Time to abandon ship. Oh no! Here we go. Can I persuade you to join us for a drink? It's a tradition. Here, here. Jar Jar, homie, my main man, quickly. Before the separatists attack, get into the escape hold. Hey, this is escape. Then we're the pot. This is my surprise. Welcome back to Star Wars Escape Pod and a very special guest episode.
We have Molly joining us fresh off the Halcyon Legacy and our co-host Blake, and we're just going to be chatting about this crazy experience at Walt Disney World and getting into all things Halcyon Legacy and a bit more Galaxy's Edge. So without further ado, let's get into it. Welcome, welcome Molly to Star Wars Escape Pod and welcome back Blake. I've been looking forward to this for a while. I as well, I as well.
So before we talk about the Halcyon, just so everybody kind of knows where you're coming at as a Star Wars fan, how and when did you become a Star Wars fan? What was your favorite Star Wars movie growing up? Maybe you can take a moment to talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. I'll try to keep it brief. It's my favorite question. So I am one of the people who've been a fan since literally can't even remember when I started. I really was a fan since birth.
My dad is one of the Star Wars fans who, you know, was there for the first movie and grew up on it. So he raised me and my siblings on it. And I'm a child of the prequels. So my favorite movie was definitely Attack of the Clones when I was really little because I loved the battle of Geonosis. And of course, you know, as a female Star Wars fan, having Padme Amidala just going crazy. Battle of Geonosis was like, you know, the perfect girl boss figure. So that was my favorite when I was younger.
Yeah, yeah. My first movie I remember seeing in a movie theater. Like, I'm sure I saw other movies first. But the first one I remember seeing was Revenge of the Sith because that was five. So I had to like when Anakin's on Mustafar burning, my dad had to like cover my eyes and I could like see it through his fingers. My older brother like ran out of the theater. Yeah, it was quite a time. So, yeah. But so I was, you know, a little scared of watching that movie. But now it's one of my favorites.
Yeah. So I've been on the journey with Star Wars forever. You know, of course, the sequel films in the theaters. My family is actually the front page of our local newspaper before The Force Awakens. So I was quoted as saying that I like liking Jar Jar when I was younger was a mistake. But I don't think it's a mistake anymore. You know, I just had to had to look good for the paper. Yeah. Couldn't be caught lacking. Didn't want to embarrass yourself in front of a town, right?
Exactly. But was I singing? Yeah. Was I playing with my Jar Jar action figure the most growing up? Yes. Did I sing in a Jar Jar voice on Rock Band? Yes. So my journey with Star Wars has definitely been a lifelong thing. Of course, now I got to be the reason I'm here. I was on the Halcyon because I interviewed to get the job because I really want to be a part of it. And it was just, yeah, it's been really fun. Now I write. I'm an editor for Screen Rant Star Wars V. So Star Wars really is my life.
And I love I love the Mandalorian. That's my brand. So awesome. That's a yeah, that's great. I'd like and that's so cool that you get to sort of continue that Star Wars journey, you know, in your your follow up career, you know, with Screen Rant. That's super exciting. Yeah. Yeah. It's been quite a journey. Head to my Twitter if you want to read all about it. I won't bore you guys with the whole thing here. Feel free to plug that if you want to. Yeah, feel free.
And you know, any any links that might be relevant to, you know, for people to follow your stuff, just just send them through and I'll put them down in the description box. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And no problem for people who don't know what Galactic Starcruiser is or was, I guess. Are you are you able to just recap for those those fans exactly what this experience was? Because I know personally, I found and so have you, Blake.
Like we found that there has been a surprising amount of people like fans that are of Star Wars that just have no idea that this existed, which is mind blowing. So we've been even just the last few weeks kind of getting ready for this, this specific podcast, just talking people, bringing up the hotel, the experience, and they hadn't even heard of it before, which was bizarre. I guess because we're Josh and I really involved with the fandom that we knew about it was announced.
Right. Yeah. So this is my one of my favorite questions. And actually, one of the jobs I used to do at the Star Cruiser is one of my most frequently asked questions. We'll get more into that later. But the Galactic Starcruiser, formerly known as the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser and the ship name known as the Halcyon. It was a two day, two night immersive experience or a three day kind of technically two night immersive experience at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Not Disneyland, only only Disney World, which is the one in Florida. I could see why there's confusion for that. And it opened. Yeah, it opened on March 1st, 2022. And yeah, it's just basically a 48 hour movie is really what I can liken it to is you're in Star Wars for 48 hours. You stay on the ship, which is, of course, the hotel aspect. I don't like to use the word hotel for the Halcyon because anybody who experienced it knows it's nothing like a hotel.
It's basically like a cruise on dry land. And you get to be a part of a Star Wars journey. It involves a phone application that guides your journey and you get to interact with all your fellow passengers. And then all, of course, like the working cast or the advent people who are leading the adventure. And then you got the cast like me or the crew members like me who kind of help to facilitate the smaller details. And yeah, really, that's the best way to describe it.
A 48 hour Star Wars movie that you get to star in. So it was an epic adventure. Wow, that's yeah. Super cool. To me, that sounds like a fan's dream. I know. Yeah, we heard this announced. Absolutely. All I could think of was this is something that as a fan is more what I've always wanted to do. I didn't think we ever pulled it off. It's like playing a big Star Wars D&D game, but in real life. Yeah, exactly.
Where everything is fully interactive, people are properly playing characters and everything. It's like you are the hero of this story. It was almost too good to be true. You know, like it's almost like this was. Oh, yeah. We just didn't deserve this. You know, that's where it went wrong. Oh, yeah. Yeah, nobody can ever forget their first time stepping in the space. Mine, of course, was it was like formal, less formal because I was getting a tour of the space before I started working.
And I'll never forget when the the door to the turbolift or the elevator opens. And gosh, it was just like looking at the space that the atrium was the first thing I saw. And, you know, the chandelier, the way it smelled like I wish I could describe a smell. It's not like I know Disney has its smells, but the smell of the smell, the smell, the house scene was just like, oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's it's I can't believe that that was really like my everyday atmosphere for eight months.
Especially looking back now, I have to pinch my mouth to be like I was normalized in that space. Like it was basically I think I spent more time there than I did in my apartment when I, you know, was working. So, yeah, I guess I guess a better smell nicer for like it's an enclosed indoor experience for like two nights and three days. Right. So like I would hope it's got some sort of.
Yeah, they built it next to a. Respect to all the people who would, you know, come in there, what we call collectivist or, you know, their their cosplays and outfits. Not everybody would cosplay, which is fine, because some people would come and they really didn't. They still didn't really know what it was when they were there, which it's it's just tricky to describe the experience.
You don't go full in as I'm sure you guys learn because you're saying you did the research and still had a hard time finding stuff. It's just it's hard unless you're watching blogs and stuff like that. But there would be some people in their cosplays and it's layers. Yeah, people come in their cosplays and they're layered and they're coming off of Batu, which is like, you know, in the Orlando heat and it's July. And the smell was not very pleasant then. But, you know, it is what it is.
I you know, our our own costumes, our own outfits were long sleeves and pants year round. So whenever I had to stand on Batu, I was not smelling good, I'm sure. So who was the target audience for this experience? Because, you know, the when this thing was announced, the price was talked about a lot, you know. And, you know, we're just kind of wondering, like, well, like who was there any sort of conversation with the staff as to sort of the people showing up?
You know, who is this audience that this is for kind of thing? Yeah, from really all the conversations. I remember it's everyone, which I know is going to sound like the yeah, of course answer. But the word you actually mentioned earlier was play like you want to play in this world. And that was our biggest world. We just our biggest word.
We just wanted everybody to feel like they could be a kid again to the most extreme degree, you know, be that kid who if you saw the first Star Wars movie was experiencing all of it for the first time. Or a kid like me who grew up during the prequels and had, you know, a little Star Wars spoon collectibles from their cereal boxes and we're playing with those. We really just wanted to kind of take any person at any age.
And there's actually one spiel I used to give a little bit closer to the end of my time there. And what I would do is while people were waiting to get into their launch pod to head up to ship, I would kind of just remind them of the tools they had and whatever. But one of the things I would say is who's here because they love Star Wars and then, you know, a bunch of people raise their hands.
And then I would say who's here because you love someone who loves Star Wars and then the other half of the people would raise their hand. And, you know, I give this I give this speech about how no matter where you come from, who you are, you can still be a part of this. Like you don't have to know everything about Star Wars to have fun. So really, of course, we're targeting two different audiences, but trying to make it work at once.
We're targeting the Star Wars fans who have been dreaming of something like this and then people who are supportive of those Star Wars fans to kind of get them interested in the world. So I would say like a healthy mix of fans and non fans, but really like all ages, of course, probably more so families as well. Just we had a lot of child's activities. So, yeah. Did that make the immersion hard to pull off if you're having these people with such drastically different takes on it?
