Star Wars Weekends

My family’s Disney vacation just happened to coincide with the first 2009 Star Wars Weekend. We are from Alaska and had never attended one of these before but we were very excited as my son (8) and husband are huge fans. We arrived at the park about 8am and were able to get good spots in line, about 40 people back from an entry turnstile. While my daughter (10) and I waited in line, my husband & son went over to get Ray Park autograph fast passes, but they were all gone. They did get Standby passes, which we found out doesn’t guarantee you anything, but sometimes the actors will do some extra signing. We all also got wrist band/ fast passes to get into Wickets Warehouse, ours were for 9:15. The storm troopers did their little opening skit about 8:45, I was glad we were close enough to see well. They actually opened the turnstiles a little early, but once we got into the park Disney Cast Members had ropes to block full access until 9am. Our first stop was the information table to get our son signed up for the Padwan Challenge, second stop Wickets.

Once inside Wickets we made the rookie mistake of looking around first before realizing there was a line for the collectibles. Once we figured that out I got in line and we took turns looking around. It took about 1.5 hours to get through the line. We were getting some weekend pins, and a collectible coin. In hindsight we probably should have just come back later in the day when there was no line since we weren’t buying anything that there was a HUGE demand for. Note that they only let you get 2 of the same pins per person. We also picked up some weekend tee shirts, regular pins, a drawing book, and some of the blanket throws ($15 when you spent $100). We had all the big things shipped back to our resort.

The Padwan mind challenge (trivia contest) was a bit of a disappointment to our son. Virtually all the questions were about the Clone Wars, which he hasn’t seen nearly as many times as the original films. He had fun though; all the participants got toothbrushes that play Star Wars music.

Next up, the parade. It started to rain just as it was supposed to start. Luckily it was just a quick downpour so the parade was only postponed, not cancelled. The parade was great, all the costumes were fantastic, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald all made appearances as well. Even our daughter who isn’t a huge fan was having fun seeing all the characters up close. The parade ends at the jedi training stage right next to Star Tours and they do a big photo op, we were too far back to get good pictures, but it was fun to see. We tried for the Jedi Training several times but the weather had other plans, they do not do the training if it is raining. So we missed out on that on Friday. They also moved the autograph sessions inside due to the rain. My husband was given the #1 standby position for the afternoon Ray Park sessions, but unfortunately Ray didn’t sign any autographs for standby folks on Friday afternoon.

We spent the afternoon getting autographs & photos, some of the characters were just wandering around (Aurra Sing, Tuskan Raiders, Storm Troopers, Clone Troopers, Zam Wessell), others had Disney “handlers” (Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Amidala, Boba Fett, Capt Rex). Vader & Maul were doing photos inside Wickets Warehouse which was a bit of a pain because the lighting was very dim for the average digital camera; we’ll probably end up buying the Disney photo-pass versions.

We closed out the day with the Hyperspace Hoopla, we didn’t know what this was, but it was so funny we decided we had to come back and see it again the next day (with a better view).

Saturday we came back to the park late in the afternoon and our son got into the Jedi Training at 5:15. The nice thing about the SWW version of the Jedi Training is that they pick more kids and both Darth Vader & Darth Maul show up to fight the “younglings”. All the kids got their certificates plus the Star Wars musical toothbrushes. We took a quick ride on the Tower of Terror and came back for the Hoopla at 7pm, our kids were right at the rope and it was just as funny the second time. Unfortunately they did have to cut it a tad short since the skies opened up just as it was finishing.

So all in all we had a great first time SWW experience.