Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/30/harrison-ford-dedicates-the-st.html
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Ford is a class act, dedicating it to his co-pilot Peter Mayhew.
I’m going to wait at least a year before visiting Disneyland to see this, but I will go.
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I had a chance to experience that ride last weekend. I gotta say, throwing the lever to kick that thing into lightspeed felt pretty awesome.
ETA: BBS regulars may be interested to know that @Otherbrother is one of the engineers who helped build that ride. So if it breaks down unexpectedly this week he might be the one who is called in to whack it with a space-wrench until the hyperdrive comes back online.
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“Unexpectedly?” If the Millennium Falcon didn’t break down on a regular basis it wouldn’t be true to the movies, and this new land is all about authenticity.
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I still say you should have put in a pressure panel in the back bulkhead where people could bring the power back online by giving it a solid whack.
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i watched this live, and i was happy to see SOMEBODY give Peter some recognition. it was so super-happy-disney, which i guess is to be expected, but still.
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The cantina does have a drink called “The Hyperdrive” that gets dispensed from a machine that always breaks down halfway through, and needs to be whacked by the bartender with a hammer to finish. Unfortunately that’s one of the nonalcoholic drinks so I haven’t witnessed anyone order it yet. When folks have to wait so long just to get into the cantina they tend to have certain priorities.
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Didn’t Cory do some consulting work with Disney a while back?
That ‘respect’ system they have having your respect follow you around the park sounds familiar. (IE: You might pick up more missions from a walkaround character or have negative comments from a droid later in the day based on your respect points)
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Wookie Whuffie?
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no sound on that clip or is it just me? anyone have a link to video with sound?
I don’t know if they’re still planning to introduce this idea into the park but there wasn’t any hint of that during the cast-only preview opening last week.
There were a variety of ways to spend more traditional forms of capital though. I chose to convert credits into alcohol.
It’s called a hydrospanner, geez!
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It also has to malfunction so someone can say “Would it help if I got out and pushed?”
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The ride actually has an “extended mission” mode that kicks in if there’s a delay unloading the pod at the end of the ride. So if the group ahead of yours is taking longer than usual to unload, your crew will have a sudden “hyperdrive malfunction” on the way home you get to spend the extra time dodging asteroids instead of just sitting around waiting for the ride attendant.
It’s all so seamlessly designed that most riders won’t even know the real reason for the detour was an unloading delay. I read a review of the ride by a tech columnist who had the hyperdrive malfunction the first time he rode but not the second, and he chalked it up to being a better pilot than the kid who was steering the first time.
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The new addition to the Disney Play app that they made for this land actually does have a lot of this kind of functionality, keeping track of how well you did on the Falcon and giving you the option of doing various “missions” around the land. (Mostly scanning crates or “hacking” those blinky control panels with your phone.) Depending on the missions you take on you’ll gain a reputation as being aligned with the first order, resistance, or smugglers. The folks at the retail and restaurant spaces have little discreet indicators near the registers to tell them your reputation. But they didn’t let us use the app at the cast preview because they didn’t want people’s phones out taking photos before the grand opening.
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Here’s a video for the complete dedication jumping forward around 28 minutes to see Harrison Ford.
With sound you can see they messed up the queue for it starting. I wonder whoever was responsible for triggering the lights and sound didn’t realize that Harrison was going to dedicate it to Peter Matthews. So that they pulled the trigger as he was approaching the Millennium Falcon just a couple seconds early.
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Ahh, I thought the “reputation” thing was going to be linked to an RFID-enabled card you’d get at the entrance or something. No wonder all those fans are getting custom cases for their smartphones now.
We finally got to access our photos today since the place is officially open now.
The attention to detail was great. One of the things that impressed me about Batuu is how convincingly “lived in” the place looked, even up close. Most stuff looked grimy and rusted and the buildings even appeared to have lichens growing on them.
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Those rust-stained barriers…as I always say when I go to Disneyland, those Imagineers don’t miss a trick.
