Podcast: The Ride - Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Join the cause! We went to opening day of Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland. Hear our many thoughts on this massive new E-Ticket attraction! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus Imagineering Story Part 1 now up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog. We'll regroup with you after the theme song. Welcome to The Cause. It's Rise of the Resistance on Podcast The Ride. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, or as it's known today, two hours of breathless gushing. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Jason Sheridan. Bright Suns, Scott. Bright Suns. And Mike Carlson. Yes, Bright Suns as well. I assume it'll be rising moons by the time we're done with this.

I think so. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. it'll be rising moons by the time we're done with this i think so yeah yes yeah i had a question uh regarding the runtime of the episode because if all right if our standard ratio is about two hours for a three minute ride would we be forgiven for doing 10 hours on a 15 minute ride oh yeah that's a fair point yeah i think i think the audience would have to allow it. And it might be what you get. You're looking at the runtime now.

We don't know. You know more than we know. Could be 10 hours. And if so, I'm sure it's all essential and compelling. I'm sure it's riveting. We're talking Rise of the Resistance, which is the new ride based on the Star Wars franchise. Yes. Oh, my God. We got to do it. It rules. It fucking rules. the star Wars franchise. Yes. Oh my God.

We got to do it. Did rule it. Fucking rules. Holy shit. Yeah. Yes. Long, long awaited,

uh, delayed six months, eight months. We don't know exactly no one who was supposed to originally open because they pushed up the opening of star Wars galaxy's edge. Um, but it's here. Finally we did it at Disneyland.

We did not go out to Orlando. Uh, some people I think were, uh, questioning our cred that we, like we did not go out to orlando uh some people i think were uh questioning our cred that we like we should have gone to orlando to done i've done it first day um but we weigh the amount of like uh credit card points we have yes literally i said yeah i meant credit card points yeah finish the whole phrase yeah sorry that's what i call it and i just kept replying by retweeting graphs of cost of living increases in Los Angeles. But yeah, we did it at Disneyland's opening day.

We made it opening day. Opening day. A real adventure. It really was. And I think there was definitely a question at the beginning of the day if we would even get on. I think there's been that question for everybody going, and there probably are some tales of woe of people who did not get on and did not win the boarding pass shuffle.

My buddy, I felt really bad. My buddy, Avery, went down on Saturday, and the app crashed at 8 a.m., and by the time they all got back up, it was gone. Like, the people had gotten them. What a mess. Yeah, and I think they went faster on Saturday, maybe, than so well people off work you know people off work uh people knew maybe knew how it worked by then people had realized that camping out from mid the the one of the parking

lots the toy story lot was open at midnight uh so people were there and camping out and then it was determined that by 8 a.m you did not have to do that that didn't help you in any regard no yeah so basically what what had happened was my understanding is in florida you had to um like have a very similar uh app situation as the one in disneyland but the way they were doing it is that first person in would immediately get to join a boarding group. So I don't know when those would start. Maybe they started like at seven. They started earlier. So essentially it was first come first serve. And as soon as you went through the turnstile, you get on your app and find your slot and it would obviously go through sequentially.

So there was an incentive to being there first. You would get a little more fair. Yes, it is. it is more fair the most fair to insane people yes so the people at midnight would have benefited at least they would have been like the first people on but now they've randomized it on both coasts yes and i think we have a leg up because i saw one twitter user uh post about this and i texted you about it of like the system for doing it is built on the backbone of max pass which we are familiar with we have it out here but it's a they don't have it in florida and everything in florida the digital fast passes work a little differently yeah so i was i had that question so basically when we say it's randomized now quote unquote it means that everyone who has gone through the

turnstile at 8 a.m gets on their app right at that time and gets added to a boarding group now i don't think it's actually randomized i think it's still doing first come first serve it's just that since it's a giant clusterfuck of a bunch of people trying to get on it's essentially randomized because there's so many people doing it you're not with half second difference right more like yeah parse it even more yeah yeah i think it also helps if you have the fastest phone and whoever has the best data providing in yes and where and what what yeah what data is received the best in that specific spot in disneyland let's start out with a hack let's start out with what we believe to be a hack really a little bit of a hack well i don't use the wi-fi don't use the wi-fi don't use the disneyland wi-fi

now you can leave after you go through the gate that's what we're talking about here yeah i see so the idea would be maybe go a day before you're gonna do it and test out where your phone gets the strongest signal even you could do it before walking around the park i disagree with this step this is madness you have to do a prep day i yes it's very funny you use that word the twitter account is madness kingdom they write some they have some very interesting essays on Medium. Check them out. But you also could go to the Grand California, you could go through the turnstile at Disneyland at 7 a.m., leave, go to Grand California and get on the Wi-Fi in the lobby or somewhere,

sit comfortably in a chair, and then at 8 o'clock, try getting on. If you live close enough you could go to your damn house sure uh so the hack is become an anaheim homeowner yes that would definitely help uh or just go have a nice breakfast a hack for every day you gotta start up there it's good breakfast if captain kid's buffet on harbor has wi-fi which i don't know the answer to because we haven't uh reviewed it for the podcast yet go over there snip that word yet out of the sentence for sure do you mean for when we for sure let's not add any words i think it was a tidy sentence

up until the end the moment you say oh hey i'm going out of town for a little while mike and i just start salivating i'm'm like, Captain Kidd. Captain Kidd, Captain Kidd. Yeah, the first day. That bastard's not holding us back anymore. Dad's away. He's trying to have dessert for breakfast. He's trying to have dessert for dinner.

Reviewing by far the worst reviewed restaurant in the vicinity of the Disneyland park. You will have to come back from that trip because we will list you as our emergency contact for Anaheim General Hospital. And we check in for any number of foodborne illnesses. Scott pulls the plug on both of us. I'm taking it

one step further than Nick Mundy who yanked your microphone cord out. I'm yanking your living cords out. Sir, that was a saline drip. Sorry, we were just trying to hydrate them. Eh, close enough. They'll die slowly over months. So, yeah, so to finish up the hack,

essentially don't find a spot where your phone has either good hotel Wi-Fi or a good strong signal in the park vicinity somewhere and you don't necessarily need to we because we walked over by the land i think that was maybe a mistake because it wasn't the strongest signal and we had problems getting right in and getting a group on the app but i watched some people people were counting down to 8 a.m inside galaxy's edge there was a mass in galaxy's edge who all jumped on and some of them got earlier groups than us. I will say that. So some of them didn't get through on the app, but they did accidentally get a transmission

from a long dead emperor and discovered he's still alive on a secret underground planet. I didn't know. I would have liked to have gotten that transmission. Would have been cool. Very surprising. I'll be honest, it sounds confusing. No, I think it's pretty clean when I'm setting up.

It sounds like people die and then they come back to life years later and are kept alive by a big cord tree, by a big group of dongles. And they've built any number of country bear shows. Like hundreds and hundreds of country bears.

So you're saying that those are... I'm saying by theme park, yeah. The theme park equivalent. Exegol has 20 country bear shows. Okay. Of all the seasonal ones. So in this bit, Exegol is the Sith planet, but the country bears are being built under the water. The bears speak.

So the bears are... The under the water. The bears speak. So the bears are the emperor. Okay. Since Return of the Jedi, the emperor has been building animatronic shows under that ocean, that exegol ocean for 30 years. And then they will all rise up at a certain point. Yes. Favorite music, bluegrass. He loves, uh, Sheev Palpatine's favorite music is bluegrass.

The same name as that woman from uh succession yes yeah that's well i mean i look i would have loved it they got the x goal it was shiv all along a different uh cinematic baddie um so yeah so we got on the app at 8 a.m we had three of us trying so that's also another tip if you have multiple people in your group put your passes on each person's phone and have everybody try because yeah god knows the thing crashes it doesn't work i didn't i look i'm a master checker i'm not a master code breaker but i'm a master checker and i didn't. I look, I'm a master checker. I'm not a master code breaker, but I'm a master checker. And I didn't get the reservation. My phone kept crashing. Cover the spread. Cover the spread. Wow. But this this was and I posted this on Instagram.

The moment of you preparing for your most like the check of your life, basically. Yeah. And I must have been thrilling. It was. you sometimes you fail when you check you failed but by enacting the plan by which other people succeeded it was still your victory that is yeah thank you for saying you for saying that I really hadn't thought about it I just sort of had felt bad about not being the one to get like a really high cuz I what you know I wanted to get like oh I pulled group three sure that's what i wanted for for my ego you win the game by one point or 30 points it doesn't

matter you still won the game yeah you're right yeah and we did and we did make it and just so like so for people who are going and trying to do this and hopefully it is still the boarding pass system by the time this episode comes out or all this is irrelevant advice. But with our sort of randomized and with Mike having us all cover the spread, we got on, we were 87, which as the day played out, and we know that there were several short breakdowns of the ride, maybe 45 minutes to an hour. This was 8 a.m. Group 87, we got on at 7 p.m. And that includes breakdowns.

Yeah. So let that be kind of your guide. If you get before 80, you're probably in for sure. Yes. After 80, you're dancing on the line. 82 is what the app says. Like, you'll get in if you're 82 or under. Where they don't want to promise it.

Right. I see. And I think Saturday they went over the amount they went on Friday. So ideally it's getting better. I checked on Saturday. I know on Friday they capped it at like one, like in the early 100s. Yeah. They gave it out into 120.

I think they capped it around 110, 111. By Saturday night at 740, second day of operation, They were at groups 109 to 111. So get a little faster. Okay. And closing the window, too, of the amount of groups that... So if you're post-100, don't despair. It's still possible. Yes.

And then you get a full day in the park. But I think don't expect to go and check out the ride in the morning and be on your merry way in the afternoon. If you get there at 8 a.m., you are committing to potentially being there all the way till midnight. Yes, for sure. Unless you can find like the highest speed internet

in the park and you can get right on. But yeah, that's I wouldn't count on that. Yeah. It's and even then sort of like finger dexterity is part of the issue and probably the newest phone making sure dexterity is part of the issue. And probably the newest phone, making sure it's the newest version of the app. There's a lot of factors. Go and upgrade your phones.

Go get the hottest new phone. I don't know what it is. Get the one with the best processing speed, with the best network coverage. You know, this is all prep you need to do to get on a ride. And maybe know somebody who has fast fingers. Maybe if you have a friend who's like a court stenographer or something that requires... Or a pianist. Yes, that's a good one.

Or a pickpocket. Like Liberace. Yes, if you know any of these three. Any of these pickpockets. For sure. Although, you know, is that of these three. Pickpockets. For sure. Although, you know, is that fingers or is that wrist? Is pickpocketing, what is the, what do you need? I think it's applicable.

And I think quick fingers would have to help because you have to make sure they aren't felt. Yeah, that's true. They're in and out of a pocket without impact. Close-up magicians. Close-up magicians. When you think about. That's another, yes. Yes, good category. That's another. Yes. Yes. Good category.

That's good. That is good. But I'm saying when you think of because all I can think of is the man who is playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra, which wasn't like they put Michael Douglas's head on that guy. His hands. I'm thinking that guy's got fast fingers. Yeah. I think even if you're a pianist, probably get practicing. Probably like make sure you can do Liberace double time.

Yes. Because just like being able to play a nice little dirge isn't going to help you. You got to be a fast pianist. Yeah. So you got to be a pianist. You got to be a piano-y kind of guy. Rag time. If you can play.

Rag time would be helpful. Play multiple different rags. Different type of rags you can play would be helpful. Play multiple different rags. Different type of rags you can play would be helpful. Guitar is applicable, too. If you know Eddie Van Halen, get him in. Oh, yeah. If you can shred, keep shredding. Shredding also valuable.

You know, we mentioned Liberace before. I'm realizing now Liberace needs to come up on the show a little bit more. Sure. So I just want to throw that out there. Well,'s not a museum anymore is there i mean there's that weird thing you can visit when i'm scared of visiting the weird thing that eva anderson told us about where you just uh pay some money to a guy in a limo who picks you up and then he takes you to some like undisclosed location and you look at stuff he has like room temperature champagne in his limo yeah and i'll I'll, I'll do it.

I'll do it. So we can talk about at least in that way. That's like the themed experience with Liberace. Essentially, as far as I know, I think there was a more committed museum at one point in time. But for some reason, kids aren't going to the Liberace museum and they had to shut it down for whatever reason. Dumbasses.

I know. What's happening to the kids um okay but so uh fast fingers required yes we made it i think it's interesting to this a lot of um playing with your expectations training you the the disney parks training you this is training people how to use advanced features of the apps because you have to link all of your parties tickets into in theory just one app but like i haven't done this a lot like mike you know the ins and outs of this app you know you you know the max pass system back and forth i feel like not a lot of people dameron and an x-wing you know it left and right uh yeah the the disneyland app is like my x-wing you have no control over how

fucking buggy and weird this app is in terms of signing you out and making you log back in and just crashing when you try to use one of its features hey make sure activate touch id so that the thumbprint goes through so that you don't have to retype your password because you'll get signed out randomly. Yes. Or Face ID. Or Face ID.

Okay. I don't have that, but I get that. Yeah. I don't know how many people were in the park in the morning because I wonder if it's like, I don't even know how to guess because there were a ton of people in the park. Yeah. What was it? 10? 20? Maybe. It was kind of crazy.

We're at like a super packed main street. It was only half open and then dramatically they opened it all the way to the hub and we were crouched over by the Plaza Inn or the other? Jolly Holiday. Yeah, yeah. We were crouched over there for a while.

It's kind of exciting. I hadn't been to Disneyland in the morning when it's dark, probably since the high school grad nights I got to do. That's a fun way to do it. There was a lot of excitement. You guys convinced me to come to the opening day of this and of Galaxy's Edge.

Great time at both. I assumed both were going to be a zoo. I was still picturing what i know about when indiana jones adventure opened in the 90s and it is clear how much disney has learned since then it is so much more than just getting a big line yes which hagrid's that we just talked about seems to just be getting a huge line big line uh but disney has created these systems where you could you could be shit out of luck you might not to get it might not get to get on the thing at all but uh you know in both of these cases are like the board the digital boarding groups worked great you know we had to wait all day but that's a whole day you get in disneyland it was a blast yeah i wonder like i

don't know now that they have the system figured out i guess they'll just employ it with most things they open i would guess because like yeah marvel land phase one opens i assume they'll use a similar thing because i don't think like you'll always have obviously people like that come for the ride that can't get on the ride and it's a big pain in the ass um but it's not gonna be like look what you're saying where it's just like the line is all the way down to Captain Kidd's buffet or something for like Indiana Jones. You're in the line. You might as well grab a handful of eggs since you're right there. Yeah.

Pay your fortune in the room. Pay your four or five dollars for the buffet and you get the eggs and you get them to go and eat them as you go. If a line ever forces you into a unrelated uh buffet establishment yeah yeah um but so uh i mean anything else in terms of like tips to do it or can we talk about the the ride the actual ride i'm trying to think i think that's really all it is i mean i would also just keep an eye on Disney social media because they do change things from time to time. So we recording this a few days before this comes out,

but by the time this comes out, that could also be have changed. All this could be irrelevant. So, but as it stands, if it's still the boarding pass system, just make sure you're in the park at 8am. It's all matters.

