millennium falcon – petescully

Just before Christmas we took a brief little trip down to Southern California to visit Disneyland. My wife loves Disneyland; on my first ever trip to America in 2002 she took me there. This trip was to see all the Christmas decorations, which is always fun, and we were staying for two nights, which meant we would attempt the long, long day in the parks, and we were going to both parks, including California Adventure. We had an early start, getting to the gates not long after 7:00am, which is ridiculous but my wife is a good Disney planner and if we make the early start, we can beat a lot of the crowds, and have time for an afternoon nap. So we headed down Main Street with the other early birds and went over to Adventureland, which was not yet open. We were going to start off with Indiana Jones. While we waited, more and more people started to arrive, and I took the opportunity for a first quick sketch of the castle, above. I got this story into my head that Donald Duck’s original name was Dickie Duck (because they were supposed to be Mickey and Dickie, you see), and so every time I saw Donald Duck I would refer to him as Dickie Duck, and I don’t know, it would make me laugh when people tried to correct me. Didn’t really happen, just got eyerolls from my family. I’m Such A Dad. Disney days are busy, I always bring my sketchbook but we are generally on the move, and we get a lot of rides in. We went back to Galaxy’s Edge, ths Star wars land, and rode on the Rise of the Resistance ride, which is a lot of letter ‘R’s, but was a pretty phenomenal experience. By the early afternoon it’s usually time for a rest; my wife and son went back to the hotel to chill out, but my idea of resting is stopping and sketching. I found a spot nearby the Haunted Mansion, which was all decked out with ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ theme, which they do every year. We didn’t ride the Haunted Mansion this time, I’m not that into that one anyway.

While they were still resting at the hotel I strolled back over to Galaxy’s Edge to draw the Millennium Falcon. It’s not super easy to draw and I find myself sketching the various Mickey and Grogu eared people walking by. Fewer people with lightsabres this time but some had some pretty nice ones. I love a lightsabre, but I’m not doing that whole expensive build-your-own fancy one, though they do look good. We have enough plastic ones at home that me and my son used to fight each other with when he was small. I had an interesting juice drink with a fancy Star Wars name, then met up with the family again to spend a bit of time at California Adventure (the guy on the turnstile was very rude to us when the system wouldn’t let my son back in), rode on the rides at Cars Land (always great), had a look at the new Marvel Avengers stuff (wasn’t so great) and then later on we went back over to Disneyland for the fireworks which we watched over the Falcon, and had a drink in the Cantina. We went home at 11:30pm, so that was a very, very long day in the parks. I don’t need to go back again for quite a while but it was a fun day out, right before Christmas.

In June, we went to Galaxy’s Edge, the brand new Star Wars land at Disneyland California. It was fun – expensive – but they have a huge life-size Millennium Falcon, and since it’s the fastest hunk o’ junk in the galaxy well, you have to sketch it. It was busy, for sure, though at that time Galaxy’s Edge were still only letting in limited numbers, I think it’s more open now. It’s very hard to get a reservation for a drink in the Cantina, that took some queuing up, but that was fun as well. Could have used more people dressed as aliens. The Millennium Falcon ride was good, flying in the cockpit, people saying “punch it” like that phrase is the new “may the force be with you”. Oh, the whole place is called Baku, and is named after the the city far, far away where they held this year’s Europa League final, forcing two teams and a few fans all the way from London, through asteroid fields and pursued by bounty hunters. Sorry not Baku, it’s called ‘Batuu’, which sounds very similar. As I sketched this I stood on a box that I had been sitting on, and a space-uniformed Batuu lady came up and said that climbing is not permitted in Batuu. They really sell this place as a real place (and people really buy it, with real non-Batuu currency). It’s pretty big too, and they are going to expand. The level of detail is epic even for Disney, and I tried a quick sketch in the restaurant (below) but there was so much to draw.

All in all, it was fun. My bubbling drink at the Cantina was crazy. I know Star Wars has been part of Disneyland for a long, long time (Star Tours is still one of my favourite things) but now Disney owns it and decides on its direction, well I do miss George Lucas, and when I asked my young nephew recently who his favourite Disney character was and he said “Darth Vader” well, a little part of me sank. But they did a pretty good job on this park. It’ll be expanded with a new ride soon, so I’m sure we’ll be back.