This past Friday, April 5th, I was invited down to Disneyland for the Star Wars: Season of the Force 2024 media event. Below are my thoughts on my overall experience of this celebration.
I would like to start this off by reminding readers that I am a lifelong Disney Parks and Star Wars fan, so wherever and wherever these two worlds intersect is absolutely my happy place. I’m also a regular (on average once a week) visitor to Disneyland, both recreationally and professionally, so anything new at the park is usually welcome. Not to mention the fact that the first iteration of Season of the Force– back in the fall of 2015 as the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was approaching– was my first-ever media event as a theme park journalist, so I do feel a special connection to the event in that way.
Now, getting to this year’s celebration, I arrived at Disneyland Resort with my fellow journalists at 6:00 AM. That’s pretty early for me, especially considering I had to drive down to Anaheim from Burbank, but like I said it was a Star Wars event so I was pretty happy and excited regardless. Checkin at the parks began at 6:30 and around 7:00 we were ushered into a completely empty Disneyland itself. It’s always so neat to be in my favorite place on the planet with absolutely no one else around. This has happened to me a number of times thanks to my job, and I still don’t think I will ever get tired of it.
As you can see in the above photo, the ground on Main St. USA was wet from rain, which was still lightly falling Friday morning as we made our way toward Tomorrowland, but that didn’t turn out to be too big of an issue for most of the day. Our first stop for the event was at Star Tours: The Adventures continue to check out the new destination (the planet Seatos from Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Ahsoka) and one of the new holographic transmissions– we got Din Djarin and Grogu from The Mandalorian during that first ride. Now I’m not the biggest fan of motion simulator attractions (I tend to prefer theme park rides with physical sets and a bigger variety of animatronics) but I’ve always liked Star Tours, especially the original version that ran from 1987 through 2010.
This matted mini-poster of the new Star Wars: The Adventures Continue art was gifted to media at the Season of the Force event.
That said, I also get how The Adventures Continue can often be more exciting from a guest (and designer) perspective due to its modular nature– theoretically we can visit any number of locations and hear messages from lots of different characters, so long as Disney is willing to continue updating the attraction through the years. With that in mind, I boarded Star Tours with my colleagues that morning ready for fun. And I was certainly not disappointed: the new scene above Seatos is thrilling, funny, and awe-inspiring all at the same time. I especially love how the Purrgil space-whale creatures have been featured and the appearances by Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano herself. My one critique of this particular experience would be that Din Djarin didn’t sound like actor Pedro Pascal, so my guess is that Disney cast a soundalike instead of bringing in the real deal to record the character’s dialogue. That oversight took me out of The Mandalorian hologram scene, which does have a chuckle-worthy moment starring Grogu and a floating paddy frog.
Laughing Place cofounder Rebekah Moseley joins me for a ride on the Starspeeder 1000. (Rebekah's hat courtesy of RSVLTS )
After Star Tours, it was up to the planet Batuu (in the immersive Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge themed land) to meet Sabine Wren, a beloved character from Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka making her first appearance in the area. I had seen Sabine at Disneyland After Dark: Star Wars Nite and aboard the Disney Cruise Line’s Star Wars Day at Sea previously, but considering this was her first visit to Black Spire Outpost it was cool to see her in this new context. Plus this version of the character has much nicer, more detailed armor, authentic-looking hair, and a performer that absolutely nailed her embodiment of the role. I have purist friends who don’t care to see characters that exist outside of the Galaxy’s Edge timeline (the period set between Episodes VIII and IX of the larger Star Wars canon) show up on Batuu, but I don’t have as much of a problem with it, and I’m mostly happy just to see fresh faces in the land.
Next it was time for the media breakfast inside the Docking Bay 7 restaurant, where we got to see a display of the new Season of the Force food and merchandise, plus chat with Walt Disney Imagineers Tom Fitzgerald and Michael Serna and Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin. I’ve met Matt a handful of times before, so it was great to see him again, and I always learn something new when hearing from Imagineers (you can read my interviews right here at LaughingPlace.com, and the audio versions will be included in this week’s episode of our Star Wars podcast “Who’s the Bossk?” I don’t go to Disney Parks events to get free stuff, but it was also nice to get my hands on a Jabba the Hutt popcorn bucket… complete with Salacious B. Crumb clip, which is my favorite part of this item.
Jabba the Hutt popcorn bucket provided to media by Disney Parks.
Following breakfast, the media group was brought over to another section of Galaxy’s Edge to meet the new RDX droids, who appeared once in the land about six months ago and have since become a thing of legend. Now they’re out and about each day for Season of the Force, and I have to say I found them incredibly charming and very Star Wars, especially considering the amount of personality they each exhibit.