Don't do any camp outs unless, unless you want, unless that's just for a fun bonding experience. Just give yourself enough time. So you're not like cutting it close to 8 a.m because like you just want to be going to be crowded you want to be such like you want to be like in a spot and you want to know where your wi-fi or your you will lose at 805 805 you're you're done yeah yeah so you gotta be like firmly in the park not like like oh shit at turnstiles at 759 yeah like no don't be in the starbucks line at 750 and like like really like make sure you get in there

with enough time and 15 minutes to sort of zoom around and see where your phone has good signal it seems like in florida the window is starting to open up a little more yeah like they're still getting like 30 minutes in 40 minutes in you could still get into group here uh i don't know i mean i think these boarding groups will be in play on both coasts for at least a couple months if not long probably yeah that's it seems like that and stuff's's going to be buggy. Stuff's going to break down. We've been told, expect this ride to break down. Like four or five hours up, one hour down. But like there's a lot of staff. There's a lot of people working on it to get it back up quickly.

But it made it pretty good opening day, seemingly. I don't it certainly was not some PR. We're talking about that with Paul Scheer last week week who joined us who was with us for the day and he he was he said in our episode last week they need disneyland needs a win this has to go great and i i think it went great i don't know any bad pr out there yeah i'm sure there's a few yeah people in groups that didn't get on but that's it like which of course sucks but it's not like people were in line for seven hours i saw disney i think even in florida they're going so far to try to may still make it a win that they like i think there was a long um amount of time that the ride was down and they were handing out free chips and like water and

then they made ray walk through the line to take photos with everybody so they're like we can't make they can't be mad we can't have like people being like our three in line on rise of the resistance or anything. So they're even hyper sensitive, I think. Hyper. Yeah. Like everybody was cheered up once they were like,

once Ray passed through and everybody got to shout, no, no, your last name. What's your last name? And she answered every single person. What her last name is. Yeah.

They all wanted to know. Yeah. Yeah. You really, and actually you talk about pr and disney and star wars this is of the two products in the last month with rise in the title one of them has been incredibly well received that's and it's nice to see i don't want to say which one it is judge on your own yeah yeah that's true uh it is that is funny that they're both rise they're both first yeah the resistance had to rise in florida so that skywalker could rise yeah on the movie screens and then the resistance had to rise again in los

angeles yeah that's the getting back up like this is the second second and like not no he's not down now he's not hasn't been knocked out yet still rising still rising although we we talked about i i think one of you pulled it i described it like carly uh had found the had taken a screen grab of the picture that was briefly posted on the official disneyland account which is like a beautiful renaissance painting of like a child and her dad seemingly running away from galaxy's edge and r2d2 and in the middle of the photograph is just bob eiger looking confused and it does look like they not know when they posted it what's that do they not realize that i think they'd probably just were like oh this is kind of a cute picture and then maybe like enough comments were like huh this is kind of a cute picture. And then maybe like enough comments were like, oh, this is kind of weird.

This is weird. And then people are like, oh, we've got to get away. Got to get it out of there. He looks like he looks mad. It does look like a little girl is upset running away from an angry Bob Iger. Rob Iger and R2-D2. But it is like a beautiful, confusing painting. It is like an abstract work.

Yeah. Yeah. I finally caught it. Yeah, I agree. It's very good. I'm trying to think of things we can say, because I think just out of necessity, this will become a spoilery episode. And we'll certainly give you the firm point of no return on that. But what can we say?

In terms of just what I was thinking of things to say before we talk about it uh clearly a lot of credit has to be given to scott trobridge i think so if this going on the ride is where it has registered with me that he is the tony baxter of today i think he is the 2020s or the 2010s and has been for a while because for people who don't know all the mythology, he's responsible for he's been in charge of this entire project of all of Galaxy's Edge. And if you watch the Imagineering story, which we talk about on the second gate, he's kind of the most prominent Imagineer in episode six and the final episode of it. And clearly with good reason that he stacks up with with your Gers and your Baxters. He was a universal person where his magnum opus over there was the Spider-Man ride. The Amazing Adventure of Spider-Man.

Yeah. And heavily involved with all the Harry Potter stuff. Yeah. Seemingly laid out the plans, figured out all the basics of it and the immersiveness of it and then before it was built uh got snatched by disney and right over there and like it doesn't seem like he's had like a super public what's his amazing disney project until galaxy's edge but boy that's yeah it works the way obviously he's been working on it forever uh and he's like i think he's technically he's the head of imagineering now okay i believe isn't that no isn't that god bob

weiss the head of imagineering or is that like president yeah you know what i shouldn't even because these titles are so confusing the portfolio he's he's like he's at the top of some aspect of imagineering. I'm almost positive. Something good. It might be a different name than what I said or what you. What's Rhodey? I don't know what anyone is. Yeah, because Rhodey's been there forever.

They have crazy titles. He's like lead explorer of Imagineering. He's head of the pack of Imagineering. Chief witch doctor. Yes, he's chief witch doctor but I think when you this ride without giving a lot away yet shares a lot of DNA

with Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man it and I don't know how much he had to do with the actual ride Harry Potter and Forbidden Journey but I it's like it's akin to those where it's a really rewarding mix of physical things and screens and it's truly surprising at every step it rearranges types of rides into new configurations like you've never seen great third acts i think these all have very

similar third acts yeah these rides with big surprises yeah and with really satisfying screen sections which if you're on a pure screen ride you can just get like all right sure i i think i get all your moves and he all of trobridge's rides have like surprising i don't know just like something up its sleeve at the end screens built molded into sets and used more gracefully than some other attractions yeah and i think this is like the most of anything like you would never and never ever would you call this a screen ride despite the fact that it probably has like a hundred screens in it yeah it's all doing surprising things that are supporting like the big headlines are the physical sets and the tangible things there there was one and i'm sure we'll get to it later but

there is an effect that combines the screens and physical stuff in the location that i didn't realize when we were first in it because i was so affixed at the physical set in the animatronic where i was like oh my god that happens because something happened on the screen and it's so and and there's a big audio cue but it's so of a one of one piece that i was like oh i was just impressed by the one piece i didn't even see until later on there's other things as we're saying they're like we'll get a little hard line spoiler in a little bit. Who knows? It could be another hour before. Soon, I assume.

But there's stuff where I was like, I don't know how they did this. And then it's so clear how they did it. You just miss it when you're on the ride because you're immersed. You're thinking about the story. Yeah, absolutely. I also have to give credit to disney i don't know what is again i don't his title creative executive john larina comes up in a lot of uh the longer articles about this he is talking to trobridge in the rise section in imagineering story which

i went back and watched oh but they're looking at like the the um you know uh rehearsal runs of some secret like not fully 100 there yet but like okay this is what it looks like when you do this and he him and trobridge are like walking through stuff sharing little notes yeah yeah uh a thing i didn't know about trobridge till i looked it up this morning his first job in theme park world san rio puro land wow i didn't know it makes me so happy now that i've been there and really enjoyed it like there is some real unique spirit and energy and he was there in the very beginning i think he went in 89 for the for the opening so there's like original bones dna at san Pura Land of this guy. Now, clearly one of the theme park greats. And the most wonderful thing about all this, we had been on the ride.

We were blown away by the ride. We went to cool down with some some milk at the milk stand. And who should walk by in a Star Wars cast member crew jacket? But Scott Trowbridge, the fact that we recognize him yeah so shows the level so so i hear scott goes is that scott trobridge and i turn around and i go oh yeah for sure it's scott trobridge yes good eyes glad we found each other we said hi to him in my mind we're like well let the television let the famous man uh kind of follow let's let him get out front so i uh yeah i i i went and asked are you scott he said yes and i was like i just have to shake your

hand i just want to shake your hand on this day and we were gushing about the ride and all he wanted to know was about the new type of milk that we had yes what's the type of milk what's the milk yes he very home oh yeah we'll get we'll get to the milk we'll get to the milk in the section where we talked before sith artifact that may have been my undoing well wait why are we why do we have to wait on that one you're right it's a fruit from toy daria right that's the milk from toy darian squirrel the toy darian swirl or is it this is not a ride spoiler so might as well yeah you're right you're arian swirl is it toy darien or toy daria swirl is there an n at the end i i wrote

down an n but i could be wrong just double check i i may have misread it's from wato's planet then yes yeah but it's like it's like it looks like spiced milk there's like something at the top there's an imagine it's the chili lime seasoning tahini there is an imagineer mango jelly inside there is an imagineer who loves wado yeah because there's a toy darian toy um not shop what is it toy stall toy yeah yeah uh it is with an n toy darian swirl green then someone wrote it wrong and i read it okay so a couple of us had this milk and he mainly wanted to know how the milk was which was a nice it felt like him deflecting reminded me of when

we met tony baxter and he just said have you guys done guardians yet he didn't want to accept all this praise about his life and body work which he knew we were probably going to try to do he's like deflecting and let's talk about the greater good like what else is happening yeah he wanted to talk about the cosplay he was like oh some great cosplay he didn't want to be like oh that's great thank you so much what else did you like about my ride or anything he wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna be like he just wanted to yeah to fucking talk about everyone else pretty cool that's a that's a cool way to be now let's uh talk about your stomach what happened jason so okay so we all got i mean the ride's coming after this so yeah the ride's coming after this after this 45 minutes uh transport you to jason's stomach

you know it was a long day it was like uh i woke up at 4 a.m that day i think i went to bed at 11 p.m that night a good portion of that spent at disneyland j I had seen Doolittle in IMAX the night before. So we had a wild ride. So I was still a little wound up. It's okay to be sleepy. I couldn't get to sleep. I was just thinking about. Did that sound like Doolittle's Welsh?

No, not at all. It's okay to be scared. If I ever had to do my Doolittle, it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared. Maybe the E. It's okay to be scared. I mean, this is my, if I ever had to do my Doolittle, it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared. Maybe the E. It's okay to be scared. I mean, I don't want to drop a spoiler for Doolittle, but the accent is not consistent. I don't want to drop a spoiler

and I didn't see Doolittle, but, and I don't want to drop a spoiler for it, but Dragon's Asshole. I did just drop a spoiler. But I won't say how a dragon does wait wait asshole scott seat holes i think that's a word i think so seat is more innocent than ass i think seat hole is more disgusting than asshole i don't know let the audience decide that's just me though yeah me and the dragon both having intestinal issues uh that day jason was a lot

like the dragon i was a lot like the dragon for dulo okay i mean i should have account i always forget that when it's cold out i'm going to spend a lot of time in the cold and i'm going to be up for a long time i need to watch what i eat and starting the day at 4 30 a.m with a large coffee and a donut from 7-eleven maybe didn't put me on the best footing um so i wrote down what i ate to try and figure out where i went wrong coffee and donut uh 4 30 a.m around 11 11 30 a vegetarian ronto wrap in galaxy very good uh delicious uh then the aloha sculpin the guava and pineapple infused IPA at Ballast Point. Not grapefruit.

Not grapefruit. How did you find the price point on that? Actually, I find, I think it's fair at micro breweries. Micro breweries, usually because you're buying it right from the source. How much was it? Pretty well priced. $7 for an eight ounce pour. Not a full pint, still.

And then we had some press. But if you buy the bottles from the store, it's much cheaper per bottle. But that's just, you're buying it at a bigger, okay. We had some pretzel bites with beer cheese for the table. I really liked that beer cheese. Before the skull pin, that's where I had the Toydarian swirl. And I was like, this is interesting. I'll try it for the sake of it being interesting

but like spicy cold goo drink because it had like mango jelly like boba kind of jelly in there too that may have been undoing then about three or four we all got coffees i had a tall coffee at starbucks then i had a granola bar and this is is where it started. I think that combination of beverages without food. It's not like a firm meal in there. Not like a firm meal, which didn't come until about 9 p.m. Mike and I stopped at Portillo's and I had a hot dog on the way home. You had Portillo's? I needed actual food.

The hot dog was fine. The hot dog helped because it was solid food. Again, you needed actual food, not hot dogs. It was a Chicago dog, so I had the you know there's so many vegetables there's any number of pickled vegetables basically like a salad it was like a salad basically with a little kind of like a salad but i thought about getting a caesar salad and it made the thought made me ill like i don't it can caesar salads can be real dicey like is this a real caesar salad or is this the goo dressing most places it's just the dressing and so i mean by the time you went to

dock on you went to docking bay seven you ate a dinner dinner which had its own calamity of like the restaurants were just crushed and that's something to watch out for if you're we kept experiencing that people were waiting forever for star wars food just because everybody wants it while this ride is open right did you say your ronto rep i said the ronto you did i missed it and that was fine i think like because it was like well if i had breakfast at 4 a.m lunch would come six or seven hours later that makes sense did you have the veg i forget did you have a vegetarian and i really liked it michael i'm sorry i zoned right out during jason's list of what he ate for some bizarre reason i wasn't honestly and that is weird because i'm usually

right along with yeah so that is honestly attuned but i came back from the bar and everyone had ordered iced tea well scott you had a glass of wine um sure did and i was like oh yeah maybe i shouldn't have gotten a beer at like new that was the other thing i was like god i am exhausted and it was 12 30 p.m so i don't know getting up that early i need to force myself to go to bed a little earlier when i have to get up that early i was dressed warm i was plenty warm what do you think cold has to do with it i don't the cold just wears on me it just i do much better in heat i mean i don't disagree with that but as far as like your stomach being concerned like i don't know the cold makes your stomach more stressed out do you get stressed because it's cold uh i think maybe i'm not like mentally stressed but i feel like i i feel very flushed pretty quickly and also i was pretty like but while

we were just killing time waiting for 8 a.m. to roll around, I was starting to lag a bit just because there was no, there wasn't really any, we weren't walking around. We were just kind of hanging around, chit chatting, fiddling with our phones. And I think that was like, oh God, I need to, you know, once we started going on stuff and walking around, I perked up a little more. So what happened? Did you barf or did you shit a lot? No, I wasn't doing anything for a while.

I was just like stuck. So we're talking Saturday. You were backed up. Friday night. I was Friday. And like, finally, once the hot dog got the gears. And we don't want to get too gross. Maybe this is a lot of people's first time listening to podcasts.

If it is. Oh, boy. Yeah. Just skip ahead like 20 minutes. I also don't want to get too gross. We'll say what's in the ride say what's in the ride contributor but i will say like this is a big part of the podcast and you'll just have to get used to it um yeah saturday i was fucking weird i was like that's where i'm going but i also want to say like it is when you're at theme park it throws off the way your body gets rid of waste like indicated like if you would it'll like stop

it'll stop you from going to the bathroom because like you're on a plane so much yeah because you're it's like you know you're always in uh flight i think you're trying to avoid those but i think your body does not want to go sit on a theme park well and yes i know where the good ones are but it's never the convenient ones the good ones usually good because they're off the beaten path well isn't you said there's a bathroom in the line for rise of the resistance that's what i heard i didn't see it i didn't see it there was one kind of alcove hallway where i was like maybe it's around there yeah i'm not sure where it is i don't know if i don't know if you asked the r5 droid nicely he might have driven us all to a restroom let you to the bathroom then

yes yeah and then gotten us off of the ship there's a bathroom droid i assume yeah you yes you shit into its head you shit into the bathroom droid's head it's uh let's see is there like a dirty uh number letter situation we could come up with what the star Wars bathroom droid is. Gotta be. He's just number two. It's BM2. It's BM2. I was going to say like P00P. Like O-O-P. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that works for a few things.

P0-0P. P-O-O-P. Yeah, that's good. Oh, look, P-O-O-P is here. Open your head, please. Master Windu needs to use you. Western shows Mace Windu to take a dump. He says thanks.

