We arrived in Orlando about 6pm, and went straight to the park. We decided since we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, so we'd eat some dinner and then head into the new land just to look around. We figured the line would still be outrageous, and since we were looking to get an early start tomorrow we figured we wouldn't wait in the long line.While at dinner we checked and the line was only 90 minutes! This wasn't expected for us. We hurried up and ate, and walked to the land. You enter through a tunnel near the Muppet area, which makes a very nice visual break with the rest of the park. From that side, you see a wooded area which is the "Resistance" area, where the second ride will premiere in December. We walked through that area which still had patio umbrellas set up from the earlier long lines, and we took pictures of a full size X Wing fighter, an A Wing fighter as well as some droids. From there we moved into a marketplace that looked kind of Moroccan. There you could buy many items, including a shoulder puppet of Salacious Crumb and his blue cousin, various stuffed creatures, some souvenirs of "Black Spire Outpost" which was the name of this place, and various other trinkets. We moved through this area, past Ronto's Roasters which is a counter service food place with a pod racer engine roasting various droid turned meats.
As we left that area, we saw what we were after - the full size Millennium Falcon outside Smuggler's Run. We took some pics, and got in line for the ride. At this point, the line still wrapped outside the ride building, and around the Millennium Falcon, at least for the first 20 minutes or so. It seemed to move pretty quickly. We took more pictures close up, and then we were inside the actual queue for the ride. Part of the way through the outer part of the ride they had a stand where you could buy Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Dasani water in special containers. The sodas looked like thermal detonators, and all the bottles used an alphabet from the movies. They were $6 each, and thus began the soaking of our wallets at Star Wars land. We wound our way inside and found ourselves in an engine repair bay. Sometimes they would start the engine up, and there was lots of talking over intercoms from the aliens who run the shop. From there, we moved into a room where an AMAZING animatronic of Hondo from the Star Wars animated series gave us our pre-flight instructions. With that, it was a short wait until we were in the main room of the Falcon! Walking through the corridors that looked exactly like the movie and had the ability to sit at the holographic chess table and take pictures. It was awesome. There we were divided into groups of 6, so ours was Matt and I, as well as a family of 4 - Mom, Dad, Daughter, and Grandma. At first Matt and I both drew "engineer" as our duty station, but he traded with someone and ended up with a "pilot" card. We walked down the hallway to the actual cockpit. Again very cool. Unfortunately, this is where it went downhill. We were seated and buckled into our seats and then we were off. The pilots each had one aspect of the control of the ship. One was left/right (Matt) and one was up/down and hyperdrive (the mom). The middle seats were the gunners, and me and Granny were the engineers. At this point I was thankful it wasn't a 3D ride. I've grown to hate most of those. Hondo comes on and tells us our mission, and then we are off. At this point Mom decides the best course of action is to pull back on her control stick, keep it there, and then sit back and watch. We kept running into anything above us the rest of the flight. Luckily, it kind of drags you through even if that is happening. But it made work for the "engineers" who had to fix things, which I did by turning to the side and flipping any switch that blinked, and pressed any button that lit up. Unfortunately, this takes your eyes of what's going on up front. If I was susceptible to motion sickness, I would have been losing it at that point. But all that happened for me was I just didn't get to watch a large portion of what was going on up front. At one point I looked across at Granny, and she has done nothing at all. She's just enjoying the ride. I told her we were supposed to be flipping switched to fix things, and then she got on that. I'm not sure what the gunners did. After we basically bombed the mission, we got back to the port, and then the ride was over. The cockpit door opened up, and we left the ship and were back in the stone outside. As we were leaving the family said something that I heard often that weekend - "Well, I don't really need to ride that one again".
After the ride, the park was technically closed, but they had kept the cantina open for a bit, so we wandered in and had a drink. It was well themed, and the drinks we had were nice, if pricey. The music was cool, and we enjoyed ourselves. They did last call at 10:45 and we paid and left. On our way out, we finally found the passholder and first day dated merchandise. I picked up a t-shirt with the date, as a commemorative thing. And with that, we headed to the hotel. On the car ride, we decided we didn't really need to be there for the 6AM opening, and decided to take things much easier than we had planned. We pretty much saw the outside of most everything except one small section of the land, so we felt pretty good just coming on an afternoon later in the trip. Which we did on Sunday before we left. The detail of the land is very good, and holds up well to the light of day. We checked out the main restaurant, and explored the other corners of the land. After a stop to try the blue milk (which disagreed violently with me after about 2 hours), we headed home.
Overall, here are my thoughts. You can tell that they were trying very hard to compete with Harry Potter land at Universal. The biggest problem is that HP has a definite vocabulary and customs that many people know from the movies. You would think that they could do that with Star Wars with 30 years of movies and IP......but no. They made it a new planet, with new slang that doesn't completely make sense unless you really think about what they are saying. One problem I've heard many stories of is the fact that restrooms are referred to as "refreshers" by the cast members. And cast members seem to be trained to not recognize "restroom" or "bathroom". The land has a very high ratio of shops to attractions. One section felt like an outdoor mall. Overall, it felt like Disney is trying too hard to make this be more immersive than Harry Potter land, but you end up with people who are confused, with only one ride open that doesn't seem to have much re-ride-ability, and some life size models of ships that people might recognize. They probably would have been better served to make this more classic Star Wars, and avoid the jumbled mess they have made of the sequel trilogy so far.
