The SUV Backseat Experience of Smugger's Run

Galaxy’s Edge and Smuggler’s Run exemplifies everything that is amazing about Disney, and everything that is excruciatingly frustrating from the theme park branch of the global giant.

There are so many positives and so many things they do right that the mistakes become just as baffling. Disney has finally decided to step its game up after seeing Universal Studios Orlando flip the switch on theme park experiences with their Wizarding World of Harry Potter creations spanning both parks, and this has led to mass overhauls of Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and especially Epcot.

But of course Hollywood Studios was the park that had the most space to grow, and the park that most desperately needed some good news. So after years of rumors, construction, and seeing Disneyland snatch up a lot of the thunder, Hollywood Studios finally gets its Star Wars Land that we had been begging for since Star Tours. Now, the shenanigans involving the New Star Wars/Old Star Wars fans and the two-park idea is a topic for a different day, I’m here to talk about Smuggler’s Run and Galaxy’s Edge in general (mostly).

One of the great tricks of Magic Kingdom is how Tomorrowland is built on land that’s slightly lower than Main Street U.S.A. so the impressive Space Mountain doesn’t overshadow Cinderella’s castle. Galaxy’s Edge does that similar action of being built far away from the center in order to not completely overshadow the already-obscured icon of the park. Galaxy’s Edge is impressive with its attention to detail, the constantly-moving environment with characters, villains, and cast members (as well as sound effects and music) roaming around and giving the place a living, breathing presence that even rivals that of Hogsmeade.

Not sure how it feels like in Disneyland, but this area in the Disney World side feels completely detached from the rest of the park. Restaurants don’t really feel like restaurants, the merchandise locations are very open-spaced and doesn’t distract from the overall look. The place is also large in scope, with an entirely separate attraction not yet open. To make up for the lack of actual rides, you have characters like Chewbacca roaming around and interacting.

I didn’t get to do everything because believe it or not the second-longest line in the park was that to enter Oga’s Cantina (a detailed bar that requires a reservation to get in? Ugh). I suppose if you made it larger it would not exactly match the theme and continuity of a Star Wars cantina, which is what makes the delayed opening of Rise of the Resistance that much more grating. Disney’s decision to make the place based off of a planet that hasn’t existed in the movies yet a smart one, because it allows for the Imagineers to take creative liberties and take risks.

But….well….back to that later….

I have always argued that virtual reality in spite of its constant threats and impressive technology, has never even come close to replacing gaming or even becoming the future of it. Virtual reality was at its peak in the 80s/90s and the Disney Quest Era, but it was never as newsworthy as the video game industry from Nintendo to Sega to Sony. The Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s first major dose of virtual reality, also would fail miserably in the mid-90s, and to this day barely even gets a mention from the company (even though Wario Land VB definitely deserves a remake). The top reason for this is because only the main person interacting is having fun, while everyone else is just witnessing the person having fun. When playing in front of a small/medium/large screen that allows everyone to see, the experience is different. Imagine if Mario Kart 64 back in 1997 was a multiplayer virtual reality game, even though that could be cool, outside the players enjoying themselves, nobody else could see what’s going on because to accomplish the reality effect you need to wear the special eyewear.

Smuggler’s Run is 1990s Virtual Reality----only the main players are having fun and everyone else is just witnessing the fun.

The ride without spoiling too much involves being employed by Hondo Ohnaka (don’t know who he is? Welcome to another one of this ride’s problems of using extremely obscure characters) and riding the millennium falcon (R.I.P. Han Solo, you deserve a ride) on a secret mission (wish they had multiple missions to choose from to at least rev up the variety) to smuggle some goods. The plot is explained rather quickly, and the directions to participating in the ride is explained even faster. Six guests can be seated per experience, and there are three roles to “choose from.” And by choose from, I mean they are assigned to you and your only hopes is to exchange with a newcomer that has no idea what it means to play the engineer role.

You are whether the pilot, the gunner, or the engineer. The pilots have the most fun, as they are front and center, and controlling the ship (slightly) and viewing all the action clearly. The gunners are in charge of shooting at things whenever prompted. And in the back of the SUV (the setup feels extremely SUV-ish) are the poor engineers (which is what I got), which basically press the buttons and play with the switches when necessary as the ship is getting hammered with obstacles throughout the course of the mission.

The game-changer known as Flight of Passage excels because of its ability to give everybody a perfect, detailed view of the environment they are engaged in. Soarin’ walked so Flight of Passage could soar, and Soarin’ hasn’t felt the same since flying around Pandora (also doesn’t help the Around the World is slightly on the lacking side). Smuggler’s Run however has a smaller screen, more restrictions, less movement, and way more distractions than I could have ever imagined. Compounding these issues is the sheer lack of memorable characters and memorable terrain.

