How Star Tours Laid the Stage for Disney’s Galactic Ambitions

The early phases of the ride that would become Star Tours weren’t Star Wars-themed at all. Disney originally envisioned a ride simulator attraction in Tomorrowland based around the 1979 box office flop The Black Hole. But the combination of a massive cost for the ride’s simulation technology—which planned to let guests more directly interact with the ride experience, controlling the path they went on—and the fact that, well, people were not exactly clamoring for Black Hole nostalgia, after six years of development plans were scrapped.

But Disney still wanted a new simulator ride, and decided to take a rare step—go outside the Magic Kingdom and follow up on a partnership with an outside brand that could help ameliorate the cost. Having worked together on Captain EO—1986 the 3D Michael Jackson sci-fi short film/stage attraction shown in Disney parks—Disney decided to approach George Lucas, and ask if Star Wars could make its way into its parks.

Lucas agreed—and ILM was tapped to help build the video that Star Tours would play in front of its ride machines to guide visitors through their adventure. There were a few compromises along the way. Original plans for the ride video were up to a total of 20 minutes, and needed to be cut down to just five. Lucas also wanted to avoid direct conflict in the ride: he wanted Star Tours not to directly be about the military aspects of the franchise, but find an alternative way to weave its story around the Empire-Rebellion conflict. What was planned then, was a relatable protagonist: a ditzy droid driver taking you on a tour of the galaxy, but naturally getting caught up in Star Wars along the way.

At last—and after $32 million, a huge cost but nowhere near what Disney expected to spend on a Black Hole ride—on January 9, 1987, Star Tours opened its door to Earth tourists in Disneyland hoping for a whirlwind visit to the planet Endor… with ads in the attraction’s queue (which featured animatronics of C-3PO and R2-D2 bickering, as well as other droids, to bide the time while guests worked through the four flight simulators) teasing the likes of Hoth, Dagobah, and Tatooine as locales, even if initially there were never actually plans for such additions.

Star Tours launched at fascinating time in Star Wars’ internal canon in 1987. The movies were long over, and Marvel’s comic book continuation of the story and universe wrapped over the course of the prior year. Plans to keep the similarly legendary Kenner toy series afloat with its own original worldbuilding had fallen through as well. We now know that things were about to change in the next few years: the early ‘90s brought with it the Heir to the Empire trilogy, and with it, the explosive formation of what became the Star Wars Expanded Universe. But Star Tours inadvertently took its own huge step forward: although it wasn’t majorly acknowledged, the ride was actually set after the events of Return of the Jedi, with C-3PO referring to his capture at the hands of the Ewoks in the film as having taken place in the past.

Of course, considering that Star Tours included riders seeing the sight of a Death Star under construction, that was actually a wild thing to casually drop at the time. For years the topic was left untouched, even as the Expanded Universe flourished with its own post-film continuity that simply danced around Star Tours having any kind of determinate place within canon. It wasn’t until decades later that Lucasfilm tried to square the circle on the “Death Star III,” a term first officially raised in a 2005 article on the official Star Wars website, placing the ride’s story as taking place during the latter years of the Marvel Star Wars comics.

The year 2005 was already an important one for Star Tours, however. Although as previously mentioned Star Tours launched with elements of the ride teasing other locales for the attraction, the original ride never received updates beyond the Endor adventure. But at Star Wars Celebration III in April 2005, Lucas confirmed, at long last, that the adventures would indeed continue.

With the prequel trilogy about to conclude with Revenge of the Sith’s release in May of that year, a new upgrade to Star Tours would be able to incorporate locations and ideas from the prequel trilogy, as well as expand on elements from the original trilogy beyond Endor. The new ride would also use 3D technology to immerse audiences, and no longer would they just visit a single location on each trip—the update would offer dozens upon dozens of potential unique combinations of locales in a single ride. Originally, the sequel ride would draw from six potential locations—Coruscant, Tatooine, Hoth, Naboo, Geonosis, Kashyyyk—after opening at Spaceport THX1138, with visits to different planets interspersed with messages from various Star Wars characters advising visitors about a secret mission to rescue a randomly chosen spy aboard their ride.

