Throughout Disneyland there is a diversity of experiences, from high-intensity coasters like Space Mountain to family-friendly shows like Bluey’s Best Day Ever, but if you were to point to an area that draws the biggest crowds, it’s hard to top Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge.
Transporting guests to a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away, Galaxy’s Edge is in the midst of a renaissance. After launching in summer 2019, Galaxy’s Edge is evolving 7 years later, expanding its timeline to include the Original Trilogy and revamping its Millennium Falcon ride to feature the Star Wars IP’s most recognizable icons.
Disneyland invited GameRant to check out Kids Rule Summer, with a focus on everything the Southern California park has to offer for the season. While there are plenty of reasons to visit Disneyland Resort year-round, the parks have a little something special for one of their busiest times of the year. But the biggest change is happening on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run.
Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run Adds The Mandalorian and Grogu
Smuggler’s Run has been something of an underappreciated ride at Disneyland, playing second fiddle to the extremely popular Rise of the Resistance. Specific roles within the ride aren’t as attractive as others, and the theming around the ride doesn’t capture the same level of movie-specific magic that the other Star Wars attractions around the park do. Not anymore.
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The Mandalorian and Grogu have taken over Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, and with that, Disney Imagineering has given the ride a much-needed overhaul in the visuals and interactivity department. What’s arguably coolest about the revamp is that the ride now uses Unreal Engine 5, allowing for more realistic visual fidelity within the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit. By no means did the original Smuggler’s Run look “bad,” but if you’re a gamer, you know how dated graphics engines can look after a while. With Unreal Engine 5, the experience looks crisper and the Disney Imagineers were able to set certain sequences in sunlight, a move that shows confidence in the attraction’s visuals.
How Video Games Helped Disneyland Give Smuggler’s Run an Upgrade
I spoke with Asa Kalama, VP of Creative & Interactive Experiences at Disney Imagineering, about the upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 and what that allows Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run to offer visually that it couldn’t before. From more realistic lighting to highly detailed models, the Disney Imagineers have ensured that this is a premium experience befitting an adventure with The Mandalorian and Grogu.
“We’ve always wanted people to believe what they’re seeing through that cockpit canopy window is real life, and there’s no better way to do that by pushing the visual fidelity, both in terms of the quality of the assets, but also the frame rate and the resolution.
And so what this upgrade has allowed us to do is to move to much, much heavier, richer models. We’re working with the Industrial Light and Magic asset library and instead of having to decimate and reduce the level of detail in those models we’re actually able to preserve a lot more. It gives us a bunch of new abilities and capabilities in terms of dynamic lighting and full screen visual effects. Not a lot of these things would not have really been possible with Unreal Engine 4. It’s also brought a bunch of optimizations that have allowed us to boost our frame rate, so it’s an even more smooth experience.”
Although the bones of Smuggler’s Run are still there, this feels like a whole new ride in a lot of ways. The story setup involves The Mandalorian and Grogu tracking a set of pirates with some stolen cargo. You must first pursue them on Tatooine before the trio flews to three separate planets from Star Wars lore: Endor, Coruscant, or Bespin. It’s a smart design choice that allows for some variety in the experience, similar to what you get with Star Tours and its randomly chosen destinations. However, Smuggler’s Run also introduces some rider agency into the mix by allowing one of the Engineers to select the secondary destination.
There are some fun beats throughout the ride, including plenty of humorous Grogu moments. And it feels more like a thrill ride than it did before. Seeing The Mandalorian flying alongside the ship or out in front of the cockpit helps up the wow factor of the ride. For Lucasfilm, who works in partnership with Disney on all of their Star Wars rides, it was an opportunity to show off some planets in new contexts or during an era (post-Empire) that they haven’t seen before. This isn’t the same old Cloud City, Endor, or Coruscant that you’ve seen before.
So what’s different in Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run? The three roles (2 guests per role) are relatively the same, but each has more interactivity than in the prior iteration of the ride.
Pilots
The pilots still navigate the iconic ship through a series of pathways while trying not to do too much damage to Han’s ship. The right pilot goes up and down and activates the jump to lightspeed, while the left pilot moves the ship left to right and activates the boosters.
Gunners
Gunners keep enemy ships at bay by firing blasters and missiles, with both automatic and manually targeting modes. In automatic, you simply hold down the same button, but in manual, you press one of three vertically-oriented buttons to determine what zone of the ship you want to fire from (top, middle, or bottom).
Engineers
Engineers fix the ship by pressing buttons and flipping switches anytime the Millennium Falcon takes damage, and hitting a button to “reel in” the stolen cargo for more points. Crucially, one of the Engineers triggers homing beacons while the other picks that destination I mentioned. The Engineers also get a special “Grogu button” that brings up the adorable little green guy anytime you press it.
The scoring is still a bit loose and unclear when it comes to the gamified element of the ride, but there is no doubt that everyone gets to contribute a lot more than they did in the previous version. Where Engineers felt a little underappreciated compared to the Gunners and certainly compared to Pilots, it’s a smart choice to give them more to do and some impact on the story of the ride. My son loves Engineer – who doesn’t like hitting buttons and flipping switches? – but now he gets so much more to do, even if the Pilots are experts.
If you don’t have a full crew, any of the roles will be set to autopilot.
The Mandalorian and Grogu Smuggler’s Run Review
While I wouldn’t say that Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run is a completely new ride with the Mandalorian and Grogu overlay, it is a better version than what came before. The interactivity for the Gunner and Engineer role is far superior, the theming is stronger by virtue of bringing two very recognizable characters into the mix (sorry Hondo Ohnaka!), and the ability to go to three different planets brings some variety to the mix.
It’s rare that a Disneyland ride (not to mention a whole land) gets an upgrade like this, but it fits in with the mantra that Galaxy’s Edge will be an evolving experience. For Star Wars fans of all ages, there is more diversity available, and now there is a stronger version of an underappreciated ride to serve as a counterpoint to Rise of the Resistance.
