It’s been 2 days and I still can’t stop thinking about Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios.

“Immersion” could be the word to describe the creative goal of what this industry has been trying to amp up over the last decade. (And this is me speaking on domestic parks.) The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Hogsmeade opened back at Islands of Adventure in 2010 and it

changed what it meant to have an immersive environment within a theme park, from land specific food and drinks to the ways those who worked in the land would interact to the merchandise found in the shops, it was just like being in Harry Potter and it blew my mind. Then we got

Cars Land at Disney’s California Adventure in 2012, the moment you turn the corner to enter land it truly feels like you have stepped through the screen and are walking through Radiator Springs, it once again reinforced the standard for what an immersive land could be.

Diagon Alley’s opening in 2014 at Universal Studios took the idea of an immersive enviroment to the next level, when in the alley you were surrounded 360 by the land, the theme park outside of the land didn’t really exist.

After that came Pandora: The World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom in 2017, granted Avatar isn’t really a franchise anyone is super attached to, but none the less the land is an immersive marvel. It’s an incredible land and I remember thinking, how could this be topped?

Then we met Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in 2019 at both Disneyland and Hollywood Studios, while it achieves what Pandora and Diagon Alley have, Rise of the Resistance is what took it to the next level.

With that attraction, it truly feels like you have become a character in Star Wars, from the moment you enter the interior queue to the disembark, it’s such an incredible experience and journey you go on as the rider.

Like I really have no other way to describe it besides, you become a character in Star Wars for 18-25 minutes and it’s so cool. No clue when I’ll ever get to do it again, but man, glad I finally got to experience it.