It's what he lives for. This is the bathroom. I kind of took it. Yeah, I think all of Saturday. Luke was building a bathroom droid instead. Or no, Anakin was building a bathroom droid kind of took it. Yeah. I think all of Saturday. Luke was building a bathroom droid instead. Or no, Anakin was building a bathroom droid instead of C-3PO. C-3PO is the first droid he built that wasn't for pooping in.

Yeah. Welcome to the podcast. Right. If it's your first time. So try to just, just, yeah, your body's acting differently at a theme park.

So I, I messed up by not having, trying to like have three square meals because every now and then at the parks are like try this new snack and i'm like well i guess i kind of want to try you don't know if they're gonna keep it around for a while but like be careful of that just be careful well don't go to a hot dog place after all this trying the pump that got that put me back on equilibrium because that was a real real food i again question your use of i didn't i felt better after the hot i felt better out of the hot again question your use of i didn't i felt better

after the hot i felt better after the hot dog and like saturday i just ate i had like a granola bar i drank a lot of water at night i had a couple small slices of like cheese pizza like very simple food how much did you sleep because we were obviously we didn't get enough sleep uh how much did you sleep saturday like 10 hours or so. Like Friday into Saturday, like 10 hours. Yeah, okay. And then probably a similar. I was wiped out on Saturday. I took a nap on Saturday. Yeah. For sure. It took

it out of me. But my stomach wasn't screwed up. Although I didn't I did not have any alcohol. And yeah. Good boy. I didn't want to get sleepy. Yeah, yeah. It did. Yes didn't want to get sleepy. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

It did make me sleepy. So are we there? Do we do it? Yeah. Unless Jason has any more stomach updates. No, but I do recommend that veggie ronto wrap. Try that. It is.

Yeah. The veggie ronto wrap really good. Sometimes like, yeah, like a veggie sausage or vegan sausage kind of weird. But no, I really liked it. Yeah. And the veggie thing in Docking Bay. Also very good. Oh, hell. It seemed to beat the Endurian Yip Yip, which our friend Matt was kind of displeased with.

Right. You warned him, Jason. So maybe stay away from that Yip Yip. It was not like outstanding, which is funny because a half mile away at the plaza is like amazing fried chicken. Fried chicken. a half mile away at uh the plaza is like amazing very good uh i think it's safe to say i think the ronto has the ronto wrap is very quickly entered it's come in hot as one of the best foods you can get in the disney parks welcome brother welcome to the sausage society

just need a little more going on i needed my jer. I needed my fancy slaw and my cheetah. It's a very mature hot dog entry. And I believe they ran out the first day. People so wanted to pair their Rise of the Resistance with a Ronto wrap that they ran out of them. Then they had more Rontos. I want to try that. I haven't tried the breakfast one yet either. Yeah.

So, yeah. They keep the variations coming also, I say. Yes. Absolutely. So, Rise of the Resistance. Yeah. Y'all, fuck. We're only 42 minutes into the podcast. We're so screwed here.

God damn it. So, yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody was disappointed i think all of the speculation we've done over many episodes is this going to be the missing piece that makes the whole galaxy's edge picture work completely i i it's it's wonderful it's it is it's really so good it's really really amazing it's really impressive i At the end, I have some nitpicky thoughts, but they're all, you know. I mean, I think, yeah, any attraction, you're going to, like, there's one or two things, but they... Like, I imagine that whoever worked on this would be right to tell me to fuck off after I say it.

But I will, because, you know, we have to. This is what, you know. Yeah. This is what we're doing here. I said when we were there, I was like, it's such a flex. Oh, yeah. that's what we're doing here i said when we were there i was like it's such a flex oh yeah i mean of like what imagineering is capable of with the time and budget yeah i was trying to think of what is the closest thing even to it i mean there's obviously it's like it takes elements from every other ride yeah yeah that's the cool thing about it maybe now we say spoiler yeah i guess we can refer to scenes.

Yeah. All right. You survived. If I guess right, I hope you enjoyed all the stomach-crushing detailing and listen to it after you go on the ride. And I don't, also all of those individual items I had, I think they were all fine. I don't think any of those were bad. But the combination and the timing is what did it.

I'm pissed at that granola bar. Fuck you, granola bar. I will not have you disparaging the fine people in the nature valley you said okay uh wait you said the items are okay yeah yeah you live and you live mostly on kind bars and i live mostly on nature valley yeah that's true i do have one in my pocket currently yeah um so. Okay. In terms of elements. Yes. Um, there are like, it is this bizarre, how do you even describe the recipe? It's there's, there are definite, I think Indiana Jones is probably the closest analog in terms of, uh, scale in terms of that.

It's not a roller coaster, but it's very exciting in a surprising ride vehicle way. It does things you don't expect it to do. It's whipping around the biggest scale sets you've ever seen. Yeah. I think the height. There are plenty of wonderful attractions that are not tall. All of the Fantasyland Dark Rides are very short and they're all delightful. But, oh my God.

The like, I think not since Indiana Jones has there been something so multi story. And we are exploring every possible corner of this massive building. You know, I saw and imagine you're referring to like you have to if you think back to Pirates of the Caribbean, this is a natural evolution or extension because that also similarly puts you right in the middle of a battle. Now you're kind of an observer, an outside observer to it. You don't really affect what's going on in Pirates. But yeah, Pirates and Indiana Jones, kind of the natural. Yeah, yeah.

And there's definitely a pirate component and that way yeah like here's the the zone that kind of eases you into it and then it gets super exciting and then haunted mansion components obviously in that the cast members have stuff to do this finally well i guess jungle cruise too there's finally like a third answer to where do you where would you want to work probably jungle cruise and haunted mansion because you get to like do the personality choices and now you've got this ride with this this is a wonderful role i think for a cast member yeah yeah um the the biggest i mean i guess i shouldn't say the biggest change because yeah

we're talking about haunted mansion and tower of terror rides where the the cast members get to do a character if they want and get to be weird or rude or mean, which is fun. But this really felt much more because we've, you know, we've done a couple of immersive things in the last year and those are on the rise, I feel like, and escape rooms are popular and like it felt so very much like one of those things. Yeah. It feels like a mega budget immersive experience. Like I wasn't even expecting it to feel like that much, but it is like, mega budget immersive experience like i wasn't yeah even

expecting it to feel like that much but it is like that's what it is yeah and the people they have opening this direction the cast members are so on it they are so they're like they're performing great while doing just basic how many people in your party functions yes you could see a world in 20 years where the performance isn't like i could see this decaying a little bit and it's a little more like how many how many but like opening day doing this in january 2020 you've just got top of the line people everybody's doing a great job everyone's psyched probably to be there still two two different varieties because half of them are like resistance fighters going like, come on, come on, we need your help. And then the other half are like fashy first order, like stand in the line.

Like a British character actor, like you're going to be interrogated momentarily. There was one man. This guy can't really control how tall he is. There was what I will only describe as one of the tallest men i have ever seen and he was a first order guy and he was so good and he was like menaced a small like it was one of the best performance moments i've ever seen in a park where like there was kid going like no way and this guy is like you're going to get extra interrogation. And I was like, this is incredible. This is so good.

Yeah, they'll pick on specific people. They'll get right in people's faces. I mean, how do we do that? Should we kind of room it? Go back a little bit, yeah, to the start. I mean, all right. The line, which in its current state, there may be a point in time where you just you get in this line, you're in this line for a long time. But right now it's more like Indiana Jones where they're holding you outside and then you just breeze right through it, which is cool because getting to just tear through this long series of hallways and not even really perceive everything that's there is kind of is kind of i kind of like just getting to

zip through all that but clearly there's amazing details uh in the line which is how would you describe it it's a resistance base it's like a hidden it's like hollowed out of like a mountain or of like like everything like you feel mind it feels like blown up yeah to form the like the base in 1917 or something like it is i mean that's kind of what it is like in a story um explanation is that this these are like ancient caves like hollowed out ancient caves and the the rebels have ad hoc set up a base that you can see like stuff's in temporary cages wires look rigged up like there's a lot of hanging the equivalent of hanging clamp lights so they had to get out of here quickly they could um and then there's yeah there's weapons and there's weapons or

uniforms like computer consoles and it's it's a cousin to uh smugglers run in that both clearly start and end at batuu yeah they keep the general story of batuu going and it's not like star tours where once you enter the star tours building it's just well i guess where are we now i don't know and you end in indoor what on whatever other planet and then why are you back in disneyland nothing that's ever bothered me about star tours but it's just cool that they both like keep batu alive uh it's like it can be one long story going on all these attractions right um yeah that's very cool um and then of course as we know we've said before they tie in star tours to batu in ways as well which is really great yeah because that because obviously like they were so gung ho about making sure all of this story wise made sense and fit into the official Lucasfilm timeline.

But it's not super strict, like it's kind of timeless, but it takes place sometime after Last Jedi before Rise of Skywalker. Right. Some of the characters have been killed since this ride. And some of the characters have been killed since this ride and some of the characters have been killed off screen by wikipedia entries and then specifically nine numb uh is that is that how you say it yeah uh the little little dude who drives you around who operates a vehicle in this what in the world i credit mike mitchell with the kind of helping blow that uh he died in the battle in red skywalker off screen and that guy he's dead now why why did he have to go i don't know everyone likes him you would think at least show him getting blown up happy to see him here

somebody then i feel like somebody tried to dispute that that he actually died off screen okay that's a debate maybe now but i don't know was somebody on a wikipedia making a big leap i have no idea the whole uh do you know the story of the the voice do you remember this being talked about in a panel a long time ago uh um familiar it's this is this was the case with this guy. The guy who did it was his name is Kip saying Rodich. That's the voice of this little pilot guy. And he he did he did those lines in Return of the Jedi in a mix of Kenyan dialects. Oh, I don't know this. Who he was was a he was interning. He was like he had traveled from Kenya he was interning.

He had traveled from Kenya and was interning at Skywalker Sound and had been helping out Ben Burt, who designed the sound for Star Wars and ultimately did WALL-E, right? That's the same guy. Yeah, I think, right? I think that's right. I think so. So he was, yeah, he was around and I think the way he made it over is that he met on a safari, uh, Pat Welsh, the old lady who voiced E.T.

Wow. Who had like a kind of a husky raspy voice. Right. Uh, that lent itself to E.T. and they connected in Kenya and that caused him to come learn about making movies. Oh my God. In the Bay Area with Ben Burtt. So he had these couple lines and this wasn't that character wasn't like anything anybody was thinking about then.

So just like, I don't know, could you do it? And he like, well, maybe it'll sound like an alien language if I combine a couple dialects. And then he goes back to Kenya. This becomes legendary on the way to Force Awakens. And this is last minute. They cut to that character and nobody was thinking about dialogue. And then in the sound step of it, they were like, we should give him some lines. But how do you even write lines for that?

Because who knows these dialects? Where's that guy? And it was incredibly hard to track him down. And Pat Welch had died. So that connect was out the window. And you can read it on StarWars.com, the bizarre story of finding this guy. And then eventually, he was going by a different different name and they did track him down in Kenya. But this came up in a panel with Trowbridge where they got him back for the ride, too.

And they went and recorded him in Nairobi. Wow. Yeah. So when you hear his dialogue in this ride, that was recorded in Kenya. And this man was just off the... No one had eyes on this guy through the 80s 90s and 2000s and now he's back doing this character again and he hasn't like obviously he wasn't like going to conventions cashing in no yeah i don't think he realized the

degree right which had taken off i think he was surprised to be contacted and he also apparently when they got a hold of him he told a story that he was also, he was around Skywalker when they were doing E.T. And Ben Burtt wanted him to do E.T. Whoa. And he deferred to his friend, Pat, who thought she deserves it. She's the one who, she brought me here and she should do it. Like there was still, which one's going to do it?

And he gave it to her. Selfless. He could have been E been et too this is this is all the strangest that's wild i didn't know any of that that's great so shout out to uh to nine who's wonderful to see in this thing it's like it's a great trick if he's on monitors doing a lot more but you really only see the back of his head in the uh in the attraction a lot of animatronics in this some very complex some kind of simpler but works because they're either far away or they only have to do one thing um yeah so the there's many many pre-shows yes it's like five pre-shows it's funny shows i think we didn't know the the amount of we'd always heard like it's kind of this pre-rides and then the ride but we didn't know in what order and how many it's interesting now because i've been reading rumors about this for five years five

years and at a certain point there was a rumor which i'm sure i excitedly said to somebody in my vicinity that you would get off in the middle of the ride obviously that was like a telephone i mean i don't know if maybe that at a certain point was the idea but that that feels like a telephone thing because there's so many different pre shows and then a bigger pre show and another pre show and another pre show. Yeah. And so that I could see where that kind of feels like you get off of a

ride and then you go on another ride, which is what kind of happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not that the main ride pauses for you to like literally step off. Right. Once you're on the ride, you're on the ride.

But yeah, it is this multi room. And even though there's a ride component and then things you might consider lines, you're not in it for very long. Right. And it makes story sense. They figured out a story reason why a bunch of people would be lined up. And those are very interesting rooms to be in. I'm just delighted talking about it could be telephone or as we were told by someone that day uh every now and then cast members will purposely feed outlets oh disinformation either for any

number of reasons well that's either to protect stuff or because they're mad about something or just for fun what we were told was yeah maybe it was just like just for fun sometimes there will be uh cast members trying to disrupt the flow of rumors because i'm watching you like a hawk now so is it possible that that rumor that galaxy's edge will be replaced by aladdin and that and as the the website that i read it on where aladdin is misspelled in the article is so is it possible that disney isn't going to replace galaxy's edge with a misspelled aladdin well no because that's been debunked it is going to become lord of the rings oh lord of the rings will exist in two different parks after they bulldoze toon lagoon

uh eyes of the ring it'll turn to rise of the ring they're justze to Lagoon. Rise of the Ring. It'll turn to Rise of the Ring. They're just going to put a beard on Hux and he will be. Yeah. So not Gollum, who has a beard? I missed that. Any number of our dear friends on Middle Earth. Yes.

OK, so hologram room. Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. So, hologram room. Oh, yeah. So, the first room is you're getting your first of many briefings. Yes. And you first see BB-8, who's sort of in a similar spot to like where Rocket is, a similar height. But he's rolling around. A little shelf. He's rolling around.

He's doing a ton. And clearly, there's like some extra business of beeps that can fill delays. Yes. And you're delighted to see him beeping. You know, this is probably a stall, but it's wonderful to see. You'd watch him talk for as long as possible. But people gasping in so many of these rooms. There's so many surprising elements.

And even I was, it takes a lot to surprise us. Yeah. But there was one or two things where I went, oh. Yeah. I kept doing it throughout. And even that first BB-8 appearance, I don't think I was ready for something that, I wasn't ready to like see a friend already. Like, it's still unassuming.