It depended voyage to voyage because we would have different amounts of people who were like involved and not like on them. I worked the May 4th voyage in twenty twenty three and there was I think there was like maybe one or two parties who did not dress to the nines. Like everybody there was, you know, hardcore cosplay and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Like that voyage was insane in the best way. It definitely was. Sorry.
I guess when we think of it in our heads, that's probably what we picture is probably the May the 4th like expedition. It's supposed to be September 3rd. The endless vloggers, you know, the endless vloggers with the cameras. We just couldn't help you because like, of course, all of the online material that you can watch on YouTube with all the influencers and such, et cetera. I mean, it's it's hard not to notice the amount of selfie sticks in the room.
And I'm just wondering, like, you know, we were just kind of commenting on that. Like, did that ever sort of go away when the initial wave of like invitees sort of, you know, dispersed? And when you started getting like the regular experience for the guests and stuff like, yeah, was there sort of a decline in all of the recording on the phones and everything like that? Because that kind of breaks the immersion a little bit, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So what you guys are probably referencing are when we first opened. So, yes, definitely closer to March 1st. Those were mostly made for the purpose of bringing those media people on board. So that's why there are so many selfie sticks. I never saw that many because I didn't start until like early part of 2023. But I've heard stories passed down, you know, through generations of people who trade me and whatnot.
And yeah, you know, selfie sticks never really stopped being a problem, not in terms of volume. But, you know, there'd always be that one person in the atrium with a selfie stick, like extended so far up. And that would be my job. Like, like my team, we would have to go around and very politely say, please put your selfie sticks down because, you know, the eight year old behind you can't see. So that kind of stuff is funny to get around because you still are 100 percent immersed.
And I would definitely say, you know, it's tricky when somebody comes in in a Mickey Mouse shirt and you're like, how do I approach this? And, you know, stay in the world. But we would just refer to him as the as the womp rat. You know, there are definitely ways to get around it. There are I have to remember there are so many clever ways my coworkers and I were able to talk about like the Disney parks, but in complete like Star Wars lingo.
You know, I think we called like Epcot the wheel and we're talking about like, yeah, you know, we go around the wheel and there's all these different places to, you know, get these libations so like that, like we definitely were pushing some boundaries. Yeah, exactly. It was easy to do Hollywood studios because that's just bought to, you know, that's a Black Spire outpost. And, you know, if you're not in Black Spire outpost like Galaxy's Edge, then you're just elsewhere on my two.
But the other parts were harder. The womp rat kingdom was a magic kingdom for me. Yeah, you found ways to get around it. And honestly, it made it more fun when people weren't like immersed at times because you could help to ease them in. But the people who didn't really want to be eased into the immersion, that was the tricky part. And it's like, you don't really know what to do. And and for my job, too, we dealt with a lot of helping people with their technology.
And you really can't like Star Wars lingo that because if you don't talk in real world terms, they're going to get frustrated and they're not going to know what to do. So like, you know, if this poor person just wants, yeah, if this poor person just wants to know if they can get to their reservation, they made at 50s prime time at Hollywood Studios. I can't be like, oh, what's Hollywood Studios? Like, you know, that's so rude.
Especially if it's like a 70 year old guy or something like that, you know, there with his family, you know. Yeah, bless their hearts. That usually was the case where, you know, it's just people who aren't used to either going to Disney or maybe are like a little bit older, a little more technologically challenged. So I would use my discretion in that position. We were allowed to break immersion privately in those conversations.
But you did have to do it privately because the atrium was like an echo chamber. So if you know you're talking to one passenger really loudly and you're like, yeah, if you want to go to Hollywood Studios and, you know, the person who's dressed in full Mandalorian garb is like two feet over. You don't want to break their emergence. So, you know, it's definitely a little tricky, but I love a good challenge.
So it's probably a lot of bathroom instance, too, because people can find the bathroom because they're all named fresher. Refresher, refresher. Yeah. So our guidance on that was and without all terminology is kind of like a gentle correction. So somebody be like, oh, where's the bathroom? And you start walking them over and you're like, oh, our refreshers are this way. So instead of being like, that's the refresher, you know, you kind of substitute the word.
I'm not sure how most people pick up on it. I don't understand what you're saying. That was usually the joke we would make. But was it always like, was it a gratifying moment? Like, did you ever have anyone who came up to you and didn't they didn't need to be corrected? Like you just, you know, they just spoke like, OK, where's the calf machine or like, where's the refresher?
Like, did you ever have that kind of situation with the guest where it's like they just kind of knew how to how to immerse themselves? Did they ever out jargon the staff? Staff are confused. Oh, yeah, I can. As you can tell, hopefully with somebody who has the Star Wars job I have right now, I know what I'm talking about. But there are certainly people who could outlaw me, out jargon me. And to a degree, I'm glad they could, because technically in our role, we're like in Star Wars.
So we're not supposed to know historically, like everything, which is so hard. And shout out to any passengers who heard me talk about Din Djarin, because there's no way I should have known who he was. But when I talk about him anyway, if people let me, I would get there. But yeah, so basically one instance, I guess I can I don't know if I can think of a specific example, but we had a lot of repeat passengers. OK, yeah, yeah, we could. Yeah, we could say like like I was Molly from Raxus.
I have my name tag is Molly from Raxus on it and stuff like that. But anyway, in terms of I did. Yeah. So but I couldn't do like any planet part of our process of onboarding. They had you do like a little personality quiz and it was supposed to help you pick out what planet you were going to be from. I ended up with Lance Carr. I wasn't a huge fan of like the description was not close. I was kind of going to like what's close to my actual hometown in the U.S. And Lance Carr was not that close.
If I had to liken my hometown to a planet, it would honestly be like Cantonica to a certain extent, like Canto Bayi, because there's horse racing anyway. But that wasn't an option. And so I saw Raxus and I'm a bad batch. And I was like, you know what? Like, obviously, there was Clone Wars arc on Raxus, too, but I'm like, you know, Raxus isn't a bad batch. And then my really close friend who had actually been in my previous role with me and we both were in the same transfer group.
She was doing Raxus. I was like, I think I think I got to be from Raxus. So that's really the story of how I ended up being Molly from Raxus. That's awesome. It really grew to be a part. Yeah. You talk about it enough, it becomes a part. Like, it feels like I really am from Raxus. Sometimes I still have my stories of like, oh, yeah, I grew up, you know, just on the outskirts of the city of Raxalon. And you start to believe it after a while.
I mean, it was eight months of, you know, telling this back story. Yeah. I'm curious, how deep are the characters back stories you guys played? Did you get to make up kind of what you wanted or all given like a D&D style booklet of choices? So you got the planning. Yeah, that's a good question. We were, yeah, we were really given a lot of freedom. There weren't really any guidelines. Like the limiting the planets was really the biggest guideline. Everything else was doable.
Honestly, most people struggled with coming up with backstories because a lot of my coworkers were not familiar with Star Wars, which is fine. Because, like I said, in our position, it's really better, almost better to not know because then you're not tempted to engage with passengers in a way where you're going to, you know, spoil something. At this point, you know, the Star Cruiser. Yeah, the Star Cruiser takes place before the rise of Skywalker.
So if you accidentally say anything from that movie, that's really bad. You've already blown the timeline. If you reference Star Wars as Star Wars, that is the worst thing you could probably do. But like in terms of crafting the rest of our backstory, it was really up to us. I had a whole elaborate backstory I made for myself before I started my onboarding process when I found out I got the job. And I was going to be from Sorghum.
And I was going to like set myself up to be the secret daughter of like Din and O'Meara, who is the farmer girl. I'm sorry. I'm like, I want to be the secret kid. Like I had this whole funny, elaborate backstory and then I couldn't pick Sorghum. That kind of went away. Yeah, that went away really quickly, which is ironic because we do have a or we had a dish in our lunch buffet one of the days and it was called Sorghum stew. And I was like, come on. My family dish. Yeah, I ended up exactly.
I still had to get Mandalorian stuff in there somehow. So I made myself a Mandalorian historian because I'm like such a big Mandalorian fan. So I'm like, OK, really the key word here is just like history instead of talking about like, you know, Mandalorian content, Mandalorian history, because it's actually part of our galaxy. Like it actually happened. So I was like a Mandalorian historian from Raxus.
And I had just been waving in transports to Chandrila star line because I came from parking at Epcot with my old role before the star cruiser. So I kind of like, yeah, I would blend the two. So really, that was the biggest guideline on backstories for all of us was try to base it off your real life as much as you can, but translate it into Star Wars. I guess that makes it easy to remember and makes it consistent, I guess.
Yeah, you know, it's a little bit easier than trying to explain to people, hey, I'm the secret child of these two characters that never got together and get it. Yeah, probably another benefit with it not being a bunch of super fans is you don't end up with all the staff being Jedi and hiding. Yeah, like not everyone's like the secret son of Luke Skywalker, you know. Exactly.
