Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run Now Connects to Fortnite

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Your smuggling run doesn’t have to end when you step off the ride. Disney announced at D23 that Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run now links directly to a new Fortnite island called Smugglers Gambit.

The Millennium Falcon Fortnite connection launches Sunday, August 16, 2026 at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, with no added cost beyond park admission.

Here’s how it works.

Quick Summary

• Smugglers Gambit is a new Fortnite island built in-house by Disney Games and Digital Entertainment
• Set on the planet Ord Ryla around Mersa Veta Station
• Crates collected on the ride unlock rewards that carry into Fortnite
• You can start in either the ride or the game
• Launches August 16, 2026 at park opening at both resorts
• Requires linking MyDisney and Epic Games accounts to claim rewards

What Smugglers Gambit Is

Set on the planet Ord Ryla around Mersa Veta Station, Smugglers Gambit is a Fortnite island built in-house by Disney Games and Digital Entertainment.

It drops you into the same kind of high-risk cargo work Hondo runs on Batuu, just in a new corner of the Star Wars galaxy.

You can start the story in either place:

• Ride Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and carry your mission into Fortnite
• Start in Smugglers Gambit on Fortnite and pick up the story on your next ride

During the ride, you help Hondo collect crates. Those crates unlock rewards that carry over into Fortnite, so your progress doesn’t reset when you leave the queue.

In Fortnite, you team up with friends for co-op missions, fight off pirates and Imperial remnants, deal with dangerous wildlife, pick up new gear, and build a reputation across the Outer Rim.

Why This Is More Interesting Than It Sounds

Theme park tie-ins to games are usually cosmetic — a skin, a code, a promotional crossover with no real connection.

This one runs in both directions, and that’s the genuinely novel part.

The ride feeds the game. Crates you collect during a four-minute attraction become progress in a persistent world you play at home.

The game feeds the ride. Starting in Fortnite gives your next ride context it wouldn’t otherwise have.

That’s a real attempt at making an attraction part of something continuous rather than a self-contained experience. Smugglers Run has always had a scoring mechanic that most riders ignore because it has no consequence. Attaching it to something that persists gives it a reason to matter.

Whether it works depends entirely on execution — specifically whether the ride-side integration is smooth enough that guests actually engage with it while also flying the Falcon badly with five strangers.

The People Behind It

Ray Gresko, SVP and Head of Product & Development for Disney Games and Digital Entertainment, and Asa Kalama, Executive of Creative & Interactive Experiences at Walt Disney Imagineering, discussed the project on the Walt Disney Imagineering Center Stage, hosted by Ashley Eckstein.

They talked through how Unreal Engine 5 supports ride customization and how Disney Games worked with Lucasfilm on the new characters, locations, and storylines.

The Unreal Engine 5 detail is worth noting — it’s the same engine underpinning Fortnite itself, which is presumably what makes assets portable between the two contexts without rebuilding everything.

When It Launches

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite launches Sunday, August 16, 2026, at park opening at:

• Disneyland Park in Anaheim
• Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World

Smugglers Gambit goes live in Fortnite the same day.

There’s no added cost with valid theme park admission.

How to Take Part

To join the mission, use the Disneyland app or My Disney Experience app while you’re in the ride queue, or accept it directly on the Smugglers Gambit island in Fortnite.

Any guest logged into either app can accept the mission.

The Account Linking Requirement

To claim your post-ride reward in Fortnite — including a Forsworn Trooper Outfit — you’ll need to link your MyDisney account with an Epic Games account, or have already linked them.

If you ride but can’t link accounts, you’ll get a code in Fortnite to redeem your reward instead.

That fallback is a sensible design choice. Requiring account linking in a ride queue with poor cell service would have been a genuine friction point, and the code path means you can sort it out later.

Fortnite is free on PC, console, and mobile. More details are at Disneydigital.com/fortnite.

Practical Notes

• Link accounts before your trip. Doing it in a queue on park wifi is asking for trouble
• The mission is free — no upcharge, no separate ticket
• It works at both resorts, so a Disneyland rider and a Hollywood Studios rider are in the same system
• Fortnite being free means there’s no barrier to trying the game side
• This is the second Smugglers Run change this year, following the Mandalorian and Grogu retheme that ran simultaneously at both parks

The Bottom Line

The Millennium Falcon Fortnite connection launches August 16, 2026, linking Smugglers Run at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios to a new Fortnite island called Smugglers Gambit, set on Ord Ryla around Mersa Veta Station.

Crates collected on the ride unlock Fortnite rewards, and you can start the story in either place. There’s no added cost with park admission.

Link your MyDisney and Epic accounts before you visit — the reward claim depends on it, and a ride queue is a bad place to sort that out.

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