When Star Wars opens in Anaheim in June and in Florida later in the year, that’s adding capacity.

It’s late afternoon, and the sky is turning pink behind Black Spire Outpost, where workers prepare to weld seams on a docked starship, the Millennium Falcon. A 40-ton crane hoists a radar dish onto a control tower, both weathered just so to make this haven for traders and rogues seem as timeless as the crags and petrified tree forms that surround it.

This is Batuu, the most distant planet in the Star Wars universe, and the most ambitious land ever built in a Walt Disney park. The expansion, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, opens here in Disneyland next summer, followed in late fall by a twin in Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Barron’s recently toured the Disneyland site, a first for the press this far into construction.

The Star Wars lands are part of a five-year investment surge topping $20 billion that will multiply the number of lands and rides—“attractions,” Disney calls them—based on hit entertainment franchises like Avengers, Frozen, Toy Story, and yes, even Mickey Mouse, who turned 90 in November. The cruise-ship fleet will soon grow to seven from four.

Back on planet Batuu, Chris Beatty—an “imagineer,” or creative director—is talking about a store for assembling droids; a nearby pod-racing engine that will roast space meat, which company chefs, he assures Barron’s, are working to make tasty and appealing; and the attractions. The land is designed to appeal to visitors no matter their familiarity with the films. As a boy, Beatty would ride Pirates of the Caribbean and wish he could get off at each scene to explore, then get back on. In Black Spire, there are two headliner attractions, but the visitor, in a way, is the ride.

For example, consider Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. Guests will take control of the ship and see the results of their decisions—like hitting a spire while taking off—in real time. The experience is different on each flight. Long after the flight, a guest who stops over at Oga’s Cantina for a Fuzzy Tauntaun may hear the bartender say something like, “The boss isn’t happy about how you brought the ship back.”

That experience—one that travels with visitors and builds their stories—will be something that guests can opt in to or out of. For those who opt in, droids owned by members of the same party might communicate with one another.

“Walt loved technology, but tech isn’t the star,” Beatty says. “It supports the story.”

Attention to details helps the storytelling. A stray hole in a market wall, say, has a back story involving a gunfight in a movie, episode, or book—or will soon. Merchandise in the shops won’t necessarily look like items available elsewhere. Disney’s creative team has gone to Lucasfilm for early concept art to turn familiar characters into artisan toys.

“For fans, it’s something they don’t have,” Beatty says.

The new Star Wars lands, which cover 14 acres in each park, promise to bolster returns. In Disneyland, those acres were formerly used in part as a farm for horses that pull trolleys down Main Street. The horses will now stretch their legs in nearby Norco.

Today, a Disneyland visitor in, say, Frontierland, finds a dead end and must backtrack to visit Fantasyland. The new Star Wars land will have entrances from both, creating a circuitous route and improving the flow of guests.