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The Secrets Of The World’s Most Innovative Theme Park Attraction

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Additional reporting by Caroline Reid

In the 65 years since the doors to Disneyland in California swung open, theme parks haven’t changed a great deal.

New parks still draw in guests with a central landmark surrounded by lands which have different themes. They are still largely home to a mix of roller coasters, log flumes and indoor rides that glide past elaborate sets. Aside from the addition of simulators, the industry hasn’t really broken this mould. Until now.

Today Disneyland swung open the doors to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, an attraction with a name which sounds more like a movie than a theme park attraction. It is no coincidence.

The attraction is themed to the Star Wars movie series and puts guests in the middle of sets which look just like their on-screen counterparts. Disney’s Imagineers, the wizards who dream up its theme parks, worked on it with the Star Wars movie-makers at Lucasfilm. They didn’t cut any corners.

“The Lucasfilm design team worked with the Imagineers seamlessly as one team,” says Doug Chiang who has been a force behind the Star Wars movies for 25 years. Chiang is one of the most talented production designers in the business and has won two BAFTAs and an Academy Award for his visual effects in the 1993 black comedy Death Becomes Her.

In 1995 Star Wars creator George Lucas personally selected him to serve as the head of Lucasfilm’s art department and he rose to become vice president and executive creative director of the company.

“I oversee all of the designs for Star Wars for our films, video games as well as theme parks. My role on Rise of the Resistance was really to make sure that the designs they were creating felt authentically Star Wars so even though we are designing it for a theme park, it could actually go into one of our films as well.” It is no exaggeration.

Rise of the Resistance opened first in December at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in Florida and soon became a star attraction with many guests arriving at 6am to line up for it at the park gates. There was a common theme.

“The Rise of the Resistance ride at Hollywood Studios is 1000% worth it. It really is so immersive and fun, I felt like I was taking part in the movies,” said one guest on Twitter. Another added that they “managed to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Walt Disney World today and WOW getting up at 4am was certainly worth it - If you've ever dreamt of being in a #StarWars movie then you have to visit.” Likewise, others said “you feel like you’re in a Star Wars movie” and that “pictures don’t even begin to do it justice.”

Anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie will remember the corridors of the dagger-shaped enemy Star Destroyers with their silently sliding blast doors and squeaky-clean floors lit by bright white lights glowing behind grills. Sitting in an eight-person vehicle in Rise of the Resistance, you’ll race down them as space pilot Poe Dameron did in 2015’s smash hit Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

His full-size X-wing sits at the exit of a makeshift briefing room where guests get the low-down on their mission at the start of the attraction. You stand in front of the same kind of illuminated screen that Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia used to co-ordinate the assault on the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope, the 1977 epic that kicked off the sci-fi saga.

This time the instructions come from Rey, one of the heroic band of Resistance fighters that the attraction is named after. In the movies she is played by British actress Daisy Ridley and, in Star Wars’ trademark style, a flickering hologram of her appears to float in mid-air in the briefing room.

A carbon copy of Rey’s spherical robot companion BB-8 rolls to her side as she tells guests that they must board a shuttle to meet Leia at a secret location far, far away where they will plan an attack on the evil First Order.

Try as you might, you won’t see any trace of a screen which the hologram is being beamed onto. Likewise, BB-8 doesn’t seem to move on tracks and its head appears to float on its body exactly as it does in the movies. However, this kind of special effects sorcery isn’t the real reason why the attraction is a blockbuster. It also challenges conventions which have so far been seen as immutable in the theme park industry.

Whilst most attractions involve guests queuing, getting on the ride and exiting, your journey to the stars on Rise of the Resistance involves four different types of vehicle with the biggest twist coming early on.

Disney sets the scene for Rise of the Resistance long before you even get into the attraction. It sits inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, an 14 acre land which is meant to be Batuu, a planet in the Star Wars universe. Everything fits this theme.

As we have reported, the land looks like a film set with its intricately-detailed rock work and space ships scattered all over it. That’s just the start. Murmurings from alien species are piped in through hidden speakers, signs are written in the Star Wars alphabet of Aurebesh and staff, who are aptly known as Cast Members, talk in character to guests. There are no panels marking the entrances to the attractions as you would usually find in a theme park. They are meant to be actual experiences on Batuu and Rise of the Resistance begins in an encampment hidden deep in a forest.

You enter under a laser turret and there’s no indication of what’s in store as the building for the attraction is hidden behind a mountain in the distance. It’s not just for show as the Resistance hideout is meant to have been carved into the rocks so that the First Order wouldn’t find it.

The doorway into the mountain looks like it is being held up by steel struts and it leads to a cave-like network of corridors. Cages of weaponry and space pilot suits line the rocky walls and cables appear to have been drilled into the stone to power the hideout. No stone has been left unturned.

