Flying the Falcon isn’t easy. I learned this the hard way. The first time I took the controls of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, I crashed it into spires, into walls, and into an asteroid. Sure, I had fun doing all of these things, but I didn’t quite feel like an ace pilot as Hondo listed off the many systems of the Falcon that had gone offline.
Seven years and one complete mission overhaul later, I’m still crashing. There are just more planets to crash on now.
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run got a top-to-bottom overhaul in May 2026 with a new Mandalorian and Grogu mission, and it’s not a light refresh. New destinations, new role mechanics, branching paths, a secret mode, and a scoring system with more depth than the original ever had. (I reviewed the new mission after riding it 11 times — short version: consider me converted.)
Because of the video game part, Smugglers Run has always had a bit of a learning curve, and the new mission adds even more to learn. Even though the cast members give a brief explanation of each role, your first ride in the Falcon’s iconic cockpit can be a little overwhelming.
More than any other attraction, it really pays to know a few key tips and strategies before your first ride. After flying the new mission nearly a dozen times, I’m here with valuable recon about how to be a pilot, gunner, and engineer on the hunt for three bounties alongside Mando and Grogu. These tips will help you perform your role, earn more credits, impress the rest of your crew, and enjoy the attraction even more. This guide applies to the attraction at Disneyland and at Disney’s Hollywood Studios — the new mission debuted at both parks on May 22, 2026.
(Update: June 11, 2026 – This guide has been updated to reflect the new multi-planet mission featuring the Mandalorian and Grogu).
How the New Mission Works
Every flight starts the same way: Hondo sends you off from Batuu, and you almost immediately jump to Tatooine to meet up with the Mandalorian and Grogu, who are flying the Razor Crest. You’re tracking three bounties — two ex-Imperial officers and a pirate — who are meeting up for an illicit deal. Things go awry (I’m not pointing any fingers, but Grogu… you gotta stop pressing random buttons), the bounties split up, and your crew has to pick one to chase.
That’s where the ride’s headline feature kicks in. One of the engineers chooses your destination:
- Bespin: Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back
- Coruscant: the neon city-planet from Attack of the Clones
- Endor: the wreckage of the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi
Tatooine works as a tutorial, and then your chosen planet is the bulk of the mission. Each destination has its own story beats, exclusive moments, and branching paths inside it, which is why no two rides play the same. Imagineering’s Asa Kalama told io9 he hasn’t even done the math on the total number of path combinations.
The Three Different Roles on Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
Millennium Falcon has six seats in the cockpit. Each row has a different role.
First Row: Pilots that control the flight path of the ship. Each pilot controls a different aspect, see details below.
Second Row: Gunners shoot lasers at enemy TIE Fighters and obstacles. Left Gunner fires on the left side of the screen, and Right Gunner fires on the right side of the screen.
Third Row: Engineers repair the ship and activate tractor beams to catch crates. One of the engineers picks the destination for the mission (which side is randomized).
One genuinely impressive thing I have to note: the system adapts to your crew. If there’s only one pilot, no engineers, or any other partial crew, the ride adjusts, and Mando will even comment on your crew situation as soon as you arrive at Tatooine. I had the true “Solo” experience of being the only person in the cockpit, and everything still worked. (More on how the destination gets picked with zero engineers below.)
Tips for Pilots: Branching Paths and the Same Inverted Controls
Left pilot: You control left and right. The Falcon steers a bit like a boat, so steady steering is still the way. Subtle movements make for a steadier ride and set your gunners up to hit their targets. You also have a boost button to accelerate past danger at certain moments, so watch for it to light up.
Right pilot: You control the ship vertically, and the controls are still inverted. Push forward to go down, pull back to go up. If you’ve ever played a flight simulator, you’ll have no trouble; if not, give yourself the Tatooine tutorial to adjust. Right pilot still gets to punch it to lightspeed, which remains something every Star Wars fan should experience.
One change from the old mission: the “LEFT PILOT, BRAKES” moment — the trickiest button press in the Corellia mission — appears to be gone, along with the train chase it belonged to. Pour one out.
Pilot is still the most immersive role, and it’s still the one with the most direct control over your flight. The ride remains “on rails” in the sense that you’ll always reach your destination, and Kalama told StarWars.com that the new mission adds “hidden guardrails” so that no matter how the pilots fly, it always feels cinematic. I can attest to this – each of my 11 rides on the new mission felt less jerky than before.
