#starcrusier 2022

[annakie]

A Very Star Wars Christmas

I said I’d post about this last week when I got home, but I ended up coming down with a cold instead (not COVID, I’ve tested three times in the last six days, thankfully) and haven’t felt like doing anything.  So here’s a post the first post of at least two, maybe three, about my family Christmas with a lot of info about the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser and just some family stuff mixed in.

I haven’t seen my Brother/SIL/Niblings since 2019.  This is partially due to COVID and partially due to Patchy’s health and partially due to just... inertia.  I don’t feel great about it.

But ever since the Starcruiser thing was announced my mom really wanted to go on it.  My mom is the original Star Wars nerd in our family.  She saw it in the theater as much as she could.  She snuck out with a friend of hers to see Empire Strikes Back without us kids, and then the next day both my brother and I and the neighbor’s kids had “surprise dental appointments” wherein our dentist was watching Luke Skywalker find out that Darth Vader is his dad.  Then we went for ice cream.  It was a great day.  We had similar dentist appointments for Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars (and Star Trek, even more so) were both revered in our house by both our mom (our dad liked them but was more of a fan of like, motorcycles and working on cars) my brother and I.

My SIL also liked Star Wars, and the four niblings (Oldest boy 12, then boy/girl twins 10, then youngest boy 8) have been brought into the Star Wars fold.  Also along for the ride was my aunt (mom’s sister), so all told there were 10 in the family, all going to Star Wars for Christmas.

This was like, a thing my mom really wanted to do with the whole family as soon as it became a thing.  We definitely do not usually take crazy expensive vacations, believe me.  I wouldn’t have done this by myself because the price is eye-popping and my parents are usually pretty frugal.  This was my mom doing a bucket-list item, for herself and for all of us.  And we all loved it, a lot.

Gonna post pics, with faces blurred for privacy.

Back row: Dad, mom, aunt, me, SIL, 12yo, Brother.  Front: 10yob, 8yo, 10yog.

Mom and Dad have a very big, nice RV they live out of most of the year.  Aunt has a smaller but also nice RV she lives in most of the time (they all also have a house near-ish me they spend the rest of the time in.)  They stayed at an RV park near Disney that also rented out cottages. 

Bro, SIL and the kids actually went down to Florida from their more northern home state early December, and rented one of the cottages for most of December.  Nothing fancy, but a small living room with a couch and a chair, a dining room table that seated 4, a small but functional kitchen (no dishwasher), one bath, one full bedroom, and a loft with four beds for the kids.  It was about twenty steps from walking out of one of the RVs to the cottage so, very convenient. 

My brother worked from “home” for a couple of weeks while SIL and the parents took the kids places like Kennedy Space Center, the Children’s museum, other not-too-expensive adventures nearby, and some expensive like a couple of days at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and LegoLand.  Again, once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip. They knew that this was their Christmas present from their mom and dad, and Starcruiser was their present from Grandma. 

Grandpa bought them lightsabers (and Rey’s Jakku weapon) for Christmas at Magic Kingdom.  The plastic kind, not the build-your-own kind.

I missed most of that because I had to be at home, working.  But I flew to Orlando on the 21st. I was supposed to get there with enough time to spend time with the family that night, but the airplane that we were supposed to fly in on got grounded for mechanical troubles.  Three gate changes and almost two hours later, I flew out and everyone was asleep when my Aunt came and picked me up.  I had some credits on American Airlines and splurged and upgraded to First Class and yes, it was expensive but yes, it was very nice and roomy and the charcuterie plate for dinner was better than expected.  I wanted a once-in-a-lifetime experience, too.  And after two and a half years of not traveling (except once on the company dime), I was OK with it.

I stayed with my aunt in her RV since she likes sleeping in her nice recliner, I slept in the bedroom and was glad I brought Advil PM to actually sleep through most of the night.  The next morning I got dressed in the outfit I’d created for myself out of things I already owned: the boots, pants, and leather belt, and things I bought online: this awesome shirt, this incredible vest, some leather belt pouches and bracer, some cheap but cute goggles, and my most favorite thing: a light-up Kyber Crystal engraved with my SWFFG character’s name in Arabesh.  It all went together to create my Smuggler outfit, and overall, I thought I looked great and got a few compliments.