Yeah, or, you know, not everybody's more sensitive or like, you know, that has some kind of traumatized backstory related to Order 66 through generations. Yeah. I'm sure we threw around jokes about stuff like that. I think I had a coworker shout out Charles from Baraka, and he is a redhead like Cal Kestis, and he used to make the joke that like some kind of joke that he was related to Cal Kestis or like new Cal Kestis or something. But yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, that used to be so funny.
And then he came up with a story, too, that he like was from he actually he was born on Baraka, but then he like was raised on Kashyyyk with Wookie. So he used to like consider himself a Wookie. And yeah, it was we would do fun stuff like that. But nothing like, oh, you know, my my great uncle was Luke Skywalker. That was definitely like a no. Just getting really fan fictiony. Yeah. So for the fans who love lore, the Halcyon legacy, we throw the name of the ship around a bit.
It's a Chandrilla Starline Purgle class star cruiser. And I love how they add in the Purgle class, you know, like, of course, you know, now more people are probably aware of the Purgles at this point, since it's graduated from animation over to the live action series.
But I'm just curious, like with this whole sort of initiative by Walt Disney World and everything similar to what they did with Galaxy's Edge when that launched, there was a variety of sort of multimedia going on as far as trying to integrate the location into like Star Wars stories. And there was a comic book run called The Halcyon Legacy by Marvel Comics.
And there was a couple of novels which the ship was featured in, Princess and the Scoundrel by Del Rey and a variety of the High Republic stories as well. So it's really cool to see this like whole thing being like sort of cemented in the canon and all that stuff. But I'm just sort of curious, like, did you did you read the comic? Did you have to do any homework prior, like, you know, other than your character building? Like, did you end up reading any of those stories?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. As soon as I got the job, I was interested. But I kind of like held back. I was like, OK, let me just get there and see if nothing was required. So I'll kind of answer that part of the question. This is all just kind of like a do whatever you want kind of thing. I realized quickly I wanted to read the Halcyon Legacy comics when I was doing training. Our training was very elaborate. This could be a whole other conversation, but I'll say it very quickly.
For my role, we essentially completed about six or seven different lines of business. So my training was 10 weeks long and all those different lines of business. So one of them is recreation to, you know, like learn how to facilitate a bunch of the activities on the ship. And one of those is giving a ship orientation of fun facts all around the ship. And a dozen of those or so are all from the like they're in the Halcyon Legacy comics.
So whoever was training me was like, you know, that's a great resource if you want to, you know, practice your ship orientation. I'm like, oh, man, I guess I got to get the Halcyon Legacy comic and, you know, read all about it so that I can throw in some fun facts in my ship orientation. And so I ordered myself like the anthology copy of all the Halcyon Legacy comics and like read them all one night.
And that was really cool because, you know, like the lightsaber markings from Anakin and Asajj Ventress' duel are in the Halcyon. Like they're they're on the staircase and they're like filled in with gold. They're actually there. And I used to point it out on every ship orientation. Of course, I would never say the names of who made them. I just say like a Jedi and a Sith because I didn't know. And then the lightsaber training pod, I'd be like, oh, this was actually a gift to us from two Jedi.
Or we made this to honor two Jedi who saved our ship from, you know, Raiders because, you know, Nabasik and Buryaga. And I was like, I think one of the Jedi was a Wookie. So I would I would throw in stuff from those. So I definitely personally did my homework. And yeah. And then when it comes to the princess and the scoundrel, that's actually a really fascinating story is that book.
The copy of the book I have was a gift to us from the Star Cruiser for the one year anniversary on March 1st, which I call the best day of my life. And I can go into more detail about that later. But we depending on who got there because we had like a little party that we're still working that day. But I had that day off because I requested it off because it was the Mandalorian season three premiere. And I went to the ship for the party and the gift was the book.
And I came with like a little note from Beth Revis author and kind of like talking to us about, you know, being important to the writing of the book, just like how she hoped that we did it tribute and things like that, which is super neat. But in the book, there's Han scratching in his initials, his and Leia's initials in the engineering room. And those were also in our engineering room in Arbesh. So that was really cool.
Yeah, I ended up getting another Halcyon legacy anthology copy from the Halcyon too. So I have two copies of the anthology now, one from the Halcyon, one that I bought before then. So that's kind of funny. I definitely did my homework, but it wasn't required. Yeah. The ones on the Halcyon, do they have like a limited edition cover? You can only buy that one aboard the ship or staff only, maybe not from my memory.
So I know that the ones that we got as crew members, it was the exact same as the one I bought. Like it was the anthology. So it was like, it's all the same. Like they really look the same except they had some crew members signed like the inside of one. But we had comics on the ship that we would occasionally, you know, some passengers would receive if, you know, something went wrong with their voyage or we just wanted to give them a special little gift.
You know, stuff that Disney does, we do it at all the resorts. And I don't know if those really technically limited edition. I think it was just like they were the individual stories, though they weren't anthology. Like they weren't the whole, I think it's four or five, maybe six issues. It would just be like, you know, the Lando and Hondo issue or the Padme and Anakin one. So I don't know if they were exclusive covers. They might have been.
Unfortunately, I didn't know enough about comics at the time. I'm a little more well versed now because I've been buying some Mandalorian adaptation comics. So I got some more experience, but yeah, we had some on the ship. But the ones that we got were like the ones with all the issues in it. And it was just a part of I don't know what the occasion was, but I was very grateful for it. Yeah, that's cool. I thought it was very it's very similar to when Galaxy's Edge opened.
They did a Marvel Comics run for Galaxy's Edge. Also very like short run five issues long or so. Maybe it wasn't four, but they did short stories kind of based in Black Spire Outpost. And, you know, they had their own creation, their own character, Vy Moradi, who is like resistance spy who shows up in the stories and, you know, pops up in the parks.
And I love how they did the same thing with Halcyon Legacy, the captain of the ship, Captain Keevan and director Lenka Mok and the D309, is it the droid? Yeah, yeah. And the first order Lieutenant Kroy, who ends up being like the villain of the story. So I got two questions for you, the D3 droid, because everyone who walks into the room, they get like an AI style sort of droid sort of communications panel on the wall where you can ask questions and answers.
Like, how does that work? And then also completely separate question. The first order Lieutenant Kroy from the comic book, you know, towards the end of the story, he says, I've got to investigate the Halcyon Legacy because, you know, he gets the idea like, oh, they're harboring resistance people aboard the ship. Is that a direct supposed to be a direct tie into why he shows up in the experience when he does?
Yeah. So let me answer the first one first. So D3, D309, but we always call it D3 for short, because of course it's much easier. So you're talking to the right person because I helped facilitate some of the crew training on that at a certain point. But essentially D3 is, you know, like an AI. I think it's like Disney's first AI character, I think. I don't know. I think she holds that title, but don't quote me on it.
And passengers can interact with that panel and D3 will dart the initial interaction, just trying to get to know the family and she can make special offerings.
She doesn't, but the thing that a lot of people never really understood because, you know, it's hard to make it clear when we're not standing there with the passengers the entire time, like interact with her this way, is that she can't always, you know, if you ask her to do something, she's not always going to do it because she's AI, you know. So she would sometimes offer, you know, various stories based on the experience.
And everything is powered through the Magic Bands or the M-Bands is what we call them because we didn't want to call them Magic Bands on the ship. And the M-Bands have a lot of information about the passengers in terms of what they're doing on their phone or their data pad, which is facilitated through that whole Play Disney app. The people who worked on this are phenomenal. So if any way they happen to be listening shout out to all of you, you're incredible.
I can't imagine what went behind all of it. But D3 could at times recognize how that journey is going. And so, like, if people were first order aligned, you know, she might not be as willing to share any resistance intel. And if, you know, your resistance is leaning, then of course it is what it is. But you could, like, there were some situations passengers could get in where, like, they help her negotiate with a pirate to, like, let us go through the Adanax Nebula at night.
She would tell bedtime stories sometimes. If you ask for one about, like, R2-D2 being the hero of all the Star Wars movies, which is so funny. Just cool, cool little stuff like that. So she was just there to, like, really what, and what my, the people I worked with really want us to emphasize is that she was there to enhance the experience. So she wasn't, like, a concierge droid. She couldn't, like, turn off lights or get help, put in a request at the desk to get towels.
She was just, like, there to kind of be an extra character, but, like, personally in your room. So she really was just, like, another character and they were just playing around with the AI medium. She was cool, but, you know, it was hard to, like, get the most out of it sometimes for passengers because it's hard to communicate that to them, to be like, oh, you know, it's an AI droid. They got to figure it out for themselves. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And then as far as Kroi in the comics, yes, that is supposed to tie right in because when your house journey starts, like, I think it's a few days before you board on your app, you get a message from Chandrila Starline. They're like, just so you know, the first order is investigating Chandrila Starline, but it shouldn't impact our 275th anniversary voyage. You'll be fine.
