Considering some of you have been sharing movie ideas, anyone care to share some ideas for their own SW park?
Ho... Boy. A bit of a wild collection of ideas that I just got at the moment:
First of all, pick an iconic location from any of the movies. Maybe Mos Eisley with the Cantina. Maybe a place, that looks sort of like Naboo. Maybe a place, that sort of looks like Bespin or Coruscant. Since you will built several parks, make every park its own thing and make them unique (like GE in Florida is Mos Eisley, GE in California is Corsucant, in Paris, it looks like Endor, etc) If it has to be an original place like Batuu, at least make it unique and memorable. Build this place up properly in the movies
before the park opens, so people are actually emotionally invested in the place.
Hell. Build one part of the park (like a landing pad, an alley and a shop) early on and use it as a film-set for the movie (just as a gimmick to be advertised, would still be effective). The timeline of GE is after whatever happened in the film. When we see a blastershot damaging a house in the movie, replicate that damage in the park's design.
As for attractions:
Several people mentioned a Flight Sim in a moving cockpit of a TIE-Fighter or X-Wing/A-Wing/etc. in the past. I'd add to those ideas:
Have such simulators in parks in Paris and Tokyo, have pilots from all over the globe fly togetherin a wing. Put voice command recognition into the cockpit, so the pilots can say certain specified commands to the droid (such as calling for support, highlighting a target to other players or diverting power in his own ship), who will then relay (and obviously translate) them to the other pilots (ie: A pilot in France calls for help, his ship gets highlighted in the HUD of another player from the same wing). Advertise this in a fashion that underlines that it brings people together and unifies them. If you deem it problematic to have this "unify people" thing with TIE-Fighters, have a differently themed ride for them (replacing the TIE-Fighters with AI pilots in the Rebell-Flight Sim), where people can fly TIE-Fighters in a conflict against (say) Hutt smugglers controlled by AI or something. I really love the idea of making these things training flight sims in Rebell bases or Imperial outposts in the park.
I really love that idea. When someone gets shot down, he respawns.
Come to think about it, maybe it would be fun to man a turret (or one of these giant blaster canons on a Star Destroyer) and have a rail-shooter where the players operate such a thing.
Snowspeeder Sim. Maybe even an AT-ST sim.
Some sort of Light-gun shooting range, possibly lasertag.
Speeder Bike flight-sim on Endor.
VR-Lasersword fighting Arena.
An SW-themed museum with original props from the movie production (get George Lucas' help for this one, he seems to have similar plans anyway) and/or replicas of iconic stuff where no original exists.
A zoo with animatronic animals.
Even something as benign as a merry-go-round can be effective, especially for smaller kids.
Maybe some sort of rollercoaster.
An SW-version of Madame Tussauds, with people like Palpatine, Luke, Han, Jabba and so on.
A few places to have snacks, food and drinks.
Have the open parts of the park work like the one we got (ie: aim towards immersion, that it looks less like a theme park and more like an actual location where people can breathe in the atmosphere), and sort of hide the attractions that aren't fitting for that.
If there is a unique park in several Disneylands, give every single one a signature attraction. Doesn't have to be super big or amazing. If you wanna go the extra mile, offer some limited merchandise that can be combined and when someone collects them from every park, he gets some cool reward (which I would even sell at a loss, if it meant it would make people visit every Park individually). There's fans of certain bands that follow them around on world-tourneys.