Right now, all the focus at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is on Rise of the Resistance, the new attraction that has theme park fans fighting for a spot in line on both coasts. However, even if you're ridden the other Galaxy's Edge attraction, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run, so many times that you've filled every crew position, there might be a reason to go back. It turns out there's a secret unlockable mode that let's you pilot the Falcon with Chewbacca acting as your guide.
Normally, when flying the Millennium Falcon, Clone Wars character Hondo Onaka is the one telling you what you need to accomplish and how to do it. However, the screw over at the FreshBaked! YouTube channel recently dropped a video where they reveal that it's possible, by hitting a few buttons in just the right way, to get Chewbacca's voice over your communicator instead.
Normally, when you sit down at your assigned crew position, you see a flashing orange button, and hitting that wakes up your console on the attraction. However, if everybody on the ride does something else first, you can apparently activate Chewie Mode.
Pilots need to move their flight sticks to their extreme positions left and right for the pilot and up and down for the copilot. Gunners and Engineers need to press one of the illuminated white buttons before hitting their activation button. If everybody does this, and then activates their system before the cast member hits their button, showing that the ride is ready to go, you'll get Chewbacca instead of Hondo.
Of course, you'll probably want to ride the attraction a few times properly before trying this, because of course you can't understand a word Chewbacca says, so if you don't know what you're supposed to be doing on the ride already, you'll be completely lost.
According to the video, this new mode hasn't been hiding since day one and was only added as part of a recent software update to the attraction. It makes one wonder what else might have been added to the ride, or what might get added in the future. At this point, it appears that "Chewbacca Mode" has only been confirmed at Disneyland, though one assumes that if it works there, it will also work at Walt Disney World. Although, it's possible that this new software update hasn't been done there, or hasn't been done yet. It seems that some cast member assistance was what clued these people into the hidden mode.
It's nice that all six people need to be on board with activating the hidden feature. It would be unfortunate if people who didn't want to do it where forced into it, so the hidden mode requires that the entire crew be on board with it. It also appears o be a bit tricky. In the video below, you'll see it took them a few tries to get it to work.
Making theme park attractions variable enough to make guests want to ride them multiple times has been a major focus in recent years at many parks and this is just another example of that.
So, if you've got five friends that you can take to Disneyland, you can give this a try. After you've done it, let me know how it is.
