Season of the Force at Disneyland

[BrerGnat]

SPOILERS INCLUDED!

Today, I made my way over to Disneyland to check out the new Seasons of the Force offerings in Tomorrowland. Here are my thoughts and observations from this morning.

Crowds: Insane! I arrived at the park 10 minute prior to opening and the hoards of people in line to enter were crazy. I made it to Tomorrowland right around 9:05 and headed straight to Hyperspace Mountain. It was a cluster of people, half waiting standby and half waiting to get a FP. I decided to wait standby with a 60 min posted wait time.

Hyperspace Mountain: my wait ended up being only 30 min, probably because FP return times hadn't yet started. The new version of the ride has quite a few additions. First, the soundtrack was amazing. Classic Star Wars, with the initial ascent being accompanied by the Star Wars Theme. During the second half of the ascent, we jumped to Hyper speed (cool effect) and the soundtrack included the dialogue that happened during the X Wing battle in the original film, with each "Red" pilot checking in. A star destroyer appeared at the top of the lift hill, Admiral Ackbar proclaimed "It's a trap!" And we were off! This was completely amazing, mind blowing, and made me feel completely giddy. And I'm not even a huge SW fan (although my husband is). The best effects were the additions of red and green "lasers" that looked like the gunfire from the X wings and tie fighters. Some cool explosions rounded out the projections. You could see tie fighters and x- wings zooming around but everything moves very fast so you have to pay attention. At the end, everyone in our car cheered. It was fantastic, and Space Mountain will seem really boring when this overlay is gone. Two thumbs way up for this!

Star Wars: Path of the Jedi-- Located in the old Captain E-O theater, this was about a 10 minute compilation of clips from the first six movies, following the evolution of Luke as a Jedi. This was edited nicely and the theater added lighting and motion effects made this really immersive. At the end, an extended trailer for the Force Awakens was played. This was a combination of the two trailers already released. This is worth seeing, but it was kind of intense and I probably wouldn't recommend it for small kids.

Star Tours: The ride now has three new additions, which everyone will get to experience on every ride during Season of the Force. There was a transmission by Finn and one by BB-8. R2-D2 and BB-8 have a fairly long "conversation" which is kinda funny. The new "destination" is the scene with the crashed Star Destroyers from the Force Awakens trailer. It's rather long and pretty cool, since you follow the Millennium Falcon. Nice additions to this ride.

Galactic Grill: Tomorrowland Terrace has been renamed for this event. The entire menu is new for breakfast and dinner. Breakfast items include a tamale and "bantha blue milk bread" French toast. Lunch and dinner have menu items like The First Order burger, Jedi Order chicken sandwich, Cheese-3PO burger, and Wickets Wicked veggie sandwich. Kids menu includes Java Turkey Sand-Wich, Han Burger, and AT-ST chicken walker nuggets. Specialty drinks include The Light Side (with light up Millennium Falcon cube) and the Dark Side (with light up Death Star cube). Both are lemonade drinks. Desserts include Darth by Chocolate, the Pastry Menace, and a BB-8 rice krispy treat. I had the First Order Burger, Dark Side drink and Darth by Chocolate. Everything was excellent. The burger was a blend of beef and chorizo with fried cherry peppers and lime aioli on a black bun. Interesting flavor combinations but very good. The Darth by Chocolate was a cup full of red velvet and chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, ganache, Oreo cookies and a chocolate Darth Vader head. It was good, but rich. Too much for just me to eat. The drink was a basic strawberry lemonade. Good and refreshing.

I did not get into the Launch Bay. The wait was 120 minutes just to get in. Maybe next time. I'd like to see the props and things in there.

The Tomorrowland area music was also replaced with Star Wars music, which was a fun addition. Overall, very well executed offerings, but it makes me VERY scared about how crowded the actual Star Wars land will be when it opens. Crowds today were just nuts, which I expected somewhat although there was more people than I thought for a Monday morning. Methinks a few people called in "sick" at work today.

Definitely worth visiting Disneyland to see this stuff if you can!

[tinkwest]

Thanks so much for the report, Natalie. I have got to get over there soon.

[buzznwoodysmom]

Oh my goodness my husband will have a field day if all this is still going on during our visit. I have decided to not even tell him about any of it at all. He'll be so surprised. My youngest son is/was (not as much now as a few years ago) a Star Wars fan and he is pretty excited about everything as well. Can't wait to (hopefully) experience all this in a few months!

[BrerGnat]

Oh my goodness my husband will have a field day if all this is still going on during our visit. I have decided to not even tell him about any of it at all. He'll be so surprised. My youngest son is/was (not as much now as a few years ago) a Star Wars fan and he is pretty excited about everything as well. Can't wait to (hopefully) experience all this in a few months!

This will absolutely still be happening in early January! How exciting for your husband.

[Patricia]

Friends of mine that live in Anaheim have posted video tours of Launch Bay. It looks like a Star Wars Museum, very cool.

[Jack Skellington]

How long is this scheduled to be running?

[BrerGnat]

How long is this scheduled to be running?

Rumor is until Memorial Day weekend. Launch Bay will remain long term. The rest will revert back to normal (Star Tours, Space Mtn, Tomorrowland Terrace).