Not every change would be popular with Disney diehards. Although the upgrade—dubbed Star Tours: The Adventure Continues—would still maintain a lot of elements from the original, one controversial decision was to replace Star Tours’ droid pilot RX-24 (better known as Captain Rex, well before the Clone) as the ride’s “pilot” and instead directly integrate C-3PO and R2-D2 into the ride’s story, rather than just keeping them part of the queue. After shutting down the year prior in 2010 for refurbishment for the overhaul, Star Tours: The Adventure Continues formally debuted at Disney World in Florida in May 2011, before opening at Disneyland that June.

The Adventure Continues carried on as it had launched before everything changed again. Just over a year later, Star Wars was no longer a third party license: Disney was its master. The deal by the studio to acquire Lucasfilm, and develop new Star Wars movies (and re-establish a whole new rebooted continuity along the way) was announced in October 2012, and now Star Tours alone represented a way for Disney to synergize with its new material in its parks.

Unlike the prequel era, which wouldn’t be integrated into Star Tours until well after it had concluded, the sequel trilogy came into Star Tours like an event with every release: 2015 brought with it The Force Awakens, and with it a chase sequence on the desert planet Jakku as well as new interstitials featuring Finn and BB-8, as well a tweaked alternative for the opening spacesport docking sequence to include Kylo Ren and First Order stormtroopers instead of Darth Vader and Imperial forces. The years 2017 and 2019 respectively brought with them additions based around The Last Jedi—a visit to the planet Crait inspired by the climax of the film—and The Rise of Skywalker—a return of sorts to the Endor sequence Star Tours began with decades prior, as you rode to the watery moon of Kef Bir and through the wreckage of the second Death Star.

With the arrival of material from the new films, Star Tours’ original continuity was diverged to classify sequel-era material as non-canonical, given that the rest of The Adventures Continue’s material was intended to be set between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. But even in an age of transmedia continuity, that didn’t stop Star Tours from being a vital place for Disney to sell its own era of Star Wars to audiences.

That brings us to now, and a world where Star Tours is no longer the sole source of Star Wars in Disney’s parks. Five years ago next month, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, an entire hub of Star Wars storytelling, stores, restaurants, and rides, opened at Disneyland and Disney World. But while Star Tours is perhaps not the focus of Disney’s Star Wars ambitions at its parks anymore, it’s still important—even if Captain Rex is now DJing over at Oga’s Cantina instead of piloting a Starspeeder.

This week sees the beginning of the 2024 “Season of the Force,” and with it, the addition of new material to Star Tours: The Adventure Continues. As well as an additional location inspired by the events of Ahsoka, the planet Seatos, three new interstitials featuring Andor’s Cassian Andor, Ahsoka’s Ahsoka Tano, and The Mandalorian’s Din Djarin and Grogu will now be incorporated into the ride’s myriad options. Although characters from Disney’s streaming service series have been added to Galaxy’s Edge in recent years as limited-time wandering characters, the latest additions to Star Tours mark the first time these characters and worlds have been brought into parts of the rides themselves—continuing the tradition established with Star Tours’ own sequel trilogy evolution.

Star Tours is itself almost as resilient as the franchise that spawned it. Evolving from an unprecedented exterior partnership to the nostalgic heart of Disney’s connection to Star Wars over the past nearly 40 years, Star Tours isn’t now just a part of Star Wars continuity—from its designs and characters to the faux-company itself being weaved into the tapestry of both eras of the franchise’s expanded canon—but still a vital way to keep the newer and newer elements being added to Star Wars a part of the parks.

Galaxy’s Edge, for better or worse, is now itself rooted in a specific setting and moment in Star Wars’ history, creating its own thriving world with its own story to tell, but one still very deliberately connected to a moment within the sequel trilogy’s own tale. The edges of that have begun to fray here and there with every new character that shows up to wander around Batuu—but it’ll never have Star Tours’ adaptability. With more Star Wars happening than ever before, Star Tours can always be there to add a new hero or new world to its roster. After all, the adventure does continue…