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.
Now that they had a cutting edge ride vehicle, it was time for the little details and the story. Although the attraction that opened in Florida was almost an exact replica of the Anaheim version, a few changes were made for the beginning of the experience. Because Star Tours at the Disney MGM studios was not based in futuristic community of tomorrow, designers had to think of a way for the attraction to make sense in a theme park/movie studio. The answer was easy. The exterior of the building was created to appear like an outdoor movie set depicting the Ewok village on Endor. The beginning of the story in Florida would be that guests were walking on to a hot set, to film their own Star Wars movie set just after Return of the Jedi. So a series of treehouse and foliage was created to look like the Ewok village, and giant AT-AT Imperial walker would loom over guests at they entered the queue.
From here on out, both American versions of the attraction were the same. The first room in the queue was set in a maintenance hangar for a fictional tour company providing trips to different parts of the galaxy. The idea behind this queue story, was that the travel company wanted guests to see what goes on ‘backstage’ at the hangar facility before boarding the Endor Express. Similar to a show kitchen concept that we see around the Disney parks today. This first room would feature everyone’s favorite droid duo, C3-PO and R2-D2 working on a Starspeeder 3000, the same ship guests would soon board on the ride itself. But a little hidden gem in this room was the watch tower in the corner. If you looked closely, you would see a creature resembling Admiral Akbar. And if you listened closely, you would here a PA announcement from time to time paging a Mr. Egroeg Sacul. (Read it backwards and you’ll get the joke.) Soon after this first part of the queue, guests then moved into the droid repair room. This room was, and still is, sprinkled with what’s called G2 droids. In the original version of the attraction they were just repairing various droids. Now you can see them scanning passenger luggage, among other things. At Disneyland, these G2 droids were actually reused animatronics from the America Sings! animatronic show that replaced Carousel of Progress. Imagineers took a few of the animal animatronics, took of the skin and exterior parts until revealing the ‘skeleton’ of the animatronic and thought, ‘Hey, that look’s like a droid.’ An easy way to design new characters I guess.
Finally guest would hop aboard a Starspeeder 3000 and meet a new Star Wars character, never found in the film. It was Disney legend, Tony Baxter, who came up with the idea to have a clumsy droid on his first day on the job navigate the ship. RX-24, Rex for short, was born and was voiced by comedian Paul Reubens. Yes Pee-Wee was actually the droid steering your thrilling escape from the Death Star. By 1986/1987, the CBS tv show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was a huge hit with kids.
The original film used for the Star Tours attraction was shot years before CGI became widely used. The creative team at Industrial Light and Magic, would have to shoot the new 4-minute film old school, just like the original Star Wars film. But the biggest challenge for the crew was that this time they had to shoot a completely uninterrupted first-person perspective film. This meant they couldn’t cut to different angles to tell a story, they had to place guests in the middle of the story and make it look like the film was what passengers were seeing out the front window. They had to find clever and subtle points in the film to cut in between sequences. Nowadays with CGI this would be relatively easy. But when you consider that all the sets were miniature models, and that they had to carefully map out all the uninterrupted camera moves, you realise this was no easy task. Once the film was complete, designers could then rely on the motion of the ride vehicle to exaggerate the movements seen on the film. The end result was a hit as big as the movies themselves. But sadly, Imagineers never got the chance to upgrade the film like George originally wanted, or give guests the chance to experience different version of the ride until 2011. After Disney purchased Lucasfilm and suddenly had thousands of new characters under the Disney umbrella, it was decided to relaunch the film franchise. Now that it became a goal for the company to inspire a whole new generation of Star Wars fans, Imagineers returned to some of the original ideas for Star Tours. We now have slot machine version of the simulator ride, always traveling to new destinations in the sci-fi universe to coincide with new film releases. And it looks like the hybrid-rollercoaster idea that gives guest the chance to choose their final destination on an attraction, may come true with the upcoming Millennium Falcon attraction coming to the Star Wars land at Disneyland and Disney Hollywood Studios. Until then, park guests can enjoy a Star Wars rollercoaster with Hyperspace Mountain.