Even the areas to rest during the queue don’t break the fourth wall as barrels have been conveniently left for guests to sit on and benches have been carved into the rocks. There isn’t much waiting around as the winding path soon leads to the briefing room and then the real fun begins.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to the believability of any theme park ride is predictability. You may not know what the ride will be like, and there may be surprises along the route, but you know it’s going to begin when the vehicle arrives and it’s all over when it comes to a halt at the end. It can be a jarring experience that doesn’t seem fluid or spontaneous like real life. Rise of the Resistance changes all that.

After the mission briefing, guests are led outside and into what appears to be a full-size rocket ship. Known as the Intersystem Transport Ship (ITS), it is meant to zoom guests to the secret rendez-vous point with Leia and has the appearance inside of a subway car without any seats. The walls are lined with hand rails and overhead monitors show other members of the Resistance crew who are in contact with the ITS.

At either end of the subway-like car are windows which are actually screens showing what is meant to be the outside view of the forest encampment. It’s movie-quality computer-generated imagery (CGI) created by Industrial Light and Magic which was behind the effects in the Star Wars series. Sitting in front of the screens is the ship’s commander, an anthropomorphic fish who looks like Star Wars fan-favorite Admiral Ackbar.

The ITS is just an extension of the queue as it channels guests between the cave-like corridors and the main attraction building which is one of the biggest Disney has ever built. However after a few moments inside the ITS something happens which has never been seen before in a theme park: the queue area begins to move.

Unbeknownst to guests, the ship is physically turning so that they get out in the attraction building. At the same time, the floor tilts and rumbles in time to the action on the screens to give guests the impression that they are rocketing through space. Unlike every other simulator you are standing up which makes the experience all the more realistic as it is so unexpected.

Of course, it doesn’t go to plan as the First Order tracks down the ITS and supposedly beams it onto its Star Destroyer in a bid to find out the location of the rendez-vous point with Leia. When the doors slide open the surprises continue as a stern-looking Cast Member dressed in a trademark First Order dark suit and peaked cap announces that the ship has been captured.

In stark contrast to the jarring experience of many theme park rides, it’s hard to tell where the queue has ended and the attraction has begun. Being met with surly guards is exactly what you would expect to happen if you were on a ship which had been captured. It’s more like interactive theatre than the passive experience found in most theme park attractions and this is just the start.

“The Cast Members give you that sense of reality - that it’s real,” says John Larena, Imagineering’s executive creative director for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. “The Cast Members are such an important and integral part of the overall story and the experience would not be what it is without the Cast Members.”

He adds that his favorite part of the attraction comes when guests get ushered off the ITS as they find themselves in a soaring hangar. It appears to look out onto the depths of space as its backdrop is a sweeping 100 feet wide screen showing stars and ships zipping by.

‘When people disembark the ITS there is just that flabbergasted look on their faces that says ‘wow this is actually real. I’m really here and the whole ship is here’. I think it has an incredible impact on people,” says Larena.

The hangar was first seen on screen in Star Wars: A New Hope when the iconic space ship the Millennium Falcon was trapped there and it is every bit as cavernous in real life as you would imagine. A full size enemy TIE fighter ship sits on a ledge in the wall as if it is waiting to take off. Right in front of you is a phalanx of 50 Stormtroopers clad in their shiny white armor. Some make slight head and body movements but they are actually audio-animatronic figures.

The hangar seems deliberately designed for selfies but it actually serves two key purposes. Firstly, the change of scenery and pace adds to the tension and the feeling that you don’t know what’s coming next. Secondly, guests linger in the room which regulates the crowd flow to the next part of the attraction.

There is so much to see there that the Cast Members have to move guests along which is perfectly in-keeping with the fierce First Order officers that they are playing. This theme continues as you get funnelled deeper into the Star Destroyer. The Imagineers have recreated its labyrinthine network of stark grey hallways complete with their famous grills, pipes and glowing buttons on the walls. It feels confined compared to the hangar and that’s no coincidence.

“Think of how we move you through the story and how we use scale of being inside and the colors and the textures,” says Larena. “You go from the outside world to the queue inside. Then we bring you into the inside of a space ship and the next thing you know we are hitting you with a big space. Then what is the very next thing we do? We put you through a very narrow hall.”

It gets even more confined as guests are split into groups and sent into what appears to be an interrogation room. Stormtroopers appear to peer down from a gantry above and you could be forgiven for thinking that they were real. They look so sharp that they shine, appear to have depth and even cast shadows below but they are actually projections. It is thanks to a partnership with tech giant Panasonic which developed custom-made lenses for the project.

It only becomes apparent that you’re watching a projection when Hollywood actors Adam Driver and Domhnall Gleeson address the guests from above in character as big bad Kylo Ren and his underling General Hux. Before they get a chance to grill the guests, a glowing outline appears on the wall giving the impression that someone is cutting through it. A hidden door opens in the middle revealing that even the inside of the wall is glowing from where it was supposedly cut through.