Here’s an awkward selfie I took before I got the necklace a few months ago.  Wrist bracer sorta over there by Fry.  :p

Anyway, I was proud of putting together halfway decent cosplay, and without the belt pouches, goggles and bracer, it’d probably be a pretty good everyday outfit anyway.  On Starcruiser you are highly encouraged to dress the part, but your part is like, just Some Person Who Lives in A Galaxy Far Far Away. So you can have yourself a name (I told people my Star Wars FFG character’s name) but you aren’t supposed to be like, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Annakin Skywalker, Rey, Finn, Poe etc etc.  You are a character, not the character.  So here I was, a legitimate businesswoman on Starcruiser to perform totally legitimate business.

My mom, aunt and dad were envoys from Coruscant.  The kids were all Jedi including my niece, who was a twilek Jedi for about the first hour until her lekku got too hot and then she basically looked like my smuggler’s assistant.  My SIL made her own dress based off Leia’s from the end of The Force Awakens and it looked great, and she made my brother’s outfit.  No, he’s totally not freshly escaped from Narkina 5, why do you ask? 

Seriously though, first of all big shoutout to my SIL because she made all the costumes for herself, my bro and the kids and they all looked great.  Also my brother’s costume killed at Starcruiser.  He had people going up and getting pictures with him, yelling “ON PROGRAM!” at him, joking about how it was nice he finally found some shoes, etc.  It wasn’t really timeline-fitting since Starcruiser happens between TLJ and TRoS but it didn’t matter.  With Andor fresh in everyone’s minds, he was a huge hit.

So, you can’t arrive to Starcruiser til 1pm on your first day, so I did get some quality hanging out time with the family beforehand.  I mostly hung out in the cottage with bro/SIL and the kids after having breakfast with my parents in their RV.  We loaded up the cars a little early and made our way towards Disney.  Good thing, too, because not only did we miss a turn thanks to bad GPS connection, but there was a serious lack of signs pointing towards where to go until you were close, and then another lack of signs of where to go after that, haha. 

Anyway, we were still one of the first five cars to get there, which worked out for us because our group was so big (a lot of the staff went “TEN!?” when they asked how big our party was) so it took a lot to get all our stuff out of the cars, to get everyone together, to get all our stuff TO us etc.

So how the security stuff works is with the MagicBand.  It’s sorta like a watch but not really.  You just put ‘em on your wrist and you can pay for stuff with them, and also they’re your room key and ID to get to places.  You also use them to complete quests on Starcruiser and in Galaxy’s Edge, the Star Wars part of Hollywood Studios, but more on that later.

We took that first pic of the post, then headed in... except my brother and I couldn’t because something was wrong with our magic bands and it took a good 20 minutes to sort out, and we still had to bring our ID around with us to the park the next day.  Basically, originally my mom booked two rooms for the ten of us then went ahead and booked one more room for a total of three, (and yes, feel free to do the math on that.  For the next-to-last time, a once-in-a-lifetime type of trip.)  But moving everyone around to new rooms really glitched something in their systems and at one point my mom had a very unhelpful rep on the phone when making reservations who she thinks screwed things up.  We ended up with two accounts and they had to get merged and.. hoooo boy it was a mess not only here, but a little while later, too.

SO ANYWAY.  Finally we get in, about 45 minutes after we arrived.  And I should say, the staff was great, they were dealing with a lot.  I did gently suggest to one guy to maybe call a supervisor (in a very “hey, man, you’re dealing with a lot, is there someone who could get you some backup?” way, not a “LET ME TALK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR!!” way) and once that happened the supervisor got it sorted and we got in.

So, basically, the second you’re inside and done dealing with security, it’s like... man... you are IN STAR WARS.  You’re THERE.

You get into a “shuttlepod” (elevator) which transports you from the surface of Coresaunt to the Halcyon Starcruiser.  And not only does it transport you, but you can “see out” two little windows at the top and your shuttlepod flies up through the clouds, briefly jumps to lightspeed(?) and then you see the Halcyon on the screen and.. you dock.  And the doors open.  And holy shit, you’re on a spaceship.

I’m sorry this is the best pic we have of the experience, my mom took this one, that’s my head there with the goggles, but that’s us leaving the planet. 

Yes, it’s a video on a TV screen but holy shit even that little elevator feels like a very Star Wars experience that you’re in a real little shuttlepod.  Except that there’s handrails, lol.

So um, you walk out of the shuttlepod to the atrium of the Halcyon.  And starting at this moment you’d better just start believing you’re on a spaceship in Star Wars because it will make your life so much easier and more magical for the next day and 20ish hours.

The Atrium is where most of the action happens.  It’s where you’re going to meet the cast of characters that the story you’re about to be a part of for the first time, at least for most of them.  It’s the nexus of most of the things you’re going to want to do and see. 

OK let me back up.

