Walk time is the conclusion of a theme park shift, when you get your stuff and head home for the day. At Theme Park Insider, "Walk Time" is our wrap-up column reviewing the past week's top theme park news.
Many theme parks offer attractions themed to movies. But every once in a while, the script flips and a production will choose to film at a theme park. This week saw Christmas movies in production at the Walt Disney World Resort and at Silver Dollar City.
Disney is hosting the production of Hallmark Channel's "Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True." Filming started last month then broke for the holidays, but fans have been posting photos of stars Lacey Chabert, Richard Kind and Christy Carlson Romano in the parks, where some holiday decorations have remained up for the production.
In Missouri, Silver Dollar City is hosting the filming of Great American Family's "An Ozark Mountain Christmas." If you're not aware of it, there has been beef between Hallmark Channel and Great American Family and some of their stars and fans, which some third network really needs to make into a slapstick Hillbillywood comedy someday.
Back here at Theme Park Insider, the story of the week seems to have been Disneyland's announcement that it would be bringing all the leading original trilogy Star Wars characters to its Star Wars Galaxy's Edge land, full time, starting in April. [Darth Vader is coming to Disney's Star Wars Galaxy's Edge.]
That decision effectively walks back Disney's original design choice to set the Galaxy's Edge land in the middle of the sequel trilogy timeline. But Disneyland does not appear to be planning to turn Galaxy's Edge into an Avengers Campus-style temporal mismash. The OG characters will hang out in the current First Order area, with the sequel characters in the Resistance camp, and The Mandalorian and other in-between characters in the marketplace between them.
This week I drove down to Carlsbad for Legoland California's first media construction tour of its upcoming Lego Galaxy land. That is taking over about half of what used to be Fun Town, with a new indoor roller coaster and flat ride, plus a rethemed flat and restaurants. But, for me, the highlight was Legoland's new animatronic character in the preshow for the Galaticoaster indoor family launch coaster. See Check out Legoland's first animatronic, inside Galacticoaster for the story, or just watch the video.
This week also brought more details about the return of Universal Studios Hollywood's spring-time hard-ticket event, Universal Fan Fest Nights. See Scooby-Doo takes over the Universal backlot for Fan Fest Nights if you missed those details about the Scooby Doo and Universal Monsters mash-up, as well as the new One Piece stunt show and Harry Potter Forbidden Forest experience.
Finally, over on the Discussion Board, we are debating Are there any good theme park restaurants anymore?
As always, thank you for reading Theme Park Insider.
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