Queue
Advertised as "The Ultimate Star Wars Adventure!", Star Tours puts the guest in the role of a space tourist en route to the Forest Moon of Endor, the site of the climactic battle of Return of the Jedi, via the Star Tours travel agency. Much was made of this throughout the ride queue, which was designed to look like a spaceship boarding terminal: posters advertised voyages to different planets, and a giant screen informed riders of the benefits of going to Endor. This area was stocked with Audio-Animatronic characters that seemed to speak to the ride patrons (including C-3PO and R2-D2), as well as a life-size mock-up of a StarSpeeder 3000, the fictional spacecraft which riders were about to board. According to the book Disneyland Detective by Kendra Trahan, the figures of C-3PO and R2-D2 in the Disneyland attraction were actual props from the original trilogy, modified to operate via Audio-Animatronics.[14]
Guests then enter a maintenance area where an apparently underproductive G2 droid performs repairs on another droid while being distracted by the observing guests, and another droid inadvertently points out all the supposed flaws of the StarSpeeder 3000 and its RX pilots. A ride attendant escorts guests to one of several loading stations where they wait for their turn to ride.
Pre-show
A television screen above the queue displays a countdown to take-off time and shows images of the StarSpeeder 3000 spacecraft being serviced. As launch time approaches, a safety video is shown featuring Star Wars aliens, Disney Imagineers, and their families. It instructs guests how to fasten their seat belts and where to place belongings. Once the doors to the starspeeder open, guests walk across bridges into one of the several starspeeder cabins.
Ride experience
As the doors close, the bumbling pilot droid of the ship, RX-24 or Rex (voiced by Paul Reubens), appears on the side screen and chats to the guests about the trip as R2-D2 is loaded onto the spacecraft.
Rex lowers the cockpit shield, and the hangar crew activate the flight platform. All goes well until a slight mistake on Captain Rex's part sends the starspeeder crashing into the maintenance bay doors and plummeting into the maintenance yard. They barely crash into the control room and nearly collide with a giant mechanical arm. Once in space, Rex asks R2-D2 to make the jump to lightspeed. However, the ship accidentally passes the Endor moon and instead gets caught inside a comet cluster. The ship gets hit by several comets before getting trapped in one of the larger comets. The StarSpeeder weaves its way through the comet and escapes by crashing through one of the walls. Upon escaping the comet, however, the ship encounters a Star Destroyer of the Imperial remnant.
The StarSpeeder gets caught in its tractor beam, but manages to get loose when a New Republic X-wing fighter provides assistance by destroying the tractor beam generator. Soon the StarSpeeder accompanies the Republic fleet on an assault on the Death Star III (later revealed by Leland Chee in 2013 to be a habitation sphere disguised as a Death Star in a plot by an Imperial warlord to distract the New Republic). Rex uses the StarSpeeder's lasers to eliminate several TIE fighters while a Republic pilot destroys the Death Star in the same manner as Luke Skywalker by firing two proton torpedoes into the exhaust port. The X-wings jump to lightspeed as the Death Star explodes, and a final lightspeed jump sends the StarSpeeder back to the spaceport, nearly colliding with a fuel truck in the hangar and sending a Star Tours employee ducking under his desk.
Cast
English
- Anthony Daniels – C-3PO (voice and action)
- Ben Burtt – R2-D2
- Paul Reubens – Captain RX-24, a.k.a. Rex (voice)
- Brian Cummings – Vid-Screen Announcer (planetary destinations) (voice)
- Stephanie Taylor – Safety Instructor
- Steve Gawley – cameo as Red Leader (onboard video)
- Warwick Davis – cameo as Wicket the Ewok
Japanese dub
- Yūji Mitsuya – Captain RX-24, a.k.a. Rex (voice)
English
- Anthony Daniels – C-3PO (voice and action)
- Ben Burtt – R2-D2
- Paul Reubens – Captain RX-24, a.k.a. Rex (voice)
- Brian Cummings – Vid-Screen Announcer (planetary destinations) (voice)
- Stephanie Taylor – Safety Instructor
- Steve Gawley – cameo as Red Leader (onboard video)
- Warwick Davis – cameo as Wicket the Ewok
Japanese dub
- Yūji Mitsuya – Captain RX-24, a.k.a. Rex (voice)
French dub
Muren, Gawley, and Keeler were all Industrial Light & Magic computer animation staff. One year earlier, Reubens had voiced the shipboard computer in the Disney film Flight of the Navigator (credited as Paul Mall), in which his character was named Max. Reubens credited this role with his being cast for the ride.[15]
- Anthony Daniels – C-3PO
- Luq Hamet – voice of Captain RX-24 (Rex)
Ride system
Star Tours utilized hydraulic motion base cabins featuring six degrees of freedom, including the ability to move 35 degrees in the X-Y-Z plane. The simulator was patented as Advanced Technology Leisure Application Simulator (ATLAS), originally designed by Rediffusion Simulation[16] in Sussex, England, now owned by Thales Training & Simulation (ex-Thomson-CSF). The Rediffusion 'Leisure' simulator was originally developed for a much simpler show in Canada called "Tour of the Universe", where it featured a single entrance/exit door in the rear of the cabin and a video projector. The film was front-projected onto the screen from a 70 mm film projector located beneath the cockpit barrier. The Disneyland original had four simulators, while the Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Disney's Hollywood Studios versions each had six motion bases.
