We learned how Disney’s Star Wars Hotel fits into canon

Disney World Resorts’ Star Wars hotel experience, called Galactic Starcruiser, officially opened its doors on March 1st. Guests are booked for a two-night stay, during which they take part in a novel live theater performance, where they can choose to support either the First Order or the Resistance. According to Lucasfilm, this story is canon itself – an interim part of the Sequel trilogy – and the entire Star Wars storyline.

Like Disneyland’s Star Wars area, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Galactic Starcruiser has its own story beats that repeat Groundhog Day-Style each time a new group of guests comes on board. According to Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin, Senior Creative Executive for Franchise Story and Content, this has allowed his team to fill in several gaps in the larger timeline — and even expand it into new areas like novels.

Most of this lore relates to events taking place on the planet Batuu, the setting of Galaxy’s Edge. This makes the Starcruiser a key that unlocks even more narrative content in the theme park.

“Because we were working on Galaxy’s Edge and Starcruiser around the same time,” Martins told Polygon, “we were able to plant storylines in Galaxy’s Edge that could pay off [on the Starcruiser]. So as a passenger, you take your transportation to go to Batuu and even if you’ve been to Batuu before, a lot of things are really recontextualized.”

[Ed. note: What follows will spoil key narrative events that take place at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.]

For example, one of the highlights of a trip to Batuu is meeting Chewbacca, who roams the park, interacting with guests and generally keeping a low profile. In canon fiction, he is there to meet up with Vi Moradi, Princess Leia Organa’s top spy who is working to find a new base of operations for the Resistance. As it turns out, Chewbacca’s primary reason for being on Batuu is because the guests aboard the Starcruiser — with the help of its captain, Riyola Keevan — answer a distress call and rescue him from an escape pod.

Photo: Matt Stroshane / Disney Parks

Some of the props and set piece rides in Galaxy’s Edge are also given additional context. Recall that the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride, where guests can take the helm of Han Solo’s Pride and Joy, asks you to steal some powerful coaxium fuel from the First Order. At least some of that fuel makes its way back aboard the Starcruiser to Gaya, the Twi’lek entertainer who is holding court there. The TIE Echelon parked in the First Order area of ​​Galaxy’s Edge also makes a cameo appearance during the Starcruiser’s storyline. Guests will help command the ship, which contains miniaturized hyperspace tracking technology as featured in The Last Jediand help smuggle it to Resistance agents.

Photo: James Bareham/Polygon

Galactic Starcruiser also includes a continuous line directly connecting two of the sequel films.

When Luke Skywalker burns down the Jedi tree at the end the last jedi, he believes he is destroying all that remains of the written history of the Jedi Order. But in the final moments of this film, we see that Rey smuggled at least some of this footage aboard the Falcon. One part of that collection was missing, however: Yoda’s own holocron, a high-tech archive of his teachings. This object somehow makes it aboard the Starcruiser, where guests open it with Rey’s help and eventually smuggle it off the ship into the Resistance’s waiting hands.

But Disney and Lucasfilm didn’t stop there. They made the ship themselves, the Halcyon, 275 years old. That means it stretches all the way back to the High Republic and places it squarely at the center of Lucasfilm’s latest narrative foray. The ship itself is a bridge of sorts, connecting the story of Star Wars to the past through novels, comics and more. Guests can learn more about this story by questioning a droid named D3-09. She appears on screen as an Alexa-like artificial intelligence embedded in each booth.

Photo Credit: Charlie Hall/Polygon

“She was there all the time,” Martins said. “In order to [the Halcyon] has a storied past and we had to be on the side of history to develop that past. And because it’s Star Wars, we actually have a medium to tell some of those stories too. So we were able to get it into books and comics and do it a whole comic series about the Halcyonwhich is just a nice by-product of working on Star Wars.”

Finally, last month it was announced that Halcyon also has a role in merging the original trilogy with the sequel trilogy. Star Wars: The Princess and the Villaina new novel by Beth Revis, tells the story of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa’s honeymoon aboard the ship.

“Facing their most desperate hour,” reads the official description from Penguin Random House, “the soldiers of the Empire have spread across the galaxy, retreating to isolated worlds vulnerable to their influence. As Halcyon travels from world to world, one thing becomes abundantly clear: the war is not over yet. But as danger draws nearer, Han and Leia find that their best battles are not fought alone, but as husband and wife.”

Star Wars: The Princess and the Villain is available for pre-order and will be released on August 16th. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is bookable now, with trips starting at around $5,000 for a family of four. You can read more in our review.