Disney Now Has No Plans for Roaming Droids in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

Jessica Figueroa

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Disney Now Has No Plans for Roaming Droids in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

So far on Batuu, we’ve seen build-your-own droids, Coke Droids, and plenty of droids on stand-by for photo ops, but one glaring omission still remains months after the land’s opening on both coasts: the roaming, interactive droids that were promised when Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was first announced.

photos video interactive roaming droid character for star wars galaxy s edge unleashed on disneyland and children unleashed onto it

For the first few months of the land’s opening, heavy crowds were cited as the reason to not roll out these autonomous droid characters, but in a recent piece by the Orange County Register asking when the elusive droids would be debuting at Galaxy’s Edge, it appears Imagineering has no plans to use autonomous character technology in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

photos video interactive roaming droid character for star wars galaxy s edge unleashed on disneyland and children unleashed onto it

You may recall that Disney has tested these autonomous droids several times at Disneyland Park and even at the last D23 Expo. The most famous of these is Jake, or J4-K3, which has more sensors than a self-driving car, according to Walt Disney Imagineering research and development manager Ashley Girdich.

In the Register piece, Imagineering went on to explain that the Jake project was merely exploratory and independent from anything that was being developed for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and no decisions have been made on where or when the droid will be used again.

While J4-R3 is constantly being updated and recoded, any and all plans to have him or any other droid roaming future lands, and Galaxy’s Edge, are currently on the backburner.

18 thoughts on “Disney Now Has No Plans for Roaming Droids in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge”

  1. Yeah, you can see by the video why autonomous drones would be a no-go: people pushing, pulling, stopping, and ultimately trying to ride them.

  2. What a shame. This is just another slight to entertainment, which is what has really set Disney apart over the years from just being another old amusement park.

  3. after seeing how one annoying child and parents who didne see she was overstepping her bounds , I can see why this was a no -go.

  4. Why add anything fun and unique into the bland SWGE? Guests don’t like to be entertained in theme parks. That’s Theme Park management 101.

  5. Well judging on the video, I can see why they have no plans at the moment. J4-K3 couldn’t go more than two feet without a kid grabbing it or getting in its way.

  6. Maybe they figure that if we can live without PUSH The Talking Trash Can we can live without roaming droids too.

  7. It would be cool if the robits could pick up and throw away litter!! Simple and autonomous, I’d love to see that in a droid

  8. This video perfectly showcases the reason why they scrapped the bots. Parents refuse to control their mutant kids. I mean, look at the irritating little future-Karen in this video: constantly touching it, blocking its path, climbing on it, pushing on it. All that needs to happen is for that child to get a toe run over and Disney has a lawsuit on their hands.

  9. ARE KIDDING ME!!?!?!?!?!? THERE JUST GOING TO OPEN UP RISE OF THE RESISTANCE AND NOT ADD ANYTHING ELSE FOR THE NEXT THREE OR SO YEARS!?!?!? THATS BULLSH*T!!!!! Disney, You have the money and the resources to do this STOP ACTING LIKE YOU DON’T!!!! Hopefully we’ll see Roaming Droids and Aliens EVENTUALLY rather than allowing this land to just exist unchanged for all eternity, because Galaxy’s Edge NEEDS ENTERTAINMENT!!! Wheres the kinetic energy and stuff that was promised back when GE was announced!?! Galaxy’s Edge needs its own Streetmosphere!!

    • It already has it. There are characters roaming all over the land – from familiar ones like Rey and Chewbacca to Batuu-specific characters that fit in with the Galaxy’s Edge story line. They’re interacting with guests constantly. The video shows pretty clearly that money & resources aren’t the reason roaming droids aren’t viable. It’s that people can’t be trusted not to ruin them.

      • There’s a total of 6 characters in the land, none are droids or “aliens”. It was absolutely a budget thing, as was removing the 3rd attraction and many planned thematic elements.

    • We’ll be lucky if it remains unchanged. They are just going to start cutting costs as soon as the YouTube videos die down. And then they’ll reduce capacity slowly but surely because god forbid they have some empty rides running when they can reduce wear and tear and not pay their hourly cast members. Let the people wait three hours. Or let them get trampled trying to get the fast pass!

  10. Less than a week after this article, and there are reports of Disney testing out the free roaming droids. Which it seems this site has not reported on. Yet again more of the great reporting common of this site.

    • The “test” is a cast member rolling around the $25k R2 from Droid Depot. This story comes from quotes made by executives and Imagineers to a major news outlet, so should we just discredit official Disney statements from now on?

      • I think you guys do great reporting on this site ,Tom, and I think you should report them but I haven’t trusted their official statements in years. :)

  11. Honestly, Disney should have known that kids and people touching the droid and being annoying would be an issue. I think this has less to do with that instance than it does with the fact that they constantly oversell what they are developing and once it is open they slowly cut funding to other things being developed as well as cutting parts of the attractions that were instituted originally until upper management started looking for ways to cut costs, reduce spending, and increase immediate profits.

    It’s only a matter of time until maintenance begins to suffer like in other attractions. I get that it is a business but the business is entertainIng people at a quality level and they have made it obvious that they only want to do the bare minimum. I assume that I won’t get to experience most of the cool bells and whistles of new attractions unless I get there in the first six months of opening before they start in on the cost cutting.

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