And then, you know, you get on the ship and you start the captain's toast or muster and you quickly find out not everything's fine and Kroi arrives with some stormtroopers. So that ties directly into the beginning of our story. He thinks that we got resistance activity going on the ship. So, you know, let him be the judge of it. Gotcha, gotcha.
So this whole experience that takes place between episodes eight and nine and, you know, with the overall kind of like, I'm assuming it's a repeat sort of overarching story through the whole experience, but they really emphasize the various storylines that the guests can experience like throughout the whole weekend.
So can you sort of elaborate on sort of what that was like as a guest, you know, the various storylines being like taking place through the activities or like, what is it that like, how did that look like? Yeah. So the fun thing about the storylines is that you could kind of be a part of multiple at the same time. So it was really fun because obviously on the crew member side, I pretty plainly could see like who was doing what because I could see I'm checking people in for events.
So if you're coming to a resistance event, I know your resistance. And if you're going to the first order event, well, like, you know, I know that you're trying to take over the ship. But there is the resistance path, which is there's a bunch of different ones that could branch off of that. But, you know, there's one where you're really helping cruise director like a mock. And, you know, you really want to work with her.
She's like the probably one of the strongest resistance allies, if not the strongest that you could bond with on the ship. And that goes hand in hand with her droid SK620, who is like what people probably think is like the R2 looking droid is SK. And then there's like resistance scoundrel, which is Wraith Cole. So he's like think like the Han Solo character, I guess is the best way I could describe him. But him with Gaia, who, of course, is the tweet like entertainer.
She is the best entertainer in the galaxy. She is our intergalactic queen. And they were kind of hand in hand because Wraith is Gaia's manager. So that was kind of like your scoundrel-y path. But Wraith had a thing for Lanka. So he was willing to help the resistance. And then, of course, first order, pretty self-explanatory. If you're helping Kuroi, if you're helping the star troopers and, you know, that's the path you're going down.
But you could technically be first order and resistance, which if you're trying to be a double agent, you could make it happen. But it was hard because nobody would trust you. And then there's the force path, of course. So we have the Saja, who aren't really like Jedi. I think that confuses a lot of people who didn't get to go, which is totally understandable. But the Saja are like teachers of lightsaber training, but they were supposed to be like elusive to the force.
Like they weren't really sure they could ever like wield it. But they were the ones who, if you like wanted to be a Jedi, you would really hang around the Saja. But yeah, you could really like experience. It would be hard to experience all of the various things you could do because there's so many different combinations. Like, yes, those are four very like distinctive things like resistance, scoundrel, first order Jedi.
But nothing was really ever set in stone and nobody ever really like fully committed to one path. I mean, maybe they did. But most people would accidentally, you know, at least have an interaction with some people who are at another allegiance. And they would be slightly that way, too. So I know when I did my voyage with my family, I was I wanted to be mostly with Wraith Cole because I just seemed like the most fun. But I was Wraith Cole and resistance.
Like, you know, I was I was both of those hardcore and some people would do first order and scoundrel. Some people do first order. And like I said, first order resistance be double agents. And of course, the Jedi path to was also very usually resistance aligned. But yeah, those are all kind of like the different paths. Definitely easy to intertwine. But it was the pull of that's why so many people came so many different times.
Like they wanted to do it again and again so they could experience all the different storylines because there are like these story moments that just happen throughout the voyage. And you never know when they're going to happen unless you like commit so hard to certain paths. It's very interesting. Interesting. You've alluded to being a guest aboard the ship with your family then. So what was your what was your favorite narrative aboard the experience like when you were a guest?
Yeah, I have to say I'm being a part of what's called the high end in a heist or it's like Ray Cole pulls off this heist where there's this really precious stone called the high end in a and the hyperspace compass, which is this artifact in the atrium. And so you're helping him like feel that back because it's a very precious artifact for the people of Ryloth that we like. And you're helping Gaia to get this back to her people. It's been gone for hundreds of years.
And that was really fun because of course I had a little bias because the person who's friends with race on this voyage clearly knows who I am because I voyaged when I was like after I'd been working there for five months, maybe six. So they definitely knew me and we had a relationship but you know they don't play favorites still they treat everybody equally but he knew I really wanted to do it. So we were down in the cargo hold just like small corner across from like the dining room.
It's a very dimly lit space and he has like me and my family who was also like trust deemed trustworthy and then like only a handful of other people and he's using to block cars to hand us all out very specific roles we had to play to pull off this heist. It was it was just so much fun and there's so much stuff that happens right there that even as a crew member who'd been working there for six months I never knew that like those characters exchanged those lines at that time.
But yet it happens every voyage like it's just crazy to think about. So I say I say definitely like that whole high in a heist it is oh absolutely.
I actually I saw a live play studying abroad in London gosh five years ago now and it very much feels like that same thing I saw it was the great Gatsby and I experienced that and the actors to me and have microphones of course the actors at the Star Cruiser didn't need microphones because when they were in the atrium they needed to be heard sometimes.
But yeah it was basically like a live action play and but you're in it you're in the play you just don't know what your lines are so but there was never any pressure to you know what your lines are you just kind of went as you went as you went but yeah that's essentially what it felt like.
So being a live play of course like and you talk about the atrium like that's where I guess everyone gathers and it's sort of like a central area for a lot of you know just kind of interaction with the characters on board and stuff like that. A lot of us have seen sort of the promotional videos and stuff with with Ray fighting Kylo ran aboard the Halcyon legacy and the story I'm assuming that has a place somewhere.
Have you seen this and the patent is out there right so like hopefully this isn't you know it completely breaking the magic for people but is have you seen the extendable lightsaber up close you know like what what is I've only seen over the camera so like what does this thing actually look like. Yeah I think that maybe one of the only props I've never seen up close.
Of course you know I've been closing up like I know I know I'm standing like you know but I'm standing where other passengers can stand so I'm really not seeing any you know they are smart and that respect to keep you know people like me just in case you get too curious.
No prop masters are delightful everybody who worked there is just I miss them all so much they're so amazing but no I never saw that one up close unfortunately but you know of course I know how they you know make it work for the rest of the fight the people. The actors who are also doing their own stunts in that scene all incredible people love all of them so much there all of our rays and Kylo's are just so cool.
But yeah they slayed that scene but I never got to see that technology up close unfortunately I hate to tell you. Gotcha it's very cool I mean anytime I see the videos for any of that stuff like yeah. I've been sitting here just crossing my fingers that one day Disney will start to sell it as a prop.
Well because we've got a friend who sells lightsabers we love lightsabers over here so I got I got to just ask what is your favorite lightsaber like is there is there a favorite Hilt favorite character Hilt that you like just you know if that's your that's the one.
I mean unless you guys tell me it doesn't count the darksaber I mean I love Mandalorians you know I got the I bought Disney's darksaber Hilt while I was in Disney bought it for myself for Christmas that was maybe not the wisest choice for me you know just just just financial wise. You know me in the college program at Disney I'm like oh gosh now I'm out like and of course then they started selling the darksaber for like 30 percent off like a two months later and I was like you have to be joking.
But I do love I do love the darksaber I wish they I wish didn't got to be able to like wield it well at least once but that's okay. But we also sold our own lightsaber Hilt on the Halcyon I never ended up buying it but it was and then what because it wasn't really anything like super elaborate design wise but it did have the Shinjiro Starline logo like those two lines with the circle and the dot.
And it had that on the bottom and it had like you had our best letters that you can like might magically stick on it and it was pretty cool I had I had to sell that you know a lot of merchandise was part of my job too. They'll find I literally was anywhere on the ship at any given point in my role so I was in the store sometimes selling stuff and I'd be like look at this lightsaber Hilt.
It's great you can put different our best letters on it but I would say yeah definitely like my favorite lightsaber. Public credits are no good out here. Did you ever joke around with somebody like that when they presented their credit card and they'll be like Republic credits are no good out here. I'll tell you the most the most incredible interaction I had in terms of credits at that store was somebody with a replica Beskar Inga that was so heavy.
It was the most insane like replica I've seen like they I'm talking about you know probably rambling about Mandalorian Mandalorian history as I always do in in and out of the ship and they're like well you know what I happen to have and they just pull this Beskar Inga out of their pocket. Had the Imperial insignia on it and everything. It literally looked like it came off the set of the Mandalorian. It was crazy. It was like well unfortunately I don't think we can take Beskar Pavement yet.
Just walking around in this deep dark block. Best dedication. And I was like you know I got like my eye twitching I'm like I would love to take this from you but you can keep that. I'm like man this would be so cool to have and people did give us a lot of gifts.
I have an entire black tote bag I haven't even sorted through yet full of like random sweet gifts that people would just give us on voyages especially near the closure you know people were always trying to give us stuff which is super sweet. But unfortunately that Beskar Inga was never one of them but yeah that that person shout out because that was insane. I was losing it I'm sure like internally at that moment I probably had to like go you know back somewhere hidden and just scream.