You’re then united with a vehicle which looks like a troop transport and the final act begins. British actor John Boyega reprises his role of Finn the renegade Stormtrooper who tells guests via video that the droid in the driving seat has been reprogrammed to help them escape. He explains that the way out is on the upper deck of the Star Destroyer where there are escape pods which will drop them back down to Batuu.

The trackless vehicle hugs the floor and Larena says it was designed that way “from the very get-go.” There is good reason for this. “Rise of the Resistance was born when we realized that you could make a trackless vehicle that could stay really low down to the ground and that set up the opportunity of something that can go into a Star Destroyer. Trackless vehicles usually sit pretty high off the floor so it wouldn’t be realistic for them to be running through hallways.”

The Imagineers made the most of this as the vehicle weaves in and out of the dimly-lit Star Destroyer corridors. It skids round corners, slows down, goes backwards and even stops at some points. The movement conveys the increasing desperation of the droid in the driving seat as the threat level appears to accelerate.

At one point you race through the legs of the towering walking AT-AT tanks first seen in 1980’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Stormtroopers around the sides of the room try to pepper you with laser bolts which appear to actually whizz through the air thanks to some technical wizardry. The bolts even reflect off the shiny walls and Chiang says that they “had to be designed so that their quality and look matched our films.”

Ever the perfectionists, Disney sets off crackling bursts of light that look like sparks coming from the exact point where the laser is meant to land. Scorch marks are even projected onto the spot immediately afterwards.

Larena adds that “you will notice the music crescendos are right on the mark with the blaster fire. The blaster fire isn’t blasting over someone’s lines. You can clearly hear everything. Every special effect is perfectly lined up to your vantage point.”

To run Rise of the Resistance 50 processors reportedly have to crunch five million lines of code and Larena says “they all have to talk to each other and the complexities with doing that are huge. Everything has to be synchronized.”

This soon becomes apparent when you reverse out of the AT-ATs way. There are two different paths for the vehicle to take but both see it passing an animated model of Boyega which looks so realistic it’s common to hear riders asking whether it’s a live actor. It even moves naturally as Disney reportedly developed slimline motors which fit inside artificial limbs and generate enough torque to move them fluidly.

The vehicle then rises on a lift to the upper deck where it has a close encounter with Kylo Ren. He is dispatched by falling scenery when the Star Destroyer gets into a collision which can be seen on giant screens where the windows are meant to be. A blast of air rushes through the corridor and then comes the main event.

The vehicle enters the escape pod which uses every trick in Disney’s spell book. In another theme park first there’s a sudden drop as a screen up front shows you falling through the clouds. Then, before you have had time to catch your breath, the pod becomes a simulator and starts tilting in time to the on-screen action. With a jolt it finally lands back on Batuu.

“It’s not every day that you have a trackless vehicle drive onto a lift and drop down,” says Larena. “I think what is wonderful is how seamlessly it is integrated and the real key to success in a storytelling ride is that the ride is organic to the story. So it is very organic to the story that there is a lift in an AT-AT hangar room and it is very organic that you’re going to drop if you get ejected off a Star Destroyer.”

Just as you forget that there’s a stage when you’re watching a good play, Rise of the Resistance makes guests feel like they are in the middle of an unfolding drama. At a total of 15 minutes it is one of Disney’s longest-ever attractions and it took more than the wave of a wand to pull it off.

Development of the attraction began five years ago and Chiang says that his team pored over Lucasfilm’s archives to ensure that the interior was spot-on. “A lot of Rise of the Resistance was developed from scratch but there is a very distinct visual vocabulary for the Star Destroyers so we drew on those and sometimes we went back to the original blueprints that George did.”

Larena adds that “we used physical models and CGI of the inside of the attraction. Mainly we were using physical models to validate color selection. That is the best way to model it and then we used 3D to actually validate it with the ride system and make sure everything like the clearances were there.

“The 3D process is called Building Information Modeling (BIM) and that is really what allows it to have incredible complexity. Everything is modelled in three dimensions so we already know where all the ducts, plumbing and things like that are going. So when we get to the field and build it there is no question of where the wires go. It has already been modelled so you just go ahead with the build.”

He says that the biggest challenge is keeping the mechanisms away from the guests’ gaze. “We are trying to immerse you into the story like never before so I think the complexity is how do we actually hide these systems. There’s nothing more important than technology. We couldn’t do what we do without technology but the technology has to serve the story.” It also has to last.

Film sets tend to be built for a matter of months and are often destroyed afterwards. In contrast, Disney’s parks have to last for decades and withstand tens of millions of guests. “That means that the materials have to be real so we can’t cheat,” says Chiang. “The concrete has to be real concrete, there’s no foam. Steel has to be steel.”

Despite decades working in Hollywood, a place which is famous for making dreams come true, Chiang says that even he didn’t know how Disney could pull this off. “Rise of the Resistance is so ambitious. The fact that you are taken from a planet into a Star Destroyer. In my mind I couldn’t figure out how they were going to tackle it but they created an illusion that is just magical.” It hasn’t just created a high barrier, it’s out of this world.


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