Disney’s Millennium Falcon Ride Activates Fortnite In-Game Rewards

The next Fortnite tie-in is here, and it’s connected with a real-world experience: jump on the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride at either Disneyland or Disney World starting from Sunday, Aug. 16, and you’ll earn exclusive in-game extras.

Unveiled by Disney and Epic Games during the annual D23 convention in Anaheim on Saturday night, you’ll be able to use the official Disneyland apps to accept a special mission on the interactive ride to collect crates for your Fortnite account. You can use the crates to earn rewards on a new custom Star Wars island in the game called Smugglers Gambit.

“Smugglers Gambit, built in-house by an incredibly talented team, is an immersive, high-quality game,” said Sean Shoptaw, EVP of Disney Games and Digital Entertainment. “These experiences reflect our ambition to connect stories and worlds across formats into one converged entertainment ecosystem.”

On Smugglers Gambit, you can play as a smuggler from the Outer Rim (the location represented by Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney Parks). You’ll be able to explore the new Star Wars locations of Ord Ryla and Mersa Veta Station on the new island.

It’ll have co-op missions, quests, class choices, leveling up and new gear available to unlock. You’ll be battling pirates, as well as “Imperial remnants and dangerous wildlife.”

The Millennium Falcon ride opened at Disneyland and Disney World with the launch of the Star Wars-themed areas in 2019. It allows six people to ride inside a cockpit replica of Han Solo’s famous spaceship, with two people serving as pilots, two as gunners and two as engineers to steer the ship, blast enemies away and repair any damage received to the ship during the flight, respectively.

It’s a flight simulator, so you watch a screen take you through one of several scenarios (the latest Mandalorian-themed missions just launched to tie in with the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu in cinemas in May) while the ride vehicle moves in tandem, and you use physical controls to interact with and affect the flight.

The cockpit technology was built on Unreal Engine 5 and developed by Walt Disney Imagineering together with Industrial Light & Magic, the famed visual effects studio founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas in the 1970s.

Smugglers Gambit was similarly built with Imagineering, Lucasfilm and Disney Games, expanding the story of Hondo Ohnaka, the pirate, smuggler and eventual Resistance ally based at the Black Spire Outpost on Batuu. Ohnaka first appeared in the Clone Wars TV show, but is best known as a shady ally of the protagonists in the follow-up cartoon series, Rebels.

“Building on Epic’s technology, Disney’s Imagineers are shaping the future of interactive entertainment, where an experience goes from the physical world into Fortnite,” said Epic Games President Adam Sussman.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite costs nothing, other than your pricey theme park entry, and only requires you to accept the special mission via the Disneyland app or My Disney Experience app while you’re waiting in line for the ride.