I used to have it a lot. Yeah. I would I just want to scream on the spot in a good way. Sounds like you need to join the Mandalorian Mercs. Yeah. Yeah do you have a costume? Oh yeah. No I see that's that's my struggle. I would love that. I'm just not crafty enough to like put a suit together. I need I need help. But one of my for lack of a better term managers because there's a lot of like Disney hierarchy lingo I'm not going to you know make you guys memorize what all that is.
But one of my managers for my food and beverage part of my job there he does a lot of cosplay work. He used to be like my work dad a bunch of us would call my dad at work so shout out Jacob. Love you miss you. He was an avid still is avid cosplayer and he made me like a 3D printed of den's pauldron with the mudhorn on it because he knew I was going on a voyage. So I did end up wearing that on my bought today.
I had to take it off at a certain point because it was very like it was very clunky because I didn't have any other pieces of armor. So for me I'm like you know walking around and it's clunking around and I got like a tiny shoulder. But I mean it would be a dream one day to have you know full Mando Mercs too. But I just got to get craftier or you know I got to make a friend who's willing to craft it all for me. Yeah. I think those groups are pretty good. At least everyone I've talked to.
So if you I'm sure there's a local regiment happily take you in and show you the ropes and give you tips and all sorts of stuff. Absolutely. I just got I just got to lock in you know at this at this point I might as well. You know here I am. I'm writing Star Wars stuff. So there's no better time than now. Yeah. Yeah. We had a guest on a while ago. Her name was Jess. She was part of the Boba Boba Fett fan club and I don't know if she's. Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. So if you love Mandalorian's you know she's actually in our discord still. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure she'd be happy to chat with you at some point. I don't know. Maybe she knows some people. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. How. So how has your time working at the Walt Disney World experience like just impacted your love of the more recent Star Wars stories because you know I think we all sort of grew up in that time of the prequels.
My favorite Star Wars movies Revenge of the Sith and and you know the Clone Wars came out right when I hit high school and it was sort of like the perfect age you know for this show that was sort of a bit more gritty you know PG rated animated Star Wars shows just like. We're talking Cartoon Network. The best. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No more Treehouse TV.
So like like so growing up having like your favorite Star Wars movies sort of cemented in this particular era like you know being having to be sort of immersed on day to day experience right like in this sort of new trilogy of films with these new stories and stuff like I guess what was what was that like for you as a Star Wars fan you know having sort of to be that every day.
Yeah. So it definitely you know not that I had like a negative outlook but you know like the general kind of feeling that most people have towards the newer movies is like it for me personally I enjoyed them but they were you know my favorite that I just you know thought there could be some improvements but it's not you know to it's still they're still fun to watch for me but getting to work in this experience definitely made me appreciate them more.
I would say getting to you know work with the characters so really the only sequel trilogy like established characters we worked with were you know Chewbacca, Rey, Kylo I mean I never really like talked to Kylo Ren but you know maybe I would speak Kylo Ren you know I don't want to speak too much to that but those are really the only three like established characters of the sequel trilogy I would see but even then it gave me a deeper appreciation
for them and their role in the movies and then being on Batuu because even though we're on the star cruiser our passengers would be going to Batuu on their second day and we had to help facilitate them getting on and off the ship and things like that and so I was on Batuu quite a bit working of course I would go as day yet like right after work too sometimes but when I was there working I would you know be seeing the storm troopers
roaming and seeing Kylo and of course I never saw Rey because we were in the first order part of like the outpost the entire time so usually just Kylo and the first order lieutenant too who peruses the outpost lieutenant Agnon so I would see the interchanging of various faces for that and it just like being a part of the immersion really makes you feel like you're there kind of like I said earlier so I really felt like I was a part of those stories
and that that definitely does help your outlook and it's cool to like know that you were part of the story that like like I'm technically semi-canon because you know I had to be canon because like everything that's there has to be canon technically knowing that you're kind of canon in that part exactly I could be you know like the next person running with a camp tono through cloud city if they make a lego halcyon legacy are you're gonna be a molly minifigure I mean
when they when they release the the star wars like a movie that was on the halcyon the summer vacation there's it's really funny because it's definitely a pure coincidence because that movie came out I think like in the summer let 2022 and one of the Legos in the background that is a chandrilla star line worker it looks just like one of my co-workers they're like red hair not charles this is a different redhead like red hair like it's just like crazy like they look the same
and so we always just joke we're like that's Eli yeah exactly so we make jokes about being canon but yeah I definitely have a much bigger appreciation for that era and and it's the only time Rey and Kylo Ren see each other between last Jedi and rise Skywalker canonically so the fact I got to see that fight happen like gosh I don't know how many tomorrow how many times now but I'll tell you what I never I never got sick of it yes the only time they meet in canon between those two movies and I
used to get to see it like just on a on a Tuesday night clocking in the work that's amazing I'm gonna need to look up some of that selfie stick footage and my dad got a whole vlog when we were on our voyage so I'll link you to it he's got a great shot of that perfect so do you think that the designated era of the storytelling was and Blake and I have speculated about this do you think this was maybe a bit of a disconnect for potential guests who would have otherwise attended
if it was based in their era of choice because I grew yeah we I think we all grew up in it in a time in which the prequels were very divisive films at the time and you know I remember yeah you know like yourself you know joking about you know hiding your Jar Jar love like it was kind of the same for me and and you know like I would always get flack it's like if someone found out like I love the prequels it was like dang like what are you doing like you know as if I was
committing a crime yeah and you know I just think like there are still fans out there though that you know they're they're super hardcore to the bone for the original trilogy and you know they might not be willing to put out for you know the the premium experience that this is and if it's not based in their era of choice yeah you know what are your theories on that from I'd ask yeah so of course like and everything I say is always just my opinion like this isn't anything I ever
get filtered from from Disney but I do think definitely in some cases it played a factor in some ways if you were there and you were doing the experience you didn't really care that it was the sequel trilogy from my opinion I never really remember seeing any passengers who were like you know oh you know Ray Mary Sue which I can't even get started on elaborating that let's not unpack all that but you know I never saw anything like that or openly disrespecting
them you know of course some people just don't know boundaries in general when it comes to entertainment across the board but that's a different issue but I even just talking amongst my coworkers you know we're like yeah you know they like if we were able to do different eras you know maybe we would get you know more people would would you know want to spend the money to come stuff like that just like kind of even just throw the ideas around ourselves
yeah because that's exactly what Josh and I were kind of yeah you know because like if it was like yeah in theory just like rolling eras like you know like a couple months of this era a couple months that era or even like week to week like in the park too yeah just swapping out costumes yeah everything else the same I do wonder if that would have drawn a lot more attention to people yeah yeah yeah and I feel like that's the ideal scenario like I wonder I always wonder if that's
something they like are trying to make work but I can understand why at the same time it wouldn't because there's just so many logistics and like you'd like you mentioned all the tie-ins like there's so much history they've already built around it and they have by Moradi's like what would they do with all of that you know if everything looks the same you know back in the days of you know the before the fall of the Jedi as it does when the first order comes around like
that's that's tricky to talk around but I guess it's like bossy backwater planets in my that's true that's true yeah yeah but at the same time there they're already kind of bending their roles and this was this is especially I did not mind because you'll find out the biggest reason like like I really wanted to go to Disneyland when I worked at Disney World because Disneyland had did they had didn't grow they got them on like November or something 2022 and Disney World did
not have them so I don't know if you knew that but Disney World did not have Din and Grogu and Disneyland got them in their galaxy's edge and so like they had Boba Fett they had Fennec Shann they had Din Djarin they had all these characters and Disney World only had the sequel trilogy characters and I was like man I really want to meet Din like I'm gonna go all the way to California just to meet him and then surprised March 1st the day of this season 3 premiere day
Din and Grogu just walk out of Disney World and I had no idea even as somebody who was working at the Star Cruiser I had no idea that they were coming nobody knew really so that was I got to witness their like second debt ever when they walked out which was cool because I happened to be walking to the park the first time they ever came out so hence why earlier I called that the best day of my life that you know this there's a lot going on for me that day but that for us was
a huge challenge because how do we talk around Din Djarin and Grogu walking around in you know 35 ABY because people would yeah they'd see them on their batooting come back be like I just saw Grogu and I'm like who's that that's really all you could do is play dumb which broke my heart as as the Mandalorian fan I am I'm like what do you mean I have to ask you who Din Djarin is this is so humbling I know everything there is to know about him but yeah it definitely like it's it's
interesting to see them kind of pushing those boundaries they recognize that they need these characters they're these newer characters and they should be bringing more of the older characters back so I mean Disney World personally has an out on it because they have Star Wars launch bay which is where I know like they're starting to make a little bit better use of that space like with Ashley Eckstein for a Socatano day it's gonna be doing a meet-and-greet there soon and they have
