Maybe we didn't. It was our first time so I have no way of knowing. Now that I've had time to think about it, I've come to realize that,to me, it's actually The Great Movie Ride for Star Wars. Since I find Star Wars entertaining but I'm no super fan, perhaps the ride is not particularly interesting to me. I find the cm interaction as awkward as the movie ride was and not enjoyable.
I was expecting a thrill ride and it was not that, IMO. I wished there had been a thread that said something along those lines before I wasted a morning. I don't consider that a spoiler so I was surprised that it was incorporated in this thread.
Gasp! What? I do love FoP so I've got that in my favor. ☺I'm not always a grump about a new ride.
If you were expecting a thrill ride I can see why you were disappointed. I didn't expect a thrill ride--I'd tried not to learn anything about it but had heard by accident that there were multiple animatronics, multiple ride systems, etc., so I think I had a better (if still very vague) idea of what I was going to experience. I was honestly kind of annoyed that someone let slip there was a drop and I knew to expect it. Oh, well. But I'll take visually rich/story-driven rides over thrill rides most of the time, even though I do love thrill rides (Tower of Terror is my favorite on all of property if we're talking ride mechanism as main criteria).
Have you tried the Hagrid's roller coaster at Universal Islands of Adventure? It might be more up your alley.
We rode Friday and everything was working. It was a great experience...truly innovative and interesting. We loved it.
I will say that when got rescued from the interrogation room there was a delay in which we just sat in the ride vehicles. Maybe it was only 2 minutes but it felt long and it killed the vibe/urgency of the rescue/escape as we just sat there while the CM fiddled with buttons on her console.
Hopefully they can tighten up that timing and move more seamlessly from that room to the ride vehicle and into the next room.
Last time I rode it we were delayed about two minutes as well...but the Resistance rescuers didn’t just stand there. They engaged in conversation with us about the escape. We were trying to determine who exactly programmed our droid.
I experienced a pretty significant delay there on the third time I got cleared from the ride. The CM's did a bunch of back and forth pretending they didn't know what button to push to tune in to the message Finn was trying to send us, asked for our suggestions even though we couldn't see the panels they were working at, that sort of thing. And then the ride did start but we got stopped and cleared before we'd gotten far. So it made me really nervous the other time I had a brief delay there; it could just be loading/unloading issues, but I wonder if it's also connected to larger issues that lead to shutdowns.
While I was not underwhelmed, I think I can understand where you are coming from with your comment. Living up to the “hype” - in my case a hype purposely void of almost any information specific to the ride - probably left a high bar unable to to be reached.
I was entertained, but I did feel maybe I would have been really "wowed" if I had some sort of Star Wars knowledge base other than the originally trilogy. I mean, the visuals and everything about it were stunning - the story-line went a bit over my head which I think may have impacted my perception of the attraction.
But we're the weird ones that actually really like MFSR - that ride is a blast in my opinion - so obviously my taste in attractions must be flawed!
And this could be a factor, too. I haven't obsessively watched and re-watched the newest trilogy, but I have seen all of it, plus I read the main tie-in novel for Galaxy's Edge (
Black Spire, which is about the founding of the Resistance base on Batuu). So I suppose I had a better basis for who's-who and what's-what...plus honestly I found the idea of having to abandon the base a bit heartbreaking, knowing what sacrifices were made to establish it. I'll say that my one disappointment in RotR is that Vi didn't factor into its storyline at any point. On the one hand I get it, the majority of guests won't have read the book and don't know who she is. On the other hand, she's the reason the Resistance even has a base on Batuu and I would have liked to see even the smallest nod to that.
Re: MFSR, I rode it twice and loved it the first time when I went through the whole queue and was one of the pilots, even though we did crash the MF repeatedly (in my defense there was a child in the other pilot's seat). The second time I took the single rider line and was the gunner, and it was a resounding "meh." I think the main reason was that the single rider line skips the pre-show and the pre-show was a big part of what sold the attraction for me, but it also didn't help that as gunner I found it really difficult to actively engage beyond wild button-mashing (I had my targeting set to manual but it was very hard to actually hit anything with the limited range of aiming provided by the different buttons). As a pilot I felt like I had a direct impact on the experience; as a gunner I was mostly just along for the ride.