What Star Wars Land Could Be. Special Event Reveals Previously Planned Additions That Would Improve Land.

Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge or what many park guests end up calling it – Star Wars Land – turned five years old this year. The physical construction of the land has always been impressive but there was always something lacking in the way the land comes to life for guests every day. We've written about this extensively in our urge for Disney to fix their biggest Star Wars Land mistake.

This week during a multi-day event for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Disneyland demonstrated that they are capable of bringing the land to life in the ways that we've urged, though in this case for a limited time experience.

So, today let's take a look at the offerings that the event brought to the land one of which was supposedly set to be a daily event and discuss some of our hopes and expectations for what an event like this could mean for Disneyland.

Special Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge Week at Disneyland

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Disney described the event with Make-A-Wish as the following…

Across five days of fun, wish kids and their families explored the Disneyland Resort and made the jump to lightspeed in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, embarking on a galactic adventure full of surprises!
From following their path on the light or dark side to making memories with beloved characters and beyond, there were unforgettable moments around every corner for this special group.

A selection of event highlights include:

• An exciting kick-off celebration, complete with special photo moments, goodies and opportunities to meet favorite characters from the Star Wars galaxy.
• An opportunity to build their own droid and participate in a thrilling scavenger hunt, to find the missing pieces to their own lightsaber.
• The main event was an immersive, fun-filled dinner and dessert party designed just for them in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge including costumes, character appearances and a one-of-a-kind lightsaber battle.

For nearly 45 years, Disney has worked alongside organizations like Make-A-Wish to make wishes come true for children facing critical illnesses. Since the first wish was granted at Disneyland
Resort, Disney has helped fulfill more than 155,000 wishes globally with Make-A-Wish. Immersive wish-granting events like Blaze Your Path: A Star Wars Adventure at Disneyland Resort help unite families and friends in life-changing experiences during a time when it's needed most.

We've written about the incredible relationship between Disney and Make-A-Wish in the past. Disney makes up some huge percentage of the total amount of wishes granted every single year. Disney Parks Chairman Josh D'Amaro sits on the board of the group and Disney CEO Bob Chapek was on the board before him. It's a great cause and something that the senior leaders and those at the parks clearly put their all into delivering for. When talking to members of the Disneyland special events team, I've heard repeatedly that putting on these special Wish kid events is one of the best things that they get to do.

Let's dig a little bit deeper into the event and pull out some of the aspects that we think would improve the land on a daily basis.

How Disneyland Improved Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge For Event

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Our biggest criticisms of the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge areas in Orlando and Anaheim are that they don't lean into the legacy Star Wars characters that guests have a connection to (Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, Jar Jar Bink – yes how cool would that be!) and that the land itself isn't brought to life in a compelling way. There are no swelling melodies from the original Star Wars John Williams score narrating your time in the land and no big-time entertainment in the land.

Across the way in Disney California Adventure, Avengers Campus gets a ton of this right! That land features constantly rotating character shows and a highlight of the land for me is the Marvel music. During this special Make-A-Wish event, we saw Disney correct some of these issues in Galaxy's Edge with an amazing show that brought the spaces of the land to life.

The show was open to all guests, but was only quietly added to the Disneyland app yesterday with little fanfare. The show took over the upper terraces just inside the land and featured a number of different characters like Chewbacca and Storm Troopers but the highlight was Rey and Kylo Ren battling it out in a lightsaber battle backed by the amazing special score that John Williams created just for the land that normally can only be heard on the Rise of the Resistance. Some have suggested the choreography for the battle seems similar to something they did onboard the now closed Star Wars Starcruiser hotel experience.

Here's a snippet of the performance. The pyro is amazing and I love the flips and stunts.

Here’s just the battle between Kylo Ren and Rey backed up by the wish kids and their families. This was part of a first time event in Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. https://t.co/scjg02oFk6 pic.twitter.com/Xe8AXflO36

— Matt Desmond (@DisneyScoopGuy) September 12, 2024

And, here's a link to a video of the entire show.

The show brought in elements of another removed aspect of Disneyland – the Jedi Training Academy. It's difficult to believe that show isn't running at Disneyland right now because of how well it was received and how long it ran. In it, young kids would be selected to join a show where they would face off against Star Wars villains and be coached through their battle using a lightsaber. It was fun, and interactive, and brought the Star Wars story to life. The Make-A-Wish show carried forward the spirit of that show by having kids hold up lightsabers and support Rey in the battle.

Also during the event in what appears to be a Disney ballroom space, the kids were treated to meet and greets with characters like C-3PO and R2-D2 (see above). How cool! I would love to see more meet and greets like that beyond an event like this or the always sold out Star Wars Nites that deliver similar character experiences. They could easily bring more formal character spots into the land.

The entire event seems wonderful and I am thrilled that they pulled it together for this very special group that deserves the VIP treatment. My only question is if Disneyland thinks that these are the necessary ingredients for a fantastic Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge experience, why aren't they offered all the time?

We are still waiting and hoping that more changes will come into the land in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Right now we are still riding high from the D23 announcement that the Millennium Falcon attraction will be relaunched with a new story based on the new movie coming that year. See that link for details. I hope that they take that opportunity to do even more to make this land more exciting and a better tribute to the Star Wars franchise that we all love so much.

Guy Selga, a Disneyland correspondent for Touring Plans, shared more background on this show offering. “This was a show planned for the end of every day in Galaxy’s Edge with a light and dark side ending based on who won the day in the games in the datapad.” He then went on to suggest that it was removed from the land plans due to budget cuts. I still hope that we could see something like this added in the future. It's quite interesting to me that Avengers Campus gets this level of entertainment while Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge does not.

All of the things we listed above require investment in entertainment Cast Members who can focus specifically on bringing this land to life. We are currently in a place where Disneyland has been reshuffling and cutting some entertainment. I can't imagine there's any reason that the Broadway-caliber theater is sitting empty at the resort while we are in a busy crowds season if not to save on entertainment costs. All that to say, I would be surprised if we got a big announcement or saw that naturally a ton of new entertainment was going to be rolled out for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. We may be waiting a little while for that to happen. Here's hoping that some of the senior executives who saw this special show as part of the event are also having these conversations today.

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