But the rails are much looser now, and the big new pilot feature is branching paths.
On Tatooine, there’s an early left-or-right decision, and the branches keep coming. For example, here’s a very cool secret I learned from Adam Bankhurst. Later in Tatooine immediately after the bounties split up (Mando says “New plan: we catch one bounty), you can go the standard route through a canyon to the right, or you can go down and to the left to go through a cave that features a skeleton of a Krayt dragon.
Every planet has its own branches. On Cloud City, you can fly below the city structure (where you’ll see trash getting dumped out into the open air, the same underside view Luke had at the end of Empire) or stay in the middle near the docking bays.
Tips for Gunners: Pick Manual Mode, and Watch for the Missile Button
After you buckle your seat belt in the gunner’s seat, you have a very important choice that most people miss. You can choose between Automatic and Manual mode, and it makes a meaningful difference.
Automatic mode still auto-tracks targets and is the right call for kids and first-timers. Per Disney’s official tips, it fires in bursts of five. Timing is important if you are on automatic mode.
Manual mode lets you aim high, middle, or low with three vertically arranged buttons, and the easiest technique is the same one I recommended in 2019: lay three fingers on the buttons so you never have to look away from the screen.
If you want the most gameplay depth, I think picking Manual matters more than ever.
The environment now reacts to your laser blasts: there are obstacles you can clear out of the pilots’ way. The Death Star is full of debris to blast down.
The new mechanic that took me embarrassingly long to find: the missile button. At select moments, a big orange button starts blinking, and pressing it fires off a volley of missiles that ccan hit up to five targets at once. I rode 11 times before I clocked it, and I only learned about it from Disney’s blog post. Don’t be me. When the orange button blinks, hit it.
Tips for Engineers: The Glow-Up Role
Engineer used to be the unfairly derided position (it amounted to pressing buttons as they light up, but I enjoyed it as the buttons are very satisfying to press). Now it’s the role with the most gameplay variety, and the one that shapes everyone else’s ride. The engineer jobs:
Pick the planet. One randomized engineer chooses the destination after Tatooine (it’s a 50/50 chance of being right or left if you have two engineers). The choice comes up on your screen with about a 5-second countdown, and here’s a detail I learned from a recent episode of Disney Unscripted: your first press doesn’t lock it in. You can change your mind until the timer runs out. If there’s only one engineer aboard, that person picks; with two it’s random which seat gets the choice; with no engineers at all, the system picks for you.
Launch tracking beacons. The engineer who doesn’t pick the planet launches homing beacons at the three bounty ships before the jump.
Work the tractor beam. Crates are this mission’s equivalent of the coaxium. When you can grab a crate, the big orange button will glow. Mash the button to secure your loot. Per Disney, each engineer can grab up to three crates, six total for the crew, and what’s inside matters (more on that in the scoring section).
Call Grogu. Both engineers have a Call Grogu button under the call icon, which plays adorable videos of Grogu doing his Baby Yoda thing in the Razor Crest. Fair warning: it’s cute and it’s also a distraction from a mission that now has a lot more happening out the cockpit window. He’ll also pop up on his own from time to time. But if you’re mainly interested in Grogu, you could just sit in the Engineer seat and watch his cute videos the whole time.
Repair the ship. The classic engineer job survives: when the Falcon takes damage, buttons light up around you. Press them fast. My 2019 advice stands: you’re judged on speed more than precision, so it doesn’t hurt to bear-paw the panel.
Planets: Which Destination Should You Pick?
Each planet has exclusive moments you can only see there, so the real answer is “ride three times.” But if you’re choosing:
Endor is the action/difficulty pick. Flying through the shattered Death Star wreckage looks incredible (the graphics upgrades are the most apparent here). Plus, you get the iconic trench run moment, plus some fun nods to the original Star Tours (which was supposed to take you to the Forest Moon of Endor).
Bespin is the views pick, and the gunner-heaviest planet, with swarms of TIEs to gun down and freighters to dodge. Early on, the Falcon snags on a cable and gets physically attached to the enemy ship. Later in the mission, Mando actually jumps out of the Razor Crest.
