We learned how Disney’s Star Wars hotel fits into the canon

Disney World Resorts’ Star Wars hotel experience, called Galactic Starcruiser, officially opened its doors on March 1. Two-night stays are available for guests. They can choose whether to support the Resistance or the First Order. According to Lucasfilm, that story itself is canon — an interstitial part of the sequel trilogy — and the overall Star Wars storyline.

Like Disneyland’s Star Wars area, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Galactic Starcruiser has its own story beats, ones that repeat Groundhog DayEach new group of guests arrives with a different style. According to Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin, senior creative executive for franchise story and content, that has allowed his team to fill in several gaps in the larger timeline — and even extend it into new areas, like novels.

The majority of that lore applies to events that take place on the planet Batuu, the setting for Galaxy’s Edge. This makes Starcruiser an important key to unlocking more content in the park.

“Since we were working on Galaxy’s Edge and Starcruiser around the same time,” Martins told Polygon, “we were able to plant story threads in Galaxy’s Edge that can pay off [on the Starcruiser]. So as a passenger, you will take your transport to go to Batuu, and even if you’ve been to Batuu before, it really recontextualizes a lot of the things.”

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

Chewbacca is a popular attraction on a Batuu visit. He interacts with park visitors, and keeps a low profile. In the canonical fiction, he’s there to meet with Vi Moradi, princess Leia Organa’s top spy, who’s working on finding a new base of operations for the Resistance. As it turns out, the reason Chewbacca is on Batuu in the first place is because the guests on board the Starcruiser — with the help of its captain, Riyola Keevan — answer a distress call and rescue him from inside an escape pod.

Photo: Matt Stroshane/Disney Parks

Some of the props and setpiece rides at Galaxy’s Edge get additional context as well. Recall that the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride, which lets guests take the helm of Han Solo’s pride and joy, asks you to steal some potent coaxium fuel from the First Order. At least some of that fuel makes its way back on board the Starcruiser to Gaya, the Twi’lek entertainer holding court there. The TIE Echelon parked in the First Order area of Galaxy’s Edge also makes a cameo during the Starcruiser’s storyline. Guest will be able to command the ship which has miniaturized hyperspace track technology. This type of technology is also featured in The Last JediYou can help to smuggle it into the hands of Resistance agents.

Photo: James Bareham/Polygon

Galactic Starcruiser has a throughline which directly links two sequel films.

The Jedi tree is taken down by Luke Skywalker at the end The Last Jedi he thinks he’s destroying all that remains of the written history of the Jedi order. We see Rey sneaking at least some of that material onto the Falcon in the closing moments. One piece of that collection was missing, however: Yoda’s own holocron, a high-tech archive of his teachings. That object somehow makes it on board the Starcruiser, where guests will open it with Rey’s help, then eventually smuggle it off the ship and into the waiting hands of the Resistance.

But Disney and Lucasfilm didn’t stop there. It took 275 years to build the Halcyon ship. That means it dates all the way back to the High Republic, placing it squarely in the middle of Lucasfilm’s latest narrative push. The ship itself is a kind of bridge, connecting Star Wars’ history back in time through novels, comics, and more. A droid named “D3-09” can be interrogated by guests and they will learn all about this history. The screen shows her as an Alexa-like artificial Intelligence embedded in each stateroom.

Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon

“She’s been there this whole time,” Martins said. “So [the Halcyon]It has a long and rich history, so we had to work on the storytelling side. And because it’s Star Wars, we actually have a medium to tell some of those stories as well. So we were able to get it into books and comics and do an entire comic series based around the Halcyon, which is just a nice byproduct of working on Star Wars.”

Last month, the Halcyon was also announced as a link between the original trilogy and the second trilogy. Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel, a new novel by Beth Revis, will tell the story of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa’s honeymoon on board the ship.

“Facing their most desperate hour,” reads the official description at Penguin Random House, “the soldiers of the Empire have dispersed across the galaxy, retrenching on isolated worlds vulnerable to their influence. Like the Halcyon One thing is clear as one goes from place to place: the war isn’t over. But as danger draws closer, Han and Leia find that they fight their best battles not alone but as husband and wife.”

Star Wars: The Princess and the ScoundrelAvailable for Pre-Order and Published on August 16th Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser has trips available for booking starting at $5,000 per family. Read our full review.