There's two doors and you're like, is this where it kind of kicks in? But you don't expect to walk in the room and he's just there saying hi to you already. Yeah. Because even there's a delay with Rocket. He doesn't, he's not immediately there. Yeah. And he is like, and they, you know, they have him and he is like and they you know they have him he is like doing the things he do he does in the movie like he wrote yes jason said he's he's

rolling around he's beeping he's doing all the adorable stuff yeah the only thing it misses is him doing the little uh thumbs up that he does in force awakens that's he already looked expensive so i could only imagine what that would cost yeah really and there's multiple of him because that's the point where you go i think you get two room there's a split off at that point yeah um and then you get briefed by a ray hologram and that's a high quality hologram yeah holograms have been portrayed and they like in in many iterations of star tours now but that's a boy that is a clean good looking hologram and it's projected on a mirror well it's like there's a mirror and it's on an angle and it it looks like the thing and i know there's multiple rooms that have the same pre-show in it it looks like like a lot of cave is behind her too but it's a mirror and and as if there is like the hologram is just coming from the machine like up and down like

there's not a hidden thing behind it yes right right right so yeah it's a very effective effect i think the only way you can really like kind of see what's going on is if you really get up on the side of it you can kind of you can see that she doesn't it isn't as three-dimensional but like that's obviously a who's's going to do that? People were excited when that appeared. People were excited when a second later Poe, Oscar Isaac shows up on screen. Yeah. This is, we were talking about this in last week's episode with Paul, um, about people not wanting to maybe do actors, not wanting to do rides based on, you know, the movie or whatever.

But I think we are in a new, a new world where every actor does it now for the most part. Cause like guardians, the whole cast is on it. And then the whole cast is here. Yeah. And a few of them who had appeared in star tours previously and kind of get more to do here. And I think everybody does a great job. I think particularly John Boyega doing all of the narration throughout, like especially him, like the elevator part.

He's a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. Up is bad. Up is very bad. Yeah, yeah. They're all giving it their all. They all feel like the characters. And I think all of these things, all these scenes were shot between. heard that somebody somewhere i heard that uh i think the poe dameron part was shot in a rare

moment of downtime on last jedi because ryan johnson was going to his sister's wedding so they had a tiny window where he'd been working it wasn't even like they didn't like specially did they but they got to the set and found a rare window where uh everybody wasn't super busy i okay i will drop a nitpicky thing here right now that took me out of it a little it the poe footage is a little too clear like shot on iphone level clear compared to the chewbacca footage in smugglers run which looks like the kind of 70 you know star wars is kind of stuck in 70s version of the future. Sure, sure. That kind of, I was like, did they shoot him on a video camera real quick? Like, I don't, it wasn't a huge, it was only a beat of like, wait, something. You wanted a dirty lens.

I wanted it a little grainier. But again, who cares? But that was my only thing. And Nia Nub is a CGIgi in this part two yeah and this character what we're about to talk about was his robot i believe yeah or a facsimile of i don't know if it was the exact robot or some of the video yeah i don't know because like hondo in millennium falcon is he's an actor with a suit on in the video the the pre-ride video. Yeah. And then he's the robot you see in the pre-show. Could be the same deal.

Could be a similar situation with. Kind of funny. We don't know, but we should talk about him. Sure. Yeah. So, so you walk outside, you see Poe Dameron's X-Wing part with BB-8 also moving around on the top, which is very cute. Yeah.

Oh yeah. And she, Ray sends him off. Like, shouldn't you be working on the plane? And then that's a payoff when you go outside. Oh wait. Oh, yeah. And she, Ray sends him off. Like, shouldn't you be working on the plane? Yes. And then that's a payoff when you go outside. Oh, wait. Well, and gasp moments. Oh, yeah, yeah.

The doors opening and realizing you're going back outside. Because you are accustomed on any ride to think, especially in the line. Yeah. When you were in an indoor part. Mm-hmm. All right. Now we're in the show building. It is such a surprise that you're in this alcove that i'm sure is not that big

of a footprint but feels huge yeah it's really grand and probably the people are walking by on the other side not that far but boy does it feel like a massive hangar and you can't yeah and you can't see it from on the outside no it's only yeah it's like a big reveal and it's a it's some sort of corellian freighter right is that the name it's like a transport ship and then you pose a black x-wing i honestly in all the reading about what this ride was going to be i thought this would be a longer queue area i thought you would hang out here for a while you go through it pretty quick i had to watch a few videos to catch a few little to realize like oh bb8 yeah is moving in the x-way yeah yeah he's kind of saying hi to

you yeah uh yeah all there's several points of this where you want to stay behind and take pictures but you kind of got to keep moving so it all it all leaves you wanting more which is cool it makes you want to come back and like hope there's a stall so you can take pictures of everything but you're pretty quickly in that transport vehicle, which is going to take you to another planet where the First Order can't get to you. Yes. Yes. But that's not how it works out. But when you are in there, when you walk into that ship, I think one of our new favorite friends in all of Disney theme park worlds.

Yes. Lieutenant Beck. Lieutenant Beck, the Mon Calamari. yes yes uh back lieutenant beck the monk calamari because admiral akbar uh uh coldly killed in last jedi at least it was on screen i guess it was referred to it was referred to but still i would have liked a bigger send-off i will say for admiral but since he is gone yeah that would have been good uh since he is gone a new monk calamari i guess they're just very good captains they can pilot ships very well or they can give commands yeah he's not really he's just kind of sitting there he's sitting in like a little rotating

chair while nyan does the actual driving of it so he's like uh we were talking about gilligan's island recently he is he is the skipper and gilligan is like nyan yeah yeah yeah uh but lieutenant back he is he is a full animatronic he is yeah he does a lot he can move he can yeah and you can get so close to him you can be right next to him it's amazing really just like no i mean is it i think any way you board he's on the right so go to the right yeah and there's also if you get crammed in and can't really see there are screens everywhere of you can see communications between characters and stuff and then there's a screen at the back of the the vehicle and a screen at the front of the vehicle and there's only okay so this is uh

okay so i don't know if anyone is actually interested in this but there are two different i i just said this there are two different rooms there with ray and bb8 and they're reversed so there's two different pre-show rooms and then you all load out into the same area which we're talking about the outside area with poe dameron and then the two and then you reform with one in this one group and you reform into the yeah this one group with this ship. Now, I heard, I read that there are three different insides of this ship. Okay.

That rotate. Yeah. Turntable. Turntable style. Yeah. I see. So, you'll always get, yeah, you'll always get Lieutenant Bacchanian on the right and the back area where you can see like where you're flying out out of which means there's three sets of animatronics yes

this amazing mon calamari there are three of them and the back of nine's head uh-huh that's so cool um and you're it the the turntable effect is so surprising because you really think you have this thing figured out you you think that this is haunted mansion elevator you think it's like kind of a false moving room um that's like that's because it you're it's supposed to be a spaceship so you are you're shaking around it's vibrating and but you're like well it's maybe it's like on a mansion or it's like a journey to the center of the earth has in japan has something like this like a an elevator that's taking you way down into the earth uh and so i like i think i thought all right so it's a stationary thing like star tours and i'll get out the other side yeah so you yeah you walk in and

there's a door where you obviously where you come in and then on the other side of the transport there's another door so obviously everyone assumes i know how rides work that's the door we're leaving whenever whatever happens happens because of course it does this is yeah as you're saying this is stationary we know how this type of thing works yeah um but yeah you go through the whole pre-show and it's like you know as you imagine like you're going and all of a sudden the first order is there and they're shooting at you and what's really fun is that everywhere you are in the transport you can see different kind of stuff there's little screens with different like pictures of the uh tire the the x-wing pilots there's different like radar you can see yourself taking off from the planet and going into space which it it stays the screen is consistent with the outdoor area that you just left so if you left during the day

then what's behind uh beck is during the day and if it's night it's night which is insane yeah that's a whole other set of footage they had to create yeah and then time of like okay the sun has set switch over yeah there's probably multiple versions for like bright sunlight well that's what i want to know yeah i want to know like on a rainy day how does it look on a on a very bright day how does it look at dusk how does it look when it's dark how does it look um i don't know there's also um the the person who's kind of showing us around near the ropes uh showed it pointed out there's a skylight that also is a point of consistency where if it's during the day it's not a full window but but natural light is coming into this vehicle and then once you're in space there's no more natural light yes very very cool yeah delineates the time of day um because yeah so

yeah we were looking at that and then yeah getting up close to lieutenant beck yeah which just i feel like we were like i'm imagining like uh like uh like when someone's infatuated with somebody and they have their hands up under their chin, you know what I'm saying? How would you describe the motion I'm making? Yeah. You know what I mean?

Smitten. Like, like if you have a crush on the teacher and you have your hands on the desk, that's exactly what I'm looking for. That's what we were like in front of Lieutenant Beck. Yeah. Yes. Just kind of like,

cause you can really post up on there and you try not, you can't, you shouldn't get in the way because there's a lot of people in the transport. But we were just like, oh, look at this guy. So cool. You can get close enough to see his little tentacles wiggle when he moves around. And this whole thing is, it's like a subway car, basically. They found a way to do a simulator where you don't have to sit or be in seatbelts.

There's rails you can grab onto. You don't really need to. But sometimes you feel like you need to. Yeah, yeah. Here and there. Like, yeah, you're on a cruise ship or a bus like in your standing up. It was more than I thought there would be, honestly. Yeah. Bump wise.

So, yeah, you get it going. I think, yeah, if I was a kid, as I've said before, I got scared because I went in this weird UFO thing at Pirate's Cove Park as a child. And there was light coming out of the door, and I still thought we were in space. So as a kid, I would have been fully believing that this was going on. Oh, also, two characters die horribly in this sequence. Oh, yeah. Two X-Wing pilots blow up, as they often will do.

I don't know. What do we have their names or do we not know? Can we pay proper tribute to them? Red and blue. Red and blue. Yeah. Poor red and blue. Yeah.

So you encounter some trouble. We don't get to the safe planet. The First Order intercepts us and we are told prepare to be boarded. And because you think you know how things work, everybody looks out the other door. Right. And then in many, it really felt like there was full whiplash of everybody staring into the wrong place.

And you hear a voice and you look back out the door. You came in. Yeah. And an audible scream from the crowd. Everyone just went, ha ha like everyone was like the one of the biggest pops i've ever heard in a theme park one of the biggest surprises yeah absolutely partially because there's a person there and the effect freaked you out mostly because the last time you looked out that door it was real world outside and now you're

looking out that door and you are in a first order ship. Yeah, it's it's crazy. And I remember I swear I read this because there were there were people, I think, with the press happened initially for Galaxy's Edge that did this part of the ride. Uh huh. Like leading up to just this next part. Yes. And I believe this illusion was given away and i'm sure because i'm spoiler hungry and i read a lot of stuff that i knew it totally forgot it and i was just as shocked as everyone else was

and because the room you open to the docking bay you open to is so large it's so big yeah um so yeah what we were saying before is there's a turntable with three of these things on it, apparently. And yeah, there's one that's docked in the Star Destroyer. There's one that's docked outside on the Resistance planet or whatever the base. And then there's just one like in motion sort of so you can in transit. So every every part of this, you can see how they keep the lines moving and you can keep people going through it because it's so it's it's it seems like what we were told i forget the numbers but it's going to be when it's running a very efficient like kind of

people eating experience even though it feels like no one's on the ride yes you think this is like spider-man or something where you can't imagine there's like not that many people going through it. Like, you feel like the line, it should be three hours to wait for it. Estimate like at full when this starship is at full capacity, whatever they say in New Hope. Yeah. Fully operational. Estimated, they were saying estimated at approaching approaching pirates of the caribbean levels which is usually estimated at 2800 people an hour wow yeah and and yeah of course yeah so and as you

were saying the difference is here they've done it and they've chopped it up in pre-shows to try to make it feel much more intimate obviously when you're in the line and when they, when they're just maybe having a standby queue, you'll be in line up until the Ray room for, with a bunch of people for 45 minutes. But once you hit the Ray room, the idea really is supposed to make you feel like it's kind of you and like 30 people,

you and 25 people are on this and you shouldn't see more than that. Yeah. You shouldn't probably won't. You shouldn't feel like you're yeah you shouldn't probably won't you shouldn't feel like you're being dumped into just an endless line like almost every other ride it has and you're being given so many treats you don't realize you're like you're already in it like you're still being herded through yeah and everything's cool yes and all the pre-shows it's because and you can see it in in like their way of thinking with e-tickets with avatar

because there are a lot of pre-shows you could argue they're not quite as fun as this uh the scanning but you can see that they're they've they're slowly perfecting mega e-tickets that can really absorb a lot of people yeah and what's funny is it's all distraction and stagecraft and little tricks it's all the like tenants of theatric like classical theater tricks and magic tricks like it's all very old school just done in different ways and with a lot of technology there's so much technology in this yeah and there's a lot of technology like there's so much stuff that isn't in your face technology too i mean we'll get there i think when we're more on the ride itself but where it's like little tiny stuff happens and you you again you wouldn't like notice it really it's just sort of

in the background so much technology is just used to like help a little piece of something else along but if you really look at it you're like oh that's an impressive illusion that's an impressive little piece right there illusions details easter like there's stuff i only caught rewinding like ride through videos of like oh my god i just realized the question i had of like where did that character end up is explained in the distant the deep background of a video is justified jeez wow wow um and then i guess also presumably when you enter this transport and you exit the transport when you're in the star destroyer is that the way you're when you're in the star destroyer you see the outside of the

of the ship but that's a facade probably right like that never moves but the interior yeah yeah it's just yeah so yeah you're basically what it is is it a corellian transport am i wrong with the distinction of craft uh so yeah they just have a set like exterior for that spaceship inside the star destroyer and then outside by the base looks very similar to the transport ship leia is on in the very first scene of a new hope yes the blockade runner yes yes yes yes oh sure um so yeah that's just that's obviously always sitting there that doesn't move at all that's really cool that's i'm really thinking about that so yeah you get you get boarded uh you were told to proceed off to the right for interrogation.

They're trying to move you through clearly, even though you are brought out onto one of the most jaw-dropping sets you've ever seen. One of the tallest sets you've ever seen. And this is where much documented the 100 stormtroopers are standing. Yeah. And I think they're 50 actually. It's not 100. I think. But that was another.

The rumor was because I was again five years ago I was reading like then you there's 100 stormtroopers. And I think it I don't know maybe it was in blue sky or something but I think it's closer to 50. And they're standing in front of the biggest screen I've ever seen maybe outside of like when I was at uh i was at wrestlemania and santa ana yeah at the whatever stadium levi's stadium but i was like that's the biggest screen i've ever seen disney the guardian screens and the screens in this attraction i'm

like well these screens how are these so clear like how are these so good and guardian screen which is very big but guardian screen you know isn't nearly as big as the thing no certainly not so that was just very impressed because that's just looking out into space and i just yeah that this how do you think this is a two-story room how tall you think this is right three and a half three there's a scale down i mean it's not full size but there's an there's an x-wing in here or not a tie fighter yeah a giant which i didn't even notice at first that's very funny because yeah yeah there's so many things i didn't notice until later and then the stuff that i noticed that you guys hadn't seen or sure there's a transport there's the vehicle that you end up on later in the ride

with an r5 droid yeah and i hadn't put together till later that that is that's showing you there's vehicles we have in this uh in the star cruiser and these guys are we have bad droid we have evil droids so register this these are bad i believe that's also there for i could be wrong but i believe that's also there for um you taking a photo in it because people sometimes want to take photos when you actually load onto it and that is not a good time to do it oh interesting so if you do a quick one like it's funny because the people in there are playing first order officers and they're being mean to you but they also know that like everybody in here wants to take a bunch of pictures and hang out for a second yeah so it feels like you need to leave quickly but they give you a minute or two but they give you a minute or two three or

four minutes they'd start to bug you it would be funny to i don't know what their directive is if it's like if somebody asks can i can you take a photo of me in this vehicle? What they do? I found a video where the picture taking is justified. A cast member says, document your capture if you must, but proceed to the right. That's good. Nice. Yeah. Really like that. That is good.

