Star Wars Land: An Excruciatingly In-Depth Prequel

so let me tell you a tale a tale of trains long ago there was a little boy named Walt Disney Walt loved trains I mean Walt Disney really really loved trains the farm on which Walt grew up was next to a railroad track he loved to sit outside by the track and watch for trains and a beloved uncle of his was even an engineer at age 16 Walt left home and for a time he traveled the railroad lines and when he was older and would eventually moved to Los Angeles to find his calling making movies it was a train which carried him their biographers like to imply that Walt loved trains because of what they represented to him things like freedom and possibility and progress I never thought it was that deep I mean Walt Disney is a man whose taste in food never evolved beyond grilled cheese sandwiches and chili which I mean relatable I imagine that Walt loved trains in the way that little boys love Lightning McQueen trains are big and they look awesome and they go fast and if you have a little toy train you get to go to draw maybe that's not it either one of the boyhood tales of Walt Disney was that he would lie on his side in the dirt next to the railroad tracks and he would press his ear to the rail and listen sometimes for hours until he would hear the rumble of a distant train what else do you think he heard what whispers do you think the locomotives shared with him on those still afternoons is it possible that they told him of his destiny did they rumble instructions and what did they promise in return you might be wondering why we're talking about trains so this video is about Star Wars land but I have to talk about trains because trains are in its blood trains are it's blood like the veins or railroad tracks and the blood is trains without trains we'd likely have no Star Wars land because we'd have no Disneyland to put it in when grown-up Walt Disney was running his animation studio he bonded with one of his top animators Ward Kimball over their shared love of trains this story goes that word had Walt over for dinner and then just super casually and organically mentioned that he happened to have an elaborate miniature railroad in the backyard I like to imagine that it was actually Ward playing an elaborate game of 40 chess after he found out that the boss loved trains in 1948 Ward Kimball took waltz away to a weekend at a railroad fair it was basically a bunch of hobbyist showcasing their tiny railroads each of the hobbyist wanted their train to stand out from everybody else's trains so basically they would each pick their own little theme of what environment the Train would be set in so Walt spent what he would later describe as the best weekend of his life watching a bunch of tiny trains rolling through intensely themed environments and I firmly believe that this experience planted the seed which would later grow into the idea of Disneyland Park Walt came home and built his own extensive model train set in the backyard this one was 1/8 scale which hey that's pretty big he named the Train the Lilly Belle after his wife Lillian because Lillian was less than pleased about the Train I don't know if this helped when Walt drew up his plans for a theme park which was initially a much more modest idea called Mickey Mouse Park it was a very simple concept just a little village a couple rides and a trainer on the outside eventually this idea expanded into the Disneyland Park we know today and by the time it reached that point and it expanded to be big enough to get its own full-size railroad to this day you can visit Disneyland and write a full-size steam train one of which is called the ward Kimball or if you're a member of the secret Club 33 you can ride in the luxury caboose called the Lillie Belle but you can't stop progress just like you can't stop your husband from building a train in the backyard sorry okay what am I thinking this is going to be a really long youtube video about Star Wars land galaxies edge the new very large section at Disneyland Park nobody is going to watch it if I don't break it down into some kind of numbered list since its Star Wars I decided to call the bullet points episodes Star Wars land episode 1 why Star Wars land in the early 2000s the Walt Disney Company was looking to expand by purchasing the theme park rights to the wildly popular Harry Potter series so it's going pretty well Rowling is in talks with Disney everyone just assumes they're going to get it but suddenly they start butting heads over Rowling wanting more creative control as legend has it the point of contention was a train where's my train JK wanted a full-size Hogwarts Express to care guests into Harry Potter land and Disney said that was too much both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom at Disney World had full-sized trains already and couldn't comfortably house more trains adding a Hogwarts Express to the existing parks would be expensive unnecessary and logistically inconvenient the Walt Disney Company's new CEO was no Walt Disney too many trains he said I assume we'll have no more trains here you monster Jenny said we will have trains here as long as a dream is alive in a child's heart I'm sorry I was reading for my fan fiction again oops anyway the CEO was anti train and he would suffer for it The Wizarding World of Harry Potter would open at a competing theme park Universal Studios Orlando and see huge success thanks in part to its large new train its success was even enough to pose a threat to the