It’s been a hotly debated topic in fan circles of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – roaming droids. When the land was first announced, Disney promised rooftop battles, roaming droids, and interactivity the likes of which we’ve never seen before in a theme park land. What opened to the public was decidedly not that.
What we did get, however, wasn’t some third-rate theme park land either. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge has debuted to rave reviews from the general public, nearly impossible to secure boarding groups for the crowning achievement of this generations Imagineers in the Rise of the Resistance ride, and daily interactions with Star Wars characters that this generation of younglings identifies with as their Star Wars.
That said, the idea of rooftop battles and roaming droids hasn’t been completely shelved. Imagineers from the top down have consistently said that the land has room for growth as Star Wars stories continue to be told. While we still have yet to see the fully autonomous droid that Imagineering has been working on, we do have perhaps the most famous droid in the galaxy now on the streets of Batuu in Disneyland.
It looks like the R2-D2 droid that was previously located in the Droid Depot (and fetching a price tag of $25,000) has been repurposed as a walk around character in the land.
Again, this isn’t a rollout of the autonomous droid tech that we’ve seen in testing for years, but it’s always fun to see a familiar face in the Outer Rim planet of Batuu. There are no currently known plans to bring R2-D2 to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Ecstatic to see R2-D2 finally roaming free in Galaxy’s Edge, Hopefully this is the start of seeing more characters come to the land. Next can we get the Hondo Ohnaka that we saw at media event opening at WDWs GE, or Harkos the Bounty Hunter in the Cantina that was teased before the land open?