Our First Star Wars Weekends Experience

Believe it or not, attending Star Wars Weekends is something we had never done before this year. We’ve been to every other special event at Walt Disney World, including 2013’s Limited Time Magic May the 4th Be With You event, but never Star Wars Weekends. Last year, 2013, was our first full year living in Florida. Prior to that, neither of us had visited in late May / June in the years since Star Wars Weekends have been in existence. To be honest, we had always heard about the crowds and the long lines and with the late spring heat, it just wasn’t an event we were rushing to despite the nostalgia and interest we both had for the Saga (really just Episodes IV, V, and VI).

We had a blast at May the 4th Be With You. We met Chewbacca and an Ewok We saw all kinds of  Star Wars and Clone Wars characters and enjoyed a dance party with them, and at the end of the night we watched the incredible Symphony in the Stars fireworks — all with little to no lines or crowds since the event was announced only a week or so in advance. After this great experience, we didn’t really feel like we needed to attend Star Wars Weekends.

May the 4th Be With You 2013

Disney’s Star Wars Weekends 2014

Well, something changed this year that suddenly made the event more appealing: a little beauty called Fastpass+! This year, we could pre-arrange reservations for the popular shows at Premiere theater!! Knowing we could show up shortly before the shows were about to begin made all the difference and were saw excellent programs like:

• Stars of the Saga – A celebrity talk show hosted by voice actor James Arnold Taylor. We attended the show on June 1st with guests John Ratzenberger (most notably Cliff Claven from Cheers, but also had a small role in Star Wars), Ray Park (Darth Maul) and Taylor Gray (from the upcoming Star Wars Rebels show).

• The hilarious Stormtrooper Pre-Show, which took place before Stars of the Saga. It’s included in the above video, but if you just want to see the Stormtroopers, you can see it here.

• Visit to the Maul starring Ray Park – The man, the Sith, the legend… Ray Park is interviewed again by James Arnold Taylor, but in this presentation, the martial arts master performs impressive demonstrations as he tells his story about his journey to action-star fame. Plus, there’s a cute segment where some really lucky kids get a “lesson” from him live on stage.

•  Obi-Wan and Beyond starring James Arnold Taylor – In this show, Taylor isn’t interviewing anyone else, but instead showcasing his own talents and career as a voice actor of an incredible number of notable characters. He also adds a bit of inspiration and heart when he shares his very personal stories and repeats his message about how hard work and determination got him to where he is today. We were quite impressed with this show and would certainly see it again.

But the BIG show of the 2014 Star Wars Weekends events this year was A Conversation with Mark Hamill! Yep, you read that right — Luke Skywalker was at Walt Disney World this year and we had Fastpass+ to see him! What could be better?! Oh, I don’t know….how about seeing him TWICE! Andy and I saw him together on Friday, June 6th and I went back on my own on Sunday, June 8th. Both shows were entirely different material, so I was glad I went back to see it again. I will say that I thought the first show was better though.

We really enjoyed hearing about Hamill’s memories of landing the role and working with his fellow cast members among other things. His Harrison Ford impressions were pretty great too. It was really exciting to just be there in the room with him. The fans were so excited and the energy in the room was simply fantastic! Having the opportunity to attend events like this is a perfect example of why we love living here.

A Conversation with Mark Hamill – June 6, 2014

A Conversation with Mark Hamill – June 8, 2014

We took a look around at Darth’s Mall, the event merchandise headquarters, but we aren’t really merchandise kind of people so we quickly made our way to Ackbar Snackbar and joined the Dark Side with a Darth Vader Cupcake. Holy cow, we thought this was the best cupcake we ever had, especially at Disney! It’s chocolate cake with chocolate peanut butter buttercream icing, chocolate curls and chocolate sprinkles. We shared the cupcake and this is usually not a problem for us because Andy is not that into desserts. He’ll have about two bites and hand it over, but this time, we matched bite for bite and marveled together about how great it was! When Andy gets excited about a cupcake, you know it’s a good one!

On a different visit, we though we’d join the Rebels and try the Yoda cupcake, which was a chocolate cupcake topped with chocolate hazelnut buttercream and toffee crunch. As much as I hate to admit, Yoda was not nearly as memorable as Vader. The cake was crumbly and while the frosting was good, it was not as good as the baddie’s frosting. It was enjoyable, just not incredible.

If you are  into event merchandise or Star Wars merchandise, take a look at this overview of Darth’s Mall’s wares.

Though we didn’t wait on lines to meet them, we did see a number of cool characters with meet and greets as well as some wandering the park for somewhat spur of the moment “meets.”

 

Each night, some very short, but very exciting fireworks lit up the sky this year at Star Wars Weekends. Symphony in the Stars is cool show set to the John Williams’ classic Star Wars themes. I believe was the same show they did for May the 4th, but it was fun to see again nonetheless. It seems to be a real crowd pleaser too, so it’s always fun to see and hear the crowd react to a new show. We watched from about mid-way down Hollywood Boulevard one night and from outside the gates another night. Here’s a compilation of those two views.

So, if you are familiar with the events at Star Wars Weekends, you’ll know that there are a few things we skipped like meeting characters, celebrity autographs, the celebrity Motorcade, and the new dining events. The first two require waiting in lines that are longer than we were willing to wait. The motorcade is early in the day and you need to arrive early to get a good spot, so we just didn’t have that much time to commit to get to that in addition to the other shows we wanted to see. We did have a reservation for the character dinner at Hollywood & Vine for my birthday, but I ended up getting a stomach flu and we had to cancel it. Bummer. All in all, we are ok with having skipped these aspects of the special event. We enjoyed the parts we did attend so much, we didn’t feel like we missed out.

Closing Thoughts….
Even though we were in no particular hurry to attend this event in the past, after seeing the special entertainment this year and with the advent of Fastpass+, we will most definitely attend again next year. We hope they might add FP+ for the motorcade viewing next year too. The celebrity shows were really entertaining and it’s a huge plus to be able to attend celebrity appearances and even get autographs at no additional cost. Being local, we are able to pick and choose the events we want to attend across several weekends, so it’s definitely worth it for us to check it out and we are already looking forward to next year. For Star Wars fans, we say this is a must-do event that we highly recommend. Plus, the Vader cupcake alone is worth the trip!