Rise of the Resistance: A Hero’s Journey

The first thing you must know is that in order to ride Rise, you must be inside Disney’s Hollywood Studios prior to park opening. This is non-negotiable, and you won’t be able to finesse your way in by any other means. There are no tickets, no fast passes, and no way to cut in line without being caught and turned away an hour and a half later.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Everyone in your group needs to have a My Disney Experience account and they all need to be linked together for the trip. Whoever has the authority (your choice, but handle this beforehand) to make plans for the rest needs to have their phone ready. When the opening announcement starts, reboot your My Disney Experience app and navigate to the Rise of the Resistance page—it should be the top link—and click “Join Boarding Group.” This should only take a few seconds all told, which is good because this bastard fills up for the whole day in under a minute.

Stay calm and you’ll do fine.

Once you have your boarding group, relax and enjoy the park. You have 2 hours to get there after you’re called, and a bit of a line after that. Lena and I enjoyed the aesthetic of the place, while B.J. and Kristen, my brother and sister, entertained themselves with the space beer kiosks in the line.

Inside, Rey recruits you all into the Resistance and gives you a cushy space job smuggling some plans or something. No worries though, no one knows who you are and you are in zero danger. Really, nothing can go wrong.

Soon enough, something goes wrong and you are caught and dragged aboard a First Order star destroyer, which is where the majority of the ride takes place. But in between your capture and the ride is a weird sort of queue which is disguised to be an internment facility for the ship’s prison, which was just creepy enough to cause me to want to play around and diffuse the tension.

You’re in a room full of stormtroopers and First Order officers, all of whom are carrying blasters. There are strange lights and noises everywhere, and the crowd is brusquely sorted into groups by color.

“What color are you?” an officer yells.

“Um, orange?” my sister answers.

“And what is the location of the Resistance base?” he presses her.

My sister, who had been trying to chug her beer through the don’t-tell-the-bad-guys-where-the-base-is portion of the show so she didn’t have to toss it in the trash, shrugs and says, “Florida, I guess?”

The guard angrily scans the rest of us properly cowed orangies. “Any of you resistance scum have anything to say before your interrogation? Tell us where the base is!”

I raise my hand. I had been given just enough time to think.

“What color are you?”

“Orange.”

“What is the location of the Resistance base?” He was really selling it here. I could have hugged him.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I say, and flash him a grin. “I’ll tell you where the resistance base is for half the cost of my interrogation.”

Lena hid her face in her hands and Kristy and B.J. burst out laughing.

“What?” 

I spread my hands to show sympathy. “Look, you have to rent a room, reserve time and staff for the interrogation droid, and all those drugs they use aren’t cheap. Then the clean-up—and I know you have better things to be doing on a Saturday. So whaddya say?”

He leaned over me, threateningly. “You will tell us what we want to know regardless. Keep your place in line for processing.”

Lena turned around, presumably to pretend she didn’t know me. My siblings merely grinned and watched.

“No worries,” I said to the officer’s retreating back. My voice rose, and other officers and troopers took notice. “I won’t tell anyone you could have saved the Order fifty thousand credits with the stroke of a pen.” 

The officer looked over his shoulder at me. A tiny corner of his mouth tried to quirk up into a smile, but he viciously suppressed it.

“And hey,” I said, “I’m not telling you what to do with the cash. No one would even have to know.”

“Are you bribing me, scum?” he growled.

My voice went up again. “I’m not bribing you. You’re bribing me. I hope so, anyway.”

“No, wait!” Kristin held up her cell phone. “It’s Batuu. The resistance thingie is on Batuu. Am I saying that right?”

“It’s pronounced Or-lan-do,” B.J. provided helpfully.

“I hate all of you,” Lena whispered to me.

The officer smirked at us. “Batuu is too remote to make an effective demonstration, but don’t worry. We will deal with your resistance friends soon enough.”

I started clapping at our wonderful prison officer as the line moved off into the next room. By the time we hit the door, the rest of the oranges were, too. Our officer, no longer able to keep from smiling, gave us all a tight little wave and spun on his heel to go terrify the next group.

Then there was an awesome ride that absolutely blew my socks off, and which I won’t tell you about. But you should ride it.

Like, now.

As we disembarked, a lone member of the resistance was there to tell us thanks for keeping the base location a secret, how very brave we all were, and how much our efforts meant to the galaxy.

I paused in front of her big podium/stand.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news there,” I said. “I think I might have told them where the base is. So you might want to—you know—leave.”

“Oh no,” she exclaimed. She appeared genuinely heartbroken. “Why would you do that?”

“Money was too good,” I said, mixing my space quotes. “I got stupid.”

Lena punched me in the back and pulled me away by my shirt. 

“You are so embarrassing,” she said. “That girl is too young to even heard of Firefly.”

“If that’s true I’m glad I sold her out,” I said as we left. “Some resistances just aren’t worth saving.”

 

Kevin Pettway is the author of the Misplaced Mercenary series, published by Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing. The first book is titled A Good Running Away, and is already out. You should definitely buy it. You would like it.