In the last two months, I had the incredible opportunityto visit Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studiosfor not one buttwoStar Wars-themed adventures. In November, I was among the first to check out the newly updated attraction,“Star Tours”, which incorporated new characters, vehicles, planets, and creatures fromStar Wars: The Last Jedi. This month, I was welcomed back in order to experience the park’s epic"Star Wars: Galactic Nights"event while also getting an inside scoop on the details for the upcoming attraction, a massive expansion of Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios known as “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.” While the overall experience was aoncetwice-in-a-lifetime ride, what’sreallyexciting is what the park has planned for guests attending the Galaxy’s Edge attraction.
If you’re aStar Warsfan, either stretching all the way back to 1977 or just fromRian Johnson’s most recent installment, there’s a good chance you’ve envisioned yourself piloting a starship or engaging in a lightsaber battle. Whatever the fantasy, “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” is designed to drop you into an immersive, other-worldly adventure where (family-friendly and perfectly safe) action and intrigue await around every alien corner. The attraction will transport guests to Batuu, a remote trading outpost on, you guessed it, the edge of the galaxy. Once there, you’ll be able to take on missions that will determine the fate of the battle between the First Order and the Resistance, explore the vast and varied merchant market stalls in a grand bazaar, and/or just kick back and enjoy a wide selection of alien drinks and space meats.
The Imagineering team and Lucasfilm have really pulled out all the stops in making Batuu and “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” not just an authentic and “lived-in” place with a built-in sense of history, but an immersive environment that aims to let longtime fans live out their ownStar Warsstory. Here’s everything we know about it so far:
‘Inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge’ Presentation
(While I had video of the presentation, technical difficulties prevented me from sharing it with you; my apologies! Please enjoy this flyby through the park’s model that was released earlier this year.)
Introduced by the legendaryWarwick Davis, and led byStar WarsactorDavid Collins, this 45-minute panel featured the collaborative team ofScott Trowbridge, Portfolio Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering;Robin Reardon, Executive Creative Producer at Walt Disney Imagineering;Chris Beatty, Executive Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering andDoug Chiang, VP/Creative Director at Lucasfilm.
It also featured a bunch of new images, first-looks, and exclusive reveals that I’ll be sharing with you below. Some of the following information came directly from the even, while other bits of news have been revealed and confirmed via the excellentDisney Parksblogs. Read on for everything we know so far!
Attractions
You’ll get to do more than take a one-and-done mission on the Falcon, as the panelists discussed:
The Design of Batuu
As for Batuu itself, Scott said, “Much like [Star Wars] locations reflect personalities of characters, Batuu is rich with discovery and hidden alleyways to explore and surprises and new adventures around every corner. That’s the Star Wars where we want to live. We want to provide an opportunity for all of you to be in the story.”
Chris spoke at length about the design influences and details guests will find on Batuu:
“Designing a planet is a lot like designing a character. So we sat down and started looking at where we wanted to take our guests. There has to be a place that was familiar and still felt like Star Wars … We went back and looked at the work of Ralph McQuarrie, which I would say is the Star Wars DNA. There’s so much of his artwork we still respect.
“[This place] is an outpost on the edge of the galaxy, an old trading post with its own history. But to create history … we take pride in the details, we do our research. For Batuu, we wanted it to be romantic, to have this exotic nature to it, mysterious, a little bit of danger. (It’ll be safe, I promise.) But there’s a sense of danger and a comedy aspect, and a lot of fun. We want to base Star Wars in reality. We started looking at Morocco … and these ancient ports of trade. What we found were these amazing marketplaces where every time you turned a corner there were these sights and sounds and smells that just brought this place to life.
“If this is Morocco, what’s Batuu? If I turn the corner, what do I hear? Do I hear droids arguing in the corner over something, or music coming from an apartment overhead, or can I go up to a weird cart in the marketplace and get some strange space-meat sandwich? What am I walking on, are they cobblestones? Will I look down in the dirt and see droid tracks? It’s all about story, and when it’s about story, it’s about life.”
His passion for designing an immersive experience was plain to see, but he still had this to say: “I can’t wait for you, as guests, to take these little dogleg turns as you wander through the streets and [experience] these reveals we have for you guys.”
Chris talked about this particular shop, just one in a huge marketplace full of individual stories:
“How do we bring this sense of artistry to our planet? You can see the influence of Morocco and Istanbul, based on the grand bazaar and walking into this grand space. But we compress that space and bring it down, make it a bit more human and accessible to you. Here, you’ll have all these little stalls that all have their own backstory. We may never share those backstories with you, but we know those backstories. It helps the design team craft each one of their individual stories.
“One story we will share is that one shop owner is a Toydarian, and they make toys. The beauty of the shop really is that artistry, authenticity. The things that we want you to buy as fans … you want something unique, something different, something that feels like it came from this planet. So we’ve been working really hard with our merchandise partners to develop toys like an ATAT walker that looks like it’s crafted by an artisan who’s hammering each little piece of metal out and setting rivets by hand. A lot of these toys are inspired by things that we’ve seen inRogue OneandThe Force Awakens, which Doug worked on."
*Apologies for the low-quality screengrab, but these are some very cool-looking, hand-crafted artisanal toys.
And here’s a little bonus trivia for you:
What do you think? Are you ready to book passage to Batuu? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
