Disney previously announced its new Star Wars Land and special event, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim last month. The Season of the Force event will include a "Hyperspace Mountain" special-effects overlay for the Space Mountain roller coaster, as well as the opening of a new "Star Wars Launch Bay" exhibit and meet and greet area in the old Innoventions building. Disneyland will be adding a new scene to its Star Tours: The Adventures Continue ride, too. The event starts November 16, though Disney has not yet revealed a closing date for what it calls a "limited time" event.
Construction starts on Star Wars Land January 11, 2016 and will be disrupting several Frontierland attractions. The Big Thunder Ranch, including the Barbecue restaurant, will close permanently at the end of the day on Jan. 10. In addition, the Disneyland Railroad and all the Rivers of America attractions — Tom Sawyer Island, the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Sailing Ship Columbia, and Fantasmic! — will close for an extended period after Jan. 10, too.
Disneyland is building the 14-acre Star Wars Land on the site of the Big Thunder Ranch, as well as some backstage area behind it. Disney has not announced an opening date for Star Wars Land, but Theme Park Insider readers have guessed it for sometime in 2020.
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Glad they are getting things started.
Poor Tomorrowland. Soon it'll be even more obsolete, and the only thing "tomorrow" about it will be a decades-old roller coaster and a bunch of stinky-exhaust, gas powered go carts.
For the last year or so, there has been nonstop complaining about how Disney has built nothing new and exciting. Now they finally are....and we're giving them crap for it. What the hell? Look, I agree that Star Wars Land shouldn't be built on the other side of the park from a land that's had a prexisting Star Wars attraction for many years, but honestly, as long as it's awesome and is built in a way so that it doesn't clash with the theming of the surrounding lands, who cares? And if it really is the last amount of available space for expansion, then obviously, if not taken up by this expansion, then it would've been taken up by a future expansion that would then not leave any room for any expansions after that. So what's the point in trying to conserve it? And who said they can't build Marvel in DCA?
I really feel it is a bad fit, and so not in-keeping with the themes or with the parks provenance.
If they really had to build it (personally I really wouldn't care if they didn't), it should have been completely seperate to the existing parks.
Perhaps it's a little better fit at MGM Studios, but not at Disneyland or DCA.
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I'm assuming that they are having to excavate so that guests walk under tracks as part of Star Wars land. (Of course guests won't notice that they've walked under the tracks)