Chip Chick
A galaxy far, far away is getting brought down to Earth. Since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they’ve been kicking around ways to integrate Star Wars with all other things Disney, with the biggest example being a whole section of their theme parks dedicated to the franchise. Construction at both Disneyland and Disney World is underway now, and Disney is giving everyone a tiny sneak peek at the D23 fan expo this week.
At the fan event in Anaheim, Disney brought along a 50-foot wide model of Star Wars Land, the 14-acre park expansion coming to both of Disney’s United States theme parks. Will there be bumper podracers? I don’t know! But I do know fans will be able to pilot the Millennium Falcon and join a wild light versus dark battle, which will apparently be based on the current trilogy (so, First Order versus Resistance).
Where’s the crushingly expensive food, drink, and entertainment going to be? Where else? They’re building a real-life Mos Eisley Cantina, which better have that rad alien band playing all the time. It actually makes me feel a little bad for anyone who’s going to work there, but hey, we do know from the movies that the Cantina band knows at least one other song.
It’ll be interesting to see how they handle the human main characters in the park, but it does sound like there will be plenty of park employees out in costume as droids and aliens from the entirety of the series. Well, some of them are going to be park employees in costume. I don’t know how you’d do that with BB-8, and maybe I shouldn’t ask.
Despite the presence of Mos Eisley, Disney isn’t patterning Star Wars Land after any Star Wars planet in particular. They’re calling it a never-before-seen planet, but it’s probably going to be more like what would happen if the Death Star blew up a bunch of planets, then hit reverse on that death ray and stitched them all back up into one mega planet.
The park expansions won’t open until 2019 — probably around the time Episode IX will be coming out. That makes us wonder whether or not they’re adding any Episode IX-specific stuff to Star Wars Land — if so, be careful! Those construction sites might be spoiler zones.
Via Cnet
