History of Star Tours

One of the most successful attractions for Disney has been Star Tours, an attraction that has been replicated around the world in Disney's theme parks and continues to entertain to this day. But to understand the history of Star Tours at the Disney-MGM Studios, we need to go back across the United States to Disneyland and a project that never got made to find the roots of what became Star Tours. Star Tours’ history can be traced back to Disney’s first attempt at a motion simulator.  Disney first proposed a simulator based attraction as part of 1974’s Discovery Bay for Disneyland. The simulator ride would be an underwater adventure with Captain Nemo that would have operated on a motion base.  However, in the 1970’s, technology wasn’t advanced enough to accomplish the goal of making that attraction a reality.

The idea for a motion simulator was shelved until 1984 when Frank Wells and Michael Eisner joined the Disney Company in 1984.  In 1984, there was a great turmoil of takeover events, and many did not know what was going to happen to The Walt Disney Company. Roy Disney was partly responsible for getting it back on track and working to get Michael Eisner and Frank Wells to join the company. Imagineer Tony Baxter was looking for some new heroes that would enhance the image of Disneyland.

Baxter felt George Lucas was the man. Baxter had been developing an attraction idea that turned out to be Star Tours. Lucas was eager to develop a park attraction and Disney had been working on developing their simulators over the past years since the attempt with Discovery Bay 10 years earlier. Ron Miller was still President of Walt Disney Productions and Baxter went over to Ron and talked to him about it. Miller was uncomfortable partnering with someone from the outside, George Lucas, but he finally decided, "You are right, we need to have the best at Disneyland." So he took his plane up his vineyard in Napa Valley in Northern California. Miller flew Marty Sklar, one other designer and Baxter. George Lucas drove to Ron's house in his car.  There, the idea for Star Tours was put down on paper and thought through with the Star Wars element to the attraction that Baxter had been developing all along. 

When Michael and Frank came on board, Baxter took it to them and said: "We really need to do this because Disneyland needs to have an attraction based on characters that children today are growing up with. We need a mythology that really touches people's heart, like Walt used to do." Baxter later found the plethora of inspiration to draw upon from the Star Wars universe extremely useful, “"We were fortunate to have such an imaginative mythology to work with," says Baxter.”It made the challenge of expanding it to three dimensions a very exciting and rewarding experience. In some ways we actually had more creative freedom than you would with a feature film.” Eisner was already friend with George Lucas from his days at Paramount Pictures and from the Raiders of the Lost Ark film.  Eisner liked the idea and Disney was looking to replace an old attraction in Disneyland, called Adventure Through Inner Space, which had opened in 1967 and by the 1980’s it was look dated.  Regardless of plot of a new attraction, Imagineers had blocked out some basic ideas about the physical set-up of the interior of the simulator cabin such as all the seats would face forward toward a giant projection screen, which would serve as the stand-in for the spaceship's windshield. And so Adventures Through Inner Space closed on September 2, 1985 and plans were formulated to fit Star Tours in it’s place.

The plans for Star Tours had to accommodate a new queue, preshow, 4 simulators and an exit area and it all had to fit into the space that Adventures Through Inner Space took up.  It wasn’t an easy task for Imagineers, but they managed to squeeze it all in.  Design work was well underway by mid 1985, with a projected November 1986 opening.  In 1985, Tony Baxter and Walt Disney Imagineering show producer Tom Fitzgerald joined Lucas and a small group of ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) designers at a story session at their Northern California headquarters. George Lucas came up with the idea of a pilot, who turned out to be Rex, the rookie. Rex began as a 'cosmic bus driver,' a counterpart to the wisecracking Jungle Cruise guides at Disneyland.  By the next morning, they had the first draft of a concept for "Star Tours." 

Read part two