The “Ship” (and look, I’m going to say ship even though we all know it’s a hotel, on Earth) supposedly has a lot of levels but you can only go to floors 4 through 7.  Floor 4 has the dining room, the cargo bay, the “engine room”, the lightsaber training room, the “environmental simulator”, which I’ll get to later, and a few smaller spaces, and where you board the shuttlepod to Batuu (Hollywood Studios). Floor 4 might actually be ground level, I honestly do not know and wouldn’t know how to tell.

Floors five and seven I think are all guest rooms.  We were on floor seven, thankfully near the end of the hall.  The cast can get to the second level of the atrium from floor seven but not the guests.

Floor six has the atrium, the bar, the bridge, the gift shop, and some more guest rooms. 

Honestly there might be more stuff that I didn’t even see, I don’t know.  There’s a good map of it from the app here.  I’ll talk about the app later.

I think that there is at least one entire level for the cast?  Apparently in order to not break immersion, everyone lives on the ship while they’re working.  So the actors, cooks, waitstaff, bar staff etc. don’t go home at night.  They also live there.  I don’t know the exact schedule but I have to think they must have two shifts of people who rotate “voyages”. Each voyage is two days.  You arrive around 1pm on one day, have a full day there (well, a lot of it at Galaxy’s Edge) and leave the next morning by 10am.  They have two or three hours to turn it around and start all over again with the next group.  But we had the same actors, the same staff, the entire time. 

We probed a little and found out a little information but the staff has to stay in character the entire time. Our waitress was Gina, we saw her at dinner both nights and also helping out during the first lunch and the late night buffet later.  I really want to know like, are they one cruise on, one cruise off and it just rotates like that? I don’t know.  I could possibly be wrong about this but  Gina thought hard about how to phrase it and I think she was saying this for real and not giving me a cutesy Star Wars answer. BUT I COULD BE WRONG and dumb on this.

Anyway, back to it.

The atrium is a large space, and like I said, where most of the action happens and aside from the bar, the main hangout place.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out there.  It’s comfortable.  There’s usually something going on.  There’s a fancy water bar (sparkling, chilled flat or room temp flat!  Look, I love just drinking water 90% of the time so I was very happy with easy access to as many cups as I wanted of tasty, cold water) or hop into the bar for a drink. You can just sit and look out to the bridge and either observe if Bridge Training is happening or just watch the stars go by, or the ship orbiting the planet.  Whatever is happening in the story, you can look out of any “window” and that’s reflected.  Also they often had snacks at the guest services desk if you just really needed some popcorn, pretzels, candy, dried fruit... I don’t know all of what they had, I just asked the niblings what they had grabbed when they came by with stuff and grazed off them, haha.

And in the first few hours when you arrive, many of the characters are just there, hanging out, getting to know you and you getting to know them.

Let’s look at the Atrium:

You know what?  I don’t have many from when “Nothing” is happening but these two are decent. The first one is from not long after boarding, and that’s the back of Ouannii, who is a Rodian and one of the official characters.  More on her in a sec.

There’s a bunch of pretty comfortable seating and some of the seating has USB/plugs so you can recharge while relaxing.  It feels very Star-Warsy in a very clean, sleek, Corellia-y way.  In the second pic you can see the model of the Halcyon (the ship we’re on), and above that you can see some of the windows.  There was a bridge crew training happening I think when I took those so the things flying by are practice targets.

We just... hung out here for awhile before and after lunch and it was great.  But upon arrival, we were swept quickly to our rooms to put down our carryons.  Also so those not already in costume could get into costume.  I’d say by dinner the first night like 80% of everyone was in some sort of costume. And if you didn’t bring one and didn’t mind dropping some $$ there were some to buy in the store.  We were one of very few people we saw who just came in our costumes, but a lot of people probably came from the airport or other Disney resorts, whereas we came from “home”.

The rooms... were also very Star Wars.

Very cool: you have a “window” where you can continue to see what’s going on outside the ship, and one of your options is for it to keep coinciding with what’s happening in the story.  ALSO I learned that depending on which side of the ship your room was on, you got a different view!  You could also change it to a few things like a generic starcreen, or planetside views of Star Wars planets if you were feeling a little claustrophobic.  It could be “shuttered” at night, or you could leave it on if you wanted it as a nightlight.

You could pull those orange box chairs under the window out and there were tables that would pull out, as well, if you wanted a seating area.  But it was cool that it also tucked away neatly.

Bottom pic.. you can see there’s a queen sized bed and two bunks.  My niece (the twilek pictured here haha) took the top one, I took the bottom one and my aunt took the bed.  The room was VERY comfortable for three people, about a standard hotel sized room, way bigger than like, a regular cruise ship room. 

