ANAHEIM, Calif. _ When you enter Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the 14-acre expansion coming to Disneyland early this summer, you are faced with a choice.
Walk around a bend _ and under an archway crafted to look centuries old _ to discover the starship the Millennium Falcon, nestled comfortably under hand-sculpted mountains designed to evoke the petrified forests of New Mexico.
Or wander into a marketplace, one inspired by Moroccan and Turkish bazaars. Intergalactic creatures are said to live in the ramshackle, factorylike apartments above the shops, presented as stalls, creating a cacophony of life and noise.
Consider this the "Star Wars" equivalent of Main Street, U.S.A. Instead of quaint stores there are catlike creatures in cages and toys that feel patched together from found parts.
If you bypass the town you'll enter a forest where the Resistance, the "good guys" in the "Star Wars" universe, have set up a camp, hiding ships among shrubbery and building a base inside alien ruins _ a twisting cave where digital schematics clash with remnants of a long-lost civilization.
But you might not make it that far if you accept a mission. A smuggler needs some info _ and you, if you have a smartphone, have the scanner to get it. Disney's theme park interpretation of "Star Wars" puts an emphasis on personal decision-making, active participation and gamelike scenarios.
You fly the Millennium Falcon. You choose to help the Resistance. You opt to align with the evil First Order. You get thrown in a detention room of an imposing Star Destroyer.
Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, which opens in an identical setup at Florida's Walt Disney World a few months after its Anaheim debut, is designed as a place to engage, recognizing our culture's shift to experience-based entertainment and the generational shift in today's guests _ and certainly those of tomorrow _ increasingly weaned on games.
If you want to bring home a droid, you build it in a cavernous warehouse with tool-shed-like fixtures. Guests, for instance, will fish for robot bits from an assembly line. Want a lightsaber? Hunt down a not-so-secret shop where you and just 13 others will learn how to construct and use one under the guidance of a Jedi Knight sympathizer.
And if you want to join the fight, you can do that too by using your phone to hack data ports. Then try to stay one step ahead of other guests in a constant tug-of-war for control of the fictional town of Black Spire Outpost.
If the land meets the ambitions of the Walt Disney Imagineers who designed it, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge may be the boldest statement yet that play has become the defining narrative of our generation.
Visitors to Disney's theme parks, says Scott Trowbridge, the Imagineering executive who has overseen the development of Galaxy's Edge, are "interested in becoming more of a participant and less of a spectator, and playing more of an active role in the experiences they have."
Such a desire extends well beyond the Disneyland berm. "It's not just the guests who come to our parks," Trowbridge adds, "it's society in general."
Today, the arcades of yore have been replaced by group games such as escape rooms, movie marketing increasingly involves large-scale pop-ups that serve as mini, "Westworld"-like themed environments, so-called Instagram museums serve as grown-up play-time and downtown L.A.'s Two Bit Circus melds tech-savvy carnival games with story.
And while Galaxy's Edge won't emphasize role playing as much as other experiences _ for that, you'll likely have to wait for a "Star Wars"-themed hotel being built in Walt Disney World _ it still represents a shift for a modern Disney park, utilizing the land not just as a home for shows and rides (and there are two massive attractions here) but as a locale for deep, interactive exploration. For guests who seek it, there is essentially a persistent, living game baked into the land.
For Imagineering, it represents the culmination of about a decade of smaller, stealthier play tests throughout the Disney parks, perhaps most notably in Anaheim with the short-lived, live-action role-playing game that was 2014's "Legends of Frontierland."
"In the beginning it was a little experimental. People are used to coming to a Disney theme park to be entertained. So how are they are going to feel about this shift in their role? We were blown away," says Asa Kalama, who has overseen the interactive experiences of Galaxy's Edge and was instrumental in the development of the gamelike flight simulator ride Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run.
"This is a thing we all grow up doing, playing in our backyard with a cardboard box and imagining that it's a spaceship," he continues. "As we get older, we tend to think we no longer have that capability, but it's in there."