powerful Disney parks Disney's first attempt at competition Pandora the world of Avatar was beautifully designed and some massive attendance from guests but it wouldn't be considered as much of a draw as Wizarding World was for Universal nor did it inspire anywhere near the level of interest in merchandise their second attempt to compete with Harry Potter would be their own Star Wars land it would coincide with the release of a new trilogy rebooting the franchise and it was going to be big 14 acres which is the largest expansion Disneyland Park has ever seen since it opened in 1955 if you're not a frequent visitor to Disneyland but you are peripherally aware that it's situated inside the very busy city of Anaheim you're probably wondering where all this extra space came from and that brings us to Star Wars land episode 2 the land despite being the third teensiest Disney Park worldwide at only 83 acres Disneyland Park is one of the most popular in terms of sheer annual ticket sales and that's because the cream rises to the top the limited space means that if an attraction is too unpopular or just steamed too old they will take it out and replace it with something new sometimes they even take out an attraction that everybody likes for no reason so whenever Disneyland gets a new ride chances are that sitting on the bones of another ride that came before it delana which Star Wars land is built has actually been home to two different attractions the first well that's right I guess it was a train mine train through nature's Wonderland was inspired by the old Disney nature documentaries and was a slow sprawling easygoing ride through the Western wilderness passed over 200 animatronic figures of bears elk beavers mountain lions rattlesnakes wild pigs segments of the ride included the western town of rainbow rich bear country Beaver Valley the rainbow caverns and the Living Desert a whimsical portion with mechanical rock formations that would tumble menacingly toward you and human looking cactuses sometimes do you make these your cactus take on screen in addition to the mine train you could also go through nature's Wonderland on a stagecoach a Conestoga wagon or a pack mule all of these other ones were pretty short-lived but there were like two magical years where all of these different modes of transport were going through the wilderness simultaneously not to go on like a giant tangent but to me this really exemplifies Walt Disney's commitments he using modes of transportation as not only conveyances but as sort of a futuristic mode of ornamentation so if you're going through nature's Wonderland on your little train you might look overhead and see a rock bridge with a pack of mules going across it or see a full-sized covered wagon lumbering by in the distance over the trees you can see the very top of the paddle wheeler making its way down the river these aren't just rides for the people who are on them they are also symbiotically enhancing the experience for everybody in their sight line it made for a very lively section of the park and also just made you feel like you were in a real Western wilderness being explored by settlers early tomorrow and my personal favorite operated by the same principle so you might look out and see from one vantage point a people mover train a Skyway bucket a monorail and a submarine all passing by in the same view anyway the mine train was the longest surviving conveyance through nature's Wonderland and it had a pretty good run it lasted clear up until 1977 the same year Star Wars hit theaters that's a coincidence it's just kind of cool but some nature's Wonderland remnants and references survived for years and it's still kind of a darling of old theme park enthusiasts the rides loading area and a large chunk of its land was taken over by the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster which is kind of a spiritual successor even though it's much more exciting it reuses the buildings of the town of rainbow ridge and a handful of the mechanical animals the first lift hill of the roller coaster takes you through a cave which is a visual reference to the rainbow caverns and you know it's a train down the trail from Big Thunder they even put in a little tribute to the Conestoga wagons this was during Disneyland's partnership with McDonald's in the late 90s and early 2000s it constructed a building that looked like a covered wagon and it sold McDonald's french fries and nothing else it was known as westward ho fries or in some cases the Conestoga fry wagon I don't think any of us will ever see anything as kitschy in our entire lives as the Conestoga fry wagon and I miss it dearly I was really hoping they'd bring it back for Star Wars land maybe like park it right next to the blue milks you'd have your hot fries and your cold blue milk there are dreams that cannot be a few more of the mechanical animals from nature's Wonderland still populate the rivers of America which you can see from the Mark Twain riverboat the remains of the bear country section can still be seen on a trail leading between Thunder Mountain and Fantasyland the tunnel that used to let out onto the old trestle bridge is now looming over a big empty lake a chunk of the trestle and the track itself was left hanging out of the tunnel initially and it stayed that way for years until eventually rough weather caused it to tumble down into the lake I'm genuinely curious as to whether it's still down there this is a bit spooky right bears are long gone but when the water