Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is a ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The experience, which combines a trackless dark ride, walk-through, motion simulator, and drop ride system, immerses visitors in a fight between the Resistance and the First Order. Rise of the Resistance is one of Walt Disney Imagineering’s most sophisticated and innovative attractions, with four interconnected ride systems, Audio-Animatronics, realistic sets, projection mapping, and screen-based media.
The attraction was first announced at the land’s formal unveiling at the 2015 D23 Expo in Anaheim, with guests “being thrust in the heart of a final fight between the First Order and the Resistance.” The attraction’s name was revealed on November 17, 2018 at a Destination D event as Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, and Kipsang Rotich reprised their roles as Rey, Poe Dameron, Finn, Kylo Ren, General Hux, and the voice of Nien Nunb, respectively, in the attraction. Lieutenant Bek was voiced by James Arnold Taylor.
The CGI sequences for the attraction were developed by Industrial Light & Magic.
The attraction’s creation presented significant technological obstacles. The attraction not only has 65 Audio-Animatronic people, but it also needed the biggest concrete pour in Disney Parks history. The many features of the trip are controlled by about five million lines of code. It has been described as a “technical marvel.”
The attraction lies at the Galaxy’s Edge region known as the ancient ruins on the fringes of Black Spire Outpost, which also includes a Resistance encampment. Its entrance is marked by a turret (owned and operated by Oga Garra of Oga’s Cantina) that leads guests—as new recruits—to a path leading into ancient caves that house a Resistance control center, where they are given a mission by BB-8 and a hologram of Rey to meet General Leia Organa on the distant planet of Pacara. Poe Dameron, Nien Nunb, and Mon Calamari Lieutenant Bek all emerge on television screens during the briefing. Guests then proceed to stroll through spacecraft, including Dameron’s X-wing fighter, before boarding a resistance CEC Intersystem Transport Ship for the first leg of the excursion. Bek greets passengers on board while Nien Nunb controls the ship, which is accompanied by Dameron and other X-wings. When the transport and fighters are attacked by a First Order Star Destroyer, which seems to seize the visitors’ ship and drag it inside a hangar room packed with stormtroopers, Dameron is forced to flee. The recruits are subsequently led into a cell where Kylo Ren and Armitage Hux talk about their questioning. The liberated recruits then board a stolen First Order Fleet Transport (an eight-seat riding vehicle) operated by an R5 unit to go to an escape pod with the assistance of Finn, dressed as a stormtrooper.
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