Coruscant is my personal favorite. It’s the spectacle pick, and if you’re only riding once, it’s my recommendation. You’re speeding through the neon-strewn city at night, dodging signs and traffic. It plays like the speeder chase from the beginning of Attack of the Clones. And yes, this is where you can trigger the Cantina music, which Grogu adorably dances along to.
About that Cantina music: I’ve triggered it, but I haven’t isolated what triggers it. It might be the engineer’s Grogu button at the right moment, or it might be a pilot path. But I’m not 100% sure. If you figure it out, the comments are open.
What About the Secret Mode?
The original Smugglers Run had a hidden Easter egg known as Chewie Mode (or Chewbacca Mode, or Wookiee Mode, depending on who you ask) that replaced Hondo’s narration with Wookiee howls. The new mission has its own secret: Grogu Mode, and I’ve ridden it myself. You just need two gunners to unlock it.
Here’s my full step-by-step guide for how to unlock Grogu Mode on Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run.
As for whether Chewie Mode still works on the new mission, I haven’t been able to confirm it either way. That’s on my list for the next visit.
Scoring, Crates, and Employee of the Month
The end of the ride got a real upgrade, beyond just seeing Grogu and Mando. A very cool detail I loved: the bounties coming out of the ship, freshly frozen in carbonite.
Back in the hangar, Hondo tallies how many crates your crew recovered. You can get a maximum of 6 crates (3 per Engineer) and the crates actually open: per Disney, some hauls contain galactic credits, some contain Kyber Crystals, and some contain baby Rancors.
What’s inside affects your cabin score, and each seat’s individual performance gets added up. Disney also says there’s an elusive Employee of the Month honor for the highest scores. I haven’t earned it yet, and not for lack of trying.
The nice thing about the new scoring is that the stakes feel looser. The old mission’s interactivity was binary. You got the coaxium or you didn’t. Now, missing a crate just isn’t that big a deal, which makes the whole experience friendlier to first-timers.
Easter Eggs and Secrets Still Out There
I went in trying to see everything and couldn’t, even after 11 rides. Here’s the confirmed list of what’s hiding in the mission, courtesy of my own rides, plus what Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin and Imagineering’s Asa Kalama told io9:
- A downed podracer on Tatooine (Martin says to look closely).
- The Krayt dragon skeleton tunnel, the hardest Tatooine branch to find
- A Halcyon sign on Coruscant: a nod to the dearly departed Galactic Starcruiser
- One of the coolest Easter Eggs I heard on just one of my 11 rides, audio of Han Solo yelling at Hondo. This was after a Coruscant mission, but I am not entirely sure what triggers it.
- Kalama teased that the ride contains an in-story explanation for why the physical Falcon outside already has its Force Awakens-era rectangular sensor dish
- The Razor Crest you fly with is the new, post-movie Razor Crest, which dates the mission after The Mandalorian and Grogu
In Line Tips
Request your role: If you are in the standby line, you may be able to request your role as they are giving out boarding credentials. Emphasis on may — this wasn’t consistent before the update and still isn’t. If you have your heart set on a role you haven’t tried, just politely ask the cast member, and don’t worry if they won’t let you wait extra. All the roles are fun, and that’s truer now than it’s ever been.
Single Rider is now a strategy, not just a time-saver: Single Rider remains a great way to reduce your wait, and it’s also the best way to see all three destinations. As a single rider you’ll most likely be assigned Engineer, and the Engineer chooses where you go. The downside is the same as ever: the single rider queue is basically a hallway, so you skip Hondo’s pre-show (which is barely changed from before anyway).
The Play Disney Parks Datapad mission (“Flight Crews Wanted”) was a great way to earn credits while in the standby line for the original mission. I haven’t confirmed whether it’s been updated for the new mission, but the mission is still there in the Play Disney Parks app.
The Most Important Tip
Have fun! Flying the Millennium Falcon can be a chaotic adventure, as it should be. There will be times where your pilot crashes into a wall or your engineer doesn’t repair something in time. Take this all in good fun. I’ve been lucky to fly with many crews who took the whole thing in the right spirit, excitedly whooping when we jump to lightspeed.
While it’s satisfying to earn more credits, don’t yell at your other crew members if they aren’t “doing their job.” (Maybe send them this article instead.) It’s not a real spaceship, and these aren’t real credits. It’s a game that can be just as much fun when you do poorly as when you fly smoothly — and that’s truer than ever now that the looser rails mean a missed crate barely matters.
