Planning a visit to the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land at Walt Disney World or Disneyland? Here is what you need to know before you go.
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is a 14-acre land in both Disneyland in California and Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. The lands are almost identical, save for an additional entrance to the land in the Disneyland installation and some minor differences in the Resistance Camp area. But they include the same attractions, restaurants, and shops.
Set on the new planet of Batuu, Galaxy's Edge is built around the Black Spire Outpost — a galactic hideaway for those who do not wish to be discovered. Here's a video overview of the original installation, at Disneyland.
The land's biggest attraction, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, has yet to open, debuting December 5 at Disney's Hollywood Studios and on January 17, 2020 at Disneyland. Disney's Imagineers are calling this the most ambitious attraction Disney's ever built. Using multiple ride systems, the attraction puts you on a journey to join the Resistance, only to be captured and taken aboard a Star Destroyer by the First Order, from which you must get away in an escape pod to return to Batuu. We talked with Imagineer Greg Johnson about the ride.
The Star Wars ride you can experience right now is Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, in which crews of six people work together to pilot the Falcon on a mission to steal coaxium for Hondo Ohnaka. Two people work as pilots, two as gunners, and two as engineers. Here's what it looks like in the cockpit.
And here is a full walk-through the queue.
Disney is not currently accepting Fastpass reservations for either ride, so you don't need to worry now about making advance Fastpass+ reservations for the land at Walt Disney World. (Disneyland does not use advance reservations for its Fastpass system — just day-of-visit time assignments for rides that participate.) But you do need to make advance reservations for Oga's Cantina, the lightsaber building experience at Savi's Workshop, and the custom droid assembly at Droid Depot. You can make your reservation times via the following links up to 180 days in advance for the Walt Disney World locations and up to 14 days in advance for the ones at Disneyland. You can read more about each location's policies at these links, too.
Walt Disney World:
Disneyland:
So what are they like? Here are some video overviews, starting with Oga's Cantina.
The other food and beverage locations in Galaxy's Edge are the quick-service Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo, which serves a large menu of selections for lunch and dinner; Ronto Roasters, which serves what I think is the best food item in the land, the Ronto Wrap; Milk Stand, where you can get the iconic Blue Milk and Green Milk (which are served in cold, slushy form), and Kat Saka's Kettle, which serves the "Galactic Mix" of flavored popcorn. Coca-Cola products are served in specially-branded souvenir containers throughout the land.
In addition to Savi's and Droid Depot, other merchandise locations in the land include Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities and the Black Spire Marketplace.
As for strategy, both parks have the capability to limit access to the land using a virtual queue, which will you join via each resort's official app. Disneyland only used its virtual queue for part of the land's first day and has not used it again. At Walt Disney World, Galaxy's Edge is available to on-site hotel guests as part of the extended Extra Magic Hours, which is seeing the park open at 6am each morning to those guests for the land's first few months.
Even if you do everything in the land, you easily can finish up in Galaxy's Edge in a couple of hours, plus however long the Falcon queue is. Based upon our experience in Disneyland, that line is longest early in the day, as everyone rushes to do that ride first. So consider waiting until later in the day to visit Galaxy's Edge, when queues are shorter. Keep that in mind when making your advance reservations, as well.
If the land is using a virtual queue, location reservation holders are exempt from the virtual queue and may enter the land just before their reservation time.
You can use the Star Wars Datapad game on the Play Disney Parks app to read signs throughout the land, take control of access panels, droids and even spaceships, and fight for control of the land. While "Disneybounding" as Star Wars characters is encouraged, full cosplay is prohibited, per Disney's usual theme park rules. As part of those rules, you may not wear the full-length Jedi robes that are sold in the land while insider the park. Same goes for Stormtrooper gear. But you are encouraged to say hello to the people of Batuu with their traditional greeting of "Bright suns!" ("Rising moons" after dark) and to say goodbye with a rousing "'Til the Spires!"
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Another thing I might note regarding making reservations for the building experiences - If you're making reservations for Droid Depot or Savi's Workshop, consider that whatever you purchase at these experiences will need to be hand carried throughout the rest of your day. The custom droids are supposed to interact with certain aspects of the land, but must remain in either their cardboard boxes or backpacks (not allowed to be operated remotely in the land). Same with the lightsabers that do make for awesome photo props, especially at night, but can be a bit unwieldy getting on and off rides. Disneyland was not providing any package delivery service for items purchased at Galaxy's Edge (either to the front of the park or to on-site resort hotel), and I don't think WDW is either. That means if you make an early morning reservation, understand that you will be stuck carrying these items around throughout your day unless you plan to leave the park to take them back to your room or car.
I saw many guests at Disneyland struggling with this, especially getting on rides that already have tight quarters and fast-moving loading stations like Matterhorn, Space Mountain, and Indy. On most of the Disney thrill rides, the droids probably won't fit in the space at your feet, and the lightsabers will likely protrude beyond the confines of your immediate personal space. Make sure you think about what you're going to do with these pricey souvenirs and what activities you plan on doing after you build them BEFORE you make an early morning reservation.