Skip to content

Disneyland |
Rise of the Resistance: I rode Disney’s new…

68°F
Tuesday, August 13th 2024

e-Edition

Trending:

Things To Do

Amusement Parks

Disneyland

Disneyland |
Rise of the Resistance: I rode Disney’s new Star Wars attraction 4 times and here’s what it’s like

The long-awaited attraction will leave you wondering again and again how Walt Disney Imagineering pulled off one visual illusion after another with each scene somehow outdoing the last.

Guests come face to face with First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren as they stumble into the bridge of a Star Destroyer in Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the new attraction opening Thursday, Dec. 5 inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida and Jan. 17 at Disneyland in Anaheim. (Photo by Steven Diaz, Disney)
Guests come face to face with First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren as they stumble into the bridge of a Star Destroyer in Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the new attraction opening Thursday, Dec. 5 inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida and Jan. 17 at Disneyland in Anaheim. (Photo by Steven Diaz, Disney)
Brady MacDonald
By | bmacdonald@scng.com
UPDATED:

I didn’t expect to be smiling from ear to ear on the new Rise of the Resistance attraction coming to Disneyland as I was captured aboard a Star Destroyer, marched to a jail cell by a First Order officer barking commands and menacingly chased by Star Wars villain Kylo Ren.

But I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face as I rode the new state-of-the-art E-ticket attraction four times on Tuesday, Dec. 3, during a media preview in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida.

Sign up for our Park Life newsletter and find out what’s new and interesting every week at Southern California’s theme parks. Subscribe here.

Rise of the Resistance will leave you wondering again and again how Walt Disney Imagineering pulled off one visual illusion after another, with each scene somehow outdoing the last. Disney’s new Star Wars attraction redefines what E-ticket stands for: Extraordinary.

The highly anticipated Rise of the Resistance debuts Thursday, Dec. 5, at the Orlando-area theme park to out-of-this-world expectations and at every step of the way the attraction exceeds them with a ride experience unlike anything anyone has ever encountered in a theme park. A carbon copy of the ride opens at Batuu West in Disneyland on Jan. 17.

The ride, billed as four attractions in one, lasts an astonishing 15 minutes but rarely slows down during the epic interstellar journey. Unfortunately, 15 minutes is not enough. You’ll wish Rise of the Resistance was twice as long.

1 of 21

First Order Stormtroopers await guests as they arrive in the hangar bay of a Star Destroyer as part of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the new attraction opening Thursday, Dec. 5 inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida and Jan. 17 at Disneyland in Anaheim. (Photo by Matt Stroshane, Disney)

Expand

I constantly found myself wondering if the Stormtrooper aiming his blaster at me was an audio-animatronic figure or a digital projection. Blaster fire sliced through the air right in front of me, just like in the “Star Wars” movies. The laser blasts exploded with flying sparks all around my ride vehicle, seemingly blowing pieces out of the walls and ceiling right before my eyes.

Imagineering’s goal was to put riders in the middle of a “Star Wars” movie and they achieved this at every turn. BB-8 rolls out to greet us. Rey appears in a hologram message. Towering AT-ATs fire at us as we flee. Lightsabers carve holes in the ceiling. Rise of the Resistance is everything Star Wars fans have been hoping and waiting for. And then some.

Riders meet Kylo Ren in several forms throughout the ride — from animatronic figures to digital images to a startling stalking special effect that makes it look like the masked villain is heading right for your ride vehicle with his crossguard lightsaber drawn.

The journey begins with a realistic ride aboard a Resistance transport shuttle with a floor that rattles and tilts as the ship takes off from the Star Wars planet of Batuu, the setting for the twin Galaxy’s Edge themed lands in California and Florida. The swift departure plays out on screens at both ends off the ship that riders can wander around and explore during the off-planet flight.

I could almost reach out and touch the lifelike Lt. Bek animatronic that sat in the cockpit of the transport ship. The amphibious Mon Calamari creature peers at riders with bulbous eyes that protrude from either side of its fish-like head.

Before long, the transport shuttle gets trapped in a tractor beam and captured by a First Order Star Destroyer. Riders are deposited on the Star Destroyer and greeted by a Disney cast member playing a First Order officer. The ill-tempered and downright rude officer is unlike any Disney employee you’ve ever met in a theme park, trading smiles and niceties for insults and orders.

The captured “Resistance scum” is marched out of the transport into a Death Star hangar bay that will simply make your jaw drop. I found myself repeating one simple exclamation each time I entered the hangar: Wow. A 100-foot-wide space window serves as an interstellar backdrop to rows of approximately 50 stormtroopers, about 40 percent of them animatronic. The shock troops stand at attention as a few of them seemingly follow your movements as you head off to a jail cell.

Everywhere you look is Star Wars. The entire attraction is a 360-degree scene out of a movie. It feels like you’re really on a Star Destroyer in outer space. The illusion is complete. Imagineering has recreated the look and feel of a Star Destroyer — right down to the droid ports where astromechs can plug into the ship. And you can reach out and touch it all.

After escaping the detention cell — I won’t tell you how, so as not to spoil the surprise — the Resistance-recruits-turned-prisoners hop on a dark ride vehicle in a daring attempt to escape. Unlike most dark rides, you’ll have to buckle up. You’ll find out why later. But for now, let’s just say this is not your average dark ride.

The dark ride portion of the attraction takes you past booming cannons, through the legs of towering AT-AT walkers and up to the bridge of the Star Destroyer.

The Kylo Ren animatronics are amazing feats of engineering. It’s rare that you see a full-figure animatronic from his head to his toes. But you can see the character’s feet move and you’ll be left wondering how Imagineering created such a nimble animatronic figure.

The finale drops riders into an escape pod — the reason for that seat belt. I won’t spoil the experience except to say that the fourth and final ride element combines a Star Tours-like motion-base simulator with a drop similar to Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout. See if you can figure out how Disney did it. I couldn’t.

The biggest surprise comes at the end as the ride vehicle slips outdoors to unload riders inside the carcass of a massive crashed spaceship.

If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself wanting to linger in each new space you encounter in Rise of the Resistance. Every scene has so many visuals to drink in that you can’t see them all in a single ride. The experience moves at such a quick clip that you can’t see everything. Which is what makes a great ride — and the kind of problem you’d like to have. You’ll just need to get in line again.

Originally Published:

More in Disneyland