Admin: ParksWiki backfill Wave 6 (SUPAPARK-937)

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{{Infobox attraction
| name = Star Tours
| park = [[Disneyland Park]]
| land = Tomorrowland
| type = Motion simulator
| opened = January 9, 1987
| designer = Walt Disney Imagineering; Lucasfilm
| status = Closed
}}

'''Star Tours''' was a motion simulator attraction at [[Disneyland Park|Disneyland]] and three other Disney parks, based on George Lucas's ''Star Wars'' films. It opened at Disneyland on January 9, 1987, and put guests aboard a Starspeeder 3000 spaceliner on a trip to the forest moon of Endor that went entertainingly wrong, piloted by the nervous rookie droid RX-24, known as Rex and voiced by Paul Reubens. Star Tours was the first major Disney attraction built around a property Disney did not own, and the first true motion simulator in a Disney park. It closed in stages between 2010 and 2016 and was replaced at every park by [[Star Tours – The Adventures Continue]].<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Tours Star Tours — Wikipedia]</ref>

== History ==
By the mid-1980s [[Walt Disney Imagineering]] had been experimenting for years with a flight-simulator attraction, an idea once considered for a ride based on the 1979 film ''The Black Hole''. The concept found its subject after Disney's new management, led by Michael Eisner, opened the company to outside creators, and George Lucas, fresh from producing the 3D film ''Captain EO'' for Disney, agreed to bring ''Star Wars'' to the parks.

Imagineering bought four military-grade flight simulators, at a reported 500,000 dollars each, built by Rediffusion Simulation. The system, the Advanced Technology Leisure Application Simulator, or ATLAS, carried a cabin on hydraulic actuators with six degrees of freedom, so it could pitch, roll and heave in time with a film. Industrial Light & Magic created the ride film, a first-person sequence shot on 70mm film, and a programmer then rode in a simulator with a joystick, synchronising the cabin's movements to the action on screen by hand.

The finished attraction cost about 32 million dollars, close to twice what the whole of Disneyland had cost in 1955, and took over the Tomorrowland show building formerly occupied by Adventure Thru Inner Space. It opened on January 9, 1987; Disneyland stayed open for 60 hours straight to mark the occasion.<ref>[https://www.etonline.com/star-tours-at-35-a-timeline-from-star-wars-simulator-ride-to-galaxys-edge-land-flashback-177430 "Star Tours at 35" — Entertainment Tonight, 2022]</ref>

Versions followed at Tokyo Disneyland in 1989, at Disney-MGM Studios, now [[Disney's Hollywood Studios]], on December 15, 1989, and at Disneyland Paris, where it was an opening-day attraction in 1992.

== Experience ==
Guests entered a spaceport belonging to Star Tours, a travel company selling excursions around the galaxy in the years after ''Return of the Jedi''. The queue wound past a full-size Starspeeder 3000 and Audio-Animatronic figures of C-3PO and R2-D2, built using original film props supplied by Lucasfilm, at work on the ship. After a safety briefing, parties of up to forty boarded a simulator cabin.

Their pilot, Captain RX-24, or Rex, was making his first flight, still wearing his "remove before flight" tag. Voiced by Paul Reubens, Rex took a wrong turn out of the spaceport, overshot Endor entirely and sent the Starspeeder through a field of ice crystals inside a comet. Escaping the comet put the ship in the path of an Imperial Star Destroyer, which caught it in a tractor beam until an X-wing fighter destroyed the beam's generator. The tourists were then swept into a Rebel attack on a Death Star, in a trench run modelled on the climax of the original 1977 film, before Rex brought the ship home with a characteristically rough landing.

For twenty-three years, every Star Tours departure flew exactly that same mission.

== Closure and legacy ==
By the late 2000s the single fixed film and a ''Star Wars'' saga that had grown by three prequel films argued for a rebuild. The American originals closed in 2010, Disneyland's in July and the Hollywood Studios version on September 7, 2010, after a "Last Tour to Endor" event held for the Star Wars Celebration V convention. Tokyo's version closed in 2012, and the last original, at Disneyland Paris, closed in March 2016, ending a 29-year run across its four homes.<ref>[https://www.laughingplace.com/w/featured/2017/01/12/disney-extinct-attractions-star-tours-adventures-begin/ "Disney Extinct Attractions: Star Tours – The Adventures Begin" — Laughing Place, January 12, 2017]</ref>

The successor, [[Star Tours – The Adventures Continue]], opened in Florida on May 20, 2011 and at Disneyland on June 3, 2011, reusing the simulator cabins with a new randomised 3D film and C-3PO in the pilot's seat. Rex survived the change: the character returned in 2019 in [[Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge]] as DJ R-3X, the house disc jockey of [[Oga's Cantina]].

== See also ==
* [[Star Tours – The Adventures Continue]]
* [[Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge]]
* [[Disneyland Park]]
* [[Disney's Hollywood Studios]]
* [[Body Wars]]

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Attractions]]
[[Category:Defunct attractions]]
[[Category:Disneyland]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:1987 establishments in California]]

Star Tours - Revision history

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