Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

…especially not on our very special Star Wars date-day!

Sure, Rise of the Resistance may or may not have been the greatest theme park ride in world history, but it wasn’t the only Lucasfilm tribute that Hollywood Studios offered. After our honorable discharge from the Resistance and some overdue breakfast (which we’ll cover in a later chapter), our next obvious stop was Millennium Falcon – Smugglers Run.

The intergalactic flight simulator lets fans pretend they’re Han and Chewie, or Lando and Nien Nunb, or Rey and Finn, or Rey and Chewbacca, or Ralph and Alice Kramden going bang-zoom to the moon. It’s up to you whatever role-playing you can manage jointly in your heads while you’re being buffeted by lights and sound effects and stomach-churning vibrations, and managing the interactive tasks assigned to you. Every rider gets to be a Millennium Falcon crew member!

Near the actual “ride” part, your small group is divided into crews of six, each of which “fly” in their own Millennium Falcon cockpits (read: simulator). Two riders are in charge of weapons, hammering their PEW-PEW-PEW buttons to blow away enemy ships all over the surrounding screens. Two act as engineers, but I couldn’t tell you what they were doing in the back row, though I hope they had fun. Anne and I were up front as pilots — one manning an awkward handle for the X-axis, the other doing likewise for the Y-axis. Once everyone is secured at their stations, the Falcon takes off and it’s your crew’s job to pretend this is real and do something about the ensuing fusillades and tilting and rattling and jerking and yanking and EXPLOSIONS!

You absolutely feel the pains of all those drivers from the trilogies, up to and including space whiplash, as if you really are about to die here and now in space battle unless you can navigate the sensory bedlam and get your unseen space MacGuffins delivered to whoever at whatever spaceport. At the time I felt I was handling my controls much better than Anne was hers, but I also play more video games than she does. Then again, no one kept score, so I could be off-base. Maybe we won. The important thing is we didn’t die.

Not that we emerged unscathed. The Dramamine we took earlier helped stave off motion sickness, but only just. Smugglers Run was much rougher on our middle-aged constitutions than Rise of the Resistance had been. That’s probably true-to-movie-life, though — the Falcon is supposed to be a rickety jalopy that should’ve been traded in for a newer model long before its odometer rolled over parsecs ago.

We were back on Earth by 10:15 and had plenty of Star Wars yet to explore. For the rest of it, though, we kept our feet on the ground while we kept reaching for the stars.

To be continued!

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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete major trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts. For further signs of life between entries, wave hi to me on . Thanks for reading!]