Star Tours
Have
you ever wanted to visit a world you’ve seen in the movies? Maybe you’ve always
dreamed of getting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, or you’ve wanted to board the
bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
I
personally have always wanted to travel to that galaxy far, far away we’ve only
seen on the big screen (plus this is a Star
Wars series, what’d you expect me to say?) While Disney is still a few
years away from truly creating a real-life Star
Wars outpost in their theme parks, today I’d like to talk about the
original real-life Star Wars experience:
Star Tours.
First
opened at Disneyland in California in 1987, Star
Tours was advertised as “The Ultimate Star
Wars Adventure!” on posters around the park. Being released just a few
years after the launch of Return of the
Jedi, people everywhere were looking for the next bit of content from their
favourite movie series. And, having ridden it several times myself, the
original Star Tours delivered on
their expectations.
Star Tours was a simulator ride, meaning
you sat in a small theatre that moved and jerked around in accordance to what
was happening on the screen. The ride put you in the role of a passenger on
Star Tours, the canonical airline in the Star
Wars galaxy. Here you’re going to travel to the moon of Endor for a
relaxing getaway with the Ewoks. Upon entering the queue the first thing you’ll
see is C-3PO and R2-D2 watching from beyond the queue fences, making banter
about the flight company and their new jobs there. Meanwhile up above, a crew
of Mon Calamari monitor their progress and ensure they don’t get too off-task.
There’s also a large ship sitting right in the middle, known as the Starspeeder 3000. This is the craft
you’ll be riding in just a moment.
Going
further down the queue, you encounter other small droids that work on repairs
and make snide remarks about the ships and pilots Star Tours employs. After a
brief but memorable safety video, it’s time to board the Starspeeder and meet your new pilot: Captain Rex.
Uh,
no, not him. The other Captain Rex.
Yeah,
that’s the one.
Rex,
or RX-24, is new to this whole “flying” thing, but with the help of R2, he’s
sure he can get everyone to Endor safely. Things almost immediately begin to go
wrong, as he takes the wrong turn off the landing pad and flies through a
maintenance tunnel. Once he makes his way out of there, the jump to lightspeed
is made…and we fly right past Endor.
From
there we encounter all sorts of trouble, including comets, Star Destroyers, and
even a third Death Star. (A favourite little bit of trivia of mine is that,
since the original Star Tours was
considered canon in the old Expanded Universe, they had to retcon in the Empire
somehow building a third Death Star after Return
of the Jedi. Most authors ignored this entirely, but it did officially
happen at some point in the old universe.) The ride ends with us performing the
iconic trench run, blowing up the station and returning to home base before
anything else can go wrong.
Like
most rides it’s much rather seen than heard about, so I’d recommend giving the
whole experience a watch right here:
Star Tours was a delightful little
corner of the galaxy that everyone seemed to love. So what happened to it?
Well, it’s still there…sort of. The old film was retired in 2010, and the ride
was revamped into Star Tours: The
Adventures Continue in 2011, which is a better ride in all respects. Now,
instead of one linear story, Star Tours plays
out like a randomized choose your own adventure book, with multiple different
planets you can see, including Tatooine, Hoth, Coruscant, and even Jakku. C-3PO
is your unwitting pilot this time around instead of Rex, and his bickering with
R2 adds a lot of extra humour to the ride.
As
for Rex himself, he’s still very much a part of the Star Wars universe. RX model droids have been used as pilots in Star Wars Rebels as a fun nod to the
classic ride. But if you’re looking for the original character, you need to
look no further than the Star Tours queue.
After you leave the room with R2 and 3PO, look to your left. He’s pretty hard
to miss if you’re looking for him. It looks like poor old Rex has finally been
marked as defective after all these years, and every once in a while he’ll
spout some garbled dialogue from the original ride. Give him a nod if you ever
see him.
I’ll
probably do an article going into further detail on Adventures Continue someday, but this trip down memory lane was a
fun one for me. The original Star Tours was
one of my first experiences with Star
Wars outside of the movies, and even though the updated version is a much
improved version of the ride, I’ll always have a soft spot for Rex and the
crazy adventure he took us on.
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