level is low enough you can still look down in the lake and see the jumping mechanical fish that they used to try to catch I think it's cool that Disney still leaves this effect switched on as kind of a throwback but we want to turn our attention to that Living Desert section I was talking about the Living Desert scene with all its cute little cacti and it's tumbling rocks would comprise most of the land that would eventually become Star Wars land and there is a unique quality to it which I would like to discuss you see since it was a desert they couldn't have any sight lines to any of the things around it and there was a lot of stuff around it there were trees all around it there was a huge lush River on one side and then on the other side is Fantasyland so if you saw any of that you wouldn't feel like you were in a desert so to create a visual barrier the entire desert section was dug out to sit rough six to eight feet lower than everything surrounding it initially after the closure of nature's Wonderland the living desert area became a barbecue restaurant and a petting farm but to build these attractions they needed to get the land level to the walkways around it so that guests could go into it without traveling over a hill or falling into a pit so you'll remember when I said that the nature's Wonderland ride had over 200 animated figures and then only a handful of them like maybe a dozen tops would go to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and the rivers of America so what about those other critters well the critters of nature's Wonderland had deteriorated from age and from years of sitting outside some of them in water and with no immediate plans to move them anywhere they would have taken up a lot of storage space so legend has it that in kind of a two birds one stone solution they decided to just throw all of the unwanted critters into a giant pit in the living desert pour a bunch of concrete over the whole thing and never speak of it again so guests would unknowingly be walking over the mass unmarked grave of countless mechanical bears on that note let's talk about the next attraction to occupy this land Big Thunder ranch the barbecue was all-you-can-eat and it had live music and it was pretty popular at the petting farm you could meet goats donkeys cows turkeys the giant horses that work on Main Street and Jenny hi Jenny how are you doing yes I worked at the petting farm I loved the petting farm the petting farm was not popular it was a favorite of the young the elderly and guests with sensory issues who just wanted a quiet place to chill for a minute but Disney takes hourly counts of their attractions and it's not like a petting zoo can compete with Space Mountain according to my manager at the time the petting farm had the lowest hourly counts of everything at Disneyland I'll never forget how when I talked to him about the impending closure of the petting farm he told me it wasn't a matter of where are we going to put Star Wars land it was a matter of how are we going to replace the petting farm the petting farm was on some pretty prime real estate because at the outskirts of the park and behind it was just a large empty festival center a big grassy hill a barn and a parade storage building it was a good space for outward expansion it just needed a little juggling the biggest accommodation is they did have to completely reroute the Disneyland railroad but in doing so they actually added a lot of scenery and embellishments to the trains river crossing including a lot of references to mine train through nature's Wonderland we've got waterfalls and beavers and a giant beautiful railroad trestle I was Hite Star Wars land itself even took the page out of the Living Desert splay but they wanted clean sight lines and they also wanted to build tall structures to have good forced perspective and some big alien rock spires without visually disrupting the rest of the part so they actually carved a large concave area back into the earth and put everything lower than its surroundings I wonder if they dug deep enough to strike pay dirt and accidentally unearth a lot of animatronic bear and elk skeletons that would be a fun day on the construction site best of all this land is rich with big Train Energy Star Wars land was not only once occupied by a train it is also hemmed in by trains on nearly every side Casey jr. circus train is its closest neighbor to the east Big Thunder Mountain is to the south and the Disneyland railroad is to the west so Star Wars land is chugging into the station and now it just seems it's story Star Wars land episode 3 the lore as with Pandora the world of Avatar Star Wars land is intended to be a fully immersive experience but unlike Avatar Star Wars has a large established fan base who care deeply about the Canon so the Imagineers had to make it fit in with everything that came before it and this was accomplished through a multi-step process one invent a new Star Wars planet this gave Imagineers the freedom to make the landscape whatever they wanted to but also to feature whatever creatures or characters from Star Wars they wanted without disrupting the established canon so they can have big orangie rock work that matches Big Thunder Mountain on the frontier land side but also have a back way that transitions into forests and rock work to merge it with critter country in the back they can have bantha milk and porks and ancient Jedi artifacts consequent Star Wars land has four different names Star Wars land which is what