At Disney's D23 Expo on July 15, 2017, a presentation uncovered additional details about the attraction's story. Artwork depicted Chewbacca and Hondo Ohnaka outside of the Millennium Falcon and it was revealed that an agreement between the two will lead to a crew being needed for an as yet unknown endeavor. On December 13, 2017, the Disney Parks Twitter feed posted an image from the interior of a portion of the ride.
Instead of a traditional ride film, the Millennium Falcon ride film was developed by ILM Experience Lab as a real-time rendered experience in partnership with NVIDIA and Epic Games. The "ride film" runs on the Unreal Engine, which is powered by a group of eight NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs with five QuadroSync projectors offering ultra-high-resolution pictures.[1]
The attraction puts multiple guests into the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, where they each have a specific job during a mission. The outcome of the ride's events and the performance of the guest gives them a reputation that affects other experiences within Galaxy's Edge beyond the ride itself. Originally, guests were to have complete control over the Falcon's path. Disney later changed this over fears that certain guests would intentionally crash in seconds to ruin the experience for other guests for their pleasure. During the ride, lights flash to tell guests when they need to interact with particular buttons and switches in the cockpit.
Attraction[]
Set between the events of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, Smuggler's Run puts guests into the role of flight crew members recruited by Hondo Ohnaka, space pirate, smuggler, and president of Ohnaka Transport Solutions. At the entrance, guests are greeted by the sight of the Millennium Falcon on the landing pad as it is being readied for its next flight.
Entering the queue, guests pass behind the Falcon and enter the repair bay. Inside, guests see various pieces of equipment that are being used to modify the spaceship while flight crews can be heard over the PA as they work on the ship.
Later on, upon reaching the upper level of the queue, guests are escorted into the main pre-show room, where they meet Hondo. As Hondo explains, he needs flight crews to help him carry cargo across the galaxy using the Millennium Falcon, which has been loaned to him by Chewbacca, who intends to aid the Resistance with the cargo to be transported by the Falcon.
After meeting with Hondo, guests are then assigned one of three different roles: Pilot, Gunner, or Engineer.
Pilots are tasked with flying the ship by controlling its movement during flight, with the right-hand-side pilot making the ship pitch up and down while the left-hand pilot steers the ship left and right and operates the boosters. Gunners, meanwhile, protect the ship by operating its forward laser cannons and missiles while Engineers repair the Falcon and handle its mission-specific modifications.
Once aboard the ship, Hondo informs guests about their mission: a flight to Corellia in pursuit of a First Order train carrying coaxium. During the mission, the Pilots will attempt to get the Falcon behind the train so that the Engineers can fire the grappling harpoons to capture a train car full of coaxium while the Gunners shoot down the escort fighters.
During their flight Hondo serves as guests' guide, flying in front of them in his ship. Throughout the mission, he prompts guests to act by interacting with certain buttons, switches, and levers when they light up.
As they depart from the spaceport, all members of the flight crews are quickly introduced to their controls. Once the crew is familiar with the controls, guests then jump to lightspeed for Corellia. Upon arriving, crews will then have to act quickly to destroy the squadron of TIE Fighters escorting the train before proceeding to capture a train car containing coaxium. To complete the mission, guests only need to get one container of coaxium, but can capture a second one if they can work together to capture it.
Following the capture of the coaxium, a TIE Echelon appears, and Hondo informs them that it's time to make their escape, and prompts them to destroy the train using the Falcon's missiles. The resulting explosion then causes the Star Destroyer to collapse. After barely escaping the collapsing Star Destroyer, guests then hyperspace back to Batuu. Depending on their performance, however, the Falcon's hyperdrive may fail, resulting in the guests being stranded in an asteroid field while TIE fighters attempt to shoot them down. Hondo will then inform guests that they need to destroy all the fighters to keep the First Order from finding the location of the Resistance's hidden base on Batuu.
Upon returning to Batuu, Chewbacca pilots the ship remotely for a landing back at the Black Spire spaceport. Guests are then given a score based on their performance while Hondo congratulates them for their work. Afterward, guests then exit via the Falcon's docking hatch and return to Black Spire.
