[Bohrok Awakener]

Who has been on the fantastic, OT-based Star Wars ride Star Tours, at all of the Disney parks? The ride itself isn't that great, but the atmosphere is. The queue, filled with droids, ships, equipment, Star Wars-themed radio announcements, etc. was great. It's just like a Star Wars movie, right down to "I've got a bad feeling about this" and "Will the owner of the landspeeder marked THX 1338...". The worst part is George Lucas getting a cameo in the form of a man named Egroeg Sacul.

[Despondent]

Have not. But I remember hearing they scrapped the Pee-Wee Herman narration after he got busted in the nineties.

[LiocModnar]

That's surprising. When I at DLR in '03 the pilot still sounded a lot like Paul Rubens. I have to agree with the comments about the queuing area. I especially like the pre-flight video.

[Bohrok Awakener]

Oh yeah, the safety video was funny. Threepio was doing the narrating, and it showed Chewbacca, some Ewoks, and some Mon Calamari getting onto the StarSpeeder alongside some humans. I hope Lucas' proposed prequel edition of Star Tours is just as good as the first!

[diligent_d]

Was it Canon?

[Giff]

Lame ride, yes, but the atmosphere is awesomely good fun

[Bohrok Awakener]

Is it canon? Most of the ideas for it came from George Lucas, and, to cut a long story short, it's just as canon as all of the books... If you accept those as canon, then Star Tours is.

The biggest problem is canonism is that it has a THIRD Death Star in it. The official storyline says it was built by the remnants of the Empire after ROTJ in one final attempt to overthrow the New Republic.

It's not as canon as the movies, but it is as canon as the books. At any rate, it's very, very cool. I can't wait for the new 'flight'... but if it's anything like the prequels, we're doomed. I can only hope that Captain Rex flies the StarSpeeder through Otoh Gunga and ends up running over the complete Gungan population. And we see their blood splattering on the windshield... oh yes, that'd be good...

[diligent_d]

Captain Rex? Wait, that's Mon Mothmas twin brother, right? The guy that built R5-D4 after buying off of Han Solo?

[Bohrok Awakener]

Mon Mothma's twin brother? I've never even known she had a brother. Anyway, the Star Tours Captain Rex is the robot who pilots the StarSpeeder. His real name is RX-27, or something similar...


At the end of the ride, when you arrive at Endor, you meet Rex's girlfriend in the starport (I think her name is something like RZ-29, or Rozanne). Were we seeing the dawn of Lucas' "Let's make crap films" period? Or did that happen before ROTJ?

[Giff]

I'm surprised he didnt just call the pilot "Johnny-5"

[Giff]

Heh, our school went to Disneyland last night from 10:30 PM - 6 AM.

I rode Star Tours 5 times.


I totally forgot about how after you escape the tractor beam of the Star Destroyer, you go throught the Death Star.

I was sitting next to my buddy when I said "Didnt the Rebels destroy this thing?....Twice?"

[Despondent]

That's surprising.  When I at DLR in '03 the pilot still sounded a lot like Paul Rubens.  I have to agree with the comments about the queuing area.  I especially like the pre-flight video.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's right. Maybe they just shut it for the weekend but it made the news. I remember reading about it!

But from friends I'd heard the queuing area was done well.
The Spider man ride at universal has a good one. ST ('89?) probably set the standard.

[Bohrok Awakener]

The story behind Star Tours is that you end up in the middle of a battle between the New Republic and Admiral Daala's Death Star III. Lucas apparently came up with most of the ideas for the ride, so you can accept it as being canon to a certain degree.

The one thing I don't get is how you escape the Star Destroyer's tractor beam. "Ease up on your rear thrusters" says the X-wing pilot. Why didn't the Tantive IV or the Millennium Falcon do that in ANH? Maybe it only works on small ships.

You can watch an excellent Flash version of the movie here. It uses actual music and sound from the ride, but everything else is done in Flash. It's the next best thing to actually going on the ride.