(Lee, who is the really big Star Wars fan in the family, put this together from his notes on the “Making of Star Tours” session at Destination D. Thanks, Lee!)

Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, writer and producer for the original Star Tours and for the upcoming “Star Tours: The Adventures Continue” spoke mostly about the creation of the original attraction but also briefly about the update.

In the mid-80’s there was not much new successful Disney movie content to base new attractions on, so the Imagineers got the idea to approach George Lucas about doing something based on Star Wars. They felt that Star Wars had many “Disney” qualities (family focused, adventure, comedy) and it turned out that Lucas is a big Disney fan – he says he was at Disneyland on the second day it was open.

Lucas toured Imagineering and saw a flight simulator ride concept and thought that would be a good approach for a Star Wars attraction. The British company Rediffusion Simulation had been building flight simulators for training commercial pilots and invited the Disney Imagineers to try out a large size simulator using some rough game footage and less-than-perfect motion programming. The simulator broke on the first ride and the mismatched visuals and motion made them all queasy, but they liked it enough to use it as the basis for the new attraction.

The original concept for the attraction was a Jedi training center where the guests would participate in a training session to prepare them to battle the Empire. However, President Reagan’s use of the nickname “Star Wars” for his missile defense system, plus Disney’s sensitivity to topics like “war” lead to the development instead of the more light-hearted tourist concept used for the attraction.

Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic made the movie – shot on 70mm film and all done with practical models since this was before widespread use of CGI. The film was a challenge for ILM since it required a single point of view (so no cuts like a normal movie) making it effectively a four minute and 30 second “effects shot.” Once they had the film, Imagineers spent months programming the motion sequences for the simulator to match what you see in the film.

Other tidbits from the talk:

– Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman) is the voice of the pilot droid Rex. Disney needed someone with a really great scream and Paul’s work in “Flight of the Navigator” was similar to what was needed for Star Tours. Tom showed concept art that showed the progression of the pilot droid from the original Crazy Harry to Rex.

– The simulators were lifted by crane and lowered into place through the open roof of the attraction.

– Disney actually rejected first trench scene from ILM because it didn’t give the same feel as the movie – that was nervous moment for the Imagineering team.

– ILM employees (not professional actors) are the human cast members in the film.

– Disney didn’t have enough budget to build working robots in the Droid Room. But the Imagineers really wanted them, so they used the geese audio-animatronics from the decommissioned “America Sings” attraction, stripped down to their bare frames. (He called them the “goose droids”.)

– The droids in the Droid Room were supposed to speak in clicks and beeps (more like R2-D2), but Lucas liked the English dialog Tom Fitzgerald had provided to explain the concept better. What you hear is dialog never meant to be heard. It was recorded in one day with Tom Fitzgerald and another Imagineering employee doing the voices.

– The attraction score was composed specifically for the attraction, based on the John Williams movie music. They had to be careful to have the score not sound like a movie since the guests are experiencing it instead of just watching it.

– The Mighty Microscope from Adventure Thru Inner Space is in the opening scene – sticking out of the wall low down on the right as the Starspeeder pulls up from the initial fall.

– The attraction had several different names, including Cosmic Winds, before they finally settled on Star Tours.

– Anthony Daniels wrote and recorded the public address dialog you hear in the queue – it’s in Ewok. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

– Disney and Lucas agreed to do Captain Eo as a quick “placeholder” while they took time to build Star Tours.

From the beginning it was expected that since the attraction could be changed with new video and motion programming that it would be updated every couple of years. Instead, it’s taken twenty-five years to get to the first update. The reason for the delay was partly because once Lucas started the prequel trilogy, Disney waited for it to finish.

Tom Fitzgerald is blogging (on the DisneyParks blog) every couple weeks on the creation of the new Star Tours so he didn’t want to give too much away. He did provide a few details on the update:

– The “tour” will visit Bespin, the forest moon of Endor, Alderaan and Coruscant.

– The update is set between the two Star Wars trilogies, so the vehicle is an older Starspeeder 1000 and the pilot Ace is an earlier model pilot droid than Rex from the original attraction

– George Lucas has been much more involved this time since he has more free time.

– There is a new robot spokesperson name “Aly San San” voiced by Allison Janney.

– Ace is the pilot of the Starspeeder 1000 (as opposed to the Starspeeder 3000 in the original attraction, which was set in a later time period).

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is currently scheduled to open in May 2011.

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