New SWGE Superthread! Now Open to All! (6/24/2019)

[HannaBelle]

Airport security in Germany confiscated my toy lightsaber from the "Build your own lightsaber" years ago. Classified it as a weapon. Wish I was kidding.

I absolutely believe it:

https://reason.com/2014/10/29/tsa-confiscares-raygun-belt-buckle-becau/

 

[bethwc101]

It was easy for me
I'm from Ireland and scenes from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were filmed here. An island off our south coast was used as the Planet Achtoo, where Luke Skywalker was in hiding. It's also the home of the Porgs.

My back story is that I am from the planet Hibernia, which is in the same Galaxy as Achtoo. Hibernia is the Latin name for Ireland.

Skellig Rock or something right? We visited the area right around the time filming was finished and the locals said they got photos with all the actors who were there. We saw TONS of photos of SW actors with people on the local pubs

 

[bethwc101]

You can make reservations day of on the Disney website for Oga's. They open at 7 AM and require a credit card deposit. Check in 15-minutes before your reservation time. Single Rider is the way to go if on Smuggler's Run.

Actually, reservations are available now further in advance for Oga's Cantina. But yes check in 15 minutes before your reservation time.

We decided on Sat to do a last minute trip this Wed and Thurs. It says lunches and dinner res are all booked.
So I'm guessing the day of booking is gone

 

[Skyegirl1999]

We decided on Sat to do a last minute trip this Wed and Thurs. It says lunches and dinner res are all booked.
So I'm guessing the day of booking is gone

No, I posted that I did it last Friday. If you go on the Oga’s page on the DL site, it says some are still same-day.

 

[StarlitNight05]

So it's still 14 days in advance to book Oga's, right? I keep getting worried they will switch it and I'll lose my chance to book in advance!

 

[Purrkins]

We decided on Sat to do a last minute trip this Wed and Thurs. It says lunches and dinner res are all booked.
So I'm guessing the day of booking is gone

Actually, the opposite. Advance reservations were booked when I went spur of the moment in August but when I logged in at 7AMish on the bus from the parking garage to DL I had my pick of times for both Oga's and Savi's. I think a VERY small percentage is actually available for the advance reservation with a much larger percentage being held back for day of.

 

[BadPinkTink]

Skellig Rock or something right? We visited the area right around the time filming was finished and the locals said they got photos with all the actors who were there. We saw TONS of photos of SW actors with people on the local pubs

Yes thats the name of the island. Mar Hammill loved the area and would pop up in all sorts of places when he wasnt filming and post on social media.

And its because of the real location Skellig Michael ruins that they created Porgs. The island is actually a world heritage site due to the ruins and because of the huge colonies of nesting birds, in particular Puffins. When they were filming they couldnt get a clear shot of the island, the ruins or Mark Hammill without Puffins being in the shots. So they decided to crated the creature Porg to disguise the real Puffins in the shots.

 

[Self-Rescuing Princess]

Is The Catina still only 14 days?

 

[gpjacobs]

Is The Catina still only 14 days?

Yes, I believe so!

 

[Skyegirl1999]

Is The Catina still only 14 days?

Yes, with additional reservations released for the day at 7am each morning.

 

[Keyframer30]

And its because of the real location Skellig Michael ruins that they created Porgs. The island is actually a world heritage site due to the ruins and because of the huge colonies of nesting birds, in particular Puffins. When they were filming they couldnt get a clear shot of the island, the ruins or Mark Hammill without Puffins being in the shots. So they decided to crated the creature Porg to disguise the real Puffins in the shots.

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary work. I'm not gonna bother asking my friends at ILM to see if that is true but as someone that worked in VFX...it would be easier to just have Compositors paint out the Puffins in Nuke rather than create CG Porgs and then have a team of Animators keyframe animate/matchmove over Puffins...and then sent it back to have them comp them in....but then again, that's just me...

 

[SOCALMouseMommy]

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary work. I'm not gonna bother asking my friends at ILM to see if that is true but as someone that worked in VFX...it would be easier to just have Compositors paint out the Puffins in Nuke rather than create CG Porgs and have to then have a team of Animators keyframe animate/matchmove over Puffins...and then sent it back to have them comp them in....

https://www.starwars.com/news/designing-star-wars-the-last-jedi-part-1-how-porgs-were-hatched

 

[BadPinkTink]

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary work. I'm not gonna bother asking my friends at ILM to see if that is true but as someone that worked in VFX...it would be easier to just have Compositors paint out the Puffins in Nuke rather than create CG Porgs and have to then have a team of Animators keyframe animate/matchmove over Puffins...and then sent it back to have them comp them in....

For transparency sake, this is where my information came from

https://www.starwars.com/news/designing-star-wars-the-last-jedi-part-1-how-porgs-were-hatched
Creature concept designer Jake Lunt Davies interview with www.starwars. com December 15 2017
"From what I gathered, Rian Johnson had gone to shoot this sequence on Skellig Michael, which is the real island location that stands in for Ahch-To, and that island is covered in puffins. It’s a wildlife preserve and everywhere you look there are hundreds of birds dotted around the landscape. From what I gathered, Rian, in a positive spin on this, was looking at how can he work with this. You can’t remove them. You physically can’t get rid of them. And digitally removing them is an issue and a lot of work, so let’s just roll with it, play with it. And so I think he thought, “Well, that’s great, let’s have our own indigenous species.” We’d already started work on the Caretakers, which again was a brief from Rian. We’d just been told “puffin people.” Yeah, there was going to be this race of people and puffins again were a source of inspiration for Rian. The puffins were sort of a big influence on everything, really. "

 

[Keyframer30]

https://www.starwars.com/news/designing-star-wars-the-last-jedi-part-1-how-porgs-were-hatched
Well what do you know! I stand corrected. I guess that the hard way was the only way! Interesting!

