Year 4

Year 4 has a new land based on the hit movie franchise Star Wars where you can go into Hoth and experience all the interesting things that the planet holds.

Hoth: Galaxy's Edge

The Disneyland Paris version of Imagineering's smash hit Galaxy's Edge expansion will be both the smallest version and the most creatively ambitious. Hoth - Galaxy's Edge will take place entirely on a familiar planet which hasn't been seen since the original trilogy and will the Star Wars lore beyond the sequel trilogy. There will be only one anchor attraction and a "cantina" style location along with a small sampling of merchandise and snacks, and the overall land will only be about five acres in size. This boutique quality to the land will add intimacy to the experience and very much allow it to stand on its own from the Black Spire Outpost counterpart.

Backstory

Set after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker as Luke Skywalker has cemmented his legacy as a war hero in the galactic civil war after his role in the Battle of Krait, Hoth - Galaxy's Edge plays around with the idea of gendrification in the Star Wars universe. What happens to a famous battleground in the Star Wars universe after the war is over? That's the question at the heart of this.

The two factions at play here are the traders...merchandisers seeing credit signs as a way to capitalize off the now famous Skywalker war story, and the locals of Hoth who are none too pleased with how commercialized the battlefield has become. Both of these factions make a home together in the abandoned caves and rebel base of the planet's harsh tundra.

Lurking in the midst of all this however is a third and far more dangerous group...the Nomads. These exiled bounty hunters live on the fringes of society but at the forefront of technology. Their defining feature is the jet black and neon blue full body outfits they wear which essentially act as high tech snow wetsuits. The plot of the Nomads is to hijack the fallen AT ATs that the traders have so callously preserved as the centerpiece of the Hoth marketplace and take the planet as their own using the power of the fallen empire. With social and political unrest amidst a truly insidious plot, Hoth - Galaxy's Edge promises a smaller scale but just as story driven experience as its Batuu counterpart.

LAYOUT

The land works its way around a horseshoe courtyard of interconnected caves, with the Star Tours headquarters on one side and the Star Traders gift shop on the other. Guests walk through open air caves with exits into the center of the land located on either side. In the middle of the open air caves is the icon of the land, the two fallen AT ATs.

The AT ATs have long since been sunken into the ground and are now blended into the mountains and snow, but the "faces" still pop out and the tied legs still remain visible. It's mostly the bodies that are buried into the earth. Luke Skywalker's X-Wing proudly sits in the center of the AT ATs, a proud symbol of the ultimate hero of the Galactic Civil War and key player in the Battle of Hoth. The X-Wing was donated by Rey after the events of "The Rise of Skywalker", and Rey can be seen wandering the land spreading the word of Luke's story and keeping the Jedi philosophy alive.

Star Traders

Located within the former rebel base used in the Battle of Hoth, Star Traders is a boutique shop themed as a Star Wars version of a military memorbilia store. Inside guests can find rebel helmets, outfits, blasters, as well as remnants of X-Wing parts from the Battle of Hoth, from full scale engines and wings to the smallest pieces of scrap metal for your on the go collectors.

The Blue Banthaa

Guests wandering through a cave not far from the entrance into Galaxy's Edge encounter the former Wompa cave that Luke Skywalker was once trapped in. Here we find a small snack stand dedicated to all things blue. Blue popcorn, blue milk, blue raspberry icecream and slurpees, blue dried cereal snacks. Blue corn chip trail mix. It's all here in this unique and sure to be crowd pleasing snack shack. The real draw here is the alcoholic Blue Banthaa drink...a delicious concoction of spiked blue milk served with a cookie on top.

Star Tours Gold Lounge

Located within a secret side entrance to the Star Tours Headquarters, the Gold Lounge is this land's equivalent to Oga's Cantina. It will be designed by the same architect who made the infamous planet-wide Canto Bight casino, but within a very confined space. The AA found within the cantina is K9-08, a vibrantly colored neon blue DJ droid whose look falls somewhere between K2-SO and L3-37, most notably the domed helmet-like head to give the droid a slightly Daft Punk feel to it.