If you see someone completely confused, politely tell them what they should do. Just have fun and have a good attitude, and your flight crew will appreciate having you on board.
And if you’re overwhelmed by all of this gameplay, my advice is to take the Gunner or Engineer seat and treat this like Star Tours. Just go along for the ride. Millennium Falcon rewards you for engaging with the systems, but doesn’t punish you for just sitting back and taking in the adventure.
Quick Reference: Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (New Mission)
- Mission: Track three bounties with Mando and Grogu; debuted May 22, 2026 at both parks
- Destinations: Tatooine (every ride), then Bespin, Coruscant, or Endor (engineer’s choice, 5-second timer)
- Pilot: Left = horizontal, Right = vertical (inverted); branching paths on every planet
- Gunner: Pick Manual mode; three fingers on the buttons; hit the orange missile button when it blinks
- Engineer: Picks the planet (randomized between the two seats), launches beacons, tractor-beams up to 3 crates per side, calls Grogu, repairs the ship
- Single Rider: Usually lands you Engineer — the best seat for choosing your destination
- Secret: Grogu Mode exists, here’s how to unlock it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this guide work at Disneyland or Disney World?
Both! Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is an identical attraction on both coasts. Tips that work at Hollywood Studios will also apply to Disneyland.
What are the roles on Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run?
Each crew of six has two pilots (left steers horizontally, right steers vertically), two gunners (who defend the ship and can choose automatic or manual targeting), and two engineers (who pick the destination, launch tracking beacons, collect crates with the tractor beam, repair the ship, and call Grogu).
Which engineer picks the planet?
It’s randomized between the two engineer seats: neither left nor right has an advantage. If only one engineer is aboard, that person picks. With no engineers at all, the ride picks for you. You have about 5 seconds to decide, and your first press doesn’t lock in. You can change your selection until the timer runs out.
What happens if you don’t have a full crew?
The mission adapts. If there’s one pilot, no engineers, or any partial crew, the ride adjusts the gameplay, and Mando even comments on your crew situation when you arrive at Tatooine. I’ve ridden completely alone and everything still worked.
What happened to the asteroid scene?
The original mission had an asteroid field scene right before your return to Batuu that acted as a way for the game to “vamp for time” as other ride vehicles loaded and unloaded. I rode the new mission over 10 times and never got this scene, but that doesn’t mean it does not exist anymore.
Is there still a secret mode like Chewbacca Mode?
The new mission has its own hidden Easter egg called Grogu Mode. Whether the original Chewbacca Mode still functions on the new mission is unconfirmed.
What’s the best destination to choose?
All three have exclusive moments, so the real answer is to ride three times. If you only get one ride, I recommend Coruscant. That was my personal favorite for the visuals, the music, and the most going on.
How tall do you have to be to ride Smugglers Run?
The height requirement is 38 inches, unchanged from the original mission.
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There’s actually a few different optional sequences after you land as well. Once after landing Hondo had us wait for what felt like a long time (was probably about 20 seconds) while he checked the ship for Mynocks. I know there was at least one other one where Hondo delays you for a short while compared to the ‘normal’ version where you get out pretty much right after landing.
Very cool! They’ve done a great job making the load/unload pretty seamless on this ride.
Your instructions for the right pilot controls sound confusing.
” The right pilot controls up and down. However, these controls are inverted, so pushing down on the stick makes the Falcon go up, and vice-versa…
Getting out of Batuu can be one of the trickiest sections for the right pilot. There is a large spaceship right after you take off. Every ride I’ve taken has crashed into this ship. Push up to fly under it, and then pull down to fly above all the rocks in Black Spire Outpost for the easiest path.”
So, which is it? Perhaps saying something like “Push forward to go down, pull back to go up” (if that’s the case) would be less confusing. Otherwise, great tutorial. I’m looking forward to experiencing it in 2 months.
You got it right: pull the stick back towards you to fly up, and push the stick forward away from you to fly down. I agree that my initial instructions could have been worded a bit clearer, so thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve updated the article. Best of luck when you fly the Falcon!
When it is time for the left pilot to brake, the red brake lights flashes for a few seconds before Hondo tells you to brake. If you hit the button before Hondo tells you, you won’t crash into the cargo ship. But you have to be paying attention.