Star Wars: Episode VIII Mission Is Coming To Disney Parks’ Star Tours

Not long ago, a theme park very close to home announced that its Star Tours exhibit would be getting an upgrade in honor of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Episode VIII. Yesterday, Disney Parks posted a celebratory blog marking the 30th anniversary of Star Tours. The exciting note recounted the history the changeable attraction before noting where Star Tours will go in the future.

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Unsurprisingly, the theme park mainstay will be getting a few add-ons this year. Disney Park is already working on an “exciting new mission” based on Star Wars: Episode VIII.

“The attraction is celebrating 30 years of galactic adventures (having undergone a major update in 2011 along with the addition of elements from Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 and an exciting new mission based on elements from Star Wars Episode VIII currently in production),” Disney Parks wrote on its website.

The blog continued with some words from Tom Fitzgerald, a senior creative executive with Walt Disney Imagineering. The higher-up explained just why he felt Star Tours has been an enduring part of Disney Parks and why the attraction’s future looks so bright.

“At Imagineering, the technology is always in service of the story,” he notes. “As a result, our focus is on the incredible storytelling of Star Tours — the characters, the adventures, the story, the music and effects. That’s what keeps people coming back again and again… to relive the moments they loved growing up watching those films, and to step into the story and experience it in an immersive way as only Disney Parks can deliver.”

This is not the first time Star Tours has been altered to suit the franchise’s new trilogy. The ride previously underwent an upgrade before Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens was released, and the makeover added the planet Jakku to Star Tours.

Star Wars: Episode VIII is written and directed by Rian Johnson, continuing the saga films. Star Wars expands their universe with Rogue One, the first of their new standalone movies that take place without a focus on anyone named Skywalker.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits US theaters December 16, 2016. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it’s the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core “Skywalker Saga” of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue Onetells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters today.