 

[figment_jii]

For those that are interested in the personality chips and what they do...I finally got one (well, okay, all six...but that's a different story ) and had a chance to play with it in the parks a few weeks ago...

There are six different personality chips that are compatible with both the R2 and BB-8 units. Resistance chips are orange or blue, First Order chips are red or black, and Smuggler ships are purple or grey. You can tell which type of chip is based on the symbol on the back of the package. Once placed in your droid, the chip changes the sounds the droid makes. I don't speak droid well enough to know if they're saying anything different ( ), but the chips to change the pattern of beeps and the tone of the beeps. So, if you bought all six chips, you could listen to your droid beep in six different sets of tones (one at a time because the droid can only have one chip in at a time).

The other, and potentially more fun, effect of having a personality chip in your droid is the ability to interact with other droids. Only the droid with the chip will interact, but it will respond to droids without a chip. I was had the chip in my droid and was standing by the Haunted Mansion entrance (so no longer in SW:GE) and suddenly he started beeping. I was confused until I noticed that a group that had just sat down on the bench next to me also had a droid. I asked and none of their droids had a chip. It happened again when I was over at the Stage Door Cafe and on Main Street, so it seems like a droid with a chip will beep to acknowledge another nearby droid (seems like it has to be pretty close - I'm guessing maybe 5 feet or so at most).

 

[ten6mom]

For those that are interested in the personality chips and what they do...I finally got one (well, okay, all six...but that's a different story ) and had a chance to play with it in the parks a few weeks ago...

There are six different personality chips that are compatible with both the R2 and BB-8 units. Resistance chips are orange or blue, First Order chips are red or black, and Smuggler ships are purple or grey. You can tell which type of chip is based on the symbol on the back of the package. Once placed in your droid, the chip changes the sounds the droid makes. I don't speak droid well enough to know if they're saying anything different ( ), but the chips to change the pattern of beeps and the tone of the beeps. So, if you bought all six chips, you could listen to your droid beep in six different sets of tones (one at a time because the droid can only have one chip in at a time).

The other, and potentially more fun, effect of having a personality chip in your droid is the ability to interact with other droids. Only the droid with the chip will interact, but it will respond to droids without a chip. I was had the chip in my droid and was standing by the Haunted Mansion entrance (so no longer in SW:GE) and suddenly he started beeping. I was confused until I noticed that a group that had just sat down on the bench next to me also had a droid. I asked and none of their droids had a chip. It happened again when I was over at the Stage Door Cafe and on Main Street, so it seems like a droid with a chip will beep to acknowledge another nearby droid (seems like it has to be pretty close - I'm guessing maybe 5 feet or so at most).

Thank you for this! My niece and nephew got BB units last week (I know my nephew chose a First Order chip) and my son plans to get an R2 Unit next week so we are hoping there are still personality chips when we go!

 

[midnight star]

For those that are interested in the personality chips and what they do...I finally got one (well, okay, all six...but that's a different story ) and had a chance to play with it in the parks a few weeks ago...

There are six different personality chips that are compatible with both the R2 and BB-8 units. Resistance chips are orange or blue, First Order chips are red or black, and Smuggler ships are purple or grey. You can tell which type of chip is based on the symbol on the back of the package. Once placed in your droid, the chip changes the sounds the droid makes. I don't speak droid well enough to know if they're saying anything different ( ), but the chips to change the pattern of beeps and the tone of the beeps. So, if you bought all six chips, you could listen to your droid beep in six different sets of tones (one at a time because the droid can only have one chip in at a time).

The other, and potentially more fun, effect of having a personality chip in your droid is the ability to interact with other droids. Only the droid with the chip will interact, but it will respond to droids without a chip. I was had the chip in my droid and was standing by the Haunted Mansion entrance (so no longer in SW:GE) and suddenly he started beeping. I was confused until I noticed that a group that had just sat down on the bench next to me also had a droid. I asked and none of their droids had a chip. It happened again when I was over at the Stage Door Cafe and on Main Street, so it seems like a droid with a chip will beep to acknowledge another nearby droid (seems like it has to be pretty close - I'm guessing maybe 5 feet or so at most).

I have a red first order chip for mine. They are so fun to play with! Did you by chance pay attention to how it moves around certain parts of the land? Maybe I am not paying attention as much, but I feel like it moved more without the chip? Or maybe I need to hang around the first order side more?

 

[figment_jii]

There didn't seem to be a huge difference in terms of how much the droid moved/made sound with the personality chip. It did seem like he beeped less overall with the chip in, but he did beep more often when in the "right" area. It was most noticeable with the Smuggler chip and over near the Cantina and Millennium Falcon. I didn't notice a lot of difference between the Resistance chip in the Resistance area or First Order chip in the First Order area. All chips seemed pretty much the same in the area near the Droid Factory, which is where he's usually the most active.

 

[StarlitNight05]

For those who have done Oga's, what is your favorite drink with alcohol? I'm having a hard time deciding what I'm going to order!

 

[LanceQ]

For those who have done Oga's, what is your favorite drink with alcohol? I'm having a hard time deciding what I'm going to order!

Fuzzy Tauntaun is a must.

I'm also partial to Jet Juice and the Dagobah Slug Slinger.