The Original Star Tours Archive: Flight to Endor

STAR TOURS IS FOREVER! They may be gone but they are not forgotten.

Consider this video my farewell and thank you to the REAL "Captain Rex" (and in my consideration, the best and only one in the Star Wars universe)!

StarSpeeder 3000 pilot-droid RX-24 -- voiced by Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman -- was retired on September 7, 2010 after more than 20 years of "first flights", still sporting his red 'REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT' pitot tube tag until the very end!

This is edited together from several tapes, some that I shot over the course of two days in late October 2007 at the then-Disney/MGM Studios in Orlando FL, and some that I shot during the Last Tour to Endor event on Saturday August 14 2010 at what is now called Disney's Hollywood Studios.

I tried to make it feel like the viewer is the only person riding, but the one time that I was aboard a StarSpeeder by myself in 2007, they wouldn't let me film.

My least favorite part in editing this was C-3PO's speech on the monitor, because on every tape, there was a bobble. It's not easy to buckle yourself one-handed while filming and still keep the shot steady.

(My wife and sons were allowed to stay on a simulator for a second flight in 2010, while I was filming the queues. I would have loved to have been sitting there already buckled in order to get a steadier shot of Threepio. Ah well.)

One thing on my final flight in 2010 that I specifically wanted to record was the onboard monitor, because very little public record of those shots are out there.

I got as much as I could, especially Red Leader's scenes, because in 2007 I got to interview Steve Gawley, who played the role back when he worked on the special effects for Star Tours at ILM.

Other ILM'ers from the 80's make tiny cameos as well. There's Susan Monahan as 'Departure Control', rear-screen-projected into the little booth to the right of the Launch tunnel just before Rex makes his fateful wrong turn.

Dennis Muren, Selwyn Eddy III, and Claudia Mullaly (all of whom I also interviewed) are just barely visible inside a window of the building in the hangar that sits right in front of the Mighty Microscope, a pseudo-'Hidden Mickey' from the previous attraction in Anaheim, Adventure Thru Inner Space. Muren et al. duck for cover as our StarSpeeder careens past.

And, finally, that's retired ILM'er Ira Keeler as the man who dives below the desk as the SS3K almost collides with the fuel tanker. No, it's not George Lucas. Sorry. I have that from several reliable sources, including Muren, Gawley, Eddy, and Keeler himself, who provided me an on-set photo of him in the costume which ran with my article.

(ILM's Bill Beck's cameo, doing the preflight checks on the StarSpeeder 3000, is discussed in my 'Loading Concourse' video.)

I chose to use only my live audio for this edit, because there's something about the sound of the shuddering metal whenever the simulator would move that seems missing from the CD-quality source audio.

The exit to the gift shop is cobbled together from several tapes. I chose to use the audio where I am humming along with the music because it captured how upbeat and carefree this ride always made me. Normally, when I am videotaping, I try to be as unintrusive to the event as possible, but I was so pumped at being on Star Tours, I forgot myself, and that's part of the FEELING of the ride that I wanted to acknowledge here.

Hope you've enjoyed my Original Star Tours Archive here on YouTube. Keep checking back for new additions.

And be sure to check out EndorExpress.net for the most dedicated Star Tours coverage available!

Thanks!
-Alex N.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Star
• Tours
• Flight
• to
• Endor

[haftashaft]

Just wanna throw it out there... the original death star was over Yavin IV when it was destroyed, not the Forest Moon of Endor...

[LextheRobot]

@haftashaft According to the show's writer in some of the interviews from around 1987, this was intended to be a THIRD Death Star, and not either of the ones shown in the continuity of the films. Threepio's dialogue in the queue clearly establishes the setting as being after events depicted in Return of the Jedi, i.e. after both the previous Death Stars had been destroyed.

[LextheRobot]

But, in the new version of Star Tours, my friends and I at EndorExpress (dot net) uncovered some Aurebesh writing on Threepio's diagnostics board which indicates that one piece of equipment to the StarSpeeders is a flux capacitor. A nice little detail that lets the ride exist separately from any past continuity problems as well as any that will crop up whenever GL decides to revise his universe again.

[trex91000kk]

Were you like the only one there

[LextheRobot]

@trex91000kk The video is edited together from a couple of different flights, but yes, on occasion I have been the sole passenger.

[MoonspiritAndFriends]

Captain Rex was the one and only captain for Star Tours. I miss him so much. I went to the new Star Tours recently and found it decent. But it's just not the same without Rex. Gosh I remember when I used to have a friggin crush on him! :) What really sucks is that they put him in the Defective Robots area. I mean it's good see him but still, it's just not the same without him as Captain. I salute to you Captain Rex.

[TCOPatrick]

@dragnink09

Sigh, that makes me sad, because I agree. The original Star Tours felt so much more "real" because the fact there were REAL models and handbuilt props/sets/etc. The new Star Tours, being CG and all, sometimes can be a little un-realistic at some times...

[vigo894]

I've been to Endor dude. Not for the light hearted.

[dragnink09]

Something about the old Star Tours that can't be replicated.. is that most of it was miniature model sets and physical models so it looked entirely real, I think the new Star Tours is going to be all CG...

[ddrusa]

may you rest in peace startours