like a whole theater in there and I think they used to do a show for like the Sequel Children era but then like you know when COVID happened things got changed and they never really brought it back but there you can meet like Chewbacca Vader and BB-8 at least at the time when I was working there that's what those three characters were so I feel like they could use a space a little bit more and get like you know like Anakin Skywalker I know they have the costuming for it because he was at
like a late-night event either at Disney World or Disneyland like you know they have like these these resources so I don't know yeah I was almost I know that idea was getting thrown around a lot too when we closed with people being like oh are they gonna remake it to like Mandalorian era to make it more popular I honestly don't know nobody knew me I don't know to this day they have these ships out you know on on all the time they these giant like Kylo Ren's big ship and stuff so it
would be a challenge to change the era and have to maybe remove that but if they're bending the rules like letting you know Boba Fett and you know Mando and and and Grogu just walk out and Fennec Shand you know it's just like it kind of begs the question like okay it's really just a matter of like where they're willing to bend the rules you know and and I think with the characters it might be more of like a standpoint of promoting their new content on Disney Plus rather than this
is what the fans want and you know personally I would love it if they did like six month seasons you know it's like hey now we're doing like Empire Rebellion season I don't care if the Kylo Ren ship's still there you know like you know yeah yeah like it's weird for me to like talk about Galaxy's Edge to people who don't know what it is and then tell them this is a place that's basically like Star Wars land where you can't see Darth Vader and Stormtroopers you know like it's the
most surreal conversation because as I talk about it I'm like wait a minute like what and when I've gone to Universal Studios like sorry this is a whole tangent like when I've gone to Universal Studios like I've thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the the Wizarding World Harry Potter experience there and it's sort of it's sort of vague as to the canonicity of the events that transpire at the park I don't really think it is I mean the rides have their own storyline going on but it's
sort of like it's like a fan service ride rather than like this is a story ride yeah and yeah I gotta be honest like I think I kind of prefer that and I'm a Star Wars fan of the bone but it sort of just allows me to unlock my own imagination and that there's no restrictions on like the park you know everyone in the park is sort of even though it's not as cemented in a particular era because you know of course there's a giant dragon on the top of Gringotts and you
know everything else is sort of coexisting in the same time period but just as like as like a personal preference like is that what you would prefer um yeah because I know that that's what I would prefer out of Galaxy's Edge or out of a Disney experience that involves a Star Wars you know story but is that what you would prefer as well in an ideal world you know you get to go to Disneyland and have those photo opportunities with Darth Vader and then Darth Maul and then Boba Fett
and all these different things at the same time or do you prefer the the in-canon kind of cemented storylines yeah that's a great question and um you know I think I have to take it from various perspectives so I think as from your perspective too as somebody who's just a fan of Star Wars who grew up with the prequel trilogy who wants to just like you know go to Star Wars land and see Darth Vader and historic troopers and maybe Luke Skywalker comes around the corner like yeah
heck yeah sign me up I want you know I don't care if like you said Kylo Ren's uh you know TIE fighter is behind him I don't care like just give me give me Luke Skywalker I think it'd be really cool if they could find a way to really do that at the same time it's like it is cool to have the history of Batuu if you know it that's the only thing that's the catch is you have to know it to appreciate it fully um and you know see Vy Moradi and stuff but I think that the only problem with
with Galaxy's Edge in that respect is that they did create this beautiful like backstory and all these interconnected stories and you know they bring Vy Moradi in which is super cool and but the daily day uh day guests excuse me are not gonna recognize Vy Moradi um they I think a lot of people see her and they're like who is that who is she what movie is she from right she's not you know she's not you're like uh like most people are not asking for pictures of Vy Moradi or you
know they're asking for a picture thinking it's someone that's in a movie or a show and they go home they're like I don't know who this is but that's no disrespect to Vy Moradi my queen and everybody who has ever been quote unquote friends with her you guys are amazing but it's just the nature of it um but I also do know people who have helped to create the story of Galaxy's Edge because you know just for the nature of working at the Star Cruiser a lot of similar people and
they're amazing storytellers with huge you know huge just visions and imaginations and the kindest people we ever talked to and like brilliant and the stuff that they used to advice used to give us at the Star Cruiser is just so cool and but it's just it's tricky like they really really wanted to go all in and creating this one specific world that's unique that you know you have to go there to understand um kind of thing but at the same time it's it's hard for those fans who just
want to see the people they love you know the people they grew up with so it's not it yeah for me it's not like yes or no yeah exactly you can't you can't do both so I feel like in a way I almost wish it was like I the only way it could really work is if they did like certain hours almost so it's like okay it's during the day we have the the Batuu people you know the the people who are here for the story once sun goes down bring out Vader but at the same time you can't bring out Vader
at night because he's not going to be able to see where he's going so yeah that's that's a whole other problem for those poor actors but yeah it's just um that's I really it's hard to envision a way they can make it work but I wish we could have both at the same time you know that's the other side of it yeah do you remember yeah exactly that's why like Star Wars launch base should get more attention because that's the perfect spot for it anyway sorry continue yeah I know that's
a great point because like like do you do you remember when they did other Star Wars style events before Galaxy's Edge um I don't know how often you went to to Disney as a kid but um I recall uh there is some some pretty redonkulous footage of like those Star Wars dances that they used to do oh yeah like both of that one in my head right now yeah yeah they um they had there's like various things they would do they went they had Star Wars weekends
um at Hollywood Studios um and I think that like those videos were a part of Star Wars weekends um and they had like the I don't know the official name but it's like a Jedi training and it was a stage outside of Star Tours yeah it's like you could like get chosen to get trained as a lifesaver some little kid was just whacking Darth Vader like it was no tomorrow yeah they had like I remember my first time ever going to Disney I was like who on the cusp of
turning three like there's no way I should remember this but like deep in the recesses of my brain I remember seeing the Hollywood Studios parade that had like like the cavalcade that had Luke and Leia in a Luke's land speeder and R2 and Vader you know like they they did used to have that kind of stuff but I know ever since you know Galaxy's Edge opened it's you only see Star Wars either in Galaxy's Edge or if you go to launch bay and meet the specific characters so it's yeah it's sad to
see that they had to peel it back and I feel like in a way that I guess they could avoid it by like having those characters still be meetable outside of Galaxy's Edge like in the rest of Hollywood Studios just like they used to do I'd say if I could see why that's tricky too because people are going to get confused they're like why are there Star Wars characters not in the Star Wars land right it's hard it's like yeah it's it's really hard I do wonder how long they're going
to keep it yeah um in this era because the sequel era is already like it's all getting old not like old but yeah it's been 10 years since the force awakened you know like years which is crazy yeah yeah uh we go yeah oh go for it go for it Molly yeah no problem um it's crazy thing too because Galaxy's Edge didn't even open for uh I think Disneyland was a few months before Disney World I could be wrong but I think Disneyland was a few months before us and it was 2019 that's the year
the Mandalorian came out like that's the year the Rise of Skywalker came out like they didn't even open it until then and um really cool story from one of my co-workers who opened Galaxy's Edge at Disney World is they in Doc Ondar's Den of Antiquities which is like you know a little shop with where you can buy all the lightsabers and stuff um has uh Den's helmet and pulse rifle on the wall and nobody knew what it was they're like what they're like oh what is this Mandalorian
helmet like oh that must be from the holiday special and then you know the Mandalorian premieres and they're like oh my god um yeah so that's it's just I don't know when they're gonna pivot because like yeah the the the sequel trilogy really is starting to feel like it's already passing its era but at the same time Galaxy's Edge especially with the with the pandemic has only really been going for a few years so I don't know yeah it's a great point yeah I wonder I wonder how long
they'll they'll let certain exhibits stay there right like Kylo Ren's shuttle before they replace it with something else I mean we've got four new Star Wars movies on the way right you know I mean like how are they I'm curious to see how they're going to use the park to sort of market those films like the Dawn of the Jedi one and yeah because they're different eras now yeah they're all different eras the only one that lines up at the park remotely is the Rey film that they're
that they're looking at doing yeah you know with with what happened with half of the other projects in the past like who knows if any of these will see the light of day of course because got to take everything with the grain of salt nowadays even if it is announced but it's crazy yeah I gotta ask well what in your opinion is the most successfully immersive part of the ship of the whole experience um also the least immersive part like like maybe you have a
list of top three I mean we were we were trying to come up with some some just random things the other day about this but um like like what what would you say is like you know your top three sort of least and most immersive yeah great question I love that one um I'll start with the most immersive so my favorite place on the entire house scene is the bridge where you know you're you're seeing space through the transport or the not the transport the the gosh the viewport
gosh wow I am I'm out of my element um it's been too long um and you're you're literally interacting with the bridge you're you're on the systems panels you're on the weapons you're shooting at things outside the viewport and you're on shields you're defending the ship and you're also controlling these loader droids that are picking things up it's just like it's so believable the technology that goes into making it believable um it's not something I think I can
