Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

"We're going to do things with Star Tours that have never been done in any theme park attraction, at any theme park anywhere."

- Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is an upcoming Disney simulator ride theme park attraction located at Disneyland in California and Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida. It is scheduled to open at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World on May 20th, 2011 and in Disneyland's Tomorrowland park on June 3rd, 2011. The attraction will replace the original Star Tours attraction and will serve as its prequel, taking place in between Episodes III and IV and tying both trilogies together.

Updated and improved


It was confirmed at D23, the official Disney fan convention, that there will not be a second ride introduced, but that instead the existing ride will be updated and improved. The original rides closed in 2010 (July 27th in California and September 8th in Florida) to allow Disney engineers to begin the updates and renovations. This new iteration of Star Tours will re-open on May 20th, 2011 at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida, and June 3, 2011 at Disneyland in California.

The new ride will be in 3-D (it is unknown if glasses will be introduced) and at least part of the ride will have the StarSpeeder 1000, bursting into the Boonta Eve Classic pod race. In a high resolution image of the scene provided to various media outlets, the 1000 designation on the speeder can be seen. It has also been confirmed that the new ride will also take passengers to Coruscant among other destinations, and there are rumors that the Endor flight will be reworked as well so that passengers will actually be going to Endor this time around. A new queue video "commercial" for the attraction was released in August, 2010 at Celebration V which showed the Starspeeder traveling to Bespin, Endor and Alderaan, though it was not confirmed that these will actually be destinations within the ride. In April, the final destination list was released, adding Naboo, Geonosis with the Death Star I under construction, Kashyyyk, and Hoth joining the already announced Tatooine and Coruscant.

In September, the official Disney Parks Blog revealed two droids from the new attraction: a pilot droid from the AC Series named Ace (a predecessor to RX-24 from the original) and a "spokesbot" named Aly San San, voiced by actress Allison Janney. The blog also revealed that the ride's storyline takes place between Episode III and Episode IV (19 BBY and 0 BBY). At the Destination D23 event these new droids were announced at, it was also revealed there will be 54 different experiences on the attraction.

In October, it was revealed that, although Star Tours uses AC Droid pilots, it will be C-3PO who will pilot the Starspeeder 1000 in the attraction, through some chaotic mistake. The article also reveals that RX-24 will return as well, due to his popularity with thousands of fans, but there is no mention of whether or not Paul Reubens will reprise the role.

The background music score of the ride will be composed by Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino, who, according to some reports, was a big fan of the original attraction.

In January, it was announced that Star Tours: The Adventures Continue would open on May 20th, 2011 at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida,. In February, it was announced that the ride would open on June 3rd, 2011 at Disneyland's Tomorrowland park in California.