James Martin/CNET
The next Fortnite tie-in is here, and it’s connected with a real-world experience: jump on the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride at either Disneyland or Disney World starting from Sunday, Aug. 16, and you’ll earn exclusive in-game extras.
Unveiled by Disney and Epic Games during the annual D23 convention in Anaheim on Saturday night, you’ll be able to use the official Disneyland apps to accept a special mission on the interactive ride to collect crates for your Fortnite account. You can use the crates to earn rewards on a new custom Star Wars island in the game called Smugglers Gambit.
“Smugglers Gambit, built in-house by an incredibly talented team, is an immersive, high-quality game,” said Sean Shoptaw, EVP of Disney Games and Digital Entertainment. “These experiences reflect our ambition to connect stories and worlds across formats into one converged entertainment ecosystem.”
On Smugglers Gambit, you can play as a smuggler from the Outer Rim (the location represented by Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney Parks). You’ll be able to explore the new Star Wars locations of Ord Ryla and Mersa Veta Station on the new island.
It’ll have co-op missions, quests, class choices, leveling up and new gear available to unlock. You’ll be battling pirates, as well as “Imperial remnants and dangerous wildlife.”
The Millennium Falcon ride opened at Disneyland and Disney World with the launch of the Star Wars-themed areas in 2019. It allows six people to ride inside a cockpit replica of Han Solo’s famous spaceship, with two people serving as pilots, two as gunners and two as engineers to steer the ship, blast enemies away and repair any damage received to the ship during the flight, respectively.
It’s a flight simulator, so you watch a screen take you through one of several scenarios (the latest Mandalorian-themed missions just launched to tie in with the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu in cinemas in May) while the ride vehicle moves in tandem, and you use physical controls to interact with and affect the flight.
The cockpit technology was built on Unreal Engine 5 and developed by Walt Disney Imagineering together with Industrial Light & Magic, the famed visual effects studio founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas in the 1970s.
Smugglers Gambit was similarly built with Imagineering, Lucasfilm and Disney Games, expanding the story of Hondo Ohnaka, the pirate, smuggler and eventual Resistance ally based at the Black Spire Outpost on Batuu. Ohnaka first appeared in the Clone Wars TV show, but is best known as a shady ally of the protagonists in the follow-up cartoon series, Rebels.
“Building on Epic’s technology, Disney’s Imagineers are shaping the future of interactive entertainment, where an experience goes from the physical world into Fortnite,” said Epic Games President Adam Sussman.
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite costs nothing, other than your pricey theme park entry, and only requires you to accept the special missionwaiting in line for the ride. You then need to link your MyDisney account with your Epic Games account to claim your rewards in Fortnite, or use a code to transfer them from the ride to the game
“The seamless link between Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Smugglers Gambit … (is) a groundbreaking example of how stories can flow across screens, theme park rides and games,” said James Waugh, Senior Vice President, Franchise Story & Creative Strategy, Lucasfilm.
The ride tie-in follows the Star Wars IP Toolkit’s launch in Fortnite in May — which Disney says drew in 8 million players in the first 72 hours — an expansion that allows players to build their own Star Wars-themed games and islands in Fortnite. The game also famously hosted an event back in Dec. 2019 that heralded the return of Emperor Palpatine a week ahead of his appearance in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Theme parks have been leaning increasingly into more immersive experiences, with Universal Studios Orlando last year opening Epic Universe, which, among other experiences, lets you use your Super Nintendo World Power-Up bands as Amiibo on your Nintendo Switch. The Smugglers Run Fortnite experience looks to be the first one that gives you in-game rewards back home, depending on how well you play a theme park game.
