We were all shocked to discover when Darth Vader revealed himself to be Luke Skywalker’s father. But we experienced perhaps even more shock when news broke this week that The Walt Disney Company was acquiring Lucasfilm, George Lucas‘ 41-years-strong company. Now, Mickey Mouse will be both Vader’s and Luke’s parent, though not by blood — what an awkward “modern family” that deserves some critical examination.

Puns and jokes aside, this $4 billion purchase follows what has been a whirlwind of new ventures for Disney in just the past seven years since Bob Iger attained the role of CEO of The Walt Disney Company. 2006 marked Disney’s purchase of Pixar. 2009 signified Disney’s purchase of Marvel. And now 2012 represents news of Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. One can only imagine what the Mouse House will obtain in 2015 if this ironically-consistent pattern of buying a big entity every three years continues. These heavily-expensive, but ingenious acquisitions reflect Disney’s focus of branding and leveraging well-known and well-received properties.

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”¦”

Several Star Wars fans may have felt this way or even recalled the above quote with the announcement on October 30 that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm, and were proceeding forward with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy commencing with the release of Episode VII in 2015. Some may have even had strokes. The news was initially perceived to be a possible joke by many fans, and I’m sure many pondered whether it was actually April Fool’s Day and not Halloween.

In spite of this, the news is very real, and the new Disney Lucasfilm (is that actually a name now?) is steaming ahead with upcoming and current projects.

Following the breaking of the news, I followed the link to the Disney Investors Conference Call to listen in on the full sordid details on the acquisition. It was a bizarre experience; I felt like I was eavesdropping on the Empire in some kind of twisted livestreaming Space Watergate, but it was incredibly informative.

Since then, I’ve got many thoughts and theories and opinions on this massive purchase by Disney, and while I’m going to go through them on the latest Social Blend podcast, I wanted to put fingers to keyboard here at Geeks Of Doom.

The Star Tours attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios had its grand opening 22 years ago today on January 13, 1990.

Disney Parks Blog posted a photo from taken in 1989 of the 35-foot AT-AT at the entrance of the Star Wars-themed attraction, which was still under construction at the time (check out the image here above).

Star Wars creator George Lucas visited Disneyland Park in California today, giving a thumbs up on the progress being made on the theme park’s newly revised Star Tours attraction.

The picture above is of Lucas posing with the audio-animatronics figure of C-3PO in the motion-simulated ride’s Starspeeder 1000 cockpit. Lucas, along with Star Wars producer Rick McCallum, took some test runs on the ride aboard the Starspeeder, which will now “travel” to several Star Wars worlds.

Disney has announced that Star Tours is coming back, and that the newly updated attraction will reopen May 20, 2011, at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in at the Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida. Star Tours is a motion simulator attraction based on the Star Wars universe created by George Lucas. It was first launched at Disneyland in 1987 as a creative collaboration between Disney Imagineers and George Lucas with Industrial Light and Magic.

The new version, retitled Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, will be based on a story set between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Anthony Daniels, James Earl Jones, and Peter Mayhew reprise their roles as C-3PO, Darth Vader, and Chewbacca, respectively, for the attraction.