And sleeping in the bunk felt VERY Star Wars.  My only complaint was that that white rolled-up thing?  It’s basically a sleeping bag, NOT a blanket.  My aunt kept the room warm but I still wanted a blanket in the middle of the night and couldn’t figure out how to unroll it for awhile in the dark, and ended up just half-draping it over myself lol.  But for the kids?  Very cool.  The bed was comfortable enough, though I missed my memory foam at home.

I don’t have a pic of the bathrooms but they were spacious and separated out so the toilet had its own space, as did the sink. The shower was a walk-in with a rainforest showerhead placed on the ceiling and falling right down.  Not great for those of us who didn’t want to wash our hair, but whatevs.  It was neat.

Also appreciated was that they had a big bottle of water in the room to share so I didn’t have to run down to the back of the atrium for cold water.

A weird but maybe cool(?) feature was that every room had like a “safe room” so that you could hide in case of an emergency?  And then call for help so staff could help you.  I think it’s so any elderly passengers didn’t have to wait in an unsafe place, and apparently each one had its own ventilation system and stuff?  I don’t know how it works, just that it exists.  Not like we had to use it.  Yes, there were exit signs in case of an emergency, too, but apparently you could maybe survive in there in case of a fire you couldn’t get away from.

Another awesome feature of the room, I tried taking a pic but it’s a bit hard to tell...

It’s hard to see!  But on that little screen is a video call with a droid! (D-3). She welcomes you to the room, and she can do all sorts of cool things. She talks to you and you can respond.. they have a very cool IVR or AI system set up, so she’ll ask your opinion on things, and she’ll remember it.  She not only gives important information, but also like, she will ask you all sorts of questions, and she will answer questions, and at the end of the day you can tell her how your day was, you give her advice, and she will tell you a bedtime story or sing you a lullaby!  The first night we got the story, (which, spoiler alert, was A New Hope but with R2 as the hero lol).  The second night we tried for the lullaby but my niece was a bit slow answering so we didn’t get anything and couldn’t call back to ask her to do it.  Slightly disappointing. It was still, very cool. Also the thermostat is there, and any emergency announcements come through that speaker and probably other stuff I didn’t mess with.  We didn’t spend much non-sleeping time in the room.  I’m sure there are cool bits that I missed.

The other screen.. uh... we didn’t explore it too much but when we got there it had a welcome message with our names on it (and my aunt’s spelled wrong :p).  I think it had other things you could do but we never messed with it. Possibly an actual TV? idk.  Why would you watch TV when you paid that much money to be IN STAR WARS?

Okay so from there, we headed to the dining room for lunch!  It was like, 2:30 by then so we were pretty hungry.

More pics of the dining room later on, but this is a pretty good rep of it from the front looking back.  Lunch that day and breakfast the next two were cafeteria style, all you can eat.  This is the Crown of Corellia Dining room (the only dining room).  Pretty big, but never felt crowded at all.  Through those doors in the back was the cafeteria.  We didn’t take any pics, but it wasn’t anything particularly fancy.  The dining room itself though looked good in the light and at night in the dark, and the chairs were comfy.

I didn’t take a lot of food pics, this is almost all you’re going to get on that front.

Yes I tried the Blue Milk.  My 12yo nephew and I both decided... we didn’t... not like it.  Also didn’t actually like it?  It was like.. fruit-flavored... slightly jellied... milk?  Oh man, it is indescribable. Definitely something you should try if you get the chance and make up your own mind.

There was also green milk, which I didn’t get around to trying.  My nephew said the same thing... couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

The lunch buffet was great and I tried hard to not eat too much since dinner was like, less than three hours away, but there were some very good things.  The little salad with the parmesean crisp on the left was fantastic.  Then there was a cheese toasty (upper center, beneath the green sweetroll) that came with a little tomato soup... SO GOOD.  That’s the only thing I went back for seconds for.   The thing on the right was basically pizza. center bottom right was a ham and cheese roll, and the purple-blue blob stuff was a jelly-cream dessert with a bite of black cake and some kind of shipped cream.  They all had very Star-Wars-y names that I do not remember.

It was all very good.  But I’m still thinking of that cheese toasty.

From there we went out to the atrium.  For like a full hour, my brother, SIL and the kids got tech support.  All of the kids got given a very locked down iPhone, which was basically to play Star Wars Data Pad with and... oh God now I have to describe the datapad.

Let’s digress!

