While fans patiently wait for the next Star Wars movie to make its way to theaters (whatever story it might decide to tell), Disney’s Imagineers have been hard at work on an experience that will allow Star Wars enthusiasts to step into their own Star Wars story and live out a unique adventure. Star Wars: Galactic Cruiser will be an immersive hotel experience that takes place over two nights, then extends into the existing Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge portion of the Hollywood Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida. And a new video released by Disney Parks explains just how far these storytellers went to link their work to Star Wars canon.
People might not realize that the plans for Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser have been in the works for the past five years. And while Disney Parks pulled the curtain back on Galaxy’s Edge, the Disney Imagineers still were working on ways to have the vacation experience of the luxury resort tie into the existing Star Wars movies and TV shows. When explaining the creative process, and establishing links to existing canon, Imagineer Scott Trowbridge explained:
The stories that are going to take place on our Galactic Starcruiser were designed to intersect with the stories of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge when both were in development at the same time. There’s a lot of overlap, intentionally, because as we all know, we were working on them and developing them basically simultaneously. Those stories thread together. And it’s not just that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser and Galaxy’s Edge thread together. They also thread together with the rest of Star Wars’ storytelling.
According to this team, they spent years collaborating closely with LucasFilm to make sure that new characters guests will meet on the Galactic Starcruiser, as well as the ship itself, factor into the larger Star Wars canon that audiences have embraced over the years. They don’t want the immersive experience of the Galactic Starcruiser, or the subsequent stay at Galaxy’s Edge, to feel separate from Star Wars, but to really build off of the narratives we’ve already seen in the existing universe.
Ann Morrow Johnson, Executive Producer and Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering, added:
It allows us to generate this completely new storyline that is specifically so that our guests can live out their stories within this piece of canon. But it really does touch and connect to movies, TV shows, the land, and it all interweaves within the history of the planets we know and love. It allows us the room to have the kind of granular detail that makes Star Wars feel so true, but also connect to those larger pieces that we’ve known and seen in so many other mediums.
The Star Wars: Galactice Starcruiser is a physical ship that’s currently being built between Epcot and Hollywood Studios in the Orlando-based Walt Disney World theme parks. It will have its own portal that guests go through, and the minute they enter, they embark on their “journey” and step into the world of Star Wars. The ship will look like this.
But it won’t open until 2022. We wonder how difficult it will be to secure passage on the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser once reservations open up. But from the sound of the planning, no matter how long it takes, it will be worth the wait.
