How the Play Disney Parks App Adds to Your Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Adventure

Tool kit

The app contains four basics tools: translate, scan, hack, and tune.

The translation tool, which converts interplanetary languages with a manual tool to type out and translate Aurebesh into English, is Deshmane’s favorite. “It’s a language that I’ve never necessarily been able to read,” she says. Now she can understand signs and decode warning notices. “It makes me feel like I’m more immersed,” she adds, noting it’s particularly effective while reading the message board inside Oga’s Cantina, which provides additional backstory for some characters you’ll meet.

The scanning tool provides puzzles to decode marks on crates and reveal hidden objects within, which could come in handy if you find yourself working a job for a smuggler.

Through hacking, you can interact with droids by the Droid Depot, although regular use may cause some droids to resist. Another game, Outpost Control, involves tapping into door panels, allowing you to work in assistance to the Resistance or as a follower of the First Order, until one side takes control of Black Spire Outpost.

And while the tuning feature can be used to intercept transmissions while you’re standing beneath a towering antenna, picking up the local chatter and docking bay intel, Deshmane recommends regularly checking as you wander the land. “Maybe just open up your tune function by walking around the land and seeing what happens.”

The belonging you seek

The app also allows you to chat with characters both in the land, like Hondo Ohnaka, and from around the galaxy. “A lot of our favorite characters from the Resistance and the First Order will show up in your Star Wars Datapad,” Deshmane says. “Rose might ask you to help her with a task for the Resistance, or you might get a message from General Hux.”

“Your choices matter,” says Asa Kalama, the executive creative director of Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. “Based on the way the guests interact with the environment, with the props within the land, what jobs they choose to go on, all of that affects the sort of persona that they’re starting to create for themselves and as a result the way the world around them starts to engage with them.”

“You actually start out as completely neutral in the land and then based on the choices that you make and the things that you do, that affects your allegiance,” Deshmane adds.

In line for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, you can accept a job from Hondo Ohnaka while you wait. And after riding the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the galactic credits paid out (or owed if your crew had a particularly rough mission) get carried over to your profile. “There’s this really lovely continuity of experience that starts on your mobile device or maybe in the attraction, but are linked together,” Kalama says.

When you return to Batuu after your first visit, “your Star Wars story will come with you,” Deshmane says, building upon your previous interactions and rewarding you with increasingly difficult games over time and a running tally of your character’s allegiance, equipment, and collected star maps. “You can have fun with it on a surface level,” Deshmane says, “but you can also sink your teeth into backstories and lore if you really take the time to sift through all of the content that we have.”

Whether you’ve already visited or are planning your own adventure in the future, you can learn more about the Play Disney Parks app this week on The Star Wars Show, which you can watch below!

Message, data and roaming rates may apply. Availability subject to handset limitations and device settings , and features may vary by handset, service provider or otherwise. Coverage and app stores not available everywhere.  If you’re under 18, get your parents’ permission first. Some features require a Disney account. In-app purchases may also be required.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland® Resort is now open. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will open at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida on August 29. Admission and experiences subject to capacity.

Associate Editor Kristin Baver is a writer and all-around sci-fi nerd who always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s not. Do you know a fan who’s most impressive? Hop on Twitter and tell @KristinBaver all about them.

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