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Last time I talked about some interesting details about the birth of the original Star Tours attraction in California. Today we will embark on a journey on how Star Tours came to Florida at the Disney MGM Studios. But first, a little side trip about what Imagineers originally were thinking for a thrill ride based on the famous space saga.

Originally, even before George Lucas came into the picture, Imagineers were quietly brainstorming on thrill ride ideas based in the Star Wars universe. When Lucas was finally approached by Disney to co-develop a Star Wars attraction, Imagineers pitched their original idea to the film director. Originally designers had an idea for hybrid rollercoaster attraction. It is very possible that in California this would’ve replaced the fan-fan-favorite Space Mountain. The attraction’s main feature, aside from hair-raising thrills, was that the ride’s ending would be customizable. Guests would get to either choose, or be given a random selection of a destination in the Star Wars universe. This would provide guests with a different experience every time. However, this type of technology was no where near possible in the mid 1980s. Lucas would eventually help Disney develop a tracked simulator attraction with Indiana Jones, but that’s another story.

With the capabilities of developing the Imagineers’ ultimate Star Wars dream lightyears away, Eisner sent the team back to the drawing board. The Disney company was in a bad place when Eisner was hired as CEO. The company had nearly been sold off into pieces, so it was up to Eisner to rejuvenate the company, and fast. Eisner, along with Lucas and Imagineers, came to the conclusion that they needed a Star Wars attraction that could be built with cutting-edge technology, but readily available. Eisner knew that Lucas’ story and characters would draw crowds in. But what type of ride would they build?

Disney had first developed plans for a simulator attraction based on the little known sci-fi film, The Black Hole. The film was produced by Walt Disney Pictures in 1979, just a few years after the first Star Wars film. Once again, designers were tinkering with the idea that guests would get to choose their destination on the ride. But since the budgeted cost was astronomical at a point when the company wasn’t financially flush, and the film was a box-office bomb, Imagineers shelved the idea. Elsewhere in 1977, while film fans were lining up to watch Lucas’ hit film, Joseph Strick, another filmmaker, began expanding is own ideas of multi sensory entertainment system. He invented the six-axis motion simulator. Once he was confident with his system, he approached Disney about using this ride model for an attraction. So by the time Eisner was looking for a new piece of technology for Lucas’ thrill ride, Disney revisited Stick’s new invention which was specifically geared to be used for entertainment, and began adapted a ride simulator attraction for Star Wars.  Disney purchased four military-grade flight simulators, each costing $500,000.

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During the early days if the Disney Studios, Walt used the short films he produced as a way to experiment with the possibilities of what animation could do. Some of the technological advancements made during this time, including the introduction of synchronized sound and three-strip Technicolor, helped set Disney’s output apart from his competitors and led the way to more ambitious feature-length projects.

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George Lucas’ beloved characters from the epic space saga first flew onto Disney property on January 9th, 1987 at Disneyland in California. The first simulator ride of it’s kind in a theme park replaced the omnimover ride, Adventures thru Inner Space. The new thrill ride had a final cost of $32 million. It was double the amount it cost Walt to build all of Disneyland in 1955. Needless to say, the collaboration between George Lucas and Disney paid off and the attraction became a smash hit. But it seems that Lucas always intended the ride to be upgraded. To change from time to time, traveling to new exciting worlds. Yet the attraction never saw an upgrade until nearly 25 years later. Let’s look back on a history and the relationship between the film director and the mouse himself with the popular attraction known as Star Tours.

Captain EO was the first attraction to open at a Disney park with George Lucas’ name attached. The 3D film was a new story story about a space captain, played by Michael Jackson, and his ragtag space crew delivering a gift of song and dance to an evil supreme leader. The movie experience opened at Epcot on September 12th, 1986 and at Disneyland, right below Space Mountain, just six days after. To the public, this was the first Lucas/Disney collaboration. But Lucas began working on the original Star Tours attraction a few years prior to Captain EO’s premiere. At a press conference in 1987, Lucas said that he always wanted to work on an attraction with Disney, and he believed his talents and imagination would naturally fit for an attraction in Tomorrowland. He referred to Disney as the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of amusement parks and he was only willing to allow a company of that status to even come close to his characters from Star Wars. This opening day press conference at Disneyland is fascinating from today’s perspective. Lucas made three clear points throughout the press event. First, that the attraction would make no sense if it was in 3D. Secondly, that the attraction was intended to be upgraded from time to time. Finally, he expressed his confidence that his Star Wars attraction was the best Disney had ever developed. In fact, he half-way arrogantly boosts that Star Tours was far superior to attractions such as Space Mountain.

His comment about the attraction not suited for 3D came out of a question related to Captain EO. The public loved that the visionary director helped developed Disney’s 3D based attraction. It was natural for them to think that Lucas and Imagineers would continue down that path of using 3D with an attraction such as Star Tours. After all, this is a ride based on a film that pushed the boundaries of visual effects. But Lucas very clearly stated that 3D wouldn’t make sense, because guests were watching a film that was an image of what they were meant to be seeing out of a window. If something popped out in 3D and into the interior space of the starspeeder, this would imply that an object broke through the glass. We all know what would happen if a glass window on a spaceship breaks while traveling in outer space. We would die instantly. Imagineer Marty Sklar, also mentioned how a park guests claimed to have lost her glasses while riding in the back row because of the ride’s intensity. Another reason why wearing 3D glasses on the simulator wouldn’t work…back then at least. Lucas, and the rest of the panel, quickly brushed the silly question aside as if it was insignificant.

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