it is Star Wars Galaxies edge which is what it's officially called la 2 which is the planet that it's set on and blacks fire outpost which is the location on by two that you are specifically a step to fire the director of one of your Star Wars movies and replace them with a director who's willing to add an extended sequence that is solely there to establish the existence of trains in the Star Wars universe this would appease the train spirits and prevent misfortune from befallen your theme part step three start referencing Star Wars land and all of your Canon material prior to its opening on Star Tours and basic and basic don't make fun of me on Star Tours they added an ending to the possible carousel of endings that took guests to BOTS too although each of the story segments on Star Tours are randomized I believe for a good long time this was the only one you could get two was also featured in the novel Thrawn alliances it made a little cameo in the Star Wars resistance cartoon and it got its own Marvel comic series a story of bot 2 is that it is a once great Outer Rim world which is now used as a stopover for travelers and smugglers on their way out into wild space it's currently occupied by the first-order but the resistance has also set up a base in the very same outpost that last part is kind of funny because of the proximity of the two organizations so you have kylo ren's big ship and periodically he will stomp out of it and he's like where's the resistance and raised straight up doing photo op meet and greets like a block away but that's kylos problem he's too focused on his work if you just walked around the corner to get himself a hotdog wrap he'd see the Millennium Falcon it's parked in the middle of the street but speaking of rey her theme park story is even funnier sometimes she'll hold still in one place usually out by the building that's going to be the rise of the resistance ride which is the resistance base and also sometimes by the Millennium Falcon photo op area but they avoid setting up a queue and having people meet Rey one after the other instead she is on resistance business the best thing ray does is if kids come up to her she will tell them that she's on a mission and she's hiding from stormtroopers and then she'll take them around on an adventure with her then they'll basically just go around the land and hide in doorways and behind garbage cans in the olden days this was how all Disneyland characters functioned they didn't have a sign set up telling you where to meet them and they didn't form a line they would just show up and be around and kids would gravitate toward them they would just wander the park like they live there which is what you're supposed to feel like and sometimes they would even climb on two rides with you then the concept of the character meet and greet was recontextualized into an attraction of the park a rite of passage for little girls wearing matching princess dresses and a marketing opportunity for your Disney PhotoPass photographers there are a couple characters who are still free-range like Peter Pan will just wander all over Fantasyland and Alice and the Mad Hatter still go play musical chairs with kids at the ice-cream parlor but the princesses are so in demand that they built them a dedicated Royal Hall for photo ops you line up and then they march you through and you meet three in a row like it's an assembly line and the character hosts have an hourly quota they're supposed to meet I understand the need for this they wouldn't have started doing it if the demand wasn't there but that never made sense for right and before Star Wars land opened they did have a dedicated Wray meet-and-greet and she had a little backdrop that they made for her it was a little room with like a map and the console with buttons and it's like raised in a political leader like Leia and she's not bubbly and outgoing like Rapunzel and Snow White so like why is she in this room holding court with strangers and none of the performers could do the accent and you just make awkward small talk that's one statement I am NOT going to include a clip to support because I don't want to just cruelly single out one Rey but this new thing is such a fun idea and it's going to make such a better lasting memory for the kids that meet her I also like the way it kind of reshapes the characters function into an active playmate for kids it almost discourages adults from approaching her and like you still can and she'll even come up to you if there aren't any kids around but I think the idea of having her play a little pretend game with you is a good way to establish that boundary because it should be for the kids at the end of the day and mostly I like to imagine that episode 9 is going to come out and just have a 30 minute action sequence of Rey wandering a market at a light jog crouching by one trash can after another in a seemingly aimless pattern also race sure is quick to trust and recruit every single person she runs into on BOTS - are you sure this is the best way to keep a low profile right as far as the physical sense of immersion goes it's fantastic Disney as always has their sight lines down to a science like you can't see anything else while you're inside and you can't see inside when you're in the other land so it doesn't ruin those I really wish companies like Universal or Knott's Berry Farm cared about this so you wouldn't get things like a Homer Simpson head from Hogwarts or a roller coaster track in a Western ghost town and all the employees