Theme Park Bits: Suing Over Soda, Star Tours Updates, and More

In this edition of Theme Park Bits:

• Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is getting a big update this December.
• Someone’s suing Universal over unlimited soda.
• And more!

In case you haven’t heard, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker unleashed a thrilling new trailer this week. Related to the world of theme parks, Disney Parks has announced, unsurprisingly, that their Star Tours: The Adventures Continue motion-simulator ride is going to be getting an update this December to reflect the brand-new chapter of the saga. In fact, the update is arriving the same day the film does, December 20, and will bring your Starspeeder to the ocean moon Kef Bir, glimpsed briefly in the new trailer. This is the nice advantage to the spruced-up version of Star Tours: the digital screens enable Disney to update the ride to keep the experience in line with the latest movie. This one could be particularly thrilling.

Let’s move over to Universal Orlando for our next couple of stories. You may well have experienced, either at the theme park or in your regular life, a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine by now. For the uninitiated, it’s a machine where you can get all sorts of flavors of soda, from an orange-flavored Coke to cherry Dr. Pepper and more. At Universal Orlando, things are such that the park is being sued over these machines…or, well, a guest is suing Universal because he was apparently “denied” from using the machines for the advertised unlimited soda refills. The machines, in fact, told him he had to wait — hence the suit, where he’s requesting a jury trial. That would be…an interesting jury to sit on.

Speaking of Universal Orlando, you might well want to head over there next year if things like a private lounge sound like your cup of tea. Anyone with an Annual Pass in 2020 will have that perk and a few new ones to brag about to the rest of us. Also, for the month of January, Annual Passholders will also have special exclusive access to distinct park entrances. (Seems odd that it’s just for one month, but if enough people use it, maybe we’ll see the entrances used more often.) Plus, to tie into our last story, there are exclusive drink options in the UOAP Lounge sponsored by Coca-Cola. Just…maybe time your refills.

Over in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, changes just keep coming. Of course, there’s going to be the Rise of the Resistance attraction added to their version of Galaxy’s Edge soon enough, but they’re also taking some things down. Specifically, the bridge that you drive underneath before arriving at the park is being demolished, a year after some of the designs around the bridge had already been removed. Disney’s Hollywood Studios, more than even Epcot, has been a park under redesign since its very inception. So it’s not shocking to see this go even as it represents another part of the old era going away.

There’s only a few more days in the month of October, which means there’s only a few more days before Halloween. Over at Disney Springs in the Walt Disney World Resort, there’s a few exclusive dining options that are only going to be available in the last week of the month. Just head over to a trio of food trucks to try some of the special, seasonal food items, like macaroni and cheese with gummi worms on top, and the dessert taco above with cold brew cookie dough, pumpkin spice, and a chocolate spider. (If you’re an Instagram kind of person, this taco is apparently quite “Instagrammable”, which presumably means it looks good in a photo. Like the one above!)

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