Yeah. Because that's a hard thing to justify, taking cell phone. Sure. And I think on one of the times we went, somebody says, what is the line oh i just i've never seen people so excited to be uh taking prisoner yeah that is funny the stormtroopers twitch does some of them twitch some of them are more static than others enough to keep it alive enough to keep it alive yeah um and there's like a bar like you between those stormtroopers um it would have been nice for a hundred sure but you know the trick works sure like yeah yeah um

around this point jason you mentioned uh maintenance issue which is very true that like they are gonna have to buff these floors the floor is so shiny and everything looks so sterile because it's supposed to be like the fascist first order so you know very tight hugo boss-esque uniforms and very precise you know everything's got to be clean and not dirty and yeah i mean i don't know how much they'll care about that i think in certain parts it it makes sense in other parts where like the ride vehicles would be going over you can't buff out every you know rubber scratch or whatever yeah yeah but boy the upkeep in this room yeah i wonder because like on the actual ride itself you can see that there's just marks where the vehicles are going over.

So I wonder, yeah, I wonder what their buffing plan is. Yeah. What is the procedure? How much buffing needs to be done? Somebody can message us if they know. We should have asked that. We should have asked the buffing. What's the buffing plan?

What's the buffing budget? It's got to be high. Buffing alone. Do they buff in the middle of the day or is it just end of the day yeah but yeah they're going to buff it how will they buff it how will they buff present like a place i would describe as like impossible architecture like i if you walk through that i i don't quite know i'm sure there's blueprints or stuff somewhere but it's like the full-on winchester mystery house where like well you have to go up to go down and this hallway is a dead end but it gets you to this endless hallway

and it's like so crazy if you try to think about it somebody has it i saw on one of the videos i was watching somebody does have the layout and it's interesting yeah um but yeah i i had no i couldn't have drawn a map after doing no you're, you're so confused. You're so turned around. And this is the true on the ride part, too. You feel like you're in a confusing spaceship. Like, where am I now? Yeah. Is this a safe place to be? No, it's not at all.

Yeah. Even when I got off the, you get off into the room, the big Star Destroyer room, and you look back and my brain wouldn't fully, it knew that right outside was outside where we just were. It knew that, but that one, it didn't fully accept. Yeah. So you were like, well, I am on a ship now. So then I'm very disoriented. Completely.

You get into a part that's a little more line-ish. They just said, I think we saw it with a big backup. We saw it not with a big backup. I've now outed maybe that we got to do it a second time. Yes. And so our main group went. The regular way we did it went around 7 p.m. We got to do it another way.

Once again, I will say podcast privilege. I admit it. I copped to it. I apologize for it. And I thank the person, our spy on the inside who made all this possible. Yeah, our mole in the first order. Was it a Toydarian? Was it a Mon Calamari?

I don't know. Podcasts are built on hope. So, you know. Was it Jyn Erso? No, Jyn Erso dies on that beach planet. So it was not Jyn Erso. Was he quickly shot like Hux? We don't know.

We don't know. No, we don't know. We don't know what became of this brave soul. No. Hopefully he's okay hopefully so yeah so where were we were in the are we in the line or like the more line part which isn't guaranteed to have a big backup but then you're

kind of so you're in a line but it is now a plot justified line perhaps the first time this has ever happened in theme park history you are lining up for processing you're going to jail. Yes. And it's. I will say in that big room with all the stormtroopers at the holidays, I saw pictures where they

had set up rope queues in that room. And that for me would break the illusion a little. But if you're getting record Christmas, like giant Christmas crowds. They could. I get it. You'd cut them some slack. But you are being processed. You are prisoners being processed.

Yeah. Yes, you're right. Diegetically, makes sense for a line. Amazing. And then you've got mean people saying, how many in your party? Proceed to the left. Proceed to the right.

We've found a plot reason to ask how many in your party. Is it the first time this makes sense? Like to have like the, I mean, they don't ask how many in your party on the man on the haunted mansion but like on tower of terror like how many in your party for the for the elevator that doesn't quite make sense yeah yeah i guess indiana jones i guess you know sala wants people to go through the thing yeah and you would have people helping them out and a limited amount of space in those transports sure sure. But this is, we're in a, this for sure is an experience where nobody, if pretending we, the audience, don't know anything, and the first order people don't know anything, nobody knows a ride is coming.

The point of this part is you're going to jail. Yes, you are. This is a simulator for processing at a jail. Which is, what a a great we talk about how i kind of love the theme park tropes i kind of love you're getting on this thing and but something's gonna go wrong you're gonna test the thing at the special facility but uh-oh the real thing from the movie happens i kind of love it but certainly it has been done a gazillion times and boy this is not that there you don't know there's a ride until you

see the vehicle yeah i mean i am so i i read rumors but i didn't watch any ride throughs and i tried to go cold on a lot of stuff i wish i didn't know a lot of this because i can't imagine totally going in fresh imagine like you didn't know anything about it. Yeah. I didn't know a lot of the big set pieces. I didn't either. I'll say that. I knew very little. I didn't know how they got you in and out of places. Yeah, I didn't know stuff like that. And I knew

there was AT-ATs and stuff. But if you're listening to this and you have someone in your life, you have a kid or a parent or a friend who doesn't know anything, who doesn't pay attention to this stuff but enjoys disneyland if you can get somebody on without telling them anything do it because they will lose their shit yeah that's what really seems honestly that i was like oh yeah i'm trying to think of who i know that i can take yeah because i'm very interested

to see everybody's reaction to it because yeah i because they have most even if they've heard me drone on about rumors there's no way anyone retained any of that garbage from me so like they'll be fresh going on this um it's fun yeah it's very fun surprising sets the bar high uh certainly like that avengers ride although we've been told yeah it's set your bar I go ahead yeah they know they have to match yeah you would think because with the Avengers being like the number one franchise yeah

at the moment you were sort of I think I think we don't without saying any type of we'd not that we were really told much but I think it's if you've watched Imagineering story or you've been to this thing in person it's maybe the scope maybe it's our version of Shanghai Pir any elements yeah yeah something of that and the scale of this kind of but it seems together it also seems like it's far away it seems like it's very far away

and anything can change yeah so i was just so and this is this is this might sound like a wrap-up thought i could say to the end but while we're talking about scale and everything, I mean, like, I remember how this whole experience flashed me back to being 10 and going on the Indiana Jones adventure and thinking it's never going to get topped. And then it wasn't topped for a long time because the Dark Ages set in and they did a bunch of off-the-shelf shit. And I was really wondering i was like i guess i experienced the peak of disney imagineering and how wonderful to be around 25 years later

and they set the they reset the bar i don't i that's an interesting thing because with galaxy's edge in the whole land it feels like they can't keep doing this, though, because a lot of a lot of stuff is coming. No, but there's just no way. That's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, we're going to do an episode soon about the slinky dog dash. And that is not a bar topping thing. But it's wonderful.

And it's cool that it exists. Yeah, yeah. And they need to do those things. But it's like they need to do it every once in a while, just as Jason said, to flex to show that they can. And I think Universal's been doing all the flexing until this well and it's funny because the experience you were describing i had at 13 in 1999 on spider-man which again 20 years later scott trowbridge still going strong and that does feel like that was like for the time very uh doing new stuff using simple tricks using sets

using um real explosion using practical stuff meld it with screens and an interesting cue there's nothing there's nothing ever you've never felt anything like that yes yeah yeah and that's it which is that's a tough there can be very very good rides but you go oh it's kind of a version you might even say though i would rank this as one of the greatest rides ever radiator springs racers you recognize the bones as being test track and that is no slam against it because boy does it rule yeah but it doesn't reinvent reinvent the wheel not what it's trying to do right but it's how cool to get a reinventing the wheel yeah oh yeah i mean for me this was baby's first trackless ride vehicle experience yeah that's true and well it's except for uh

luigi luigi's lord uh yeah yes it's your first like room to room the first yeah i haven't done ratatouille or mystic manor or poo's honey hunt like um which i i mean i i think it's the best one of those and i made the complaint that i thought the ratatouille ride was like a little dopey it's a little you're going you're kind of just it's not you don't have like the the whipping around it doesn't feel it didn't feel mad cap to me and this completely does this was like exciting ride vehicle travel yeah poos is awesome yeah yeah poos is really great i'm gonna do it i mean hopefully the ratatouille in epcot is like draft two i think i wonder i think because i mean uh apparently here at disneyland they were able to fix some stuff that were bugging, like nagging issues from Florida.

And also found out that we have like twice as many vehicles as Florida does. So apparently, yes, maybe going a little smoother, a little quicker out here. Maybe so. I mean, the little extra time we had to wait might have might have helped. So, as we've said, cast members are being mean they're lining you up yeah they tell they really warn you not to step on this glass behind you and we were told that's for real and you feel it if you step on the glass don't step yeah like they do need to like haunted mansion keep you away from the sides that seems like yeah somebody's gonna break that

with their heel yeah stand on the line not the. If someone is wearing like a spiked high heel, this is going to be a big problem. Yeah. Or just a long high heel. That's going to be, you're going to go right through that glass, it feels like. Because a second later, you do need to stand on a colored oval that looks very similar to the color, to the white lights. I was confused by colors. I didn't know what color I was on.

I didn't know where I was looking for that color. Yeah, that's a confusing aspect, will say when it's like you're orange and then like you need to know it two rooms from now yeah yeah true and i didn't realize till the second time that they then it correlates with the color that's in the vehicle right i told you i was very that's confusing i see the logic but expecting people to remember after like a couple of very impressive moves i i think that's a little too much to expect from gas if you tell me i'm orange then you say go there that's all you're gonna get like yeah my memory yeah yeah um but so after this wonderful cast member business

and boy great job everybody keep it up uh then you are brought into the cell you're brought into a detention cell yes and you are on the bottom of it it right it rises up very high there is like a cage above you that really kind of restricts your vision of the stormtrooper that's watching you um and and there's a little bit of stall there i liked the second time where we could just there was just animation of like helmet clacking yes just to fill the space um and then uh hux comes in yeah general hux he's in this in multiple forms yes uh and then the big bad kylo ren himself mask on mask on yeah driver did i just had to do a voice he did the voices yeah but there's been question about that it is him yeah i think it's him although there's a very funny there's there's a line that stuck out to me later on and i'll point it out when we get to that okay

sure sure um but he uses some force threat on you room shakes a little bit um i also around this point i mean i thought this the whole ride uh not to just complain about a thing that a lot of people have done a lot of complaining about uh it was nice to be in a star wars experience where what where the motivation is very clear if there's one thing there's one. You know the location of the base. Kylo wants it. He's going to kill you if he doesn't get it. Right. And we don't have gadgets and dude heads aplenty.

We don't have knives and compasses. Galore. Little, yes, knives and compasses galore. No thingamabobs. Not 20. I think Rise of Skywalker definitely had 20 thingamabobs if not more i want to shout out one of my favorite actors domhnall gleason i think as general hux consistent throughout doing a great i think gets that like this is there is a fine tradition of uh imperial

first order people played by like british actors being very stern and i think he does a great job at it uh i think it's very kooky and this is a spoiler for like rise of skywalker but when he yells i was the spy like i that was very funny i thought that was a great delivery like he just go be a little silly and martin short would play it would play it. Yes. Yeah. It was me. Rise of Skywalker could have used Martin Short. Yeah, sure. Throw him in. He's busy on the morning show.

And why wouldn't you be? Domhnall Gleeson and in Rise of Skywalker, Richard E. Grant. I mean, just doing great jobs. Richard E. Grant doing that part makes you think, wait, didn't he do this in, was he in Empire? You're surprised that hasn't happened already. Yeah.

It seems like, I was like, oh, he was in the other two at least, right? Force Awakens? No. No. It's kind of similar to like Carl Weathers and Giancarlo Esposito both feel like they're so like, hasn't this happened already? Yeah. They're so like hasn't this happened already yeah they're

so like made to be star wars people yeah yeah and verner verner hers oh yes true yeah he's a lot of fun um so room travel is a forest you're stuck how are we getting out of here and then one of the coolest and this was a spoiler i didn't know this i didn't know this i didn't know this either i didn't either wow oh great because it's you don't know how you're getting out of here. And then orange glow around an arbitrary spot on the wall, which reveals itself to be a door, which slides backwards in this very clever way. Yeah. So they like burned through the door, essentially.

Yeah, they blow torched through the wall. There's a projection inside the wall. I don't know where it was coming from that makes it look like yeah they're like searing through it and then like if you look on the sides the door it looks like yeah like uh it's still glowing a jagged cut because they uh whatever instrument they used just this we haven't even gotten to the main ride we haven't been on the ride yet is great yeah we're doing our own but this is like our haunted mansion series uh just in uh the But this is like our Haunted Mansion series.

Just in the one episode. This is the second time the whole room went, ah! Like, they're so surprised by it. And I'll say this. Depending on which room you're in, it might be the one wall. It might be the other. Oh, no. That changes.

There are four of these. There are four of these cells. Oh, that's right. And they all go to different places. Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah um and i think one of the in a day of many great star wars uh actor cast members uh maybe my favorite one just because combined with the surprising effect then a guy coming in and saying i'm with the resistance follow me he gets like yeah like whoever this was nailed it. It's so exciting. Yeah.

This guy, he said this ride operator saved you and they're waiting are the ride vehicles. Now, I know this, but I don't know that they spell it out narratively too well. The idea that they have reprogrammed the evil droids. Yeah, that's true. Because as I said back in the room you saw earlier, these droids are not friendly. They're here to watch you and make sure you go into your detention room but now these ones that you're in front of are good yeah they don't it's it's a lot that's an info dump that is i don't know how you get it out yeah because like it's supposed to be very urgent this moment yeah this moment is supposed to be like you got to get out of here fast it's so urgent that you're getting like please keep your hands and arms inside while

you're moving like you're throwing so much at you and's so urgent that you're getting like, please keep your hands and arms inside while you're moving. Like you're throwing so much at you and like, okay, make sure. Okay. Bye. They have Lieutenant Beck say it to you. Yeah. A friendly voice. A friendly voice.

And pretty funny. Like in this part of the rot, like there's a moment where he goes like, did it work? Okay, great. Like the resistance. He's great. He's great. He's great. The resistance, uh, the resistance force wants to make sure that you tug on the dirty yellow strap before you get out of here.

They do want safety. They want safety. Because they're a force for the First Order would let you fly out of the thing. They don't care. In the Empire, First Order, whatever you call it, First Order, they do have dirty yellow straps on the seatbelts as well, just like a theme park. Yeah. That one's a tough one to justify but they have to make that strap yellow i think because it's easy to see there's a lot of

you know what they should explain that there's a lot of a ton of wills in the strap strap is made of wills the little creatures that make up the force yes yeah that george wanted in these um yellow as a high concentration of wills so once you're officially loaded into your ride vehicle one of the like computer displays starts to play a video from finn uh and this video i thought this looked pretty good he shows you a schematic of like all right you're gonna get to escape pods you're gonna take these elevators to escape pods yes it's funny this is all all I was saying. It feels chaotic. Yeah. I feel stressed.