are extremely into it if you go just know that basically everybody at the park wanted to work at Star Wars land they even made a video surprising people by telling them they got accepted to work there like they were winning the lottery or something so definitely don't overlook the cast members as a resource like if you see anything that you're curious about or just have any questions definitely approach them and ask they are just as excited about Star Wars land as you are a lot of them have made up their own backstories and characters like there was a guy selling me water bottles whose thing was he likes to eat pork a lot of them are doing fun space hairdos and when they go to costuming instead of having a set costume like everywhere else in Disneyland they are given a large selection of pieces they're allowed to mix and match and that's to help them establish their character also first guy I've seen with this hat it's a bold choice but I respect it if you're talking to an employee and they look like they have a minute definitely ask them questions about their characters or the surroundings or props ask them how they feel about the first order if you see a blast remark ask them how I got there because odds are they've either made up their own story or it was covered in training and they're excited to show they can remember it one of my favorite moments was I was in line for the lightsaber experience and we were in this courtyard and there was a tree with colorful scraps of fabric tied to it at one point an employee arrived and started tying more scraps of fabric onto it and this was opening day so I was like oh it's the designer punching it up or maybe guests disrupted some of them and he's fixing it but a Niran employee so I just point to this man and I go what does it mean oh that man is flying fabric onto that tree he's awfully anyway it turns out it doesn't have an explanation that's the kind of thing that makes the experience really special as in Avatar land nobody is supposed to acknowledge that they're in a theme park or that Star Wars is a movie series in Avatar land the Avatar movie is the documentary and in Star Wars land the Star Wars movies are the legends this land also of course has its own lingo bright Suns and rising moons are their greetings depending on the time of day somebody was telling me that the planet bot - has three suns and I think two moves and I believe this employee was telling me that they're all out at once and I don't know enough about space to know if that makes sense but anyway that's why they're all about their sons and their moons because they just have a bunch of them so it's always on your mind wheelchairs and strollers are transports and my personal favorite I don't know is supposed to be only the ancients know which I have yet to see employed but I'm very excited for the eventualities I remember that for people that like clickbait articles before it opened everyone was like if you go to Star Wars land you better know to call the bathroom the refresher or they won't tell you where it is it's like no customer service still comes first obviously it's just clickbait they call it that but they obviously still answer you it's obviously just like if you ask for the bathroom as they say the refresher is that way and you understand through context clues it's not complicated guys definitely use the lingo while you're there because it is fun I don't make the fun rules it just is fun I imagine that working at Star Wars land when the crowds pick up is going to end up being a very stressful experience with a lot of unhappy guests I worry that as guest satisfaction issues arise they will start discouraging their employees from being so in character or the employees will stop having so much fun and not be so into it or they will simply run through their first crop of employees and not train the subsequent crop of them quite as intensively if I may hit you the fun fact which I love I was once in a break room and a veteran employee of California Adventure spore to me that when the Park first opened all of the employees of the boardwalk area were asked to effect an old-timey carnival barker accent like the CEO was just really enamored by the idea of this and asked it of them in training but nobody was doing it and the employees were bad at even being asked because it is kind of a big ass management was tired of trying to enforce it because they weren't into it either and it was very quickly just written out they're like no we're not gonna do that I've googled around about this extensively and tried to find old home movies of the year the park opened and I've not been able to verify this as fact at all but I want to believe nobody in Star Wars land is being asked to do carnival barker accents but I think it is a reality of theme parks that as things begin to age that level of attention to detail and effort begins to wane as the realities of training and maintenance 7 so that's why it felt very important to me to go to Star Wars land soon after it opened and catch all those strange and interesting things which might be changed or abandoned later but how are we kidding inside Star Wars land Solo a Star Wars land story how are we getting inside so we all knew I was going to go to Star Wars land and do an appallingly long video on it but that is easier said than done in anticipation of large crowds access to Star Wars land is very restricted for the first month and a half of its life and will continue to be somewhat restricted after that