At last! After nearly a year in waiting, Droid Factory has finally launched at Star Traders in Disneyland Anaheim! MouseWait has the photo confirmation and big thanks to Yakface.com for the heads up!

Thanks to a tip from our pal and friend to all collectors Chuck, we now know that Downtown Disney's Once Upon a Toy Hasbro store now has the Droid Factory set up.  This means you don't have to pay to get into Disney Hollywood Studios, as Once Upon a Toy has no admission fee.  From the pictures it looks like it's a much better set-up filled with bins on four sides (rather than just one) and best of all, you won't have to shell out $100 to get into the theme park to waste 2 hours of high-quality ride time to attempt to collect them all.

LucasArts was best known to fans as what confused people thought was the true name of the company Lucasfilm, but in reality it was the entertainment software branch of George Lucas' media empire.  For much of its early life it was known as Lucasfilm Games, which spawned numerous memorable computer games like The Curse of Monkey Island, TIE Fighter, Maniac Mansion, and more recently Grim Fandango.  Today, we learned that Disney will be shuttering the developer, instead licensing out its characters to other developers.  The fate for Star Wars 1313 is not completely known although some reports have indicated it was far enough along to finish while others say it will be axed.

With recent news and all, this year's Star Wars Weekends at Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida (May 17 to June 9) is a little more special and relevant and may offer hints of the franchise's future, which we hope expands beyond the cutesy collectible and pins with the obligatory mouse ears. 

Hasbro announces two new Star Tours exclusive multi-packs that will be available beginning in May 2013 at Walt Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando (to debut for Star Wars Weekends) and at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim soon thereafter.

In an announcement that is so stunning and game changing in its scope that we had to check the date to make sure that it wasn't April 1st, Walt Disney Company has entered into an agreement to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd. from George Lucas as we enter into Kathleen Kennedy's stewardship of the most beloved space fantasy franchise in history.

The Disney booth was ripe with activity as Celebrationers clamored for their Star Wars meets Mouse themed exclusives. Their Holographic Leia Vinylmation that was limited to 2,500 pieces sold out by Saturday.

Depending on where you sit as a fan, the merchandising at Star Tours is either the best thing ever or something giving you a little toy anxiety.  (Hi, Ron!)   This year at Celebration VI, Disney previewed Droid Factory, new Star Wars Muppets, Vinylmation, and-- get ready for this-- Star Wars Disney-Pixar Cars.  Yes.  Darth Mater.

The D-Tech Me Carbon Freeze Me figures are starting to arrive for those fortunate enough to travel to Disney Star Wars Weekends in Orlando, Florida the past few weeks. Galactic reader Frank sends in his photos which include front and back scans of the package along with a short report.

It's called a good problem for Disney but less than ideal for vacationing collectors. Dan Curto is at Disney Star Wars Weekends and reported some changes with the Droid Factory packaging and availability of parts.

The biggest chatter of the year comes from Florida, where Droid Factory is being deployed at Disney Hollywood Studios. You can build your own Astromech Droid, but what does the whole set-up look like? Our pal Chuck sent us some awesome images over teh Twitter, and you can click through to see them (and follow him) after the break.

First up, one of our pals on Twitter tweeted us last night that the Star Tours Astromech Droids would run about $12.95 each, or 2 for $18.95.  This article shows more pictures of retooled heads and other changes, and the claim that only the R6, R8, and R9 heads are exclusive is something of a half-truth-- remember, the R5 droids appear to have no antennas this time around, plus all the droids have holes in their head.

About 20 domes, 10 bodies, and a whole mess of droids were posted to the Star Tours Facebook page.  To date this is the clearest shot of the robots, which gives us a look at the various Mickey Mouse ears, confirmation that Goofy's hat does indeed sport ears, and, of course, this isn't everything.  Other hats, like a very Jack Sparrow-looking pirate hat, were shown in previous preview images so it's a pretty safe bet what you're seeing here isn't the entire line.

StarWars.com updates with more information and images of the Carbon-Freeze Me Experience which officially opens on May 18th for the launch of Star Wars Weekends.

This summer's Star Wars Weekends is shaping up to be quite the event with the launching of Droid Factory and now news from "Eyes and Ears", the Disney employee newsletter, that you can have your own 8 inch Carbonite figure of yourself!