Disney Is Retiring the Original Millennium Falcon Ride Mission… But Why?

Well, it finally happened. After six years of punching it to lightspeed, crashing into asteroids, yelling at your friends for not fixing the hyperdrive fast enough, and stealing coaxium for a very stressed Hondo Ohnaka, Disney just confirmed that the original Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run storyline is nearing the end of its flight. The ride is staying, the cockpit is staying, the chaos is staying, but the entire mission we know by heart is about to be retired for good.

Why now? Turns out Disney Imagineering just gave every Falcon cockpit a major brain upgrade. They swapped out the old pre-rendered system for brand new hardware that can render everything in real time using the same tech behind The Mandalorian. So instead of watching a fancy Star Wars cutscene, the Falcon is basically running on the same engine that runs the most high-end video games. And that means one thing, the old mission cannot keep up.

Since the Hondo storyline was built for a totally different platform, Imagineering says it has to go before the new era can begin. And the new era is full Mando. Starting in 2026, guests will fly a complete reimagining of the ride where you join Mando and Grogu on a full multi-planet chase. Pilots get expanded controls, gunners get a much more responsive targeting system, engineers get new tasks including actual interactions with Grogu, and the visuals are upgraded to match the look and quality of the show thanks to assets pulled straight from Lucasfilm.

But here is the big thing, once the switch flips, the original mission is gone. No side queue, no random rotation, no one last coaxium run at midnight. If you want to hear Hondo one more time, this is it.

Part of me is heartbroken because Smugglers Run became a weird kind of gamer flex for Disney fans, the ride you kept replaying until you perfected every role. But the other part of me is very ready to see Grogu pushing buttons he definitely should not be touching while Mando sighs loudly in the background. It feels like Galaxy's Edge is finally letting the modern Star Wars era into the cockpit.

So yes, this is your last chance to fly the Falcon the old way. And then we all buckle in for a brand new mission with the galaxy's smallest and most chaos loving copilot.