Star Tours

Star Tours
The Star Tours sign at Disneyland.
Ride statistics
Manufacturer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering Industrial Light & Magic
Theme	Star Wars
Music	Composed by John Williams
Vehicle type	Simulator
Duration	4:30
Must transfer from wheelchair
Closed captioning available

Star Tours is a simulator ride located in many of the Disney theme parks, including Disneyland in California, Disney-MGM Studios in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, and Disneyland Park in Paris. The ride is based on the successful Star Wars franchise of movies, created by George Lucas. This made it, notably, the first of the park's attractions that did not use Disney-designed imagery.

The first incarnation of the ride appeared in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in 1987, replacing the previous attraction, Adventure Thru Inner Space.

Plot summary

Advertised as "The Ultimate Star Wars Adventure!," Star Tours puts the guest in the role of a space tourist en route to the Forest moon of Endor via the Star Tours travel agency. Much is made of this throughout the ride queue, and the theming of the inside holding area is convincingly modeled to look like a spaceship boarding terminal. This area is stocked with Audio-Animatronic characters that seem to interact with the ride patrons (including versions of Star Wars favorites C-3PO and R2-D2, delivering a typical Laurel and Hardy-esque routine), as well as a life size mock-up of the StarSpeeder 3000, the spacecraft/simulator ride that guests embark on. According to the book "Disneyland Detective" by Kendra Trahan, the figures of C-3PO and R2-D2 in the Disneyland attraction are actual props from the original film, modified to operate via Audio-Animatronics.

Once at the head of the line, the ride operators escort guests into one of several ride theatres. As the doors close, the bumbling pilot droid of the ship, RX-24 or Rex (voiced by Paul Reubens), chats up the guests about the trip as he sets up. All goes well until a slight mistake on Rex's part sends the ship down the wrong tunnel and plummeting down into a maintenance yard, just managing to escape to open space before a giant mechanical appendage crushes the ship. That same scene features a tribute to the "Adventure Thru Inner Space" attraction: The "Mighty Microscope" is clearly visible to the right of the screen after the appendage sweeps by.

Once in space, Rex puts the ship into light speed, but pulls out too late to catch the ship's intended destination, instead getting caught inside an asteroid field. The ship gets trapped inside one of the larger comets and has to maze its way out. Just when all the trouble seems to be over, the ship encounters a Star Destroyer. The ship gets caught in its tractor beam, but manages to get loose when a rebel X-wing fighter (played by ILM modelmaker Steve Gawley and therefore not to be confused with Wedge Antilles, the popular survivor of three Star Wars films, who was played by Denis Lawson) provides assistance by destroying the tractor beam's generator. Soon the ship accompanies the Rebellion on a massive assault on a Death Star. Rex uses the StarSpeeder's lasers to eliminate TIE fighters while a rebel destroys the Death Star in the same manner as Luke Skywalker did in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. A final light speed jump sends the StarSpeeder back where it started, but not before a near collision with a fuel truck in the spaceport.

Cast

(in order of appearance)

• Anthony Daniels .... C-3PO (attraction queue area) (voice) (uncredited)
• Anthony Daniels .... Alien Announcer (speaking Ewokese) (voice, electronically altered) (uncredited)
• Brian Cummings .... Vid-Screen Announcer (planetary destinations) (voice) (uncredited)
• Anthony Daniels .... C-3PO (onboard video segment) (noteworthy because it's not the audio-animatronic figure seen in the queue, it's actually him in the motion picture costume) (uncredited)
• Paul Reubens .... Captain RX-24, aka Rex (voice) (uncredited)
• Dennis Muren .... cameo (one of three ILMers visible in a Maintenance Bay window during the rear-projected simulator film, ducking as Rex almost careens into their building) (uncredited)
• Steve Gawley .... cameo as Red Leader (onboard video) (uncredited)
• Ira Keeler .... cameo as supervisor who ducks under desk at the end of the ride-- mistaken by many to be George Lucas himself (uncredited)

Muren, Gawley, and Keeler are all Industrial Light & Magic special effects wizards who worked on the attraction for Lucasfilm.

Ride System

Star Tours utilizes a Thomson hydraulic motion base cabin featuring 3 degrees of freedom.

The film is front projected onto the screen from a 70mm film projector located beneath the cockpit barrier. George Lucas has mentioned that the next generation of the attraction will feature digital high definition video and motion bases capable of up to 6 degrees of freedom.

