Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run, situated within the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge sections of both Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios, offers a unique experience. This ride places a group of individuals inside the cockpit of the famous Millennium Falcon, assigning each person a distinct role to fulfill during a specific mission. The progression of events during the ride, coupled with the performance of each participant, shapes their reputation, which in turn influences subsequent experiences within Galaxy's Edge beyond just the ride itself.
Before its official title was revealed at Destination D 2018, the ride was initially known as "Big Bird" during its development phase. It debuted alongside the rest of Galaxy's Edge on May 31, 2019 at Disneyland and later on August 29, 2019 at Disney's Hollywood Studios, located within Walt Disney World.
During Disney's D23 Expo on July 15, 2017, a presentation provided extra details regarding the storyline of the attraction. Artwork displayed Chewbacca alongside Hondo Ohnaka outside of the Millennium Falcon, revealing that an agreement between them would necessitate a crew for one of Ohnaka's endeavors. On December 13, 2017, the Disney Parks Twitter account shared a picture showing the interior of a section of the ride. As with all the happenings depicted at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the timeline of the ride falls between the events of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
On March 28, 2018, it was announced that instead of utilizing a pre-rendered film, the Millennium Falcon ride's visual experience was being crafted by Lucasfilm's immersive entertainment division, ILMxLAB, as a dynamically rendered environment in collaboration with NVIDIA and Epic Games. The "ride film" is built using the Unreal Engine and is powered by a set of eight NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, along with five QuadroSync projectors to deliver extremely high-resolution visuals.
Voice actor Jim Cummings returns to voice Hondo Ohnaka, a character he previously portrayed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, for this attraction. Ohnaka is featured as an Audio-Animatronic figure during the ride's pre-show, and also appears as a live-action character on video displays throughout the ride itself.
The ride was adapted into an episode of the Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures series of animated shorts, which debuted on August 27, 2020.
During D23 in August 2024, Dave Filoni revealed plans for a new update that will incorporate Din Djarin and Din Grogu into the attraction in 2026, coinciding with the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu film.