Chapter 37
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
(Originally posted August 28, 2012)
Our first Star Tours vehicle took us… nowhere. Literally. We had just gotten into the vehicle and they had checked everyone’s seatbelts. The doors were closed and we should have been preparing for takeoff. But nothing happened. After about a minute the cast member re-opened the doors, re-checked the seatbelts, and tried to send us on our way once again. But again, nothing. So they told us all to unload and move to the loading area for a different vehicle. We transferred to the one behind us, got re-situated and buckled in, and the doors were closed.
This time we took off. And we got a slightly different experience than the ones we were used to! While the different openings and holograms are similar enough that I don’t remember which ones we got which times, I know that this time, instead of Hoth, our first destination was Kashyyyk (aka the Wookie Planet). This was pretty fun. We like wookies, and it was nice to mix things up a bit. Unfortunately, after the jump to the second planet, we arrived back in the Geonosis asteroid belt where we got to meet up with Boba Fett (“a sonic bomb!”). Up until this point, though we had ridden eight times, we had literally gotten this ending every time. Tracy didn’t even believe there was another ending. Oh well, it’s still fun. We landed and disembarked.
After exiting through the gift shop, we realized there was still practically no line, so we decided to ride again!
They had just opened up the outside part of the queue, but it was pretty constantly in motion and the posted wait time was only 10 minutes.
We very quickly got back to the inside queue area.
It’s a running joke in my family that you have to hold on to your hats on Star Tours. When I was eight and rode for the first time, I had one of the old Donald Duck hats with a squeaker in the beak. When we went on Star Tours, I didn’t want it falling off and plummeting out into space, so I apparently rode the entire time clutching the bill of my hat to make sure it was on tight. Now, on every trip, we have to take a picture of us holding onto our hats before we board Star Tours. Don’t want to lose those little beauties!
Looking cool in my 3D shades.
Looking even cooler.
This time, our ride took us back to the Wookiee planed (it became a theme on this trip) but we FINALLY got a new ending. We ended up in Coruscant dodging traffic as we raced toward our final landing. It was pretty exciting to get to see another new location. After landing safely once again (phew), we went out through the gift shop one more time. Tracy wanted this Ewok keychain.
We seriously thought about riding again, but the wait time was ticking up as the park got close to officially opening. Instead, we figured we’d come back and get Fastpasses later…
We started making our way back toward the Sorcerer Hat in case there were any more characters we could meet in their Hollywood outfits. On the way, we stopped to check out some of the celebrity statues. I would never normally mock these TV greats, but so many of them were sculpted making the most bizarre facial expressions, so we can’t help but mimic them.
We walked past Echo Lake and made it back to the hat area.
There were a few characters doing meet and greets, but they all seemed to almost be going in for a break, so we decided to take some Photopass pictures with the hat instead. It’s always fun when you get a Photopass photographer who is willing to think outside of the box with the poses they have you do!
Since we had our names embroidered in our hats, several photographers thought it would be fun to have us pose facing backward.
We thought about riding The Great Movie Ride because it was still early in the day and Tracy thought she might be able to avoid falling asleep. It seems like on every trip, we ride this ride after lunch at the height of the day, and because of that Tracy has literally never made it past the Casablanca scene without dozing off for the rest of the ride. She truly had never even seen the Wizard of Oz scene… We hoped to change that on this trip.
Alas, for some reason, The Great Movie Ride was proving to be very popular this morning with wait times of 30 minutes. We weren’t about to wait for that, so we decided to put it off till later… Instead, we decided to make our way to the back of the park and see either Muppet Vision or the Backlot Tour. On the way, we stopped to take pictures with one of the Star Wars scenes that were leftover from Star Wars Weekends. We were both unhappy wookies!
I am pretty much always hopelessly lost when trying to tour Hollywood Studios. If a park isn’t set up with a hub and spokes, I have no idea how to navigate it. Therefore, I was taken by surprise when we suddenly came upon the Backlot Tour.
A group was just about to start going in as we approached, so we hurried into the shortest line and barely made the cutoff.
I would love to see the pre-show for the Backlot Tour refurbished and re-themed. Obviously, the Pearl Harbor setup is more than a little dated by now, and I think it could just use a nice freshening up in a lot of ways. That being said, someday I really want to volunteer for the pre-show, or for Tracy to volunteer. It seems like so much fun! The crew that volunteered this time were motley to say the least. I’m pretty sure the “telegraph operator” flashed the “rock on” sign halfway through being doused with water… Anyway, we moved past the pre-show and boarded our tram.
We started touring around the skeleton of what used to be a working studio… At least we got some cool views of the good ol’ Earful Tower and its topiary counterpart.
As we pulled into the canyon set, we could tell there was some trouble brewin’. If I didn’t know any better, I would say we were entering the scene of some sort of catastrophe!!
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