Star Wars Theme Park Updates: A Glimpse at the Star Tours Jakku Sequence & More.
Disney recently unveiled a few important bits of information about the future presence of Star Wars at their theme parks. Most excitingly, they included a rough cut of a brand-new clip that will be used for the Jakku expansion to the Star Tours attraction.
Once the Jakku scene is implemented into the ride, it will be shown with every instance of Star Tours for the first few months; afterward, its appearance will be randomized. Other things that were revealed with Disney’s press release include the following:
- December 1 is the date that new Star Wars attractions will start opening at Disney World.
- Star Wars Launch Bay will open with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the films, along with the chance to meet Darth Vader and Chewbacca.
- Star Wars Weekends will be indefinitely cancelled, with no promises to return until after Star Wars Land is opened.
- The Star Wars: Path Of The Jedi feature will include clips throughout the saga to help familiarize newcomers with the franchise.
- Jedi Training: Trials Of The Temple will now feature the Seventh Sister in addition to Darth Vader.
The Seventh Sister’s presence at the park strongly suggests that she’ll be seen on Rebels for quite some time – so hopefully, her presence will carry on in subsequent seasons of the show instead of leaving her as a one-season-and-done character like the Grand Inquisitor.
Stay tuned to Star Wars News Net for the latest and greatest information about the rapidly-expanding Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
i haven’t been to disneyland in a long, long time, but all these star wars additions will have have me in the door day one.
Remember to bring lots of money.
The new Star Tours opens Next Monday at Disneyland in Anaheim! Can’t wait!
December 1st? Is that 2015, or 2016?
This year.
– Pomojema
I really wish that they’d put the original ride on Blu-Ray/3D seeing as how they already released the BTTF and Terminator ride on home video.
This is pretty good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9CWq5JmGOs
Good find. Guess it will do until they release it officially someday.
I did Star Tours about 9 or 10 years ago, and it was different than this (and better than this). I remember it had Darth Vader trying to stop your ship from leaving — he was trying to hold it using the Force, and the ship was struggling to get free. What an amazing ride.
These new white Tie Fighters just don’t look right. Solar sails are black in order to generate heat. I know it’s science fantasy, and yes I know there are colored solar cells even on earth now. But it still looks wrong.
I’m with you, but who cares? Star Wars is space fantasy, not science fiction, like you said. For the scientifically inclined, I chalk it up to the Star Wars galaxy being located in a part of the universe to which our laws of physics don’t apply.
Since when and says who? It has been my understanding for several decades that the job of the “solar fins” (never referenced in George Lucas Canon as “solar panels”!) is to dissipate heat from the two nuclear fusion reactors located in the center of the wings (check out the actual drawing in the Cross-Sections books). While the black surface may have provided a practical visual camouflage effect, exposure of the TIE wings towards a sun is somewhat counter-productive to the heat radiating effect. Thus, what we see in TFA (and elsewhere) is an evolution, i.e. less “stealth” but more efficient heat dissipation.
As an animator, this bugs the hell out of me. Especially from Disney. Just reposition a few keyframes and alter the path a bit… and this will look far less sluggish.
Maybe it’s just me but I’ve already gotten to the point where I find this endless repetition of the “new” visuals (crashed Star Destroyers and other vehicles) tiring. There’s plenty of that in the new BATTLEFRONT, too.
Apparently Disney thinks it’s cool to appeal to the morbid desires of audiences and fans to watch so many “beautiful” corpses that fell from the sky.
Can we please go back into outer space like the original Star Tours ride?
I have plans to go to Disneyland at the end of December and am kind of disappointed that Jakku is the ONLY choice for Star Tours. I have never actually done Star Tours 2.0 and was looking forward to riding it a few times and experiencing the randomness.
I’m pretty sure they’ll keep updating the ride when each new film is being released.