during that first month and a half there are only three ways into Star Wars land let's work through them together shall we option one press previews traditional media always gets previews of Disney events but so do bloggers it gets go and get footage of everything and not deal with horrible crowds this was obviously my first choice and I thought I stood a pretty good chance I wouldn't rank myself in the upper echelons of youtubers but theme-park youtubers that's a much smaller pond they have relatively lower numbers so I'm not a big fish in the ocean but I am a sizable koi in this pond a couple of themed Park youtubers were nice enough to pass along the email contact for Disney social media coordinator so I decided to reach out ghosted and no response whatsoever that's embarrassing let's never talk about that again I'm a small small little fish stop kicking me while I'm down option two is getting an online reservation option two is simple and free however these reservations completely booked out in less than two hours and a lot of people were stuck in long online queues and might not have made it through in time between me and my friends we managed to secure two free online reservations but they were not until a couple weeks after Star Wars land opened and I was afraid of things selling out so option number three a hotel stay I affectionately call this one the obscenely expensive option I said that the free online reservations booked out immediately but there is a loophole if you book a stay in one of Disneyland resorts on property hotels you are guaranteed entry to Star Wars land on that visit this could get me an opening weekend which is mega exciting I was only able to get a reservation for the day after opening day but my friends at podcast the ride got one for opening day and they offered me a spot so that's that right wrong option for cast member preview this one's a wild card employees of Disneyland sometimes get previews of upcoming attractions sometimes but not always and they never get to bring guests I used to work at Disneyland but that was a while ago so I was not even considering this but then they decided that cast members do get to bring friends and even though my friends like to Punk me by pretending they're going to bring somebody else one of my friends did bring me as a plus-one so not only am I going I'm going on May 26th before it even opens now if for some reason you are watching this video actively and not just passively waiting for me to tell you things you might have noticed that I have secured myself not one but five entries into Star Wars land during the reservation period this is crazy and excessive right most people don't even have one so you're probably wondering why I need that many and also why I didn't at least cancel the expensive hotels so let's talk about the catch each of those methods all of those reservations I just mentioned those are not all day and tree into Star Wars land those are each only a four hour time slot furthermore I can't count the cast preview as a day for gathering footage because it's before the media day so there are no photos or video allowed I don't like to do anything halfway and I was really psyching myself up about the Star Wars land opening I was having nightmares about it so I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do in Star Wars land the ride by the merchandise build a lightsaber built at roid go to the cantina eat at the restaurant take photos then you step back and think realistically any one of those activities I just named could represent like a two-hour wait in a line and that's not even a lot in time to just wander around and soak in the ambience and like observe things so I decided to go five times I'm sorry 20 hours in Star Wars land you're probably wondering what this costs let's break it down to get a nan park hopper adult ticket for one day and Disneyland Park in peak season which it is now it's 149 dollars to park it's $25 to get a room at one of the on property hotels and secure that included guaranteed Star Wars land reservation you have options the cheapest room you could possibly booked would be at the Paradise Pier Hotel and cost 503 per night plus tax and it's not a very good hotel those obviously booked out first for the weeks are on Star Wars lands opening so I just went with the cheapest option available to me my room at the Disneyland Hotel after tax totaled 761 dollars and 67 cents so I would just like to thank my patreon friends because oh my god and yes you still have to pay $25 to park when you have a room at the hotel I am a small fish being kicked while I'm down so that brings our grand total for one guaranteed visit to Star Wars land up to nine hundred and thirty five dollars and 67 cents that's expensive rogue one a Star Wars land story Project Stardust Project Stardust was a multi-year Imagineering initiative to prepare Disneyland for the arrival of Star Wars land and the idea that actually philosophically shaped Star Wars land itself too in my opinion Project Stardust is a very exciting and mysterious name for something that's ultimately actually pretty boring but I still want to talk about it so bear with me because I have strong feelings so project Stardust was born of the idea that once Star Wars land opened Disneyland was going to be met with the biggest crowds it had ever and as such subtle changes needed to be made to physically prepare the park for these crowds by maximizing walkway space and keeping people moving through them to accomplish this