Online game and theme park design are two very completely different disciplines, however they’ve lots in widespread. They share comparable approaches to constructing worlds and turning narratives into interactive experiences, utilizing environments to inform tales as a lot as dialogue, and each have embraced digital actuality in the hunt for immersion—to equally combined outcomes. Typically, although, a theme park journey is simply straight-up a online game, albeit one you would possibly bodily transfer via; suppose the mini-games of Toy Story Halfway Mania, or the lackluster Spider-Man journey at Disney California Journey, or the various shooting-gallery darkish rides that change bodily targets with screens. Essentially the most elaborate and complicated of these online game points of interest is Millennium Falcon—Smugglers Run, a movement simulator discovered on the Star Wars outposts at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando. Launched in 2019 with Nvidia tech, Smugglers Run is a present expertise inbuilt Unreal Engine 4 and using a display that takes up your complete field of regard; it’s essentially the most elaborate doable model of these arcade cupboards at Dave & Buster’s that make you are feeling such as you’re sitting in a cockpit. Solely this cockpit is a fastidiously detailed recreation of the Millennium Falcon, with its iconic lounge and every thing, inside (or, extra precisely, subsequent to) a 114-foot life-sized reproduction of Han Solo’s ship. Inside that cockpit, groups of six are break up into three completely different jobs. Two pilots information the Falcon on its mission, with one controlling it horizontally and the opposite vertically. (The pilot in the correct seat additionally will get to punch it into hyperspace a number of occasions, in maybe essentially the most bodily thrilling a part of your complete attraction.) Behind them sit two gunners who fireplace weapons and launch rockets at on-screen targets by tapping buttons as they gentle up on the Falcon’s partitions; you may choose between handbook and automated management schemes, which simply determines what number of completely different buttons you may doubtlessly push. And within the final row are the 2 engineers, who restore the ship on the fly by responding to varied light-up prompts on the ship’s partitions, and whose preliminary tasks have been so restricted that numerous little perks have been added in through the years. (Engineer is the place you seat the grandparents whose solely expertise with video video games was a number of rounds of Area Invaders at a smoke-filled bar again in 1980.) All gamers are scored individually on their performances, and people are added up for an total crew rating. There are tiers and ranks and every thing, and it’s all saved by the Star Wars Datapad widget within the Play Disney app, in case you really need it to be. © Disney Disney closely touted Smugglers Run’s game-like qualities when first selling the attraction earlier than its 2019 opening. On the time, Imagineers who labored on the journey talked about its modularity—how they may use the tech they developed with Epic Video games and Nvidia so as to add new missions or tweak gameplay. Not a lot turned of that in Galaxy Edge’s first a number of years; the engineer position was barely retooled to turn into somewhat extra concerned within the motion, however the authentic mission, by which the Falcon was loaned out to conman Hondo Ohnaka to smuggle coaxium in a win-win for each Ohnaka and the Resistance, remained the one one till the final week. As of Might 22, 2026, friends can embark on a brand new journey alongside the Mandalorian and Grogu, with three branching paths that may take them to completely different planets within the Star Wars universe. And together with the brand new mission comes Smugglers Run’s first large tech improve.
The brand new mission runs on Unreal Engine 5, which wasn’t launched till 2022, three years after Smugglers Run opened. As Morgan McDowell, a technical mission supervisor at Walt Disney Imagineering, tells me, the improve lets them enhance the journey’s visuals and likewise increase its play choices. “With Unreal Engine 5 we will add up to date property, so increased decision graphics,” she says, inside a non-public assembly room hooked up to the Smugglers Run present constructing that looks like a spot the place accountants on Coruscant would work. “We’re additionally in a position to improve the {hardware} in tandem with coming as much as Unreal 5,” she provides, “so with the added property we have been in a position so as to add variability to flying. So now we will fly via one in every of three completely different planets. Possibly you need to go left or proper or up or down, proper? We’ve variabilities within the paths that we’re in a position to take.” These paths head down one in every of three places new to the journey: Coruscant, Bespin, and Endor. The selection is as much as one of many engineers; this, together with some private display time with Grogu, is among the small modifications to make that position extra fulfilling. It’s all tied in straight with the brand new story, the place you’re piloting the Falcon on a mission alongside Mando and his ship Razor Crest with three high-priority Imperial targets; all of them hyperspace it in numerous instructions, and you’ll solely comply with one. Appears like a great purpose to journey this one a pair extra occasions, doesn’t it?
They’ve additionally up to date the Nvidia GPUs that the sport expertise runs on. If anyone can afford the surging costs of GPUs, it’s Disney. As McDowell explains it, Disney and Epic Video games work very carefully collectively on Smugglers Run, as a part of the bigger partnership between the 2 corporations that noticed the previous purchase an nearly 10-percent stake within the latter for $1.5 billion in 2024. “Oftentimes, once we’re doing the technical improvement [of Smugglers Run], if we discover bugs on their finish, we discover bugs on our finish. We’re utilizing a customized construct of Unreal Engine, however we work with them on a regular basis to work via issues on the software program aspect. And on the similar time, once we begin operating it on the {hardware}, we run into issues there as nicely, and we work very carefully with Nvidia on that aspect.” © Disney And like several sport studio, Imagineering put the Smugglers Run replace via rigorous playtesting earlier than rolling it out into the parks. On the journey’s earliest levels of improvement, McDowell explains, they used “a lab setup” in California to check it out, using an idea just like the dome Imagineering makes use of to create immersive visualizations of their theme park designs. “It’s similar to a pc operating 5 projectors that every one mix collectively within the dome that you just’re flying via. After we try this in our lab setup, it’s really 5 screens that we’ve got hooked as much as all of the know-how. We’d check our builds on this area, do soak testing, all inside the lab. After which we’d playtest it right here with forged members on the attraction.”
Now that the brand new mission has formally launched, McDowell explains, they’ll be keeping track of participant stats. That may result in modifications within the journey’s tiered scoring system as they decide what’s a great median rating within the new mission, however might additionally drive sure modifications to gameplay itself. “We use [player stats] to vary issues like what number of TIE fighters are going to spawn, or how exhausting it’s to take down a TIE fighter, issues like that,” she says. “We use information to drive the scores ultimately.” I attempted out the brand new mission throughout a latest journey to Disney World. I didn’t discover a lot of an enchancment to the journey sport’s visuals, but it surely has a extra overtly video game-like construction; the three targets are successfully minibosses, after which your engineer chooses which one to comply with like they’re selecting from a degree choose display. Pilot will in all probability stay the preferred position, because it’s not simply the closest seat to the display however the job that has essentially the most direct management over the expertise. And in case you take the gunner’s seat, you would possibly need to forged apart your gamer satisfaction and simply go along with the automated management scheme; in any other case you’ll be so busy staring on the buttons on the wall that you just’ll miss many of the story. There’s somewhat little bit of irony in Disney touting the journey’s improve to Unreal Engine 5 the day earlier than Epic formally introduced Unreal Engine 6, however then the overwhelming majority of theme park friends received’t discover or care about what software program engine is operating issues behind the scenes. They’ll simply need to get inside that cockpit (and out of that Florida warmth) and struggle alongside Din Djarin and Child Yoda for a spell. Nonetheless, the technical aspect of Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run stays an enchanting take a look at how video games and theme parks have dovetailed in recent times; hopefully it received’t take seven extra years for the journey to see extra updates like these.