Canonicity

File:Starspeeder 3000 specifications.jpg

Starspeeder 3000 specifications

The Death Star seen in the ride video is considered by some to be the Death Star prototype, as explored in the Kevin J. Anderson novels Jedi Search and Champions of the Force. The destruction of the Death Star, as seen in the ride video, is considered by some to be a depiction of the prototype's destruction at The Maw, as described in the previously mentioned novels.

This interpretation does not hold up to close examination, however, as the Death Star in Star Tours is fully built, and the Death Star prototype was merely a skeletal construction. Astrocartographically speaking, the Star Tours Death Star is very close to the Forest moon of Endor, while the black hole cluster of the Maw is near Kessel, another planet several light years away, in the aptly-named Kessel sector.

Furthermore, R2-D2's presence on board the Star Tours StarSpeeder 3000 precludes the possibility of this being any other Death Star's destruction, as his whereabouts are accounted for at the Death Star explosions of the Battle of Yavin, Battle of Endor, and the prototype's destruction in the Maw.

The Death Star seen in Star Tours can be seen exploding in the cabin monitor at the right of the large forward viewscreen-- it visibly blows up in a rear-facing view, with R2-D2 in the foreground. The logical conclusion is that this is a completely separate Death Star (called the Third Death Star by some), yet another in a long line of Superweapons built by the Empire.

Also, the StarSpeeder 3000, which is the "vehicle" that the riders are placed in during the ride, has been referenced and seen in-universe in the computer game TIE Fighter, as well as in Timothy Zahn's novel Specter of the Past.

In additon, in the main entry point of the queue, C-3PO refers to events that took place on Endor during Episode VI, so the time setting is clearly post-ROTJ.

Development

The ride that became Star Tours first saw light as a proposal for an attraction based on the 1979 Disney live-action flop The Black Hole. It would have been an interactive ride simulator attraction, where guests would have had the ability to choose the ride car's route, but after preliminary planning, the Black Hole attraction was shelved due to its enormous cost—approximately $50 million USD—as well as the unpopularity of the film itself. But instead of completely dismissing the idea of a simulator, the company decided to make use of a partnership between Disney and George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, that began in 1986 with the opening of Captain EO (a 3-D musical film starring Michael Jackson) at the California park. Disneyland then approached Lucas with the idea for the Star Tours amusement ride, he approved.

With his approval, Disney Imagineers purchased four large military flight simulators at a cost of $500,000 each and designed the ride structure. Meanwhile, Lucas and his team of special effects technicians at Industrial Light and Magic worked on the first-person perspective film that would be projected inside the simulators. When both simulator and film were completed, a programmer then sat inside and, with the aid of a joystick, manually synchronized the movement of the simulator with the apparent movement on the film. On January 9, 1987, at a final cost of $32 million, almost twice the cost of building the entire park in 1955, the ride finally opened to throngs of patrons, many of whom dressed up as Star Wars characters for the occasion. In celebration, Disneyland remained open for a special 60 hour marathon from January 9, 1987 at 10am to January 11, 1987 at 10pm.

Attraction facts

Star Tours at MGM Studios.

Disneyland Star Tours entrance in 1996 before Tomorrowland makeover.

• Grand opening:
  • Disneyland: January 9, 1987
  • Tokyo Disneyland: July 12, 1989
  • Disney-MGM Studios: December 15, 1989
  • Disneyland Paris: April 12, 1992 (Opened with Disneyland Paris)
• Designer: Walt Disney Imagineering, Industrial Light and Magic
• Simulators: 4 (Disneyland); 6 (all other parks)
  • Simulator's theme: Starspeeder 3000
• Guests per simulator: 40
• Height requirement: 40 inches (102 cm)
• Sponsors:
  • Disneyland: Panasonic (2007-present), Energizer (1995-2006), M&M's (1987-1995)
  • Tokyo Disneyland: Panasonic (1999-Present)
  • Disney-MGM Studios: Energizer (1989-2006)
  • Disneyland Paris: IBM (1992-2002)
• Show length: 4:30
• Ride system: Flight simulator with Audio-Animatronics all synced to film
• (Only at Disney-MGM Studios and Disneyland Paris)

Sequel

In April 2005, at the Star Wars Celebration III, Star Wars creator George Lucas confirmed that a Star Tours II is in production. This new ride will apparently be prequel-oriented.

In a concept release, the sequel is described as being based on the Pod Racer sequence in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The new ride system will consist of a glasses-free 3-D High Definition screen and an improved motion simulator.

The flight information board utilized in the ride queue promises forthcoming adventures to Hoth, Tatooine, and Dagobah and displays the text "Soon Endor Won't Be The End-All". These details, especially the clever tagline, are often mistaken as recent additions, used to support rumors of impending changes to the attraction, but have actually been in place since Star Tours opened.