You don't know where to look. Lots happening. So I like the idea that he's showing you where you're going, but there's no way you know what you're looking at or will remember in two seconds. So quick, absorb all this. Okay, here we go. Got it. There's a plan. Whatever you know. You know what you're doing. Turbo

lifts. A lot of people say turbo lifts for the rest of the attraction does he say turbo lift yeah okay because i always think of that as a star trek thing oh but i guess is that it may be actually a term i'm not sure i don't know either somebody will have to chime in technology um yeah so yes they're shouting at us cast members are shouting at us yeah we're tugging on yellow straps that are dirty and then lieutenant back tells us to what keep our hands in the vehicle yeah

your hands arms and children yeah uh-huh um and then you're then you're on your way uh uh you know not to shoot past the just that it is trackless. I feel like I'm talking to people who have never been on a trackless. They was your your first trackless ride. I think it probably will be a shock to a lot of people who haven't been to overseas ones that you go into this room.

And like, what is that? How is this going to work? I should also point out that the room you're loading in the vehicles, like almost every other like traditional dark ride, you see where the vehicle came in and you see where it's going. Yeah. This is the smallest room other than maybe like the Tower of Terror. It's like bedroom size. It's tiny.

Yeah. And there's two vehicles in there. And my thought, of course, first was, how do these get in here? Because there's and there's no like it's just a wall behind them so they didn't come in from behind they're not loading like that which is how almost every other ride like poos honey hunt uh they come from behind it's it's still like a standard load unload process it's not like it's not the car's ride it's not like it's the ones in front of you and the ones behind. It's just a conveyor belt for most rides. Private room. And you pointed the sound after the first time we went on it.

And the second time you gave everybody the mission. Let's figure out how those vehicles get in there the next time. Never felt dumber because I saw it. I saw it the first time because it's two things. It solves two problems. One, you go out of this room, you see two empty ride vehicles and Lieutenant Beck. This is where he tells you, play it cool. OK. And the droids talk to each other. Yes.

Like Lalo, just tell him it's a prisoner of transport. And you get by them and they're going backwards into the room and you are going forwards out of it. And that's how vehicles get in and out of the room yes i had no clue i we went by it i was like okay these empty ride vehicles got it narratively those are just they're they're just you know on their way to get somebody and we're just supposed to not be weird in front of those other droids the next vehicles are right in front of you it's so funny the very beginning of the ride and you don't really realize what's happening yes i had no idea because i i was thinking like maybe the maybe the back wall opened up or something but i was like that doesn't really make sense find the spot where it

so funny they just yeah you turn around too and they're just going in back into the room it's not even like it's that hidden yeah it's just that your attention is directed in such a way that you don't even really notice what's happening and it sells the idea that these vehicles are flying around this star cruiser they're like these guys are going in and out this is how you take uh people around this ship so nothing weird about that so if you see other people this place is full of them yes uh and you start moving and the track you realize that the trackless ride vehicle is the perfect way to do this idea where the droid is driving you and it doesn't know where to go. It has just been reprogrammed. It doesn't know left from right.

It doesn't know the lay of the land. So you're trying to find ways out of rooms and you you don't know. You don't know what's around what corner. And the spinning like i think the trackless vehicles are very good at spinning and it lends itself to that nicely like no no get out of there and you have to whip out of a corner really fast yes you keep getting caught or you keep running it and you have to fix on fly yeah so you the very first thing you come around you go down some hallways and you hit a dead end which looks like okay you'll get on the elevator right by this and then a full-size probe droid drops down a full-size

like an empire strikes back probe droid lowers down yeah the one that tortures hond or the one they shoot on hoth it reminded me of the one that they oh oh yeah yeah oh i see no it's not you're right it's not the interrogation right it's a pro try you're right you're right uh-huh but it's lens is turned away from you so it misses you and you barely get out of its sight all right so obstacle one okay but then you get into the next room stormtroopers they spot you here is the first firing of the ride and the little bits of laser damage throughout. Yes. One of the coolest things I've ever done. So, so cool.

Yeah, they I read about it and I'm still confused a little. Because is it is the projection covering up the damage and then it goes away? Or are they projecting the damage onto a clean surface?

They might be projecting the damage. Maybe that makes more sense. I'm sure it's a mix. Well, it's a mix later on when there's bigger damage, I know for sure. But yeah, it's hard to spot exactly what's happening. There's like they use like little bursts of lasers. Cause like, it's hard. Like you can't do a straight laser. Cause they're trying to mimic the way that like blasters shoot in Star Wars, which is a little bursts.

So it's like, they can't shoot a real laser. Cause that would be an unbroken beam. Yeah. Yeah. So like they do these little like bursts and then it shoots and hits the like walls and stuff. You really can't tell where things are going to the screen that the troopers are on looks fantastic.

Yeah. It feels very real. And yeah, you're avoiding laser. You're avoiding lasers for a little bit. And then pretty quickly, you end up in this hangar with the AT-ATs. I think you

see, I thought this might have been more of like the climax of the ride yeah i think so i see it so early and here again one of these big gasps that's where they go into this this ride is like being at a baseball game or something like people are just like you'd be on your feet if you didn't have to stay seated yeah people are screaming it was so wonderful doing this opening day yeah and this is this is the full top to bottom of this building which is three stories and which many a time on a parking garage in the last four years i've made someone walk up to the

top and gone look it's the skeleton of the atat that's going to be our atats that are going to be in there yeah um and yeah it is holding around it is incredibly uh impressive in scope how cool to finally be there right you're staring at it from so far away from the stairs and now you are at its feet yes um also i didn't notice this there's a giant mirror in the back of the room that if you look it gives it another sense of like there's more back there so it's a mirror so if you look through the look of the mirror it's the back of one of the atats and but it gives you the sense that there's more atats if you keep going um which is crazy and i'm sure like i i didn't notice it when we were on there both times but like subliminally you're kind of

absorbing everything and i'm sure it's giving you the sense that this room is even bigger yeah yeah it actually is and this is where you get a little variation there's a few moments of variation throughout the ride because the way the building is designed you could not have two elevators next to each other where you take them both up and look at the atatAT like cannon cockpits head on so one goes up an elevator and you're looking head on at the AT-AT the other goes to the side and like you see a bunch of scurrying first order guys pull out

a heavy gun and in both cases you get fired upon and in both cases you see Finn surprised there's two Finns hidden in this room yeah which are a little easy to miss initially he's talking but you've heard voices just pumped in so you're a little surprised when you find him and they i love that he's a little hey he's not like super presented in front of you he's crouched

yeah the person who took us around like who told us some secrets said how the you know they had to limit the amount of like incredibly this couldn't be all Hondo level animatronics. So if you look close, his body is perfectly still, which makes sense with him being in a crouch and it's just his head moving. But great, clever. That's awesome. And him and another soldier are blasting at stormtroopers.

There's stormtrooper projections in here or the digital Pepper's Ghost kind of things. Yeah. And there's a firefight. You're in the middle of a firefight and like. One thing I think is wonderful is how also with the ground that the trackless can cover. It's cool that I was always wondering, OK, so you're in a room with the AT-ATs, but I bet those things can't move, especially because we saw them. They're made out of like steel. So what's the like?

Is it exciting to go between their legs and stuff and the vehicles i mean there's so much other stuff happening you're getting you're in crossfire but the vehicles are really what's making it exciting because now we're zooming in between their legs so you get to see them from down below and see the degree of detail and then you zip around you really see so many angles of the thing and then you back up into these elevators and shoot way up and suddenly you're looking at them in one case straight down the barrel yeah um that elevator so exciting it's like a little mini tower terror you get a little like just enough of a little like uh you know little stomach lift whatever you want to call it um i think the ride throughs don't do this justice i've been watching it i'm like that feels dopey the rise up if you watch it just on camera i think when you feel it uh

it's it's rad and it's yeah i guess i knew there were elevators and drops but i didn't know when and truly this is the moment where you realize oh my god this is a multi-story ride fast yeah very fast yeah this is maybe my favorite section yeah because i think like they were trying to figure out i think how to differentiate blasts between like stormtrooper blasters and then the big atat cannons and they do a very cool effect and correct me if i'm wrong but they make it look like you're getting blasted at by the atat cannons by just sort of changing the already like the already lit up lights sort of on the ceiling completely red yeah there's a big thick tube yeah lights up yeah but it tricks your eye into thinking this giant red blast has come it's like a pulse of color along a string and i found that more uh effective

in tricking my brain into being like we're being shot at yeah because like it's because all the effects on the walls and everything before are really cool with the stormtrooper blasts but it's not as it's not quite as effective as this is in making you really feel like you're being shot at so i like this might be my favorite. Heavier duty probably. And sound is real weighty. Yeah. And so I think it was just like they had to differentiate between this has to be more powerful than a stormtrooper.

So they didn't use this effect for all the stormtroopers. And it would probably be too hard because they're like shooting wildly. Yeah. This one, when I really you realize there's like an I'm in an attic of the and I know this building footprint is huge. So we're now going to go explore a whole other half of it. Now we realize there are essentially two giant show buildings, one on top of the other.

It's crazy. And then where do we, oh, you know what? Side note, going back and watching the Imagineering story, some of you heard our episode on Patreon, but we're going to do part two soon, and we just kind of gloss over the Star Wars stuff. Now, having gone back and rewatched that, the pre-vizs that you do, the computer simulations of these rooms are perfect. Yeah. When you go back and watch, that is exactly the memory I have.

It's precisely the pov yeah it's just the speed it's just the way it like it's it's so cool that people have been digitally going on this ride for five years before it existed in person yeah and they yeah they were doing it all with wireframe footage and laptops and vr goggles and just like and then in active construction sites of like okay does that look right like so many degrees the technology is wild and then like it's only gonna get i mean crazier from here yeah as far as yeah like what you're saying where it's like pre-vis down to the like who know like whatever you would say like a centimeter or whatever of like we know exactly

how big this is gonna be outside of probably just like having to juggle all the different effects. I think that's what we've been told by a few different people that like, maybe there wasn't necessarily one giant thing wrong. It's just like, this is just so many effects juggling thing at once. It's like stuff will go wrong for a week or two. And then another thing goes wrong for a week or two and oh that's yes the our our man on the inside told us that there were certain things that the internet took hold of and said they're having big problems with this this is a huge

problem and we'd say now is this accurate is that accurate and he'd say yeah but it was a problem for a week and then the next week is a new problem a new problem right like nothing was ever stuck on for that long it's just that there's 200 things in this that could go wrong well and to say nothing of like the four you know you always hear four ride systems which i guess is think about the transport trackless vehicle drop system motion simulator i guess motion simulator is both the ending and also the transport ship. Sure, sure. So four, right? Trackless, drop, motion simulator. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, it's, no one has clearly cataloged it.

In my mind, I read through a bunch of articles and I'm like, wait, so that, that, that, that, okay, drop and motion are two different ride systems. Okay. That if the only track, if you're in California and the only trackless vehicle you've been on is the little Luigi car, the shiny car is the dance. Imagine you're getting on one of those and then it drives into the Tower of Terror and goes up the Tower of Terror and then drives into Star Tours and goes on Star Tours and then leaves and takes you outside.

Yes, but also there's a sitting star tours, and at the very beginning there was a standing star tours. Yeah. Which, and you see star tours and it's on a turntable. Just a heads up, you are on a turntable. And there's little hidden rooms like Rocket and like Haunted Mansion, and they're mean to you like Haunted Mansion, and the cast members do stuff.

Yeah. And it's like a living wax museum. There's a trap door, but it's like a living wax museum and there's a trap door but it's not the trap door you think it is uh like 10 types of things all piled on top of each other uh so now you're on the now you go to the bridge this is where i've been calling them like little cubbies that you like tuck into this cozy little spot yeah under yeah new and now if you have not seen in animatronic form hucks and kylo right uh and it's i love that you're just you just nestle in maybe they won't notice us maybe we're fine here maybe they're just going over some mundane business but no bunch of ships roll up

well yes kylo there's a little bit beat where uh he says like raise the raise the shields that's it that's the line the two-line punch of he goes you underestimate their conviction raise the shields but he says raise the shields like a kids of the hall character like i don't know what it just hit me if only because i've been thinking about the um report trailer where he goes like everyone was scared and it's just like such an interesting delivery we did see these I think in B-moj because they're supposed to turn around and look at you a little

yes yes yeah I watched the video and I saw that they fully turn around but I don't either neither time they turned around neither one of them what Kylo is supposed to turn around Kylo's person turn around and Hux like half turns towards you but in one of Todd Martin's articles about this, he

talks about how the Imagineers talk about if there's a stall, you get to see bonus stuff because you get to see the stuff killing time that you don't get to see in the regular ride. So we accounted for the stalls too. We accounted for wait times. Well, there's a big

crazy... Did you see what B-mode at the end is? No. No. Oh, we'll get there. Okay. I'll tell you. I watched it. It's fun.

It's so different. Hmm. Well. How do you get out of here? Do you go backwards? Well, you have to. You go backwards, and then you see kind of a similar, like, I don't know. It's not all Pepper's Ghost.

Oh, of Kylo. Kylo drops down down and when you're going backwards um i think we didn't see the version he says how brave how ultimate but ultimately hopeless yeah and then at some point he yells there's nowhere to run which i think of as a like universal go-to line on rides uh there's nowhere to run because i think imhotep yells it at you someone else yells at you i think maybe trobridge did some mummy too i think i've kind of like the florida mummy he loves yelling there's nowhere there's nowhere to run i read or i watched i think on a youtube video that the kylo in that section is a projection but the lightsaber is real what the lightsaber is emitting

light and that's like real i don't know what is holding it where he like pounces uh when he drops down and like walks toward you the lightsaber is practical so it emits light uh we didn't talk a little bit about the shadows in one of the pre-shows in those videos did we i don't know you know in the the uh pre-show when you're being interrogated they have this crazy thing where the projections are projecting shadows oh like elsewhere into the room well and on the grading that's in front of the oh um so like that's the difference between like that and i maybe i don't think harry potter has that when like you see the kids up there but like when yeah hux and ky are walking, there's a shadow in front of them.

And there's a crazy way. I forget which YouTube video. There's YouTube videos about the secrets of it. And there's a way they now project shadows from the screen. So, yeah, this is a different one where it's actually the lightsaber is actually some sort of practical thing that's emitting light. And then he's just a projection walking toward you. Wow. Wow.

So much backwards on that. A ton of great backwards moments. Yeah. And then you then you are cornered. You're trapped. The door. Again, the riders don't show you that door that closes just slams so fast yeah all the motion in this is just huge pieces moving really quickly right and now you're

trying now you are in the commercial moment so it's you've been this has probably been spoiled but still seeing it in person is so fantastic and it's less the commercial makes it look it's really cool but the commercial makes it look better. That's my memory of it. But that's also the Indiana Jones commercials made it look like there was a physical Indiana Jones in there. Yeah that's true.

It's all in their playbook. So Kylo's saber goes through the ceiling and is trying to slice into the elevator. That and him dropping down those are like horror movie tropes. Yeah. Those are horror movie go-tos.

