One of my favorite Disney YouTubers digs deep into the similarities between two Star Wars rides and whether the new one is intended to "replace" the old one.
Disneyland's Star Tours is a fantastic ride. Over the years, I have loved its many, many iterations. That has been part of the beauty of this early collaboration between Lucasfilm and Disney, and a distinct result of every trip to Disneyland includes the question of "How many times did you ride Star Tours, and which scenes did you get?"
The Star Tours line has enough to distract you, and enough secrets of park history to always have something to marvel at. I love the Aurbesh at the door of the StarSpeeder appearing to say, "Joke Toot."
Smuggler's Run has a lot going for it, and none of it is the ride. In the very early days of the attraction, I got to experience just how much space Disney had bet on this attraction's queue. It is packed with interactive, stare-at-your-phone type, QR-code-scanning fun. Most of that is invisible to visitors now, as there is seldom a line. The nostalgia of seeing a life-size Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca standing under it, outside the ride, may be enough for most people. Flying it kinda sucks. Unless you are in a party of six people you know and pick pilots with decent eye-hand coordination and cooperative skills, forget it. The job of the gunners and engineers is to repetitively press buttons with an occasional surprise press of some other button. You aren't focused on the screen, the mission, the story, or anything except frantic button pushing. Perhaps this is just a fair simulation of space smuggling, but the "fun" in space smuggling is derived from science fiction's "fiction."
Also, and sadly for humanity, I'd say most pilots I've seen- having ridden the ride with visiting friends and family- cannot get the job done, and the Falcon slams into everything for a few minutes, and the ride is over.
There may well be people who find this ride repetitively fun or who will enjoy it more with a second adventure. After seeing the second adventure on YouTube, I may not need to ride it again. It depends on nostalgia, but the ride mechanic is not conducive to fun. The most realistic part is Chewbacca being mad that we trashed his ship. Disneyland has an immense amount of unused real estate dedicated to lines in and around the ride, so extra adventure(s) will help, but it isn't an entertaining replacement for Star Tours.
Maybe, like Buzz Lightyear and the Webslingers ride, a videogame generation finds Smuggler's Run a must-ride, but I do not. It hasn't become a regular part of a trip to Disneyland like Aly San San's "Buh Bye!"
Eventually, Tomorrowland is gonna stop being wasted space. Having two separate in-park Star Wars areas clearly makes money, but it just contributes to Tomorrowland's broken weirdness and doesn't make tons of sense. I do not think Smuggler's Run is going to replace Star Tours; however, one is a ride people will wait in a moderate line for, and the other is Smuggler's Run.
Previously:
• Watch: Star Wars fans get huge surprise when Mark Hamill boards Star Tours ride at Disneyland
• Enjoy a full ride through of the new Star Tours adventure
• Take a trip to Endor on Disneyland's original 1987 'Star Tours'