Trivia

• While waiting in line, a voice announcement calls out for an illegally parked speeder license number THX-1138, which is the name of George Lucas' famous USC student film, as well as the name of his first film made for commercial distribution.
• On the PA system in the waiting area, a voice says, "Mr. Egroeg Sacul, Mr. Egroeg Sacul." The name is "George Lucas" spelled backwards.
• On Rex, the robotic pilot of the StarSpeeder 3000, a bright red tag can be seen attached to his torso that reads "Remove Before Flight."
• On the PA system in the waiting area, a voice says a message for "Mr. Tom Morrow," who was a character in Flight to the Moon (he later became Mr. Johnson for the overhaul called Mission to Mars, which closed in 1992 ) and later became a separate character for the attraction Innoventions, which opened in 1998.
• The G2 repair droids in the queue line are actually the skeletons of two goose Audio-Animatronics from America Sings. They were removed from the show for this attraction during the last 2 years of its run. They can be heard singing "I've been working on the same droid, all the livelong day." This is a reference to America Sings, where the geese were among several Audio-Animatronic animals that sang "I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day."
• At least two revisions have been made to the script of Star Tours since its inception. The changes occur fairly close together, right after the StarSpeeder passes the Endor Moon. The original version had Rex asking R2-D2 "Now what's the matter? Oh no! Comets!", and did not contain the line "I have a very bad feeling about this". The current version has Rex asking the similar but different "Now what's the matter? Comets? COMETS!" and does contain the running gag "I have a very bad feeling about this".
• The fuel tanker that the StarSpeeder 3000 almost runs into at the end has on its side a hazardous materials sign and registration number. The registration number is Lucasfilm's old office phone number.
• The baskets of parts in the Droidnostics Center in the queue for Star Tours at Disneyland and Disney-MGM Studios have hidden initials and birth dates of WDI and ILM team members who worked on the attraction.
• On the pre-boarding video the passengers are Imagineers and their families.
• The work crews shown in the docking bays and control rooms of the film are actually members of the Industrial Light & Magic model shop staff. ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren and his crew can be seen diving out of the way when Rex accidentally steers the StarSpeeder 3000 toward the control room on the right.
• Contrary to popular belief, the horrified man in the landing bay who ducks in terror as Rex nearly crashes into him with the StarSpeeder 3000 at the end of the flight is not George Lucas, but in fact an ILM modelmaker named Ira Keeler.
• During the ride, Rex says that he's always wanted to do this. In the Star Wars anthology book Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, one of the short stories states that there was a droid audible during the Battle of Endor assault on the second Death Star announcing it had "always wanted to do this."
• The StarSpeeder 3000 has several blast marks, one of which appears to resemble a Hidden Mickey.
• Several aliens from the Star Wars theatrical films and offshoot productions make appearances in the opening safety video. Examples include some Mon Calamari, a Gran and a Wookiee (the wookie costume is in fact Chewbacca) from the theatrical films, and Teek (from the TV film Ewoks: The Battle for Endor).
• When Energizer sponsored the Disney-MGM Studios version, the Energizer Bunny made a cameo appearance in the shop on a television screen.
• In the queue, when you get to the above-head conveyer belt look down. You can see a Kermit the Frog made out of spare parts.
• In the Disney-MGM Studios version of the ride, the giant Imperial Walker outside the entrance will spray the crowd with water at certain intervals.

Cultural references

• In the Futurama episode "That's Lobstertainment!", some of the main characters are riding a tour bus in Hollywood with the name "Star Tours." Under the bus's logo, a disclaimer reads "NOTE: BUS DOES NOT LEAVE EARTH," a reference to the attraction.
• In the sing along songs video Disneyland Fun, during "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", Chip, Dale, Roger Rabbit, and the kids briefly visit Star Tours.

See also

• List of current Disneyland attractions
• Disney-MGM Studios attraction and entertainment history

External links

Official links

• Disneyland: Star Tours
• Walt Disney World's Disney-MGM Studios: Star Tours

Unofficial links

• Star Tours at IMDb
• VisionsFantastic, a fansite containing video clips from the ride.
• EndorExpress.net (formerly SWStarTours.net) the most comprehensive Star Tours site on the web.
• Link to a fan's flash-recreation of the ride. A new version is in creation.
• Link to download a low-quality clip of C-3PO's safety video from the ride.
• Original Star Tours home page.
• Another fansite dedicated to the ride.