really talk about but I've seen it up close and it's just it's like amazing I could spend days just like looking at this technology um but it's so it's so real when you're in there and then the story aspect of it really gets you tied up because um you do your bridge training so crew members like me and the reason I love the bridge so much is I was a crew member who used to train other crew members how to do this activity but we leave like a bridge training which teaches the passengers
how to use all the councils um and I loved doing that training and I loved training people to do the training I got to know the bridge really well um definitely left in the bridge a few times because it was late at night that training um we you know we could only really uh play around in space when people were asleep so you can imagine how late that was um but um it's just the story that went into is when the characters would come in at the end of the training and it was always
a different character based on what time your training was at but a different story that a different thing they had to get accomplished and you'd go through an asteroid field and you're involved in the action and it's just so immersive the from the screens to the characters they know your name they say your name you jump in the hyperspace I've jumped in the hyperspace I can't even begin to count how many times I've jumped in the hyperspace at this point um it's so cool so
the the bridge anything on the bridge bridge training bridge events definitely like my top tier immersive it's you really feel like you're on a ship doing stuff it's like star tours all the time yeah exactly except without the motion sickness right well that's only a good thing because I did watch some people would like yeah some people um some people would like convince themselves like gaslight themselves in the thinking that they were motion sick
oh I didn't have the heart to tell them we are we are we are in a building like this is not I I had a passenger once who insisted that they were motion sick and I'm like please we're in a building yeah it's just a tv people like I guess I guess it would be a bit similar to the the the ride right the rise of the resistance ride when you first get out of the shuttle and and you're looking at the giant sort of star state behind the the hanger uh shield right
I mean yeah yeah I assume it's probably and that's exactly how it feels yeah I could understand people who were like claustrophobic because we had no windows to the outdoors of course because then it's just bright Orlando light coming in um so it's all like screens everywhere you look but we did have one room which is the um climate simulator which you know quote unquote simulates the climate of batu uh so that's usually where I would tell them to go if they're like feeling
claustrophobic like yeah I totally understand and you also you could leave like to just go to like the terminal or the front whenever you wanted if you need to go somewhere if you just need to get air like people who need some breaks they would take the launch pod back down to the terminal and they could go back out the front I'm sorry you're not allowed to leave some people would ask they're like they're like am I allowed to like go do this I'm like you can do whatever you want like you're
not duck in space but it would be funny like if people wanted you know needed to go and we're in the middle of hyperspace and I'm just like sending out a launch pod you're gonna kill them and I'm like I'm sorry there's nothing I can do that's what they want I can only imagine like some some like young family or something with their kids like five years old and they've seen that episode of the clone wars when like you know someone gets ejected out of hyperspace like while they're in
hyperspace back in a real space or the episode rebels that happens right and then just like flipping out I'm surprised I never saw a kid like scream and cry when we're getting blasted over by an asteroid fire blaze like that is very realistic but thankfully that never happened at least not on any bridge that I worked on but I'm sure one of my co-workers might have had a story or two have you ever seen anyone order the kyber drink this is a super talked about drink on the internet
maybe you can explain what it is I don't know I didn't unfortunately I didn't um I didn't like work in the bar area a lot um that was like a separate like our bartenders of course separate position but I was in the bar sometimes it's computing um so I don't know if I I don't know if I know about like like the kyber drink I know of course like there's one that's there's a drink that's very expensive I don't know what it is yeah this one and involved yeah and it doesn't
involve like smoke I think so I think so it's like canteen thing or whatever those things are called and like the door is open and it's like this dry ice kind of smoke like poofs out and you got like four cups in there yeah yeah I think this drink is like like 1200 bucks or something all the different straws oh yeah I mean I've only seen pictures of it yeah yeah I think though so I know the one that's really expensive I think the reason it's so expensive because you
like keep you get to keep it like you get to keep like the the thing it's in I think I don't know I don't remember anybody ever at least when I when I was near the Sublight Lounge is where the what the bar is called like I don't remember seeing it but I know there's like a blowtorch in the in the prep area that I think was for an expensive drink might have been for that one I'm really unfortunate I don't know I do know there was one drink called I don't know if the drink was called
Tima but they would play you Cola Tima whenever somebody ordered it and it like could serve multiple people at once like you're I think you're all like drinking out of these straws in a canister maybe that's what it is maybe it's that drink but they would like we had this song that could play and it's like you Cola Tima it would just like play oh that's like a tiki bar yeah it's like a tiki bar yeah and a tiki bar they normally have these big like bowl like punch bowl drinks
yeah fish bowls yeah and then everyone's got a straw and they always play like a big song you know whenever it comes out it reminds me of that yeah that's like yep the Star Wars equivalent is you Cola Tima and and they would play whenever people split that drink and was this a song that they wrote for the drink or is this a reuse yeah I guess it has to be because I don't I haven't heard it anywhere else in Star Wars but you Cola Tima apparently means let's
drink in Hatties I don't know if that's something that's well known I don't know if that was made up yeah you Cola Tima means let's drink in Hatties and I know that because one of the bigger recreation activity that I used to do too is called Cantina Chronicles and it was like the non-alcoholic version of the flight of drinks of like specialty drinks and I had to like make all the drinks and know all the stories so one of the stories is like it comes from Takodana and from
Maz's castle and it's like used to help her make deals and you Cola Tima was the toast they would it must be nice to know more Hatties than Poodoo and Sleemo that's all I know yeah you know I'm more I'm still more well versed in Mandoa but we're just slowly getting canon um but you know I can never could just whip that out on this dark reader I had some there's a greeting in um we talk in Enzelen not often because I don't really know
many Enzelen phrases so fortunately I can't provide that but our founder was the Enzelen so we hadn't some Enzelen phrases thrown around like tabuite was our biggest one which means savor the moment that was our toast is tabuite but there's a way to say hello and more passengers knew it than me and every time they said it it sounded like they were saying soy cuygar which like horrible I butchered that pronunciation but like there's also a Mandoa for that that means
hello like it sounded like the Mandoa way of saying hello so I'd often be like excuse me what are you are you speaking is that Mandoa and they're like no that's how you that's Enzelen and I'm like yeah I knew that I work here I wanted to see dankberg so bad have you have you uh read the Republic Commando series no it's bad it's on my my to be read list there is a lot there's a lot of Mando terms in there
it's all Mando you definitely yeah that's where I've learned them all from funny enough I go on Mandoa.org and I that's where I you know I read up on my vocab there but I know it comes from these books so it's really bad I really need to be reading these books but I keep accidentally like getting you know the new book comes out I'm like I'm really going to read the High Republic book oh man yeah I'm a very distracted yeah we were literally just having this conversation
about about like too many Disney release too many Star Wars books constantly so fast there's so many yeah I know they're they're all coming in it's like it's so thankfully I don't know how I feel about it but there was supposed to be a Mandalorian novel and then it got cancelled which is so sad but there's no plans for one yet so that I don't have to worry about that consuming my entire brain space but you know there's so much else like there's so many other things and then it's
like at what point do I dedicate myself to canon versus legends you know like legends is just as worthy but like at the same time like it's not canon so like do I focus on canon like it's very hard as somebody who's yeah like you know really just starting to fully dive into the transmedia definitely it's it can be tricky it's not just a lake it's an ocean there's a lot did you when you were a kid did you did you grow up reading any any particular Star Wars series I grew up
reading the Jedi quest series from Scholastic at my school whenever they did a book fair I would always try and get the latest Jedi quest book and eventually when episode three came out it was the last of the Jedi series that followed that series up they were all Jude Watson books and the first series that Jude Watson did was the Jedi apprentice series and that was like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that went for like 29 books or something like that it was huge but did you like grow up reading any of
these you know there was a Boba Fett series back in the day any of that I feel like I have a very distant familiarity to it I definitely don't think I like sat down and opened one of the books and read it but my brother might have like read it and then you know I'm I'm his little sister so I'm around it he's viewing some of the content to me um I don't I don't think no though I didn't sit down and read which stinks like that's like the one aspect of Star Wars really that I didn't
absorb is like the media that's in print which is so sad but I was weirdly familiar with like the heir to the empire trilogy like I knew who drawn was wasn't the only important you know I knew that I knew yeah you know especially right now uh for this era we're tackling but it's like it's like I knew of this stuff and like the same thing funny enough like I had seen I for Clone Wars I watched episodes when they were on tv like I remember sitting in my kitchen like watching
them with my dad and stuff like on Cartoon Network knew who Sokka was and stuff but like I had to as an adult I had to go back and watch it to like refresh myself but they it was like in the back of my memories is like being it so I thought they probably exposed to books like that like Jedi Quest sounds so familiar but I just know I don't I was I was not a very good like I read stuff growing up but I was like I was always more interested in making stories than reading them if you know what
I mean like I was much more of like a storyteller than I was a story consumer in some ways which is kind of funny but yeah fair enough did you get to keep anything uh your costume any props anything from the the Halcyon legacy you know when it when it started to close down uh yeah yeah I mean listen you know if Disney happens to be listening to me I did not steal anything from you and I really really want to take a costume home but I did not want to be on bad terms with Disney because they
