All of the updates for Disney’s immersive Star Wars theme parks, Galaxy’s Edge

Disney’s ambitious Star Wars land, Galaxy’s Edge, opened to visitors at its California Disneyland park in May. But when it did so, it opened with only one big ride: Smugglers Run, in which you get to pilot the iconic Millennium Falcon. Now, the company has announced when the next big attraction, Rise of the Resistance, will open: December 5th in Florida’s Disney World Resort, and January 17th, 2020 in Disneyland.

This time around, the Florida park will get the flagship ride first. Disney World’s version of Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t open until August 29th, and when it does it will feature Smugglers Run. Four months later, it will be the first park to get Rise of the Resistance. When it was first announced, Galaxy’s Edge promised the two big attractions would be coming to both theme parks, but we didn’t yet have a timeline.

It’s Star Wars Day, and Disney has unveiled the musical suite for its coming Star Wars theme park, Galaxy’s Edge, which is opening next month at Disnleyland in California, and in August in Florida’s Disney World.

The park will come with a soundtrack from composer John Williams, and from listening to this suite, it lines up nicely with the overall sound from the music that’s defined the rest of the franchise. Disney has also uploaded the track to various streaming services and retailers for you to download.

We now know when to book our tickets to Disney’s brand-new Star Wars theme parks. The company announced today that it will open Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge on May 31st at Disneyland in California and on August 29th in Florida’s Disney World Resort. There’s a caveat, though: both parks will open with only one of the two major planned rides ready to run right away.

Disney says it’s bumped the opening dates for the parks up a bit (they were previously expected this summer and late fall, respectively) due to “high guest interest.” But the company is also spacing out the release of its two announced rides, Smugglers Run and Rise of the Resistance. Smuggler’s Run, which will let guests pilot the iconic Millennium Falcon, will open in May as “phase one,” with Rise of the Resistance — where riders wind up in the middle of a battle between the First Order and Resistance — following “later this year” as “phase two.”

Disney’s upcoming Star Wars theme parks, Galaxy’s Edge, are shaping up to be major expansions for its theme parks in Florida and California that are firmly grounded in the Star Wars canon, tying into the larger saga that we’ve seen in the films. StarWars.com announced that Phasma author Delilah S. Dawson will write a prequel novel for the experience called Black Spire.

The book will be part of a larger package of in-universe additions that will flesh out the story about the planet that the parks depict, Batuu. Black Spire will be about General Leia Organa as she “dispatches her top spy to Batuu in a desperate search for Resistance allies.” The title refers to one of the outposts on the planet, which we briefly saw in Timothy Zahn’s recent novel Thrawn: Alliances, that is described as a “remote trading outpost” in the middle of a grove of petrified trees. The book is due out on September 3rd, 2019.

When Disney’s Star Wars land Galaxy’s Edge opens next year, it’ll come with a familiar soundtrack — Entertainment Weekly reports that John Williams will provide the score, and has a preview of what to expect, along with looks at two of the park’s big experiences.

The first of EW’s videos shows off a new behind-the-scenes look at the park’s construction, revealing an extensive array of buildings and landscapes, set to a music that is the “overarching theme” for Galaxy’s Edge. EW also previews a pair of videos that highlight the main rides for the parks — Smuggler’s Run, set aboard the Millennium Falcon, and Rise of the Resistance, set onboard a First Order ship.

Earlier this week, Timothy Zahn published his latest Star Wars novel, Thrawn: Alliances. The book is the sequel to his 2016 novel Thrawn, a long-untold origin story for his fan-favorite character, Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the new novel, he brings together two of the franchise’s greatest villains: Thrawn and Darth Vader.

Thrawn, originally introduced in Zahn’s 1991 novel Heir to the Empire, is a master tactician who attempted to resurrect the Empire after Return of the Jedi. While that storyline was wiped out when Disney acquired LucasFilm and reset the franchise’s canon, Thrawn was reintroduced in Star Wars Rebels, and Zahn wrote the definitive origin story for the character in Thrawn — which could serve both the old canon and the new. Thrawn: Alliances picks up the story, but alternates between an encounter between Anakin Skywalker and Thrawn during The Clone Wars, and much later, during the events of Rebels.

Anticipation has been high for the Star Wars-themed expansion lands being built at Disneyland and Disney World, but it hasn’t been clear when fans will actually be able to venture into the new parks. Today, that got a little clearer: Disney officially announced Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will open at Disneyland in summer 2019, with the Disney World version of the park following suit in late fall.

Disney parks have incorporated Star Wars rides and other elements for years, but Galaxy’s Edge promises to be a more ambitious project than anything the company has attempted before. Rather than being a one-off ride or themed area, Galaxy’s Edge is intended to be an entire immersive world, giving guests the experience of actually stepping into the Star Wars universe itself. There will be no Disney employees in the cantinas and shops of the park, for example. Instead, there will be locals and smugglers that inhabit Batuu, the planet the park is set on, while guests find themselves wrapped up in a battle between the Resistance and the First Order. Not only that, but the rides themselves are designed to be part of a larger interactive adventure that guests can go on. Do a poor job flying the Millennium Falcon in the park’s flagship attraction, for example, and a guest may find themselves called out — or celebrated — by a character later in their visit.

We’re still far away from the 2019 opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the twin expansion lands that will be opening at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, but the narrative groundwork for the new parks is already being quietly set up. Specifically, the new novel Thrawn: Alliances from Timothy Zahn will send Darth Vader and the Grand Admiral together on a mission to Batuu, which io9 notes is the same planet that will serve as the setting for Galaxy’s Edge.

Disney hasn’t revealed too much about the planet — only that it’s a remote trading port, and “one of the last stops before Wild Space” — but taking the chance to build out the lore before the park opens is a smart way to get fans interested ahead of time. Thrawn is already a fan-favorite character, and taking a visit to Batuu, as seen through the lens of the popular Grand Admiral, is an easy way to win folks over. And if the company’s existing Avatar world is anything to go by, chances are that some easter eggs from the novel could show up somewhere in the park, too.

This weekend at its D23 Expo, Disney offered several new details about its themed expansion land Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. But it was a much briefer announcement, confirming rumors that the company was working on an immersive, themed hotel set in George Lucas’ universe, that offered perhaps the most intriguing hint of where the company sees its parks and resorts businesses going.

Basically, Disney wants to build a Westworld for Star Wars fans.

Disney has finally given a first glimpse into its highly anticipated Star Wars lands currently being built in California and Florida, unveiling a 50-foot-wide 3D model of the area that will eventually cover about 14 acres. The Star Wars-themed attractions are due to open in 2019 at Disneyland in Anaheim, and at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Disney World in Orlando.

In a blog post, the company said both Star Wars-inspired lands will take guests to a never-before-seen planet, a remote trading port, and “one of the last stops before Wild Space.” The unveiling came at the D23 expo, currently being held in Anaheim, California, where the models are on display through the weekend.

Two years ago Disney announced that it was planning on adding massive Star Wars-themed expansions to its parks in California and Florida, and today at Star Wars Celebration it revealed some new details — including a behind-the-scenes look at the design and construction of the parks.

The panel itself kicked off with a brief bit of news: that Disney’s Star Tours attraction was going to be receiving a Last Jedi-themed update later this year. The new addition will give visitors the chance to visit the mineral world of Crait, with Anthony Daniels getting ready to record new material for the sequence in the months ahead. (In case the name Crait doesn’t sound familiar, it’s the strange new planet featured in the Last Jedi trailer — the one where ships scraping its surface leave behind billowing red trails.)