Star Wars hotel to open in 2021. Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opens in March

Star Wars: Galactic Cruiser, the Star Wars hotel being built outside Hollywood Studios, will open in 2021, offering two-night adventures that will include “shore excursions” to the planet Batuu that may affect what happens when guests return to the hotel, a Disney executive announced Tuesday.

“Guests will get to become the hero of their own Star Wars story,” Ann Morrow Johnson, executive producer and creative director with Walt Disney Imagineering, told journalists assembled at Disney World for Thursday’s opening of the Star Wars ride, Rise of the Resistance.

Activities in the hotel, which she described as being something like an ocean cruise, will include light saber training for adults and kids, and a tour of the bridge, where the navigation and defense systems are located. Guests may get to try their hand at operating those controls or even firing the ship’s guns, she said. And they may be able to hold secret meetings with officials on board.

Amid all the hoopla over the launch of Ride of the Resistance, It’s easy to overlook all the other rides and shows that are in the works.

“Even more magic is on the horizon as we prepare for Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary in 2021,” said Bob Chapek, chairman of Disney Parks. “And at Epcot we have the largest transformation of any park we have ever undertaken.”

Chapek and other Disney officials announced a slew of opening dates and other information about attractions:

▪ Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, whose late-2019 opening was delayed, will open on March 4. The first ride-through attraction ever built for Mickey Mouse, it will be at Hollywood Studios.

▪ The ride will be based on the Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts, and in March, the Mickey Shorts Theater will open at Hollywood Studios.

▪ Also at Hollywood Studios, Toy Story Land will get a new restaurant in 2020, Roundup Rodeo BBQ.

▪ At Epcot, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure will open in summer 2020. Disney also unveiled the ride car: a six-person trackless vehicle with the whiskered face of a rat on the front.

▪ A “Beauty and the Beast” singalong, accompanied by a short, “twisted” film in which LeFou is the hero, will open Jan. 17 in the theater in the France Pavilion, alternating with “Impressions of France,” already playing there.

▪ Other films will premiere in Epcot on the same date, the opening of the International Festival of the Arts, including “Awesome Planet” in Future World and an updated Circle-Vision movie, “Canada Far and Wide,” in the Canada Pavilion.

▪ Star Tours, the simulator ride at Hollywood Studios that is almost as old as the park, will be updated in 2020 with scenes from the final Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker.