Star Wars Weekends 2014: Star Tours Walkthrough Audio Commentary

When I attended the second of this summer's Star Wars Weekends (May 23-25), one of the things I was most looking forward to was riding Star Tours again. The ride is phenomenal -- it's my favorite theme park ride -- but the queue that leads up to the ride is fun in its own right. Disney and Lucasfilm pulled out all the stops to make the boarding area seem like a realistic terminal, from the Mon Calamari traffic controllers staring out of the second-floor window to the plucky and talkative droids scanning baggage and passengers. There are also tons of easter eggs that you'll notice if you go through the queue several times, or if you just linger on your way to your gate. (At one point, the droid scanning luggage gets a traveler alert and sees Lando Calrissian's face pop up on his screen.)

For one of my last rides on Star Tours over Memorial Day weekend, I was accompanied by Thomas Aaron Harris, who was covering Star Wars Weekends for the podcast Coffee With Kenobi. On a whim, I took out my phone and suggested that we do a commentary track while walking through the Star Tours queue on the way to our flight. Thomas agreed, and we spent the next twenty minutes discussing the droids, scanners, props, and visual effects that had turned a building in Florida into a small slice of the galaxy far, far away.

You can listen to our walkthrough commentary using the audio player embedded below. This commentary debuted on last week's episode of The ForceCast, which also featured my interview with Star Wars Weekends Celebrity Host James Arnold Taylor and more coverage of the event. If you're interested in hearing more about Star Wars Weekends, be sure to check out that episode.

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