Smuggler's Run Review...
My anticipated perceptions of this ride, from what I had read over the months, was that the ride sounded OK but it wasn't something I'd particularly like. I'm not a gamer and I really wasn't enthused about a mutual interactive participation with a cabin of 4 strangers. But I wanted to give the attraction a fair shake so I arranged my schedule so Alene and I could do multiple rides over the course of a few days. I've never been a believer that someone can give a meaningful review with only one or two rides on an attraction. So, we ended up riding 7 times during our vacation, 6 times in stand by and once in single rider. Our actual waits were generally about two thirds of the posted wait times. Our actual times in line ranged from 40 to 65 minutes in standby and our one time in single rider was about 35 minutes. Single rider bypasses almost the entire queue, so there's not much of a queue experience. Following are my bullet point impressions of the ride, but, bottom line, the attraction greatly exceeded my expectations and I liked it very much. It hit the most important theme park metric for me, namely, it was lots of fun, even after many re rides. Alene, who is not a Star Wars fan, actually said the ride was great, so much fun, and she loved it. I had no problems getting her to re ride, which was a big time issue with F&F last year.
*Most of the queue is open and not climate controlled, which is a big negative. It was chilly at DHS the week we visited, and it got very cold in those dark shaded passages of the queue.I'd guess it gets uncomfortably hot in the summer months. The queue theme fits the land well. It has that 'Mad Max' post apocalypse degraded factory/warehouse look. It's not a look I personally care for, but it works well with the GESWL look. I think the Srar Tours Two queue is better and more enjoyable, but that's more my preference space theme look than anything else. The Falcon is, for all intents and purposes, part of this attraction's facade and queue. The Falcon is done just as well as anyone can expect, and it has a myriad of great photo opportunities from the outside and the queue. The Hondo AA show is OK, but not great. It's kind of hit or miss with how much time you get in that area. A few times through we only saw Hondo perform for a few fleeting seconds. The Chess Room is also not much. It's just a small, fairly cramped, overcrowded load area with a space chess table and a few seats. You get rushed through into your waiting cabin area line so quickly that anyone trying to get a photo op sitting in those seats only had a few seconds to do it.
*A tip to those in line. Try your best to not be in line near a family with small kids. The CM's seem to have a tendency to give the in demand 'Pilot' cards to young kids, and on those occasions when they don't, the kid's parents may hound you to switch your 'Pilot' card for the kid's engineer or gunner cards. One parent must have asked Alene a half dozen times if his young daughter could switch her card. The little girl started crying, Alene felt bad for her, and gave her the 'pilot' card. Best to avoid being close to those families if you want a 'Pilot' card, and don't want hassled.
*I absolutely loved the cockpit, and sitting in it. Such a really big plus for realism....and 'fun'.
*As others have said, the position experiences are vastly different, with it basically being Pilot, Gunner, Engineer in that order. Pilot is GREAT but Gunner is pretty good too. Engineer is also fun if you don't overly try to get a real good score, since the buttons light up to hit so much that you can't get your eyes off of them to see and enjoy the ride. Best to just hit a few buttons every now and then for the interactive fun and still enjoy the realism of the flight through space. It was really a lot of fun to 'Pilot' the Falcon. Some have complained about the quality of the screen definition, but it looked fine to me. Most people on our rides basically just did their thing and had fun without being obnoxious and trying to order the other people on what to do. But on one ride we had two twenty something guys evidently piloting for their many multiple times. They were loud, obnoxious and were trying to order the other four of us around on what to do. All four of us just rolled our eyes and basically did the opposite of anything those two jerks wanted us to do.
RATING:
As I've done before I rate an attraction on the "Totality of the Experience". The facade, queue, pre shows get a rating, as does the actual ride
Facade/Queue, Pre Shows Rating: 7 ...It would have been a 5 1/2 , primarily due to most of the queue not being climate controlled. But the Falcon 'is so good' that it brought the total Facade/queue/pre show rating up to a 7 .
The Ride: 8
TOTALITY OF THE ATTRACTION RATING: 7 1/2