Just thought I'd share my thoughts and experience since I think I am the only person to have ridden that was actually disappointed, ha! Of course it's amazing in so many ways, but it just doesn't quite work for me... one of my biggest disappointments though is I thought from what I saw on the front page and app of
Disneyland that the AT-AT walkers moved and was dying to know how they managed that and how that would look, so when I saw statues I realized my expectations of the whole thing were not going to be met. Overall I felt like the experience reminded me of one of those Universal Studios rides I went on 20 years ago. I disliked having to just keep moving forward through everything... I said to my kids that it felt to me like going to the Exploratorium (which we love!) without being allowed to touch anything... 'look at all this amazing stuff, now keep moving along folks'.
I cannot imagine being a major Star Wars fan especially of the recent movies and not absolutely loving the whole experience, but I am not a Star Wars fan and while I can somewhat get into most characters from the first six movies I just felt especially not interested in the recent characters, except for maybe Finn, Kylo Ren especially just feels like a weak character to me, I would've felt much more intimidated and invested if it had been Darth Vader instead (the costume is creepier along with the sinister breathing and of course James Earl Jones sounds infinitely more imposing than Adam Driver).
I did not like standing in the transport, except of course it was nice to be able to walk around, but it was a bit like trying to get to the bathroom during heavy turbulence on an airplane... I love all the motion simulator rides, but I just did not enjoy that experience standing.
The Rey projection in person really looked like a projection, I was disappointed in that because I was expecting more of a hologram effect.
The First Order cast were all awesome, I wish there was more of that and more live interaction rather than just being passed from one animatronic/projection to another. In the back of the prison cell I pushed all the buttons and turned all the dials so at first I thought I caused the General to come out and that was pretty exciting but then since I was way back there I missed most of the cutting of the opening which looked amazing from what I did see, however on our second ride I was right by it when it happened and unfortunately that one we were in did not look anywhere near as impressive so I'm not sure if something was off with it (had a lot of other elements that were not working for our second ride) or it just actually looks better from further away.
All the twists and turns in the ride vehicles were very, very smooth, it wasn’t at all like Toy Story Midway Mania which I find very jerky and it wasn’t really like a ride experience at all like something like Luigi’s so it wasn’t an issue for my husband who gets nauseous from that, but I was also kind of disappointed by that because I guess I was expecting more of a ride element at some point, even the “drop” was more like going down in an fast elevator in a tall building to me (which actually does turn my stomach a bit, unlike frog hopper rides or guardians of the galaxy which I love and don’t bother me), even though the subtleness of it gets to me a tiny bit it’s definitely not enough to factor into any decision to ride or not, I really have a hard time imagining anyone would be bothered by any of the motion elements… I get carsick all the time and my husband can’t handle any spin rides including carousels and we were both fine on this.
After experiencing this ride it just made me all the more disappointed in Oga’s actually, RotR was more along the lines of what I was expecting from the Cantina with the whole atmosphere and CMs getting into character… my husband felt the same way only regarding Trader Sam’s and wishing Oga’s was more like that, heh.
Ultimately it’s definitely a ride I would put on my priority list for when I visit Disneyland but it was just not the amazing experience I was hoping for. I think I would rather have more of a real ride and have some elements of the ride as it is now as an interactive walk through experience you can enjoy at your leisure. I just felt too much like there was all this stuff I wanted to explore and interact and engage with that I had to just pass through because it’s a ‘ride’ but the ride element wasn’t enough of an actual fun ride to take away from the other stuff. I did dilly dally as much as possible to get the most enjoyment out of everything I could (I think? Those first order cms were intimidating, which was great!) which unfortunately at one point resulted in some other guests taking our spot in the front row of a vehicle (or maybe they really didn’t remember their color, but it seemed awfully suspicious)
My 24yo daughter who is also not a major Star Wars fan (we are more into Star Trek) went in December to the Disney World one and said it was her favorite ride ever and she absolutely loved it to the point that my rather ‘meh’ response to it has caused her to have a bit of an existential crisis!
