Star Tours

	Star Tours
	Tokyo Disneyland
Land	Tomorrowland
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Manufacturer	Rediffusion Simulation
Attraction type	Flight simulator
Theme	Star Wars
Opening date	July 12, 1989
Closing date	April 2, 2012
Music	Richard Bells
Ride duration	4:30 minutes
Replaced by	Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

	Star Tours
	Disney's Hollywood Studios
Land	Echo Lake
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Manufacturer	Rediffusion Simulation
Attraction type	Flight simulator
Theme	Star Wars
Opening date	December 15, 1989
Closing date	September 7, 2010
Music	Richard Bellis
Ride duration	4:30 minutes
Replaced by	Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

	Star Tours
	Disneyland
Land	Tomorrowland
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Manufacturer	Rediffusion Simulation
Attraction type	Flight simulator
Theme	Star Wars
Soft opening date	December 1986
Opening date	January 9, 1987
Closing date	July 27, 2010
Music	Richard Bellis
Ride duration	4:30 minutes
Replaced	Adventure Thru Inner Space
Replaced by	Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

Star Tours

Disneyland Park
Land	Discoveryland
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Manufacturer	Rediffusion Simulation
Attraction type	Flight simulator
Theme	Star Wars
Opening date	April 12, 1992
Closing date	Late 2015 or Early 2016
Music	Richard Bells
Ride duration	4:30 minutes

Star Tours is a flight simulator attraction currently operating at Walt Disney Studios Paris, and formerly at Disneyland Park, Tokyo Disneyland, and Hollywood Studios. The attraction is themed off of George Lucas' popular film franchise, Star Wars.

History

The attraction that became Star Tours was first proposed as a flight simulator for the 1979 Disney film, The Black Hole. If the attraction opened instead of Star Tours, guests would be able to choose their own flight route. However, the Black Hole simulator ride was shelved and scrapped due to its enormous cost ($50 million) and the low popularity of the film. Instead of completely scrapping the motion simulator idea, Disney decided to make a partnership with George Lucas and Lucasfilm. Lucas created the popular Star Wars movie franchise, and Disney wanted to bring it to the parks (starting with Captain EO in 1986). Disney then explained to George Lucas the idea of a Star Wars flight simulator attraction at the Disney parks. Lucas loved the idea, and with his approval, Disney bought four military-style simulators to start working on the structure of the attraction. While constructed started at Disneyland in 1985, George Lucas and a team of special effects technicians started to work on the film that would be projected on the ride. When the simulator and film were finished, a programmer sat inside the simulator holding a joystick to control the simulator's movements. On January 9, 1987, the first Star Tours simulator ride opened at Disneyland Park with a final cost of $32 million. To celebrate, Disneyland remained open for 60 hours straight from January 9, 1987 at 10:00AM to January 11, 1987 at 10:00PM. One year later, the attraction opened at Tokyo Disneyland and Hollywood Studios. Finally, the last Star Tours ride opened with Walt Disney Studios Paris on March 16, 2002.

Star Tours: Tour to Endor

Queue

The entire plot of Star Tours is to put guests in the role of a space tourist who is en route to the planet Endor (via Star Tours travel agency). The planet makes an appearance in the climactic fight scene in the fourth Star Wars movie. Much of the travel agency is shown to guests via ride queue, which is made to look like a boarding terminal for spaceships. Guests can spot posters advertising different planets and a giant movie screen advertising to guests a short film about the benefits of vacationing on Endor. The queue also displays to guests Audio Animatronic replicas of C-3PO and R2-D2, who interact with guests. The queue also has a life-size replica of the Starspeeder 3000, the spacecraft that riders are about to fly to Endor. Guests then enter a small maintenance area of the queue where a G2 droid performs repairs on another droid robot. The G2 is a bit annoyed by the guests, and another droid to the right of the queue points out the flaws of the Starspeeder 3000 and its RX pilots. A ride attendant then escorts guests to their spaceship vehicle, where they wait to ride. A television screen shows guests a small film about the instructions while the flight is in progress.

Ride

Riders then enter their fictional Starspeeder 3000 vehicle. Shortly after the doors close, an animatronic replica of RX-24 (a.k.a. Rex) chats to guests about his excitement of flying the plane to Endor. Rex then lowers the cockpit shield, and a crew activates the flight platform. Everything goes well until Rex makes a mistake and sends the vehicle crashing into the doors of the maintenance bay. The Starspeeder 3000 plummets into the maintenance yard. Rex is very close to crashing the plane into a mechanical arm, but the spaceplane then swerves away. Rex then activates the lightspeed mode, sending the plane into a blue tunnel. Rex overdoes the lightspeed activation, and the Starspeeder 3000 flies past Endor (Rex moans in frustration). The spaceplane then gets caught into a comet storm, and the plane flies into the body of a comet. The ship then gets thrown off its course by getting hit by several other comets. The plane escapes the comet's body by crashing into a thin wall of ice. After escaping the comet, the plane encounters a Star Destroyer vehicle. The ship then gets caught in the Destroyer's tractor beam, but the plane gets loose when a X-wing rebel fighter provides assistance to the Starspeeder by crashing his plane into the tractor beam's generator. Soon after, the Starspeeder accompanies the Rebellion on an assault on the Death Star. Rex uses the plane's lasers to stall several TIE fighters while another rebel fighter destroys the Death Star by firing two proton torpedoes into the exhaust port. The X-Wings lightspeed away from the Death Star to avoid the explosion, and a final lightspeed sends the Starspeeder 3000 onto Endor's spaceport. Shortly before, the vehicle almost goes crashing into fuel truck in the hangar. The ride then stops, and C-3PO instructs guests to remain seated until the doors open.

Last Tour to Endor

On August 14, 2010, the Hollywood Studios installation of the ride hosted "Last Tour to Endor", a special event that was hosted for Celebration V guests from 8:00PM to 1:00AM the next morning. Entertainment for the event included George Lucas, appearances by characters, Jedi Training Academy, Death Star Disco, Bespin Stage Dance Party, a live show, Hyperspace Hoopla, a fireworks show, and the Star Tours shutdown ceremony on September 7, 2010. The shutdown ceremony was the official closure of the Hollywood Studios installation, and several characters from the movie included Boba Fett, Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, and several Stormtroopers. The ride isn't simply shut down by R2-D2, but Boba Fett blows the ride up with a thermal detonator (a.k.a. pyrotechnic fireworks).

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

On July 27, 2010, Disneyland Park closed its installation of the simulator, explaining to guests and fans of the ride it would be rethemed and renamed to Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. Riders would board the Starspeeder 3000 vehicle and would get chased down by Darth Vader, who is looking for a spy onboard the Starspeeder (a.k.a. a guest). Guests would also be piloted by C-3PO instead of Rex, and it would be a new 3-D experience. The Hollywood Studios installation closed with an official shutdown ceremony on September 7, 2010. Two years after, Tokyo Disneyland closed their Star Tours on April 2, 2012 to let the ride go into its retheming. The ride reopened at Disneyland Park on June 3, 2011 and at Hollywood Studios on May 20, 2011. The installation of the ride at Tokyo Disneyland will reopen on May 7, 2013. The Paris installation was announced to close in late 2015 or early 2016 for a 2017 reopening.

Trivia

The G2 droids in the queue of the Disneyland installation are actually the skeleton of two geese from the show, America Sings, that closed in 1988.
The Disneyland version of the ride had four simulator vehicles, while the other three had six simulators.