Disney Overhauls Millennium Falcon Ride Without a Hitch
Disney's Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run ride in both Disneyland and Hollywood Studios has undergone a significant update, adding new missions to the popular attraction. The upgrade, which was announced in May, has increased the complexity of the ride, allowing riders to choose between different worlds for their unique adventure.
The Imagineers behind the ride have revealed that every single one of the 224 graphics cards was upgraded to a new Nvidia Blackwell card, and the game was updated to Unreal Engine 5. This upgrade has made the platform more flexible, but it also allowed the testing environment to get an upgrade as well.
The Imagineers used a developer console to test the ride's updates, which included virtual buttons to simulate all the functions in the cockpit, screens dedicated to readouts during the ride, and multiple perspectives of the game itself. They even tested some parts within virtual reality headsets to see how it would look from the rider's perspective.
To minimize downtime for the popular ride, the Imagineers worked overnight for weeks to successfully update the hardware and software. The result was zero downtime during the upgrade process.