Hoth Tours

Hoth Tours is mainly a combination between every single Star Wars attraction made so far. It takes the original setting of Star Tours, the plot of Rise Of The Resistance, and the ride vehicles of Smuggler’s Run. The setting of Star Tours adds a familiar setting to the audience and a reason to why you’re driving around Hoth of all places, but, also Rise Of The Resistance so there’s more to it than that and it ties the land together all thematically while The Smuggler’s Run Vehicles manage to make the ride different from Star Tours without being as ambitious as Rise Of The Resistance currently is.

The only difference here is that you don’t control the vehicles this time, instead you’re being flown around. This removes the annoying aspect of having to deal with people not being able to drive on this ride and technically allows us to railroad our plot into place without it being annoying. It also prevents the ride from glitching out accidentally due to breaking boundaries or ending up back in the beta testing zone, if the ride would even have it since it’s running off a film, not a game system. Also and finally, unlike the original Star Tours, and like Smuggler's Run, the ride uses a track while stimulating the movements of the ride.

This Star Tours port is reminiscent to the one currently in Disneyland’s Paris tomorrowland in terms of shape: It has a hexagonal pattern on the outside, which leads to an upper rim which is deeper within the building. However, unlike the Starport, the booth for Star Tours located closer within the building and there is no outdoor queue. This is because we’re in Hoth, and Hoth is a frozen wasteland: If there was an outdoor queue everyone in it would likely die of hypothermia unless their species was adapted for it.

Unlike Star Tours, the building’s colors tend to look more faded, and the blue on the building is dimmer and duller than its counterpart. This is because in this part of the timeline Star Tours is on the verge of bankruptcy barely keeping it’s head above financial ruin due to Hoth’s tourism industry. The Launchpads are kept inside the building instead of the outside due to heavy snows, with the air buildings taking after the bases of Hoth, with the steel beginning to rust due to Star Tours being unable to afford much to repair them. Most of the money goes to keeping the main facility and vehicles together, and most of the cash nowadays comes from their cantina so it doesn’t go under. Other than that, It’s mostly the same other than it being more compact and drowning in snow.

Inside of the Attraction, the ride’s queue is a combo of the Smuggler’s Run and Star Tours. Most of the Queue is the same as Star Tours in style, you walk through the check out area of this facility, grey carpet on the floors, and various shades of grey for steel on the walls, with a black with red lines checkered ceiling. Robots that have much more advanced designs than the original Star Tour’s robots are seen throughout the queue, conducting business throughout the port. However, some portions of the Queue have wires, tools, equipment, and boxes laying out all over the place, as if the maintenance of the area has been rushed with no time to remove the proper equipment. The Corridors of the place have paneled walls that are made out of a very light grey steel. Another cousin of Sonny and Zzzzzyyyyyyxxxx can be found in the Queue. Eventually guests will walk up a ramp to go into a tunnel where they finally board the ride vehicles. Another R2 unit guides this ride instead of R2D2 known as R2-D8, who’s white and green instead of the white and blue of R2D2.

Inside the ride vehicle is a mixture of the Star Tours and Smuggler's Run, with the ride vehicle having more seats than Smuggler’s and being more compact. The ride retains the same screen structure as Smuggler’s Run while having the rest of the ride vehicle look just like the ordinary star tours vehicles. This vehicle has an RX Unit controlling it, known as RX-77. This version of RX acts more competent than the first RX we’ve been introduced to, RX-24, because his wire has been properly cut. However, due to manufacturing errors due to cutting costs, he tends to be more aggressive than the ordinary RX unit.

The ride starts out similarly to the original Star Tours, with our RX unit welcoming us. While he still generally means well by what he says when he welcomes you, he says it in a way that without actually paying attention to what he’s saying, sounds like he’s threatening you. He then opens the cockpit shield almost immediately, acting quite peppy about it. He then gets very enthusiastic about talking about R2-D8, saying stuff that sounds like he’s insulting them, but he's actually complementing them, like “Don’t tell R2-D8 this, but he's excellent and is probably my best friend.”. He then proceeds to kick up everything, and tries to hype you up on everything you’re about to see. Anyways, his first instinct is to jack up everything immediately in an attempt to make it a thrilling experience. The only reason this dork doesn’t immediately end up hyper-speeding after leaving the building is because R2-D8 is the responsible friend, although this annoys RX-77.