The clip I've seen from the trailer makes it look like he's slicing all like around the corners of it as opposed to like, there's a little section that's different than the rest of it that he slices into, which is still a very cool effect. Yeah. Um, but yeah, and I, do you guys know how this works? look i know how it works i didn't know i couldn't guess

so i had to look it up to see how it works there is a so so basically there's a little like section of the top of the uh elevator that's different than the rest and it's just obviously different material and there's almost like i don't know if it's a complete circle but it rotates like i guess much like the pre-show the on the on the um transport all of a sudden like so like i think i'm this is gonna be impossible for me to maybe fully explain but there's like the lightsaber here and then there's this and then it rotates and then a section opens up with a hole and it goes in there and it slices along like this does that make sense not really okay is it like like a bunch is turning that already has a hole pre-cut into it yeah yes and it only reveals itself as the saber is yes the front of

the hole so like there's a circle that rotates it has a pre-cut section out of it uh there's a lightsaber above it and the lightsaber goes down as soon as that hole the start of the hole appears if there was no lightsaber just suddenly you'd see a c yes exactly exactly and the stuff inside the lightsaber were spinning right yes i believe so yeah so it looks more um like it's flickering right and he and kylo's uh uh hilt has a like very unstable and like sputters so yeah is there some projection in there too to make it seem like like like because it feels very textural i don't know the answer to that I'm not sure but it does feel yeah it feels yeah it feels like you would touch it and burn so cool

I think also instant iconic moment is the droid going wow he does scream in agony yeah that's really fun and then we get into what I will declare not just my favorite part of the ride but maybe my

favorite part of any ride but maybe my favorite part of any ride i think this room is incredible i did not know about this i also didn't i had no idea that this was here even though we all saw the teaser a long time ago right where the ships just suddenly flash up here yes and the woman at the console goes what um that's this that's in this room yeah so we were always looking at those cannons, but we didn't know what they were capable of. Right. I'll take Trowbridge's behind

the scenes description of it, that you were essentially playing a game of cat and mouse in your vehicle with giant cannons moving in front of you, moving backwards. They're so tall. They are much taller than your vehicle they seem like they should weigh you know five tons you obviously they don't but that's how they look and you are

trying to find openings as best as you can when the thing is in front of you and you're nervous as you move in front of the cannons is this thing just going to spear me down the center? And my thought on this, for some reason, it feels extremely Super Mario to me. Oh, yeah. It feels like, OK, wait for that. Like, especially, I guess, like the ice blocks or it just feels like an odd little I have to like figure out the rhythm of this. Obviously, you have no choice in the matter, but you are thinking about that. You're like,

wait, we're moving. Is it, is that going to work? Is this thing, you're just going to crash into the side. Yeah. And I'll say this is the,

maybe the only part of the ride that does make me feel like it could go wrong. The rest of the ride is very impressive and cool, but there's not a lot of, uh, danger. I don't feel a lot of legit danger but this part does make me feel like because something could crush like it could i don't know how i'm sure it can't because it might certainly can't it's and i'm sure like that's a lot lighter than you think they are because they look heavy although apparently if the can

i mean not that the cannons would hit the cars i'm sure there's a million stop gap like there's a million tail safes for that but apparently they are moving with such force that if they go too far they can hit something and shake the building oh sure i mean they're giant yes man so that is i that's the only part of the ride where i go yeah it is uh haunting it's of all of the stuff this is the room i can't stop thinking about i want to go back very badly yeah i like did you guys have dreams about the ride i had dreams about the ride i don't think i had bleeding up to it i did a couple nights i had like i was on the ride and yeah but i don't think i did after the fact i think watching jason had dream about a toy daria swirl toy darian chasing me

yeah and multiple hot dogs also cold you fool um it's a big day drink me anyway yeah yeah this room was really intense because there's also the full screens there's a full um battle going on outside that the cannons are firing and you want to watch that yes you know that's incredible animation but the cannons are so engrossing yeah again i could i had to turn back and watch it again from behind yeah i can't believe those pieces some of this i had to re-watch on video just to remember stuff because it's so overwhelming and then we were again also punchy because we got up at four in the morning yeah uh so really surreal been up for like eight hours or so by the time you finally

wrote it which i don't we have said you do not have to do that anymore and we also clearly didn't have to do our friend who got there at 7 15 was in the same boat we were yeah uh which i bet it's very funny it was a fun experience yeah geez i and it's such a narrow hallway too i think some of my like my big stuff in small rooms i think had my like my mario born fear was coming true in front of me a couple times in this ride yeah that was my question because we had you had talked about it before with those at i feel like the at ats did did it get triggered in the at at room not there no but here much more because it's a much smaller room right the canon room right uh uh and it's just and it's very mario-y in general um now will the actual mario ride be more

exciting than some of this be more much is that i think that's now the like pressures on mario so there's a leaked there is a leaked mario kart track out there that i have again i'm an idiot looked at a little bit that is just if they can pull it off it has what this has where it's many rooms so many like eight different worlds like some crazy amount wow oh boy

god bless this war yeah this is a wonderful war they yeah if they could if they can pull off half of what I glanced at yeah it'll be in it could top, I mean, it could top this. Yeah. It's possible. They have, yes, there's one thing on the horizon that might.

And it's opening in a few months in Tokyo. Yes, hooray. And then maybe next year here. Maybe. What a wonderful world. I think really, though, if Mario Kart the Ride doesn't top Rise of the Resistance, they do have, I swear, like people might be happier with Mario more than Galaxy's Edge because you can ride Yoshis around. Now, the only thing missing is that Bantha ride. That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. If they have it and it delivers, I will. I have an annual pass into Universal in a couple of years. I will get one. And anytime I'm driving by, I will just park on Lancashire. Park on Lancashire. Take the shuttle up. Then go up the hill. Then go down the hill inside the park.

It's a two-hour. And then back up and back down. Like Homer parking next to his own backyard. Oh, man. I should just get a security guard job at Universal to get a pass. Oh, yeah. Like, I just want to work three hours a week. Three, 30 minutes a week.

Well, but they might lock that down. I mean, I think now that Rise is open, I believe pass holder passes may be blacked out a little in some parts. You're right. The plan wasn't sound. It wasn't a good idea to become a security guard to get on Mario. I mean, that might, but maybe the job's rewarding. Yeah, get some connections. Yeah, that's true.

Well, maybe I'll just shift out of the entertainment industry. Get into the security of the entertainment industry. And maybe we all will, and maybe we'll all have no choice. Yep. It'll be more stable uh so then uh you you still you a new giant room like how are there still giant rooms to go and battle damaged hallways yeah in the cannon room in the next set piece there's battle damage happening around this is this is cool battle damage it's bigger and it's like yeah because now they're being shot at more by the,

I was going to say the Alliance. That's not right, right? The Resistance. The Resistance. Yeah. Not the Rebels. The naming change between original trilogy and new trilogy is so like confounding and unneeded.

It's bizarre. There are people who are resistance and rebel alliance like nine they're both well yeah but then in rise of skyrocket there's the last order and the first order but then it's also like old empire tech

in a lot like it's empire star destroyers but then there are sith troopers but in and then in the extended universe like books and stuff they were like Star Destroyers. But then there are Sith Troopers. But in and then in the extended universe, like books and stuff, they were like, it's the New Republic and the remains of the Empire. Go ahead. Go. Go for it.

That seems right. Yeah. You know, it's good. If you were going to pull anything from what I think we can now agree, there's been a I think all we can say in general, step back from it. There is a mixed reaction to the disney star wars and i think the only thing the thing you can pull that i think nobody would disagree with set design wonderful great production design of these movies it feels like seeing like

current built in 2010s uh like huge versions of the star wars aesthetic very like current and high tech sure i think I think sets have been wonderful throughout and that's what the ride feels like you get to be in like the best end of the production design of the sleek 2015 and been past and present in this in addition to

that the production design the John Williams music there's some newer John Williams themes that play throughout this sure which everybody agrees on too I think yeah I like the John Williams music. There's some newer John Williams themes that play throughout this. Sure. Which everybody agrees on too, I think. Yeah. I like the New Order thing. I like the Ray song.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think like people like the cast. I think some of the parsing of it, like people just don't like some of what has been done with all of the chess pieces that were set up. But some of the chess pieces, very promising.

Great predictions on great music. Cast, pretty wonderful. And the cast I think is great in this. I think you go on you leave this ride and you go like, wow, that ride like implied a better set of movies maybe. Perhaps at the very least a more cohesive set of

movies. Oh, right. Finn was funny in the first. Like Finn had some good lines. Yeah, right. Yes. I think this is the finn that i liked yeah i assumed that's not what we're here to do but uh and we even all of our opinions are all over the map but i like i think just like nobody's trying to hate on star wars things just to do it and i think it's really exciting to have a thing that's like this this i think is this is the ultimate thing i think that came out of the

Disney Star Wars purchase. After all the movies finally we have the ultimate thing they got to do. You just have to get to Disneyland at 8am to do it. If they did a Baby Yoda meet and greet in Galaxy's Edge people would lose their fucking

I mean it's weird. I can't imagine it's not on the table I can't imagine I heard somebody talking about it was it Jim it might have been Jim Hill I forget or Leonard Jim were talking about it like he would only be like 60 at this point it would only be like another six months and is that what happened it's like it's like right

before the new movies it's after Jedi yeah I think I haven't finished Mandalorian yet I haven't gotten around to it. But yeah, he, I mean, they did the little baby Groot meet and greet in Florida. So just do the same, same basic thing. Yeah. Yeah.

It doesn't make sense, but can we just like ride on baby Yodas? Can we like, you know, like. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. I don't care. We need like a cute ride. There are other creatures to ride on. Yes. Baby Yoda is probably not it. He can be in the car with you. sense it doesn't i don't care we need like a cute ride there are other creatures to ride on yes baby yoda is probably not it me in the car with you old disney old disney wouldn't have cared in the

50s would have been like and then you ride a baby yoda sure it doesn't matter we're not thinking about like story baby it'll be like yoshi and be different colors yeah yellow red i want a magenta baby yoda in the trevorrow script that's leaked um there was an evil yoda that would train kylo ren which i don't know if he looked like yoda that's a fun idea but that would have been a fun idea okay i recall before force awakens um when we were people were just speculating what characters were um mike mitchell believed Snoke was an evil Yoda. That was his guess. Yes, right. Well, we also all were debating how big he was.

Well, that was, we still didn't know until The Last Jedi how big he was, and the answer was normal size. Not big. Not big at all. Not big. Normal. Is this still, no, I guess the timeline doesn't allow it so that you can ride a Snoke around.

Well, there's many Snokes we know from Rise of Skywalker. Do we know that? We do. We saw them in the tube. Okay. There were multiple Snokes. Water park where you ride through empty Snoke tubes. They're still building the Snoke tubes.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. That's good. Exegol water park. Sure. Where you go through the snoke tubes yeah and you're you're snow it'll be like the hulk ride where it's like you're snoke they'll have to figure out a safe way you into a snoke we're turning you into a snoke also this is a water park with a lot

of lightning effects you're gonna like oh yeah your brain will think that's okay that's not a bad idea um so yeah this last room you're and you're going towards the exit and what does become the exit but then you hear kylo ren and you whip around and he's been in the room and you didn't see him yeah he's well he comes up oh okay i believe he comes up there's also some blast doors in this room that i i need to ride this sequence again because in some of the videos people were focusing the cameras on other things and i didn't they tricked me i was looking straight ahead to the more screens of the battle yeah i was just he just was there suddenly yeah yeah they just

pulled your attention somewhere like a magic trick you're looking over here and he shows up over there now we heard this little inside info is that this kylo we were told to take away granite but we were told that uh this might this may be the bones of elsa from frozen ever after or at least the office is the same model yeah at least like the same model and dressed it differently has the same capabilities as far as like movement waving arms around yeah it is extremely fluid yeah um so and it does a lot so much happens here he controls two vehicles at once with the force then the fucking ship gets blown back very cool yeah you feel that also thing that right there right through doesn't indicate uh fill a big blast of space air um and then big debris falls down in front of him and that's another one of those those pieces are so big it really

haunted me massive show pieces and it covers the animatronic going back that's yeah so he's able to reset almost immediately yes wow so this is the moment i mentioned earlier the reason that blast happens behind him because if you look to your right a tie fighter has been shot and is on fire and it comes at the screen yeah i missed this and it it it's coming at you and in perfect sync it goes off the screen and it hits behind oh it's in sync i didn't know this i didn't see it a tie fighter in the footage explodes and comes right at you and causes the corner of the ship to explode and that's why yeah he basically has a panel blow off behind him yeah yeah and then there's a projection of like fire and or is it a screen behind there's

projection to the sides and then there's a screen behind him of the vacuum of space and it looks like he almost gets blown out right um so that so if you knew where to look at the very beginning of that you would see the full you would see it coming at you and then it would hit in correct time right god yeah that's crazy i yeah i did not notice that so yes that has to be on my sixth ride i'll go back and look and see what it looks like a lot of reasons to keep coming back and now so many things have happened and you've never got you're still on that top level and you're thinking well when i keep hearing there is a drop right when is this drop i'm tense the whole time about the drop i'm still nervous about drops uh then you pull up into

a star tours it's not so evident that's what's happening right but once the once the pod doors open like oh this must be it this has got to be it you're like you're suddenly facing little screens on the screens your vehicles are getting dropped like like just arms open and they fall a ton so you really like what am i in for yeah you don't have any time to think about it and there's a drop that's kind of my it's not so crazy it's maybe two stories or one and a half yeah and you get caught too like it's almost like you get caught like the the like if you were on a plane and it drops a little and then you get caught that's kind of what it feels like yeah did you see this if you watch on a plane and it drops a little and then you get caught. That's kind of what it feels like.

Yeah. Did you see this? If you watch the footage in the corner of the video, you see the other escape pods and Beck is in one. Yes, yes, I saw it. Oh. And he drops. Yes.

And then I believe it's Hux and Ren go into the other one. And. Oh, I didn't see them. Hux cues the drop. hucks cues the drop and you drop it's the same time as them in the distance he holds his hand up and that's when you drop as like he gives the command to drop oh so we're in an empire we're in a first order escape we're an escape pod snuck into them and he's just dropping all the pods because there's plenty of first order people it's a little hard to tell but i'm pretty sure that's what you see because that drops and

goes to another star destroyer to like you know take shelter in and you go the different direction and that's kylo getting saved because kylo doesn't get sucked out of the ship he has to go do rise of skywalker right you gotta end up in his pajamas later his cool black pajamas so that's him escaping to go to the next movie basically but you also see beck escaping and then they're like where's beck where's beck later on and he's in an escape pod that is then you see physically a few minutes a few minutes later oh i didn't think about it i didn't it didn't occur to me why he's in one of those. Yes. That's really cool.

The only thing I want to know is, and it's probably in the footage, but there's so much going on. How did Nine Nub get out? Did he just get back to the transport ship and escape? I don't know. Like the only thing, I mean, maybe he's in Beck's, but you can't really tell.

It's tilted up. It is tilted up. So this is a little bit of a jump, but you can't really tell. It's tilted up. It is tilted up. So this is a little bit of a jump, but yeah. Right as you come out, you see a big practical version of what you've just dropped in. Yeah. And Beck is a full animatronic again, and he's talking to you. Yeah. So it's tilted up, I feel like, to maybe hide.

