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Back in 2010 the first Harry Potter attraction opened at Universal Orlando and a single ride changed themed attractions forever. No longer were theme park fans really satisfied with cookie cutter themes with a hint of a story, immersion was now the name of the game. The area of Hogsmeade increased Islands of Adventure's attendance by 1.5 million guests, an astounding figure by any standard. Since the Harry Potter franchise has given birth to two further expansions and is now home in California and Beijing. But Universal isn't completely my bag. I prefer the Disney parks. Universal has so much dross like Jimmy Fallon, Kong and Fast and Furious. Those attractions just feel thrown in whilst every Disney attraction feels placed and fits in to its surroundings. Naturally Disney saw the success of the Wizarding World and went off first with the world of Pandora (and the guest favourite Flight of Passage) and secondly with Galaxy Edge. Now, I'd previously visited the Floridian version back in its opening week in 2019 and whilst I loved it, it felt like something was missing. Smugglers Run is great, the look is great but where was that top tier attraction? Rise of the Resistance was delayed due to technical issues with the attraction and would be opening later. Looking back it was a mistake to open Galaxy's Edge without Rise. People put off visiting until it opened anyway and the area was seen as a failure for a while by the media. But now, with everything open and the world now able to visit, how exactly does Rise fit in. This review will feature big spoilers for this ride. Scroll to the final paragraph for a summary with none of the spoilers. Rise of the Resistance puts you in the position of joining the Resistance and fighting against Kylo Ren and the new Empire. Unlike the rest of Batu which is basically a trading town, Rise is set in an abandoned ruins with the queue taking place in small rocky corridors. The queue is long and mostly outdoors It commands a waiting time of an average of 100 minutes and is by the busiest ride in Disney World. We were fortunate and that it was open on time on one of our hotel extra hours times and over two trips we managed three rides. Once you hit the batching point you are assigned a room, I'm happy to call this the war room. Inside, BB8 greets you beeping away before being shooed away with a holographic Ray who tells you about the mission and welcomes you to the cause of the rebel alliance. The door opens and you are now outside with Poe's X-Wing and your transporter awaits in front of you. You board and the ship takes off. You leave the planet of Batu and it doesn't take long for some Tie fighters and a Star destroyer to appear and trap you in a tractor beam. The captain begs you to not reveal the rebel base to the First Order. Your ship is boarded and you leave from the day you came in from (I cannot tell you what an amazing effect this is, no video can do it justice. For all intents and purposes you have literally left the outside world and are now indoors on a space ship. It's outstanding). You are now prisoners and surrounding you are storm troopers, Tie fighters and droids. The group is escorted to the prison cells. where you are batched into interrogation groups. The cast members are outstanding, calling people scum and coming down hard on dissent. Think Nemesis Sub terra but with subtle acting and not unnecessary shouting. You enter your cell where Kylo Ren tells you how he will get the truth out of you personally. They leave and then a secret door is burnt through by the rebel alliance. Another great effect. You board your vehicle and the ride begins. What begins is a tour de force of physical effects, screens and Disney firing on every single cylinder. R5 will be driving you to escape pods on the ship but this is a long journey and I probably won't do the ride justice with my words. To start off with your R5 needs to convince other vehicles that he is escorting prisoners. These are just the new ride vehicles going to the loading area but the story implies these are evil droids and I just found it so clever. You almost make it to pods when Storm Troopers appear and start firing at you. The vehicles head backwards and after two corridors enter a room full of AT-AT's. More storm troopers appear and Finn appears from behind some crates and urges R5 to take you down to the pods. Instead the lift takes you half way up the building and out into the control room of the Star destroyer. Kylo Ren and Hux are here, discussing the torture of the prisoners (ie Us). In front of them, rebel ships appear for the attack and Kylo turns around and sees us. He gives chase, first attempting to use the force to bring us back, luckily some doors close on him. We then head into a lift shaft but his light saber appears through the ceiling. We escape and head past some gun turrets firing at the rebel ships. These weren't working on our visit but they are supposed to move back and forth and your vehicle is supposed to move back and forth between them avoiding the gun fire. `You take a turn to the left and the rebels score a hit with the room being half destroyed. Around another corner and Kylo appears declaring your end. But we are in luck as another rebel hit reaches his target and it is implied Kylo is blown out of the ship. R5 takes you to the escape pods which works in the same way as a towers of terror lift shaft with a star tours motion simulator screen. You really feel like you've been jettisoned out of a ship and are crash landing onto Batu. The Vehicle exists the pod and you are now back outside and have successfully defeated the First Order, hooray. It wouldn't be an understatement to say this is one of the best dark rides ever created. Disney have taken all of their 65 years of theme park knowledge and it feels like everything has been put into this ride. I was mightily impressed by every trick in the book being used to create this attraction and the perfect integration of screen based media and physical effects to put on the show. It works incredibly well and it is a miracle that it works as well as it does. Back to my original point, Galaxy's Edge needed Rise because it is the main event, the reason people want to be in a Star Wars themed area. it is incredible. This is an attraction that on a first ride will shock you and surprise you consistently. And that is more then 99% of rides out there can ever hope to achieve. A triumph in so many ways.

Thorpe seem to be focusing on the events again this year, and posted this logo-rific image: The "key" takeaway from the FN logo is very curious

Oh wow that is brilliant! Huge congrats to you Dr C

Thanks! I've been doing pure maths. A lot of theoretical and experimental stuff, with some exciting (in the very narrow field I work in) results to go with it! I'll drop this link here which gives more details in a simple (but still mathematical) explanation: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/mathematics/news/2022-02-24-joshua-coyston/ (Though always happy to go into any more details for anyone genuinely interested!)

This seems like as good a thread as any to post this in... I passed my PhD today!

Honestly I don't think you can be too old - its something you and possibly your kids can enjoy together. I have thought "am I too old" when visiting some parks before - mainly Thorpe and Alton, not because of the the thrill of the rides themselves, or the other guests that are in the parks, but just their general presentation. As we all know, there are many discussions and criticisms of the overall look and feel of the UK parks. Sometimes I wonder if I just wasn't as picky in my teen years as I am now. But every time I (now rarely, maybe once a year) visit our "top" UK theme parks, I'm just constantly annoyed by how dirty, old and unmaintained some of our parks have become. But then I visit parks abroad, the Europa's, Disney, Universal, etc. and then realise, not its not me - the parks in the UK just aren't up to the standard of ones abroad and that really puts me off visiting them. Being older, I am able to travel to these foreign parks as much as I wish - and I for one would rather spend my money on a park I enjoy and don't constantly think to myself "this place looks cheap and tacky". Nostalgia sometimes skews our vision of what a park once was - but I dont think in this case that is true, the UK parks just aren't what they used to be - in my eyes anyway. I was looking at some old pictures of Legoland on ThemeParkGuide the other day, what a beautiful park that used to be! So can you be too old - no - but you definitely appreciate different elements of a themepark which may, as is in my case, alter which ones you decide to visit.