When the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel opens for business in just a couple of weeks, it promises to let guests live their own Star Wars experience. The two-night experience isn’t just a hotel but it’s an attraction with a story to be told that will exist within the Star Wars universe. While the story being told will take place during the sequel era, it turns out that guests will be on board a ship that has been flying among the stars since at least the Original Trilogy, as Han and Leia took their honeymoon there.
Today Star Wars.com revealed a brand new Star Wars novel is on the way, Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel. It will follow Han Solo and Princess Leia immediately following the events of Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi. It seems that after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han and Leia got married and then boarded the Halcyon, for a relaxing honeymoon. The Halcyon is the same “ship” that guests will board when they enter the Galactic Starcruiser at Disney World.
The events that guests experience inside the Galactic Starcruiser hotel will, like the stories inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge itself, be set between the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. So it seems that the Halcyon isn’t the newest ship in the Galactic Starcruiser fleet, as it is at least a couple of decades old. Hopefully the cruise line has kept the ship looking shiny and new for the guests, considering what they’re paying for it.
Still, one of the big selling points of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was that it wasn’t just going to be a theme park land with Star Wars rides, but a place that existed within the Star Wars galaxy. To that end, we’ve seen Batuu, the planet that is the home of Galaxy’s Edge, become part of the larger galaxy. Batuu has been name dropped in a few different places and some Star Wars novels have even taken place there.
The same thing is now happening with the Galactic Starcruiser. It’s a small thing but it potentially makes the experience better to know that the place you’re supposed to be inhabiting is also where the characters you love once stood. Technically, I suppose this means that one of the hotel rooms was previously the cabin of Han and Leia. I suppose everybody can pretend their room was that room.
Of course, there will be those that would be happier with the Galactic Starcruiser if Han and Leia were actually on the ship with them, and that seems to be impossible, at least at this point. Not everybody is quite as excited about the new experience, but if it work, there will be nothing quite like the Galactic Starcruiser. From everything we know about what will be included, there’s a lot to be excited about.
