It's been 20 years since Star Tours received its major update and became Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. In many ways the attraction finally became the thing its creators had always wanted it to be, as it can now be, and has been, updated as new movies are released, making the ride continue to feel fresh and new despite having first launched over three decades ago. The major Star Tours upgrade allowed the ride to do many things that the first version of Star Tours could never do, but the attraction still can't do everything that everybody wanted. Walt Disney Imagineering actually had to say no to one George Lucas request.
The new Disney+ series Behind the Attraction takes fans behind the creation of Star Tours in one episode, and there it's revealed that George Lucas made a request of the Imagineers that they were forced to decline. He wanted to spray water in the faces of the guests, which might not seem like too much to ask, but as Disney Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald explained, given the way Star Tours worked, water was a bad idea to add to the ride. According to Fitzgerald...
George Lucas wanted us to have water spray into the cabin. That one we cannot do because water over time will cause rust, will cause corrosion.
Water makes an appearance on many Disney attractions, so it might not seem that George Lucas was asking for a great deal. But when you think about, the places where you do get water sprayed in your face, outside of actual flume rides, is in places that don't have a lot of moving parts. You'll get hit with water while watching a 3D show to enhance the experience, but not so much on a ride.
And as Behind the Attraction shows, the simulator that makes Star Tours work is a pretty high tech and complex piece of machinery. It's the sort of attraction that, because it has a lot of moving parts, has the potential to have its own issues, and thus you don't want to add another variable to it all by adding water that could cause additional damage.
Still, one could imagine the fun that water could add to Star Tours. Perhaps, when going underwater in Naboo, the Starspeeder could have sprung a small leak, causing water to hit the riders. And if they could have sprayed water into the cabin you could be sure they'd find a way to do it in more than one of the random encounters so that more people would be able to experience it.
Still, even without this particular addition, Star Tours is still a great ride even 30 years later. While Star Wars Galaxy's Edge may have become the home for all things Star Wars at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, there do not appear to be any plans to replace the incredibly popular Star Tours.