they relocated stroller parking areas redesigned some structures whose support beams impeded walkways and removed planters and benches that all sounds good except for that last part did you notice that part where I said benches and planters because they weren't being moved they were being removed management is replacing all of that loss seating but only inside of restaurants I think the average guest is not likely to really notice the effects of project start us but hear me out after they closed my petting farm at Disneyland I relocated to work at guest relations so a large portion of my job was fielding the complaints of angry guests in my experience the number one stressor for theme park guests is that they run themselves ragged all day without even noticing it to the point where by the time they come to complain at City Hall a lot of them don't even want anything they're just very upset and you just kind of have to nod sympathetically like that's most of the jaw they spend all day freaking out thinking about how they spent a lot of money to get there like for example nine hundred and thirty five dollars and sixty seven s then much more than that if they're from out of town and much much more than that if they have a big family and a bunch of kids and so they just panic about doing as much as they can and getting their money's worth if your old family is exhausted and you pass by a little shady planter maybe a bench by a duck pond it might occur to you that hey you should sit down for a second and not be moving around and stressing out maybe you get a turkey leg or watch the horse he's pulling the streetcar or pull out your park map and gather your thoughts maybe have a chat about what you've all liked about your day so far and decompress if you don't pass by any convenient benches on your way somewhere you feel really guilty asking everybody to go way out of their way so you can try to find a place to sit down psychologically it doesn't feel like an easy little break anymore it seems like you're grinding everything to a halt and wasting time and wasting money so you keep pushing and you keep moving and you don't even realize you feel like you're dying inside until it's 5:30 p.m. and you're standing in the middle of Pete support having a family meltdown because your son Braden only it's chicken tenders and you don't want to go all the way back to Frontierland he's crying you're crying your spouse is crying and suddenly your marriage is falling apart maybe somebody caught cat flu it's not a good time and besides Disneyland is all about atmosphere it's made to be observed there are hidden details everywhere buildings pump out smells and ambient audio tracks and you're not going to notice any of that if you spend all day hustling from one place to the other so anyway I really feel Project Stardust in Star Wars land there are huge massive walkways it feels like a lot of expansive space but there's practically nowhere to sit I remember walking outside the Droid Shop and there's this little fenced off decorative area with little droids to look at I kept looking at the droids and then looking around me and I didn't really know why until I realized that I was looking for a place to linger and I wasn't finding it I wasn't even really looking for a bench I was just looking for like a Pho alleyway with maybe some steps leading to nowhere and then people would sit on it and congregate it would be shaded and then you could just sit there for a minute and look at the droids I assumed this expectation came from Diagon Alley at Harry Potter world or Main Street at Disneyland which both have exactly that but nope not here to add insult to injury Star Wars land does have little faux staircases that don't lead anywhere but they're also high up that guests can't get to them or they're behind a little gate like they're only to be observed please do not sit on our fake staircase for some reason there are by my recollection no formal benches in Star Wars land although there are some low planters there are some space shipping crates that enterprising guests can try to sit themselves on these are all crowded with people at any given time and most of them are in direct Sun also if you have any kind of physical or mobility issues and you can't sit very low or jump up on to something you're going to have even more limited options everything about it just subliminally telling you not to linger in keeping with Project Stardust almost the only seating in Star Wars land is inside of the two restaurants and that is also limited I'm going to talk about that later all of this together makes Star Wars land extremely exhausting after my first four hour time slot I felt like I'd been there for three days another casualty of Project Stardust was the free roaming droids when the land was announced all the concept art had free roaming droids roll around through the crowds and interacting with people and then as they kept releasing more concept art you started noticing that it didn't have free roaming droids in it anymore this little guy named Jake even appeared for test drives around Tomorrowland in 2017 by the way I might just be paranoid but I'm fascinated by this guy with this sideways water bottle you can see him following the droid around like that in every shot and he never pulls out a phone to take a picture and this video has a white sweatshirt water bottle guy anyway I just thought it was interesting anyway project Stardust is reportedly the reason for scrapping these droids and not putting