For Star Wars fans, two things have always been true. It’s a world we all dream of visiting but will never actually be able to. Star Wars is a movie, of course. Fiction. The sets and places only exist in far off studios for a few months at a time, or as ones and zeroes on the servers of visual effects companies. None of it exists. It isn’t real. That is, until now.

Last week, io9 was among a select group of press to visit Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The largest land expansion in Disney history is still months away from opening (summer 2019 in Anaheim and fall 2019 in Orlando is all the company is officially saying for the moment) and is still an active construction site, with upwards of 1,000 people working on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week at its peak. Everything is muddy. There’s scaffolding everywhere. You have to avoid large pipes and walk on thin two by fours across huge holes. This is not remotely close to what fans will experience when the doors open later this year and yet, it’s already one of the most exhilarating places I’ve ever been.

You get to actually stand next to the Millennium Falcon, for crying out loud!

One of the centerpieces of Galaxy’s Edge is a full size, 1:1 scale Millennium Falcon. It’s over 100 feet long, probably 25 feet high and is covered with all the little tubes and pipes you see in the films. Everything. There it is. Right in front of you. The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy is real and words simply can’t do justice to describe what it’s like to stand beneath it, especially for a massive Star Wars fan like myself. It’s as if your wildest fantasies have finally been brought to life.