While at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), John Snoddy, Disney EVP of Imagineering, may have dropped some hints about the attractions that will be coming to Star Wars Land:

Thanks to the involvement of Industrial Lights and Magic, the legendary special effects firm that Disney acquired in its big 2013 purchase of “Star Wars” studio Lucasfilm, Snoddy says that one of the rides will be “unprecedented, in a way.”

While Snoddy didn’t share any details on which ride, exactly, this was in reference to, the description lines up with the previous announcement of an attraction that takes riders through a battle between the evil First Order and the heroic Resistance, inspired by the record-smashing movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Snoddy hinted that one of the rides that Disney Imagineering is working on with ILM is a “boat ride,” with boats moving alongside a track, kind of like Disney park crowdpleaser “Pirates of the Carribean.”

Where ILM comes in, Snoddy says, is in helping Disney mix super-high-resolution projections with real-life physical sets and characters to create an immersive mix.

Thanks to Disney Imagineering’s robotics and ride know-how, they’ll know where the boats will be at any moment, down to the milimeter, meaning they can predict with almost guaranteed accuracy where a rider’s attention will be.

Indeed, Snoddy says that having ILM’s expertise on tap has made a huge difference in the already-complicated business of building a new Disney park attraction, let alone one that’s this immersive.

“When you build a theme park attraction, you’re building a building, you’re building a massive device,” Snoddy says.

Source: Business Insider

Unfortunately, the Business Insider stepped a bit outside of their area of expertise and likely made a bad call here. It sounds like the Imagineers were describing the new AVATAR and Pirates of the Caribbean boat rides coming to Animal Kingdom and Shanghai Disneyland respectively, not either of the rides for the Star Wars-themed land. The Millennium Falcon attraction is likely simulator based, while the attraction that “puts you in the middle of a battle between the Resistance and the First Order” gives no hints of being a boat ride based on the concept art provided so far. Maybe it is a boat ride and that was what Snoddy was talking about, but to quote Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.” We shall see…

Joe Hogarty