Side-Note: Timeline-wise, it would have been so much better to have Galaxy’s Edge take place between the events of Solo: A Star Wars Story and A New Hope, so we would have had a chance to see Han Solo, maybe see a few more storylines before the original trilogy, maybe even run into a younger Luke and a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi, even Boba Fett. We could have altered Star Tours II to include other locations so that it would still work alongside the Galaxy’s Edge chronology. It just appears Disney wants to focus on current and future Star Wars as opposed to the classic Star Wars, and this decision has been splitting the fanbase apart.

As the engineer in the ride I have to fix the ship whenever conflict arises, which in this fast-paced attraction is often. But the buttons are away from the screen and to the sides, momentarily yet continuously averting my eyes away from the action and towards the panel telling me what to do to keep us alive. Also adding to the pressure is the fact that we are getting scored, as the experience actually differs depending on how everyone performs. A good idea in hindsight, but in practice the distractions issues are obvious. Of course being in the far back of the ship didn’t help at all. The gunners aren’t given as much to do, but have a better view. The pilots are the key players and the ones truly enjoying the ride the most, as they are face-to-face with the action and perform the ship’s most popular and signature function, the jump to lightspeed. But only one-third of the riders enjoying a ride in 2019? After years of planning? Three elements could have really made Smuggler’s Run a game-changer or at the very least, a much better experience:

1) More screens, or a larger one. Even if it might play with the actual dimensions of the Falcon, the screen to see the action should have been wider on the sides and from top to bottom so that way even if your eyes are distracted you don’t need as much time to look back at the action. In Empire Strikes Back, during the infamous asteroid field scene you could see the characters look up because there are viewpoints above them.

You could have had added screens to the sides so you at least get a partial glimpse of the action. The placement of the seats also doesn’t help, as there is a lot of space between rows.

2) This one is the hardest to implement, but the payoff would be the absolute best: why not make it so that the guests are actually allowed to walk around the ship during the ride? The ride could have been a lengthier experience with lots of downtime and lots of added time for people to get up and explore some of the details of the ship and get a good glimpse of what was going on and truly be immersed.

You could have installed handrails on each side of the show space so that everyone potentially has something to hang on to while maneuvering around. This also would have made for a more realistic Star Wars experience and a chance for people to switch roles midway into the experience. Of course, the major setback is Disney would never allow for safety reasons to give this freeroaming option, nor would they ever extend a ride to be 7-8 minutes long and risk the extended wait time. And even with having seat belts on the seats to wear when the action picks up, its a lot of reliance on guests to follow directions, and this is a level of trust Disney never has.

3) This one is most feasible considering that changes have already started happening on Smuggler’s Run within weeks of opening: multiple possible scenarios. Smuggler’s Run would be an improvement if they really dug into the concept and offered a variety of different potential jobs into different locations and different challenges within each adventure at hand. The Star Wars universe features a multitude of planets and places to visit, and it could really expand the Star Wars canon and create some interactive fan service if we go to well-known places and see how they have evolved after the events of Return of the Jedi.

At the end of the day, Smuggler’s Run needs a few improvements, some impossible to implement and others within the realm of possibility, in order to become a ride with the same appeal factor as Flight of Passage. The ride because of the restrictions, smaller screen, and shorter runtime doesn’t quite create the ultimate Star Wars experience to most involved---with the pilots like I said earlier receiving most of the fun. It doesn’t mean its doomed forever, and with the budget and technology Disney can tweak around and truly propel it to new quality heights—kind of how they randomized Star Tours II even more with added endings and additional scenes.

The poor attendance and slow reception concerning Galaxy’s Edge is not strictly limited to the lukewarm-to-decent reviews of the ride, as there are multiple factors relating to the worse-than-expected attendance numbers in California and Florida (it ranges from economy to Star Wars fatigue to yes…even Trump affecting tourism). That being said, unlike the wildfire word-of-mouth reception of Flight of Passage, Smuggler’s Run definitely won’t be moving the bodies towards Hollywood Studios barring massive changes. Disney knocked it out of the park with the land itself, but everything leading up to it from the movies to the timeline of said territory is what’s making the outlook towards the largest expansion in the history of Hollywood Studios surprisingly murky.  

P.S. I stand by my stance that the impact of Hollywood Studios’ expansion would have been far far stronger if they had just held off on opening Toy Story Land to coincide with Galaxy’s Edge’s opening.

P.P.S. Isn’t it bizarre that Disney the Company and Disney Parks don’t have a more communicative relationship, as evidenced by closing Great Movie Ride, and then purchasing ONE-SIXTH of Hollywood?