wristbands, which had a color and a planet that denoted our reserved time block. We had 11 AM to 4 PM, blue color, Kessel. (
"she made the kessel run in less than twelve parsecs") We queued up and wandered through Launch Bay until we reached the reservation station, which had an assortment of cast members stationed at multiple kiosks. We presented the email I'd received with the QR code that got us our wristbands, and then on our way out of Launch Bay, we had to have them scanned by another cast member (why they couldn't do it at the kiosk, I don't know) to activate them. Otherwise, they wouldn't work.
We lined up outside Critter Country after going to the wrong entrance. (There is a specific GE entrance. They didn't tell us this, nor were there signs posted.) The proper entrance is right by Hungry Bear Restaurant, just FYI. They started soft-entering people at about 15 'til to keep the crowd from choking Critter Country, so we were technically in GE before 11. Kudos to the cast members for running the show so smoothly and flexibly.
We got into SW:GE proper (i.e. everyone could see the outpost) just shy of 11. We were given by the front desk a brochure with a lot of information, most notably the special lingo used by SW:GE cast (i.e. "bright suns" means good day/hello).
The theming is on point. It is incredible. It looks amazing. Visually and aurally, it is wholly immersive and stunning. It is a little sparse on Easter eggs - there are some, and there was a Buzzfeed article I should have read but didn't that pointed out where they are. I wish it had been a tad more detailed, but I'll explain why momentarily.
Everything is ridiculously expensive. That did not stop anyone from walking around with strollers so stuffed with packages that you couldn't see the kid inside anymore.
That being said, lil bro tried on the *coolest* Kylo Ren outfit (complete with cummerbund) and proceeded to do his Emperor Palpatine impersonation. There was a $125 Yavin IV (awards ceremony - poor Chewbacca) Leia dress that I came *this close* to buying because it was soft, authentic, made impeccably well, and would make me look killer. Common sense prevailed at the last minute, however. We also thought of getting food, but YIKES. YIIIIIKES. Theme park food is expensive, but for the portion sizes (basically a hot dog wrapped in pita with some kind of slaw) you were paying $14 and up. No. Just...no. The most we paid for food was at Bengal Barbecue in Adventureland, where lil bro and I split a rice plate with two skewers. That was ~$17. We did not try blue (or green) milk for the same reason. I can't remember the price off the top of my head, but lil bro and I decided that money was better spent on Dole Whips.
You will run out of things to do fairly quickly. We joined the initial crush for Smuggler's Run and ended up waiting around 25 minutes to ride the first time. The Falcon is...well, I cried. I started sobbing, ahahaha. She's lifelike, she's true to the films, and she's every tweenage nerd's dream come true, finally in the flesh. Smuggler's Run is a great ride. It's kind of like Star Tours, but more interactive. I don't want to spoil too much, so if you don't want to know what happens, skip to the second ****SPOILER**** indicator and keep reading.
****SPOILER****
Anyone remember Hondo from Clone Wars? He's back and borrowing the Falcon from Chewie (still not over Han's death, sorry) to steal coaxial cable to help the Resistance. Just can't get caught by the First Order, naturally. There are two parts to the queue: the exterior leading to the pre-flight entertainment and the queue leading to the ride vehicle. The latter took forEVER to get through because that's where the bottlenecking gets bad. You're basically going through different hallways within the Falcon up towards the cockpit, where you're split into teams of two (for a total of six guests per vehicle). One team will act as pilots, the second will act as gunners, and the third will act as engineers. Pilots have the most interactivity, working down to engineers, who basically slap buttons when they light up.
Your goal is ostensibly to collect as much coaxial cable as possible during the run, but in truth, your goal is to avoid as much damage to the Falcon as possible so you collect as much money from your run as you can. (Lil bro and I were *terrible* pilots. It'll take a couple rides to get used to; also I have really terrible depth perception. It's why I'm literally the worst at games like Midway Mania and Buzz Lightyear - my aim is always off.) We rode twice and were engineers and pilots; you can trade with people in the cockpit with you if you want.
The visuals are incredible. Also, I got to take us into hyperspace twice. Twelve-year-old me was having a full-on fangirl meltdown. The ride vehicle is not as sensitive as I would like, though, and at some points it felt like my control of the vehicle was a bit off. Like, autopilot had taken over. I guess it's self-preservation to keep bad pilots from completely destroying the Falcon?? No clue.
Twice was satisfactory for us - we didn't want to hustle through the queue and watch the ride video again and pilot the same mission three times, which I guess is a knock on the ride, so we started walking around Batuu.
****SPOILER****
Batuu is cool, but it's...smaller than I expected. There's a lot of bare space. The stores blend in well, and we visited all of them. The merchandise ranges from fantastic (the costumes - there was a full orange flight suit and I WANTED IT SO BADLY) to the ridiculously lame (overpriced notebooks). We expected a bigger marketplace at the new outpost, and more than just merchandise carts you'll see around the rest of the park at the old outpost.
First Order Stormtroopers, Rey, and Chewbacca were out that day. The Internet says you may see Poe Dameron and an all-new character named Vi at Batuu, but we didn't see them. We met Chewbacca and he gave me a huge Wookie hug after lil bro trash-talked my piloting skills (he insisted he didn't steer us into things, which was a rotten lie), so that made my day. Unlike previous silent iterations of Chewbacca, this one does the FULL WOOKIE RANGE OF NOISES. You can have a conversation with Chewie! That was a nice touch.
The sticking point everyone's wondering is whether the park is worth going to without Rise of the Resistance opening. It's not. I spoke to a cast member who said that RotR is supposed to be the mainstay ride of the park (the E-Ticket, if you will), with Smuggler's Run as a secondary ride. That was kind of distressing to hear, and we did end up leaving at 2:30, a full hour and a half before our time was up. Quite simply, we ran out of things to do. We looked at the merchandise (after literally waiting in line to get into the stores), we tried on costumes and tried out lightsabers, but we kept balking at the prices. We rode the one ride twice and took the requisite photos. We tried to catch Rey but had no luck.
If you're thinking of GE, just wait for a year or two. Seriously. The only suggestion I would make is that if you can't wait and you have the means to come out to DL (not sure how it'll work at WDW), come after June 23 when the virtual queue has begun so there is *some* crowd control and not just the general public collapsing in on SW:GE. We didn't plan this trip for SW:GE, it just happened to coincide. If you find yourself in that situation, definitely go, because it's a cool place and the crowds will be managed. Otherwise, wait a while.
Before I finish for the day, I want to make one quick observation. My family has been going to Disney World since my mom started going in '77. My first trip was '96. My brother's first was in '04. We've been to DL once before, and only for a day. We would appropriately label ourselves WDW fanatics. However, both my brother and I had decided that if we were given the choice of DL or WDW for our next trip, we would hands-down pick DL. I can go into that more tomorrow, but it's something for you fine readers to gnaw on.
Tomorrow -
so, what did you do next?