He then begins our tour by going through the history of Hoth, and passes by historical sights such as the abandoned AT-ATS, The Blue Bantha, and The X-Wing. He flies over bases,the Clabbum Range, The Moorish Moraine, and Shyloah’s Crest. We briefly fly over a Tauntaun herd, and briefly encounter a Wampa, and although RX-77’s first instinct is to threaten it and scream loudly, R2-D8 manages to briefly take control and make a detour.

Throughout the ride we come across the tacky tourist parts of Hoth, and needless to say some, and by some I mean most, citizens of Hoth are not very happy to see Star Tours around the corner, gossiping about how their business will bring about the death of their culture, and throwing snowballs at the windshield, in which RX-77 proceeds to get angry, but then R2-D8 attempts to calm him down by beeping to him for a bit, in which they argue for a bit in which RX-77 doesn’t pay attention to where they’re driving to due to the bickering, while R2-D8 tries to get back on the main road, although that doesn’t work since they’re fighting for control at this point. Due to getting lost in the middle of the frozen wilderness, and it started to storm, RX-77 decides to listen to R2-D8 this time, who knows of an ideal shortcut. This was not an ideal shortcut.

So RX-77 begins to listen to where R2-D8 thinks they may want to go, and so RX-77 Obliges, heading down the icy cavern. Then they realize that this place appears to be inhibited by people, but then they realize it's inhibited by people in robes ...which aren’t native to Hoth? They also have ships in the cave as well, which is odd for Hoth natives anyways as well. R2-D8 appears to be arguing that they could just be cold from the snow based on RX-77’s responses and it eventually spirals down to R2-D8 arguing that this is stalking based on how RX-77 reacts, so they both shut up. We then hear their plans on resurrecting the AT-AT units for their own gain. This causes RX-77 to panic, and immediately fly out. They notice. This also freaks out R2-D8 because someone could die right now. Luckily we fly too fast so they can’t just use the force on us to yeet us across the horizon.

This causes us to have to find our way out of the middle of the freezing Hoth wilderness during a winter storm, all while trying to outrun a bunch of robed dudes who want to presumably blow up the place for self benefit. Star Tours {™} is naturally obliged to try and help because if they can’t abuse a culture for self benefit so they won’t die out, then they will probably die out with everyone else. So eventually RX-77 makes his way to the Echo Base, and warns everyone. Everyone initially doesn’t understand what’s going on, but, unfortunately, it appears that the nomads had ships as well, and now the AT-ATS are moving. Whoops.

So now the AT-AT’s are attacking, the Nomads know where we are and are out for revenge after we revealed they existed, so it’s time to defend Hoth against them. Pilots prepared to take the fight against these nomads so their freedom shall not be taken once more are ready to fight to the end, and they ask us to join in. While R2-D8 wants to get us back to safety first incase something happens, RX-77 figures that dumping a bunch of tourists back then may delay the battle, and if they lose, they’ll probably execute the tourists on their flight anyways. R2-D8 understands his logic, and comes to an agreement. So, RX-77 pulls out the cannon features meant for self defense and joins the fight, with R2-D8 ready to guide him.

So we arrive on the battlefield, fighting against a bunch of force controlled half wreck AT-AT units, and a small squadron of ships. The real thrill begins as we go at high speeds, ducking and diving under the AT-AT units, shooting at them and their joints, and as we shoot at our ships, managing to avoid being taken down, although a few aren’t so lucky. We continue to fight against a couple of ships, until we finally find a few users on the ground. RX-77 runs them over, which causes R2-D8 to scream. After the fight is over, we are congratulated and complimented for our bravery, which causes RX-77 to compliment them back for their helpfulness for once without aggression. We are driven back to the Star Tours base, and just like his predecessor, RX-77 almost slams into a gas tank due to high velocity. R2-D8 screams, but then begins to beep in annoyance about RX-77’s aggressive there, in which RX-77 retorts, “Sorry, R2, but I don’t want to be late or I’ll get fired! I’m not a Newbie, I know how to do this!” in which R2-D8 beeps back somehow sarcastically. We then exit the ride.