Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 27

TRAVEL Tuesday Dec. 15, 2015 SA3 Cox Media Group A BONUS SECTION FOR OUR SUBSCRIBERS DISNEYCRUISE LINE WAY OUT WEST Danny Handke, a creative design executive with Walt Disney Imagineering, demonstrates the hyper reality of the cockpit in the new Star Wars Millennium Falcon play area onboard the Disney Dream, as Disney Cruise Line unveils recent enhancements to the ship, joe burbankorlando sentinel Western town comes alive Knott's Berry Farm Ghost Town to get interactive update. By Joseph Pimentel The Orange County Register BUENA PARK, CALIF. -Visitors to Knott's Berry Farm's Ghost Town next year will be able to stare down the sheriff in a game of poker, arrest a family member, or write and send an important telegraph. Ghost Town, Walter Knott's creation that has stood next to Mrs.

Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant since 1941, will become Ghost Town Alive! a West-ern-themed, role-playing experience for visitors. "It's going to be like you're living in that time, the Wild West," said Lara Hanneman, creative director at Knott's. Knott's announced upgrades coming to the park in preparation for its 75th anniversary celebration. The theme park's high-speed wooden roller coaster closed for restoration since September will feature upgraded trains that will look like mining cars with gold, silver and copper accents. They will ride along 4,500 feet of resurfaced wooden track.

Notoriously known as a her ky-jerky jaunt, GhostRider now will offer a smoother journey. And, as guests wait, the queue will turn into a prospector area where guests can pan for gold. Meanwhile, Ghost Town will come to life as an interactive area of the park. Knott's will take out many of the wooden mannequin statues that depict life in the West, currently inside various vignettes or peak-ins in Ghost Town, and replace them with role-playing employees; they will interact with visitors in the town of Calico. A prominent mannequin, though, Sad-Eye Joe, Orange County's longest jailed inmate, will remain in Knott's jail.

A new Western stunt show will be held in the Wagon Camp. "We're continuing Walter Knott's legacy and taking it one step further," Hanneman said. "He wanted people to be entertained and not just on the rides. "Guests can participate or watch, but, basically, we just want them to play with us." GhostRider and the Ghost Town improvements are expected to be unveiled next summer. Just outside the park, Mrs.

Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant will undergo a complete refurbishment, closing Jan. 4 and re-opening a few months after. The restaurant's dining rooms and banquet hall will be renovated, with one room looking like Mrs. Knott's kitchen pantry with a potbelly stove. The restaurant will also have a new outdoor seating area.

The Chicken Dinner Restaurant will also get a fully stocked bar. The park now serves wine and beer in eateries in Ghost Town. You no longer have to venture to a galaxy far, far away to get the full 'Star Wars' experience. the actors," he said. "So we have a Luke Skywalk-er, Princess Leia, Chew-bacca.

One of my favorite things is we did an open house and we had the dads be Chewbacca and just listening to them roar and play Star Wars with their kids in the Millennium Falcon is incredible." The Oceaneer Club is aimed toward children ages 3-12, but there are times such as the open houses when those who fall outside that Disney demographic can enjoy the space. "Obviously it's a place we can have secure areas for the children, but there are moments during the cruise that we let adults and their kids share the space," Giordano said. "There are opportunities for everyone to Fans of that theme park ride may notice the original Star Tours video making a cameo among the many options. "On our team we have so many Star Wars fans, and the details just started pouring in," Handke said. "Suddenly we have R2-D2 in there and he's talking to guests, and then we have the training remote in the common room that hovers up and down, so just little bits of magic.

It's really probably the most detail-oriented space we've ever designed for the Oceaneer Club." There's also two common areas to either side, one of which is filled with iPads loaded with Star Wars apps and games. Both feature the hologram chess table, although you can't actu ally play hologram chess. The tables though are used for arts and crafts, such as the Galaxy Builders program, in which kids are shown how to make and then build their own TIE fighter, X-Wing or other ships from the Star Wars universe using modeling clay and foam. The space has lots of Easter eggs, such as Chewbacca's bowcast-er (aka Wookie crossbow) and bandolier, the dice hanging from the windshield of the cockpit and even the spot where Han Solo first kissed Princess Leia in "The Empire Strikes Back." There's a special spot that lets visitors "use the Force" and make boxes move. The buttons, though, are a big draw for the children.

If you press certain ones in just the right sequence, you can get special audio-visual treats such as the sound of a TIE fighter, the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Darth Vad-er breathing. "They don't want to leave," said Walt Disney Creative Entertainment Show Director Tony Giordano. "Their parents come and they say, 'No, I'm doing I'd say they spend all day in here. There are so many buttons to push and they want to figure out every hidden secret in here that they'll spend hours." There's a slew of counselor-led programming centered around Star Wars as well. "We do a half-hour version of the movies using video costume pieces and we have a giant storybook when our host tells the story but the kids get to be By Richard Tribou Orlando Sentinel The force is strong with this ship.

Disney Cruise Line has brought the Star Wars universe to Disney Dream in a big way with the Millennium Falcon. One of two new interactive play areas in the 5-year-old ship's Oceaneer Club, the installation simulates the inside of the iconic spaceship flown by Han Solo a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. "We said what kind of Star Wars experience do we want in a kids space," explained Disney Imagi-neer Danny Handke, the creative design lead for the space. "And decided that, boy, to be on the Millennium Falcon would be really awesome. Can you imagine piloting it, having the little common room with the holo-chess table.

And so we started there and we met with our partners at LucasFilm who threw us some great ideas, and so it just started kind of building on itself." The end result is an eye-catching marvel with more than 1,000 LED lights, hundreds of buttons, levers and switches and detail-oriented touches that will make any Star Wars fan smile with nostalgia. The big draw is the two seats of the cockpit that lets little pilots make the jump to hyper-space and pilot the Millennium Falcon through a variety of scenes from both outer space such as battle scenes with Imperial Star Destroyers and planets such as Tatoo-ine. Most of the scenes are culled from the Star Tours attraction at the theme parks, although some are unique to the Dream. The new Star Wars Millennium Falcon play area onboard the Disney Dream. The ship's new features include the re-imagined Oceaneer Club offering new play areas for children ages 3 to 12, showcasing the interactive replica of the Millennium Falcon and a high-tech playground based on the "Disney Infinity" video game.

Joe burbankorlando sentinel.