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Last week, we drove down to the Los Angeles area to visit some colleges with the kid. On Sunday as we rolled into town, M. said, "It's going to be weird being in LA without going to Disney!"
On Monday after visiting Harvey Mudd (which got thumbs-up from all three of us), we went to House of Blues for dinner, because M. and L. had missed out the last time they were down there. After dinner, it seemed like a natural thing to drop by Downtown Disney and do some shopping.
On Tuesday,
Part of our rationale was that everybody would probably be concentrating on the new Star Wars stuff, so we'd have relatively unfettered access to the older stuff, and we knew that they were doing reservations and/or timed entry to the new stuff, so we didn't even consider that we might get in.
Imagine our surprise when we actually got to the park and found out that there weren't enough people to trigger the timed-entry system. Galaxy's Edge was wide open.
For those of you who know the park, Galaxy's Edge is located off the trail between Fantasyland and Frontierland, behind Big Thunder Mountain. The paths into the new area wind around just enough that you can't ever see Star Wars stuff and Frontierland stuff at the same time.
The theming is pretty awesome; I can't say I really felt like I was on another planet, but I'm not going to disbelieve the folks who say they did. For my part, I have a very hard time letting myself drop into the illusion, so when an Event occurred around us, I spent the whole time trying to come up with a way to respond that wouldn't break the illusion for anybody else but would also not be irredeemably embarrassing for me, and (big surprise) ultimately failed, which made the Event experience slightly less enjoyable for me than if it hadn't happened at all.
One neat thing about the area is that they've gone to significant effort to ensure the ordinary, everyday things you see aren't quite so ordinary. For example: Coke. Instead of the usual 20-oz bottle of Coke you get everywhere else in the park, here sodas come in spheres the size of a thermal detonator, decorated in an alien script that still manages to communicate the contents clearly.
Things don't cost dollars and cents; it's "35 point 75 credits", which is a little twee for my taste, but again, I have a hard time dropping into the illusion.
A neat bonus: The castle fireworks are (mostly) visible from the Galaxy's Edge area, behind the weird-rocks backdrop. The cast members referred to this as "The Celebration", and Margaret decided (a little anachronistically if you ask me, which of course she didn't because why should she) that it was a celebration of the death of the Emperor.
Anyway, a fun experience and a worthy addition to the park was my takeaway.
Until.
Until we did the ride.
Recall, we'd expected the area to be too crowded to even get in. Then we expected the ride line to be so long it wasn't worth going on (it doesn't have FastPass).
But as the night was winding down, we ran out of other things to ride, and the line for Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run was down to 40 minutes, most of which was within ride complex, which meant there was plenty of stuff to look at as the queue wended its way around the sleazy little smuggler's docking area and past the full-scale Falcon from a variety of different angles. Well done, Disney Queue Engineering.
But then you go inside the Falcon, and the final waiting area has you free-range milling around the common area with the dejarik board where the course of wisdom is to "let the Wookiee win", and holy crap guys, I was not prepared for that. You don't get enough time in the space to get used to the idea, though, before you're ushered with the rest of your six-person crew into the FREAKING COCKPIT OF THE FREAKING MILLENNIUM FALCON. Guys. Guys.
You sit down, in one of three roles: Pilot, Gunner, Engineer. There are two of each. I dunno what the Gunner/Engineer experiences are like, because L. and I scored the pilots' chairs. In order to make things more interesting, they've split the pilot duties out into up-down and left-right, and WHAT YOU DO WITH THE STICKS DETERMINES WHAT THE SHIP DOES, within the relatively on-rails experience.
I don't remember much in the way of detail, except that I several times crashed us into the floor or ceiling because I FORGOT TO STEER.
Guys.
Guys.
All that stuff I said about not being able to let myself drop into the illusion?
Forget it.
On Monday after visiting Harvey Mudd (which got thumbs-up from all three of us), we went to House of Blues for dinner, because M. and L. had missed out the last time they were down there. After dinner, it seemed like a natural thing to drop by Downtown Disney and do some shopping.
On Tuesday,
Part of our rationale was that everybody would probably be concentrating on the new Star Wars stuff, so we'd have relatively unfettered access to the older stuff, and we knew that they were doing reservations and/or timed entry to the new stuff, so we didn't even consider that we might get in.
Imagine our surprise when we actually got to the park and found out that there weren't enough people to trigger the timed-entry system. Galaxy's Edge was wide open.
For those of you who know the park, Galaxy's Edge is located off the trail between Fantasyland and Frontierland, behind Big Thunder Mountain. The paths into the new area wind around just enough that you can't ever see Star Wars stuff and Frontierland stuff at the same time.
The theming is pretty awesome; I can't say I really felt like I was on another planet, but I'm not going to disbelieve the folks who say they did. For my part, I have a very hard time letting myself drop into the illusion, so when an Event occurred around us, I spent the whole time trying to come up with a way to respond that wouldn't break the illusion for anybody else but would also not be irredeemably embarrassing for me, and (big surprise) ultimately failed, which made the Event experience slightly less enjoyable for me than if it hadn't happened at all.
One neat thing about the area is that they've gone to significant effort to ensure the ordinary, everyday things you see aren't quite so ordinary. For example: Coke. Instead of the usual 20-oz bottle of Coke you get everywhere else in the park, here sodas come in spheres the size of a thermal detonator, decorated in an alien script that still manages to communicate the contents clearly.
Things don't cost dollars and cents; it's "35 point 75 credits", which is a little twee for my taste, but again, I have a hard time dropping into the illusion.
A neat bonus: The castle fireworks are (mostly) visible from the Galaxy's Edge area, behind the weird-rocks backdrop. The cast members referred to this as "The Celebration", and Margaret decided (a little anachronistically if you ask me, which of course she didn't because why should she) that it was a celebration of the death of the Emperor.
Anyway, a fun experience and a worthy addition to the park was my takeaway.
Until.
Until we did the ride.
Recall, we'd expected the area to be too crowded to even get in. Then we expected the ride line to be so long it wasn't worth going on (it doesn't have FastPass).
But as the night was winding down, we ran out of other things to ride, and the line for Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run was down to 40 minutes, most of which was within ride complex, which meant there was plenty of stuff to look at as the queue wended its way around the sleazy little smuggler's docking area and past the full-scale Falcon from a variety of different angles. Well done, Disney Queue Engineering.
But then you go inside the Falcon, and the final waiting area has you free-range milling around the common area with the dejarik board where the course of wisdom is to "let the Wookiee win", and holy crap guys, I was not prepared for that. You don't get enough time in the space to get used to the idea, though, before you're ushered with the rest of your six-person crew into the FREAKING COCKPIT OF THE FREAKING MILLENNIUM FALCON. Guys. Guys.
You sit down, in one of three roles: Pilot, Gunner, Engineer. There are two of each. I dunno what the Gunner/Engineer experiences are like, because L. and I scored the pilots' chairs. In order to make things more interesting, they've split the pilot duties out into up-down and left-right, and WHAT YOU DO WITH THE STICKS DETERMINES WHAT THE SHIP DOES, within the relatively on-rails experience.
I don't remember much in the way of detail, except that I several times crashed us into the floor or ceiling because I FORGOT TO STEER.
Guys.
Guys.
All that stuff I said about not being able to let myself drop into the illusion?
Forget it.
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