The BDX droids were presented as part of a training demo of sorts, led by a Disneyland Cast Member posing as their in-universe handler. It was great to see them up-close, and I encountered roughly this same show happening a couple more times around Black Spire throughout the rest of the day, which was encouraging, as I was glad it wasn’t “special treatment” for us as media. Sabine, on the other hand, I had trouble tracking down in the wild during the park’s regular operating hours, despite walking back and forth through Batuu a number of times. Anyway, I absolutely recommend checking out these adorable BDX units as soon as you get the chance, with my one minor reservation being that I could easily spot their operators standing rather glaringly out in the open, which spoiled the magic just a tiny bit.
This concluded the scheduled media moments for that morning, so it was time to check out one of the other advertised activities available at Disneyland during Season of the Force: the “Seek and Find” scavenger hunt, which sends guests hunting for multicolored cylinders throughout Galaxy’s Edge and back to Tomorrowland to interpret their findings and claim a prize. As a fan of scavenger hunts like this I was intrigued by this idea, plus I liked the design of the map (which is complementary to all guests, included with the price of park admission) and the cylinders themselves. But ultimately, though we were eventually able to figure it out, this Seek and Find activity came across as needlessly convoluted, requiring participants to decode several layers of clues before solving the central puzzle. It had me scratching my head at times, and that probably means families with younger kids will find it confusing as well. Still, the prize of a Chewbacca-themed Aurebesh translator card (again, for free) is nifty.
One other worthwhile thing to experience on Batuu during this year’s Season of the Force is the Disney PhotoPass Magic Shot, which you can try out for yourself by tracking down one of the photographers roaming the area. This Magic Shot actually incorporates a physical bounty puck prop and casts you as the bounty hunter tracking down poor little Grogu via hologram. I like this a lot, and the weight of the puck in my hand really lent a lot of realism to the result.
As a fan of the (very sadly) short-lived Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser immersive experience at Walt Disney World, I had to swing by Oga’s Cantina on Batuu to have a couple of the adult beverages that were imported from the Halcyon for Season of the Force. It felt very strange to be drinking a Fiery Mustafarian and a Silver Sea Martini in Black Spire Outpost, but I am very glad to have had the opportunity to get my hands on a couple more of the Starcruiser’s collectible glasses before they disappear forever.
My invitation to the Season of the Force media event also included Lightning Lane passes to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance in Galaxy’s Edge and Hyperspace Mountain (a seasonal Star Wars-themed overlay of the classic Space Mountain roller coaster) in Tomorrowland. Naturally these attractions have existed for years, but I don’t think I’ll ever not be thrilled to go on either one.
That about wraps up everything there is to do at Disneyland for Season of the Force at the moment, with one major exception: the “Fire of the Rising Moons” show, which syncs up iconic John Williams Star Wars musical selection with the Disneyland fireworks when you view them from Batuu. On Friday night this show was canceled due to weather (the rain had stopped earlier that morning, but it was pretty windy throughout the rest of the day), so I have not had a chance to see it in person yet. However, I will be returning to the park with a reservation I have for tomorrow and I will update this post with my thoughts on that experience afterward. Otherwise, I’m just glad to have this seasonal celebration of all things Star Wars back at the Happiest Place On Earth, and I’m also pretty psyched for Star Wars Nite returning to Disneyland next week!
Update 4/10: Yesterday afternoon I drove back down to Disneyland Resort and camped out for a few hours on the tiered balcony in front of Docking Bay 7 to finally watch “Fire of the Rising Moons” in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. I enjoyed the show quite a bit more than I thought I would (considering I’m not much of a fireworks guy either) but I do have a couple of minor notes. The first is that I definitely appreciated how well the music synced up with the pyrotechnic elements from Disneyland’s “Wondrous Journeys” nighttime spectacular, but this did clearly require the creative team behind the show to make some edits to the John Williams music we all know and love– like the “Asteroid Field” track from The Empire Strikes Back (one of my favorites, which I’m very glad was heavily featured). These edits work in the moment to keep the timing right, but they will jump out to anyone like me who has heard this music enough throughout their lifetimes that they have it memorized to the note. The other thing that I would consider a major issue and needs to be rectified by Disneyland as soon as possible is the constant, loud hissing noise emanating from the Millennium Falcon docked there in the Black Spire Outpost spaceport. You can hear it clear as day throughout the embedded video below, and it really detracts from the score being played over the loudspeakers. Those reservations aside, I really did think the show works as a night-capper on Batuu, and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will likely become my go-to location to enjoy the Disneyland fireworks whenever I’m at the park for my own enjoyment. I’m just hoping maybe someone from Disney Parks entertainment will read this and turn down the hissing during the performance.
Star Wars: Season of the Force runs from now through Sunday, June 2nd at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. For additional information, be sure to visit the official Disneyland Resort website, and as always we recommend booking your Disney Parks trips through our friends at Mouse Fan Travel.