them in Star Wars land at all because they would cause people to gather and take photos and would impede foot traffic the real reason is probably budget cuts obviously building and troubleshooting and maintaining these droids is expensive but more than that Disneyland's only puppet show Disney Junior Live ended a 14-year run in 2017 because of Disney's tensions with the puppeteering Union yeah I guess negotiations weren't going the way they wanted and Disneyland decided that puppeteers were just too expensive to bother employing also remember the last time we saw Jake was around that time but anyway Project Stardust was the excuse so I still blame project Stardust I mainly just mentioned the droids here because I want people to know that we could have had free roaming droids and if nobody knows that we could have had them nobody's gonna be upset that we don't have them and if nobody's upset that we don't have them we will never have them if a lot of people want droids maybe someday we'll get droids so you know tweet tweet them or something tweet it Disney that you want to rights actually if we've learned anything from the history of Star Wars land it's that if we really want free roaming droids we have to get universal to do it first and then Disneyland will get embarrassed and then they'll do it and like come on foot traffic is not a valid excuse for not having droids because like impeding traffic flow because people want to stop and take a picture doesn't that sound like the castle is that next you guys gonna take out the castle yeah an efficient walkway is great but you can't live your life in efficient walkways imagine existing in a place where every square foot of land is an efficient walkway you can't stop moving or you're in somebody's way you're constantly being jostled and if you try to step to the side and lean against a wall an employee and a vest urges you to keep moving now please actually exists it's San Diego comic-con and it's a nightmare never go there I appreciate the efforts of Project Stardust and the simple initiatives like the stroller parking and widening the walkways but I think when you focus on efficiency over comfort an atmosphere you're obviously going to have a negative impact on customer satisfaction in the long run I moved so I mentioned guest satisfaction and you're probably wondering how this is going over with the customer base well the story of Star Wars land is still developing we are still in the prequel portion of the Star Wars land saga but I'm sure some of you have noticed that there are already loads of clickbait articles about how Star Wars land is failing and attendance is low this is attributable to a lot of different factors a big one was Disney being overcautious and blocking almost all of the local annual passes and warning people away in anticipation of huge crowds that just never materialized they over prepared for these huge crowds to the point of basically begging people not to come and like it kind of worked so what did they expect I do personally think it's still very early things are still developing and I think the next year after this period is going to be very important in actually gauging the success of Star Wars land but I also think thus far a big culprit in the ghost town nests of Star Wars land is project Stardust Disneyland has been pretty uncrowded for a summer season this year but Star Wars land has been especially uncrowded and it's brand new and like we even pretend to be surprised when it's a land designed to bring people in and then efficiently cycle them back out it was literally designed to be impossible to hang out it project Stardust is doing exactly what it was designed to do but I think it's to the detriment of the land the only silver lining here is that project Stardust is not like a hard thing to undo it's not hard to add benches it's not a big strain on the budget either which apparently is a deal-breaker for a lot of things unless the benches decide to unionize this is all over so whoo I think that's that's all anyone wants to hear about Star Wars land machines accomplished the philosophy behind shaping its walkways and animatronic graveyards the complete I promised you a tale of trains I would have expected to circle back around two trains like in much in the way that a train would circle around a track well this tale is not over you've just witnessed the prequel trilogy plus two other things that you didn't ask for there's actually a lot more to cover in excruciating detail the food the merge the activities the ride the second much more impressive ride if it ever actually opened this feels like I'm setting up a call to action but I'm not I just these just are things that I'm going to talk about whether you want me to or not all of it just like Star Wars became much - gargantuan for a single trilogy or video to contain so I hope you'll all join me on this journey in the next video all aboard - you this part was the boringest one which is why it's also my favorite so each subsequent one will be less exciting for me but more exciting for all of you so that's you know good also shout out to my friends for ruining the audio of all my footage thank God I just talk over the clips anyway [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] summer pants [Music]

Channel: Jenny Nicholson

Views: 831,400

Rating: 4.9384418 out of 5

Keywords: galaxy's edge, disneyland

Id: dYy6V_ZVSU8

Length: 42min 54sec (2574 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Winnduffy]

great video