"George had a catalytic effect on the project all along the way," Baxter continues. "He was perceptive about our creative strengths, and helped us to reverse the tried and true by giving people what they don't expect. It worked."
By the end of the summer, all had agreed on the concept to be developed for the Tomorrowland attraction. Star Tours would feature scenic tours of the universe aboard the StarSpeeder 3000, operated by the first intergalactic tour "bus" company. R2-D2 and C-3PO would be part of the package, having resigned from military service to find new lives as Star Tours recruiters.
Lucas continued to work closely with the Disney Imagineers at the Glendale-based facility, proving instrumental as development of the attraction progressed. Industrial Light & Magic, under the direction of Dave Carson, went to work on the film, which resulted in the longest special effects sequence in film history. Skywalker Sound (then known as Sprocket Systems) undertook the soundtrack with Sound Designer Gary Summers at the helm.
Baxter and Fitzgerald travelled to the Lucasfilm Archives to uncover actual props used in the Star Wars trilogy. R2-D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca, and even pieces of the Death Star were sent to Walt Disney Imagineering to be refurbished and incorporated into Star Tours.
Disney's Glendale facility buzzed with the sounds of people building the StarSpeeder 3000 as well as new animatronic droids and a couple of familiar ones as well. Dave Feiten, former Disney Audio-Animatronics Programmer for Star Tours, was one of those hard at work to make the droids seem lifelike for the attraction.
"C-3PO was probably the longest-running animated figure we've ever done," Feiten says. "Compared to a pirate, which is about 90 feet of animation, or Mr. Lincoln which is 40 feet, C-3PO is actually 900 feet of animation, with 22 moves inside of him."
Anthony Daniels flew in from England to demonstrate C-3PO's distinctive motions and to record his dialogue on the soundtrack. Daniels says he was dumbfounded at the realistic motions of C-3PO in Audio-Animatronic form. While other Audio-Animatronic characters at Disney duplicate living beings, this adaptation of C-3PO made him seem more real, even for a droid.
One of the StarSpeeders was mocked up for testing, full-size and operational, inside a metal building in the Imagineering parking lot. After ILM delivered a film animatic, showing the proposed action for each scene in a simple computer graphic format, WDI programmers went to work.
Watching the film on a video monitor, they used joysticks to synchronize the movements of the simulator motion base with the point-of-view actions on screen. This meant that if the on-board movie suggested the StarSpeeder was taking a sharp turn, the entire simulator would be tipped on its side. Speeding up towards the Death Star meant tipping the simulator backwards. And any sudden stops had the simulator tipping forward, making all passengers ever aware of their safety belts.
Many swaying movements were later eliminated by programmers so that the motion sickness associated with roller coasters would be missing from the Star Tours attraction without sacrificing any of the excitement.
