Today is January 9th, 2008… Star Tours is 21 years old! And to celebrate we’ve got a very special message which came in just under the wire as our last Celebrity Greeting for the 20th, or our very first for the 21st, you be the judge!

Read on for a very personal memory from Lucasfilm’s Mary Franklin…

Soon after Star Tours opened, I traveled to Disneyland from the remote Montana ranch, where I was a cowgirl. I loved Star Wars, but didn’t have a chance on the ranch to see or do anything with the GFFA (galaxy far, far away) beyond the very few books and comics that were out then. I didn’t even have a television set or VCR.

Compared to my isolated life on the prairie with the cattle, Disneyland was sensory overload. I couldn’t believe all those people and rides and other attractions were all in one place. I recall I was even impressed with Mission to Mars.

Until I got on Star Tours that is. I remember standing in line and being wowed simply by what was going on around me. Listening to Artoo and Threepio, and reading the travel posters was magical. It already seemed I was in another world, so traveling in the Star Wars world wasn’t such a big stretch.

I might have gone on Star Tours half a dozen times that day. I purchased one of each of the Star Wars travel posters, ©1986, and brought them home and framed them. Several times over the years when friends came to visit someone pointed to the Tatooine poster of Jabba’s palace and said, “Where is that? I want to go there.”

You can go there from here. With a little help from Star Tours.

Mary Franklin
Events Manager
Lucasfilm Ltd.