Friday, December 4, 2015

Season of the Force at Disneyland, This Is Not The Theme Park You Were Looking For

We at TTDILA have braved the holiday crowds to visit Disneyland for its special Star War themed changed to Tomorrowland, Season of the Force. That name, oh you noticed how bad it was, we did too. Just calling it Star Wars land or really so many other options are meaningless , it falls on deaf ears to Star Wars fans. Really the name would make more sense if a Star Wars event were at Knott's Berry Farm.

The main attractions are the new Hyper Space Mountain and added scenes from the new film Star Wars Awakens in Star Tours.


Hyper Space Mountain has been blowing away fans, spoiler if you watch the above video showing the ride in its entirety. The ride puts you flying across the stars with Blue Squadron in the Star Wars Universe. Reviews from fans have been estactic.

*The wait time at anytime when TTDILA attended was two hours with no option of getting a fastpass. We can only suggest board games, video games, head phones and good friends to talk to if you want to endure the wait.

Star Tours remains as fun an as kitschy as before with the bonus of an added scene from the new film. We got to go through some broken down junk ships of Jakku, with Finn and BB-8, and the First Order after us. As before, it's a gamble of where you'll go each time you get on, but each time you'll get a taste of the new film. It remains a stellar ride that's both funny-seeing a wookie putting on a seatbelt- and exhilarating as you may almost get eaten or blown up.

In what would have been an easy idea of doing a blue milk shake and hundreds of other ideas Disney settled on a few tasty treats related to Star Wars.

Darth By Chocolate, a scrumptious hard chocolate Darth Vader helmet with edible red lightsaber on top a parfait with layers of dark chocolate ganache, red velvet cake and chocolate sponge. Is Devil's food like the dark side?

The Dark Side Chicken Curry Specialty Pizza was strangely spicy good. Composed of a slice of pizza covered in curry chicken, roasted cauliflower, gouda and mozzarella cheese, cumin, pickled veggies and fried beans. It make look like a monster of a slice, but tastes darn good. Taste the dark side of pizza!

The Pastry Menace, an eclair based on Darth Maul's head, looked unsafe to smuggle in one's face. Spicy milk chocolate, no thank you.

Wasting your time and dime were the under-imagined Forest of Endor and The Fields of Naboo, a pasta and salad dish that looked unsatisfying and simple.

For fun there was the BB-8 Droid Crisped Rice Treat and a small piece of Chewbacca Cheesecake. Chewbacca would have laughed at the look of it.

Choose a side by drinking it. The greatest of gets would have to be two specialty drinks: The Dark Side and the The Light Side. Though not in the largest cups they each come with a collectible light-up. The Death Star for the Dark Side and the Millennium Falcon for the Light Side. The Dark Side was lemonade with strawberry flavor. The Light Side was lemonade and Granny Smith apple flavor, with yogurt meteors (boba). Both had a refreshing sour and sweet taste.

First Order Specialty Burger are tasteless generic things as is most of the rest of the menu at the Galactic Grill. You may want to get a burger of any allegiance to get the Han Solo Carbonite Bucket, a plastic lunch box that looks like Han in carbonite. For the fan, a perfect keepsake that could keep other stuff safe.

Tie Fighter popcorn buckets and the Chewbacca steins are a bit large and may not seem normal to take out at home. Sort of a waste of cash to look like a Star Wars dork. Inside the park it's fine, outside I doubt you'll use it again.

Star Wars: Path of the Jedi is a huge waste of your time. It's a chopped together edit of all the movies with the trailer for the new film. With so much else to do at Disneyland it's odd Disney would have made something so boring. A stage show, a re-enactment of scenes, anything would have been better.

Star Wars Launch Bay is an area to look at models and props from the films. You could wait to meet Darth Vader or Chewbacca to take some nice photos with them. Though some Storm Troopers were walking the park looking for some droids, try and quickly take a selfie with them. Not the greatest amount of interactive stuff to play with unless you like the Lego Star Wars games. After going to so many Star Wars events I have to say the Launch Bay was a bit lacking in props and overall fun.

Lacking on the highest order was merch for Star Wars. With all the brands and designs over the years we were kind of dismayed at how little a selection of clothes and accessories there were. Sure, they have the make your own droid and lightsaber section, great for kids. If you simply wanted a pen, magnet or the simplest of Star Wars items, forget it. There weren't any even special collectibles that looked eye-catching.


Season of the Force didn't even need a name, it could have just been considered some major updates Tomorrowland before a real Star Wars land gets built. The changes to the rides and some changes to the menu only make it worth the effort of going to Disneyland if you were already planning to do so.

For more info, check the official site here.