SO basically, when you go to Starcruiser you want to download the Play Disney App and then you go in and link your reservation to your phone (thankfully I did this a couple of weeks before we went).  And the kids or anyone who doesn’t have a phone gets given a phone for this.  And inside the Play Disney App as the Star Wars Datapad app on it.  Which is your LIFELINE on this trip.

I am grateful my mom took this screenshot because I never did, thinking I’d be able to later.

So first of all, the app is your schedule.  It tells you where you NEED to be and why.  So you can see there, our transport to Batuu was at 8:10am on the second day, we had a reservation for Oga’s Cantina at noon, etc. 

But it ALSO is your Quest Hub.

See the thing is, when you’re on Starcruiser, you’re not just a passive observer, unless you just wanna be.  They actually want you to actively be a part of the story.  And to do that, you not only show up to things like it’ll say “Muster - All Passengers, 4pm in the Atrium” (more on that later) but also the characters send you texts on the app (it’s all automated, it’s not actual people texting you but it is the CHARACTERS sending you in-character messages, if that makes sense.  Much like a video game.) and you can choose to embark on quests for the characters.

And honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to do it all in one trip.

See, there’s a half dozen or more people you can ally yourself with and you can’t do them all.  I went in knowing I wanted to be a smuggler, so for me, figuring out who the main smuggler storyline guy was and connecting with that story was most important.  However, I also did several things for the captain and first officer. 

It is literally like a mix of LARPing with the actors and being on the ship and video gaming by picking up quests, talking to the virtual version of the characters on the app and collecting stuff.

Basically, you choose the life -- Resistance, Smuggler, or First Order.  Oh yeah, you can be First Order.  And honestly if I ever went back, I might go that route for a very different experience.  (Note: what you do in a game does not reflect what you’d do in real life don’t come at me with that, tumblr, thanks.  Not that I think any of my mutuals would, but you never know who ends up reading a post.)

You can do some of each, but really, you want to commit to a storyline and make sure you see that one through, at least.  And doing that is a combination of paying attention to what’s going on around you, talking to the right people, and paying attention to your app and responding in certain ways to certain quests.

That’s what your Comms is, though in the screenshot above, some of the items are main quest items, like doing stuff for Captain Keevan. 

The Comms is the main quest page where you get and send messages from the characters, and you can basically also steer your quests in certain directions, like telling Lt. Cray, the First Order guy, you’re not going to help him and telling Raithe, the main smuggler guy, you’re down to smuggle whateves, whenevs.

You’ll use Tools all throughout the ship and Baatu.  There’s like, a translation page so you can translate Arabesh (Star Wars Language) to English.  There’s a whole scanning minigame where you want to find basically QR codes and you can collect virtual items, and unlock clues in quests.  There’s a GPS tool so you can get to certain points to listen in on radio signals or transmit some.  It’s minigame central with a GPS and QR scanning component, basically.  But you use them in all sorts of quests.

The map is also very useful to get you around Baatu AND the Halcyon, and will point you towards quest points you’re on.  It was very handy.

And the Profile will basically tell you who you’re working for, who you’re on good and bad terms with, and you collect in-app virtual items.

I will end up talking more about the app at the end.  Just know that not only do you use your phone a lot for this stuff, but like my niblings didn’t have phones so Starcruiser loaned them locked-down iphones with Otterboxes on them, and it took a good hour to get my bro/SIL to get them all set up along with like three staff member’s help, thanks to both my bro/SIL not setting up their accounts ahead of time AND our reservation being a bit bungled. The staff who helped them were SO kind, patient and helpful and came up to me later and asked if everything with the niblings is going okay.  I mean, it’s Disney, you expect the staff to be great, but they were extra great.

Woo!  Intergalactic tech support!

During this time, after lunch and before dinner was also the main time when we met a bunch of characters.

Like here I am with Ouannii.  And holy crap y’all.  She only speaks Rodian, and her MOUTH MOVES WHEN SHE SPEAKS.  It is a sight to behold.  I mean it’s just animatronics but it is really cool looking.  She walks around and talks with people, and you basically have to interpret her through pantomime but it’s such an experience.  Oh, and there’s my cool light-up Kyber crystal necklace, too.

My niblings met SK-620 during this time, a droid important to the story.  Yeah he just rolls around and talks (R2-D2 style) and I have NO IDEA who’s controlling him or where from but it was just awesome to see.  Is there a person in there?  Is someone watching from a window?  He had a handler but the handler really didn’t seem like they were the ones doing the controlling.  Just... really amazing and fun to be around.

I was about to talk about Muster but... you know what? This post is ridiculously long already and I haven’t gotten to the good stuff.  And my fingers hurt from typing.  Consider this part one of at least two or three.

Part Two here!