Remembering Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple

The most competitive line at Disney’s Hollywood Studios once had nothing to do with a ride. It formed before the park gates opened, pointed at a sign-up kiosk near the Indiana Jones theater, and the prize was a slip of paper with a child’s name and a showtime on it.

That was Jedi Training. Its last performances ran on March 15, 2020, the day the parks closed, and it never came back. Disney has never formally announced a retirement, but the show’s webpage went offline in 2022 and crews quietly removed the stage signage that summer, which says everything an announcement would. It deserves a proper look back, because for over a decade it was quietly one of the best things Disney did for kids.

What it actually was

Jedi Training was a roughly 20 minute outdoor stage show where the cast was your kid. Children ages 4 to 12 signed up in the morning, came back at their assigned time, got a brown Jedi robe and a training lightsaber, and ran through drills with a Jedi Master character on a stage tucked in near Star Tours. Then the floor opened, smoke poured out, and Darth Vader rose up to duel each padawan one at a time.

The show started as a Star Wars Weekends exclusive in the early 2000s, became a daily fixture at Hollywood Studios in October 2007 as Jedi Training Academy, then got a full refresh in December 2015 as Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple, which added the Seventh Sister Inquisitor from the Star Wars Rebels series as a second villain (Kylo Ren took over her spot in 2017). Disneyland ran its own version on the Tomorrowland Terrace stage, so this was a coast to coast institution, not a one-park oddity.

The whole thing was free with park admission. Hold that thought, because it matters later.

The sign-up scramble

Every trip report from the era tells the same story, and it is the part worth remembering honestly: getting a spot was a job.

There was no FastPass+ for it and no advance booking of any kind. Sign-up was in person, morning only, first come first served, and your child had to be physically standing there (cast members checked, both for age and because adults absolutely tried to talk their way in). Slots for the entire day were routinely gone within an hour of park opening. The standard advice was to arrive 30 to 60 minutes before the posted opening time, and parents who showed up at rope drop expecting to stroll over often found hundreds of people already snaked backward through the Indiana Jones queue.

Then you guarded that paper ticket like a passport. No ticket at your return time, no show, no exceptions.

I have mixed feelings about this design. On one hand, the scarcity was real and the 7 a.m. wake-up call was a genuine tax on families. On the other, it was a fair tax. No surcharge, no app, no upsell tier. You paid in effort, which is the one currency every family has the same amount of. There is not much at Disney World in 2026 you can say that about.

Why kids never forgot it

Disney has built plenty of shows about Star Wars. This was the only one where a six year old was the protagonist. The trip reports and home videos that survive all hit the same beats: the too-big robe, the shaky lightsaber grip during the drills, and then the moment the kid realizes Vader is looking at them specifically. Some kids froze. Some swung like they meant it. A few burst into tears and got gently redirected by a cast member, and honestly the recovery moments are some of the sweetest footage parents captured.

A Disney photographer covered the show, and the shots counted toward Memory Maker, which made this one of the better photo values in the park. If you like thinking about how to shoot moments like that, the approach in this guide to capturing photos and videos that last applies to any stage show where your kid is the subject.

What replaced it (and what didn’t)

Officially, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is the answer. The land opened at Hollywood Studios in August 2019, and it is genuinely impressive. But the kid-as-Jedi experience it offers is Savi’s Workshop, where building a lightsaber runs $274.99 before tax as of mid-2026. That is the trade in plain terms: a free show where your child dueled Darth Vader became a reservation where you buy a very nice prop.

Nothing in the current lineup fills the exact hole. There is no scheduled experience at Walt Disney World today where a child performs in a Star Wars story rather than watching one. If you keep a mental list of retired experiences that punched above their weight, this one belongs near the top, right alongside the entries in this rundown of beloved closed attractions.

The monorail never went to Hollywood Studios, so the pilgrimage was always by bus, boat, or later the Skyliner. Somehow that fits. The best thing in the park for kids was never on the way to anything. You had to want it, you had to get up early, and the families who did got a story their kids still tell.