Like to say, well, there were other people in there. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Oh, I see. That's the logic. So there could be people at there yeah yeah maybe that's oh i see logic like so like there could be people at the back of it but finn is like glad you landed like you're you're a little off kilter you're a little off base so yeah so you basically take a cgi simulator

ride then down through another star destroyer into the atmosphere and you land back land back in batuu much like uh millennium falcon yes uh i think this whole i think it's a great free for hey for a spider-man fan it's kind of this is a great sequel i think to the big drop uh at the at the end of that like an inventive how do you get out of here uh i think it's a real like cousin i love that disney has a spider-man now it's it's fantastic yeah and then you are outside and then you're delivered back outside which was very cool in the day it was very cool at night yeah both ways give you something cool to look at yeah and you you've transitioned through three ride systems at that point in the span of a minute trackless into a drop drop becomes a motion simulator back to trackless and trackless outside that was just running inside yeah it's outside

which i'm trying to think like alice in wonderland goes outside guardians of the galaxy tower of terror open up and you see outside this is outside cars go cars go out but i don't nothing i don't think combines indoor and outdoor is surprisingly yeah that's nothing is effective and this is covered so i bet it can still run that last bit in the rain oh of course yeah yeah yeah for sure i think so um and that that like atrium is beautiful with the vines overtaking it and uh i like really like instantly iconic architects the way you pull up into it is so grand and then you just get you get this nice little last message from beck and you get chauffeured right to the gate again how it's not like a typical load area there's no cars

waiting there you are just delivered straight to the end of the ride yeah ratatouille and similarly surprisingly like wait do i not like get in a line like when i'm getting off of pirates just delivered straight to the end of the ride yeah ratatouille and similarly uh surprisingly like wait do i not like get in a line like when i'm getting off of pirates no no no here just here's the gate here you are sir it's a very again intimate it's uh you're not in a long line of folks it's just you yeah yeah and it happened and you play the cast members still playing along like the the one when we did it at night the woman woman went, yeah, heck of a landing, folks. And I went, hey, anyone you can walk away from. Right. And she I forget what her she had a good line to like this is walking away or like that.

That's when you can walk away from it. Like it's like i and if you work in that area you just must see such joy yeah every second of the day that's where you get people applauding the end of this ride like you saw a play right i suggest like euphoria in that room and we posted a picture of us there that's how we felt i just like that i just think of pure joy when i think about that atrium uh it's wonderful this is just it's just great really did it and a little cherry on top that we found out at the end uh the plant life that seems very lush and older plant low yeah uh at the exit is replanted from Heimlich's choo-choo train. It's a light fall. It's a light fall using every part of the buffalo.

Do you think in Florida it uses like the shrubs outside of the Golden Girls house that they had to tear down to build? It's the empty nest greenery. It's river country's greenery. Oh, yeah. Transported over. You actually just open out into the microbrewery. One of those wonderful Florida Galaxy's Edge transitions. They just play a little like lever just like tosses you into a chair

and there's a beer in front of you already. Yeah. They were using overflow. They were people were backed up to Muppets in in florida i just read i believe that yeah that's smoother here maybe um i don't know greatest ride in the world now does it have the title yeah probably it's i mean it's crazy to think about with time and perspective this could be the like remember the first iphone look how kooky this looks now i can't believe they did that you know where it's like it keeps evolving but like kind of next level right now um okay here's what everyone's gonna tell me to fuck off

uh my one thing about it is that, and for whatever, like when you come, when it comes to e-tickets, Johnny tickets, I feel like there is, I, at least I have an expectation, uh,

that it's going to feel like I got like jostled around that. I got like jerked around a lot and I don't have that feeling. I almost felt like once we got off of it, it was more of a cousin of like Fantasyland Dark Ride than it was maybe like high tech e-ticket. Because like almost every other e-ticket, there's a thrill or like there's a thrill to it that you kind of when you're done, you like shake your head because your brain has been knocked around a little bit. And this doesn't have that. Sure. This is almost purely like you're enjoying the scenery and you're immersed and it's got a little drop but

it's very very mild yeah up is exciting up is exciting but it doesn't have like whether it's you know guardians or car even cars you know you go 40 miles an hour or it's indiana indiana joins you're getting knocked around left and right the one thing i felt like a little bit let down was that i just didn't feel like uh they had fucked me up enough like i don't know if there's a real remedy to that and that's just a very nitpicky thing because it ends up just being a little bit more in my mind like and i don't mean this is a slam of fantasyland dark but i think that was the intent of like yeah you're probably right star wars version of a dark ride not a family yeah families can do it and like i think that was in their minds while they were designed sure that's the case but i think the

only thing i left being like it would have been nice for a little like something that really made your like stomach drop or something i don't know what it would be and like with these ride vehicles it's so smooth i don't know if there's like indiana jones tony baxter's talked a lot about how they were trying to figure out that ride vehicle because that ride vehicle gives you such a sense of like instability the whole time to really add to the danger whereas like i don't know because they have built like a thing that just rotated on top of a but that then doesn't really make sense for these type of vehicles so this is all nitpicky but that's the one thing where i was hoping there was a little bit of that but again this is minor when

we're in the scheme of the most crazy um scope in a ride like this ever yeah yeah i don't know i don't agree with you that's fair i think it fucking rules i'm not saying it doesn't rule yeah yeah um i think uh i'm just very curious to see how long this boarding system how long how long until it's just like, just wait in line? You know, just wait in line? Or is there a modified version of the boarding system? Because not everyone who comes to Disneyland... I mean, Scott, you bought a one-day pass to do this. It would have been a bummer to not get to go. It would have been a bummer not to get to go.

And I'm wondering, like, well, are people prepared? They are. And I think they've done a pretty good job of preparing people. Not everyone's going to get to go on. There is a boarding group system. And even if you get here very early, you could still get a reservation for very late. So I do wonder, as the land evolves and grows like how long because those avatar rides still have really long waits like slinky dogs still has a really long wait

how long until they go like okay no more boarding groups just wait in line i mean i don't know how they decide when that shouldn't happen yeah i don't know it'll shift to fast pass it is a certain point yeah i mean it'll there's touch points set up i mean i know it'll shift to fast pass it is a certain point yeah i mean it'll there's touch points set up i mean i think they'll probably like figure out whenever the thing is running at full capacity and it's you know whatever percentage consistent if it's like running 80 percent consistent yeah then they'll just go like well this makes sense and we can run this many people and they'll have plenty of data to say like how many people are coming to the park so like it makes sense yeah do it but i bet it'll be a couple months i bet it might be even be sooner than we think where it's not yeah like this because like galaxy's edge had

this system and they gave it up the two days in really fast yeah but that's a different story than this because everybody's gonna want to ride this and want to ride it twice i would imagine or more if yeah yeah that's about yeah yeah we're lucky we got to do it uh um but the i i think this all i think this like sets everything right though i think now you don't have the feeling of and then the ride is this falcon ride that people it's a little confusing that people have a little bit of trouble with i think it now like okay so that's allowed to be the the slightly lesser one like like the cousin they the blockbuster is open um i yeah you know i i think i enjoyed falcon more this time with that perspective yeah with kind of a little bit of the pressure off um as far as galaxy's edge like you still we still want as many aliens and robots going around

as possible and some flash mobs and those like it doesn't fix that but it does certainly like take the pressure off falcon being like and then like it needs to be like the be all end all for yeah yeah and it seems like that's coming slow instead i mean there's been more r2d2 sightings in the land uh i saw chewbacca like three times the one day we were there and then and and i think too this is giving us i don't mind that they are kind of like with the marvel land coming it's like all right you're gonna restaurant you're gonna get the b ride to start of course guardians edges uh guardians of the galaxy is here and there'll be characters and there'll be some meet and greets and then hoo boy wait until you see this avengers thing in a few

years yeah like they're not changing like oh by the way the big the big thing isn't coming opening day they've just taken that off the table yeah and i think that's better because at least you've established an expectation and you have somewhere to go and you have somewhere to go exactly but i just i think i you know we've maybe i think we were so enthusiastic right after we did galaxy's edge and i think it's waned a little bit and we've had our complaints we had mike mitchell on who had many many many complaints as uh that's how it goes uh and now it feels like it's like really like things are things have settled and i think

i enjoyed all the stuff more again i was we didn't get to the cantina but just like having your food having your uh having your milk uh uh doing falcon scene chewbacca it just all like it it was is the thing that was missing and uh it's uh it's it's there it's nice to have it there it would be like if you were walking around New Orleans Square and there was no pirates and you'd be like, well, this is nice, but I don't need to go walk through here every time. But like going off

like you go on pirates and then you get dumped into New Orleans Square and then you walk around a little bit like there's some flow to that like when you have a land and a ride like where you wouldn't necessarily go if like you hadn't experienced something, whether it's pirates or whether it's just little things that they're like, here's some new food. Here's a new here's the veggie wrap. Here's a hot chocolate with purple whipped cream.

Like, you know, yeah, that up. That stuff does that. Yeah, I'm starting to feel like I think I was feeling some weird like like down energy of like is this what it is and i yeah i like you feel the burst of energy obviously with this incredible new ride but yeah those little things of course i'm like of course i want that bantha or something or some like something that you know you can just walk on or that's like a half hour wait instead of a blockbuster that takes two hours that's i think the one thing they could do yeah i don't make it perfect second cantina like making the cantina a little more casual like or that dinner show whatever it is you can't do that every time but maybe they use

first order area that feels a little bare as like expansion pad maybe that ends up like oh we're actually we're gonna do a new thing here supposedly the area for the restaurant is still there they could build the restaurant or they could build a more cantina yeah you would think that the cantina is so popular we've talked about before like you may as well like a full it's still crazy to me that they didn't think like this is going to be the most popular thing and they wouldn't build like a kind of a cool like four room cantina with different things and a different robot. And like, yeah,

that's such a slam dunk to get everybody. Yeah. Maybe they needed to test the waters to know like people would want this, right? Oh yeah. People really want it. Yeah. Well,

and especially like just a few weeks ago, they made the alfresco like tasting terrorists, APS only. Right. And jacked up the lines because people here are like, Oh, limited opportunity. I get to do it.

Like my precious, precious, like, yeah. So, but it also probably was not like raking in the dollars as a regular spot. And they're like, well,

how can we juice the business here a little? And it seems like it has worked. Yeah. Oh yeah. So you will, I mean, you'll just have to settle for that beautiful patio at the Grand Californian. Yeah, that's nice, too.

Yeah. The number one thing they should, I don't know if it's even possible, but they should have built like a two-story bar overlooking the Millennium Falcon. It should have been a big, expansive bar with a couple different types of rooms. Yeah. With like, yeah, Rex Rex and one a different band could play could be live and there would be two stories and you'd have a really great view of the Millennium Falcon

and they would make so much money yeah yeah maybe they would maybe this will like kind of like I think this will offset the narrative that it's a disappointment yeah it's I think it's going to be a swell that shows people are excited about this area. I think so, because there's some big shortcomings in Cars Land.

I mean, there's some great stuff about Cars Land, but like... The restaurants went downhill. They flipped the menu at the restaurant a couple of times, gone downhill. Had the slide rides in and out. Yeah. Yeah, flat rides. I mean, I like the restaurant. I like the ambiance in and out. Yeah. Yeah, flat rides. I mean, I like the restaurant.

I like the ambiance of the restaurant. I was going to say, you sit out on the back of Flo's, and that's one of the best views in the park. That's got different rooms, but like, yeah, it seems like they kind of flip-flop the menu a few times. Yeah. But the cones, I'm always like, oh, yeah, let's go get a snack at the cones. Yeah. You got to love the cones.

Yeah. You got to love the cones. Yeah. I think, look, it was it put me in a better mood about Galaxies. Obviously, it's maybe the greatest ride in the world at the moment. And I think I don't know, just like I feel like the full puzzle is finally there. And I also like to say, I think it put us in a good mood a good enough mood where uh i really enjoyed what we were doing with our friend mamazani we were with the uh uh the doc ondar uncut gems mashup oh yeah yeah yeah we were just sort of like going from line to line like that's real black coaxium yeah that was a pain in the ass to get

If this fucking guy Hondo Onaka He had to fucking he had to smuggle this out He had to fire at a train To get this Hondo Onaka is the handsome older gentleman How you doing baby Come on up I got the chef

I got the chef from Docking Bay 7 He's coming up friends are coming up this week We're gonna make some food. It's going to be great. We had an OK riff about Joe Rohde explaining what he liked about Two and a Half Men, too, in Space Mountain. Oh, right. It was a whole of like, you know, it's actually about it's about family and it's about experience.

That's what the comedy is about on Two and a Half Men. Every episode of the Big Bang Theory actually is its own theory. A theory about harmony, about how we interact as people, as if we are the molecules. That's pretty good, too. So we had a couple of great bits. So we're having fun. Yeah, we're having a blast. Hey, C3.

Yeah, that's real black coaxium, C3. Don't lean on the glass, C3. That's gonna break you're a robot you're strong stand on the line don't stand on the glass stand on the line quick take the speeder to canto bite you put credits on the pod race c3 you gotta bring back the coaxium C3 Go get it See this shirt I'm wearing This is Lando Calrissian's shirt You see the yellow and the black This is Lando's shirt

Look at this this guy's an up and comer His name's Rex We can get him Yeah he gets into a fight with Rex in the bathroom It's the son of a bitch Rex He's fucking my girl That's good you should make a funnier dive video With Rex in the bathroom. It's the son of a bitch Rex. He's fucking my girl. That's good.

You should make a funnier dive video. It's a really good. If you want to hear this full audio play, we're willing to do it. But until then, you've survived. Podcasts arrived. Rise of the Resistance edition. What's the runtime? Where do we end up on that? I think it's about two and a half.

Two and a half. Okay. Decent ratio. Not 10 hours if you want to hear more. If you object to declaring this the greatest ride in the world, what do you think, Topsy? We haven't physically been on Mystic Manor. We haven't physically been on Shanghai Pirates. It could be one of these.

Let us know. Write us on Twitter. Let's keep the debates going. We're doing big stuff lately. Boy, Hagrid's and Rise. The War. Whoever wins, we win too.

It's a reverse Aliens vs. Predator. It's a reverse Aliens vs. Predator in quality as well as well yeah uh so yeah follow us on twitter facebook and instagram and for more podcast the ride content go to the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride oh boy all right then uh how do we come down from this i don't know um uh what are you gonna call back oh what am i gonna go in i was thinking about going this week sure yeah i was thinking about going like one day when i don't have anything to do i'll just go down early yeah

try it let us know what you notice yeah um yeah go have a hearty breakfast you know try to make your reservation a nice breakfast i I could do that. Yeah. And I won't, I won't overload on hot dogs. Yeah. Stay away from the tahini. The hot dogs weren't the issue. They fixed it. They're never the problem. They're the solution.

And then I won't have a problem using the bathroom droid. Oh, yes. Right. P-0-0-P. P-0-0-P. Thank you for your service. Master Sheridan, do you have to use P-0-0-P. P-0-P. P-0-P. Thank you for your service. Master Sheridan, do you have to use P-0-0-P? No, I...

P-0-0-P. Too much tahini, Master Sheridan. I usually bring a little bag with ibuprofen and Tums, and I forgot it this time. But if you're having trouble, just know P-0-O-P is there for you. Did you spend a little extra money on a ballast point? Draft beer? Well, no, it's comparable. Are you shitting bricks from the... It's actually one of the cheaper drafts down there

because it's direct from the supplier fruit beers no that's not you found them too expensive well you don't have to give me grief p.o.p okay no i am c3po explaining p.o.p p.o.p can't talk yeah he just he just makes an electronic fart noise. I wish your memory had stayed erased somehow. Quiet, P-O-O-P. All right, more adventures of P-O-O-P coming down the pike. Thanks for listening, everybody. Bye. Bye.

Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.