Los Angeles Times

Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge gamifies the theme park as it emphasizes play

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

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