did treat me very well um but yeah no and I didn't really like I don't and I think anybody or everybody had to end up turning in their costumes anyway um I really was tempted to to keep it though but like even just one I'm like you know I'm really gonna know and I'm like I don't need this heat on me but I you know I did get to keep my name tag okay yeah but I said that Disney would have just like gifted those out if they were closing down yeah because how cool would
it be then to actually wear their staff like Halcyon costume to like uh some celebration and stuff yeah that would be cool yeah I was like just thinking about that earlier I'm like man if I like go to you know a con in the future I really want to like just dress up as a Halcyon crew member like if I only had the costume but I guess I know like exactly the texture of it and how to recreate it because I had to wear it you know every almost every day for eight months um but yeah unfortunately
I didn't really get to keep anything like that yeah it was the most comfortable thing I don't know if it looks like it but oh my goodness it was so comfortable we called them space pajamas because it doesn't feel like you're just in your PJs and especially for like me compared to like my my parking lot costume was um you know still sizes from like the 70s and like textures from the 70s so very like tight fitting or like hard weathered it has been washed countless times um
going to the like graduating to the space pajamas I was like yeah the only thing that stunk is then you know Florida summer hits and I'm standing in Batu and the real feels like 106 degrees and I have long sleeve shirt and long pants oh no those are tough days yeah those are tough it was worth it but those were tough days I think with Josh I actually have experienced that we went to celebration Orlando we had to all stand up in line with thousands of people in the parking lot
it was awful people were passing out as they're trying to get in this building yeah yeah I can't blame them it's oh it's brutal I thankfully I don't think we had anybody pass out like either working or passengers that I can remember from heat um even in the parking lot I don't think anybody passed out which is a wonder because that's literally the parking lot and you're on the blacktop all day but yeah it was it was our our leadership did a really good job like I said
everybody worked with there it's just incredible and our leadership was really careful to make sure we were all taken care of so um if you were in that position in Batu kind of like near the heat you would kind of get rotated just to make sure you could like get a sip of water get um they would bring us powerade and stuff so we were hydrated there's no like staff people out there that position at Batu like we had yeah yeah and it's um it's a transport ride so yeah literally
literally um but the the the outpost on Batu like Hollywood Studios and and the star cruiser are not like right next to each other like there's it's a drive um not super long but it is a drive so the transports usually take like seven minutes one way so we're pretty disconnected like if you're on Batu like working you're disconnected from everything else at star cruiser so um our our my managers are really good about making sure that we were staying being taken care of and whatnot so
thankfully all hydrated so hopefully nobody worried about us too much but there are definitely some times where i'm like oh man only i could be inside the ship that would be great i gotta ask them because because you say like about seven minutes drive so when when when guests aboard the halcyon went on their day excursion to Batu i'm assuming it was like a like a very immersive experience for that would you be able to explain sort of how that worked yeah absolutely so um this is a part
of my my transportation um line of business of one of the many i've aforementioned and um it's an extremely immersive experience getting them there so we had a transport dock uh the extension of the star cruiser where passengers would be taking their transports up and down you know up from or up from Batu and then back down to Batu however many times they wanted to between like a certain amount of hours and it's this transport that has about i think 12 seats i remember right
for my training hopefully my trainer knows and is proud that i remember that um and it was it's it's 12 seats in each transport and there was i think gosh i don't remember how many there were of them but um the passengers would be able to either sit in the seats and then we could allow four people to stay standing if necessary pack them in there but it's like i don't even know how to describe the transports to you they're just so so immersive so beautifully crafted it really feels like you're
in a transport and there's audio playing and they play some songs you know to interlude there's a droid in there my co-workers are gonna make fun of me because i always forget his name because he's the Batu droid um but he like does a little spiel about like going down to Batu and what's happening on Batu and when you come back he like tells you oh i hope you weren't a part of those explosions you know over Batu which is the rise of resistance like hat tip and then like probably
something about hondo and stealing coaxing whatnot um because that was a story element on the house you know which is pretty cool um and yeah but the the transports very immersive of course again no nothing to the outside because they don't want you to know where we're driving because you do have to drive through like what we call like you know backstage to get there it's a you don't go through the front of the park so it's a highly immersive vehicle like star tours on on wheels
pretty much i guess oh yeah absolutely and you know we had we had ways to get around it if people were very concerned about getting motion sick because there are no windows and you know you're sitting like sideways and whatnot but um i don't think we ever really had any major issues and my dad who's very a motion sick person like when we went on he was he was totally fine but yeah i was very highly immersive i wish i had like like i had could have a way to show you it's just what
i have in my brain it's crazy i i remember seeing a video where the guests came out of like a special tunnel like into galaxy's edge like is that was there like a yeah i'm assuming that there was like a dock that or a corridor we're talking about yeah yeah i think i think is it by like kylo ren's shuttle or something like yes so we call it docking bay three and it's still there in Walt Disney World it just can't go past a certain point because we had to have you know
like a disney-esque touch point out there to make sure that we could let the appropriate people in on and off the ship um so nobody's trying to sneak in uh that's the biggest point of our our position there just to make sure you know that we're taking care of our passengers who are currently on this voyage and whatnot it's all about safety and at the end of the day that's the most important part but um there you would get off your transport and it would be this exclusive
area that nobody else gets to see except housing and passengers and it's basically a little tunnel and it comes out into this big open docking bay three that is open to day guests usually unless we were there and it's right next to kylo ren's um tiny echelon and it brings you right out there and buy like the first order outpost where you buy your first order merchandise and yeah and there there really wasn't like a ton to it it has some cool signage and whatnot but now
it's completely closed off they did just have the gate closed but um people started doing halcyon tributes and disney like kind of put a barricade of like barrels and stuff there so you can't even go into a little nook anymore um but i think that's because they use that passage way now for you know helping to get characters through again this is all coming from like my thoughts because i haven't even been working at disney since we closed so um like that's what i
just assume if they're they're using that pathway to help characters get through more quickly um but yeah it was pretty it was pretty cool like little i'm wondering what they did with a lot of the stuff have they auctioned it off or like like specifically with the speeders they used to get back and forth or the transports well they probably still have part of the hopes bob eiger just took one and he just drives around this is family minivan that's right please yeah oh that'd be
so funny yeah i i don't know i mean if if you put me back there and let me drive past the building i could probably give you an answer but i'm not there now so i i really don't know if they're still around we'll just have to speculate yeah i i have no idea yeah i have no idea what's going on with anything in that space my secret hope that is like total conspiracy theory like nobody should ever think i got this intel quote unquote intel because i worked there but i really wanted
them to film something there like i mean do a scene of the mandalorian grogan movie in the starkers it's we used to call it we used to joke and call it like a multi-million dollar movie set it's already built like it's already got all the elements there's very little you'd have to do in post like you know you just have to erase like the glowing exit signs and stuff that you have to have for safety code um like that i feel like it's very little it's built for you and also like
chandrilla starline the new republic capital has to temporarily move to chandrilla at some point and you know there's a lot of storytelling opportunity for the new republic era at least to really cover it right now so my clown conspiracy theory has been like maybe maybe they're gonna film something there um and then upon them filming they're releasing it people will want to go and see it yeah i don't know that's my that's my that's my theory i would love to see that happen
yeah but you know i i honestly i can promise you 100 percent that's just me being a fan speculating like i got nobody that was never mentioned anywhere so um if you if you don't know any official reason um what what is your speculation as to sort of why this experience closed and and you know sadly a lot of fans who you know weren't able to go sort of while this was open may have lost hope at this point as to you know possibly ever going again since there's no news on whether
this thing is going to come back so anything similar yeah yeah exactly so so maybe um if you have a moment to sort of elaborate on you know what what it was like you know i know we chatted briefly about this before we started recording but uh you know what it was like when that thing when you got the news of of it closing and you know sadly i mean all of you guys you know sucks to lose your job i mean it's uh you know it must have been a pretty crazy day especially such a
like like dream of yeah totally like so cool and immersive to be part of that yeah yeah really going back to that day i can only really describe it as a fever dream um because we had of course you know we're in the middle of a workday um we didn't have passengers at that point because you know every once in a while we would have to have a break just to do maintenance you know stuff like that just keep upkeep the ship and um we a lot of us happened to be gathered gathered there
and we had done some you know crew celebrations and stuff just to kind of you know boost morale as we're going through some additional training and whatnot and we're talking talking about how amazing our performance is because really like you can look it up anywhere where we were doing amazing numbers for the Walt Disney World Company like just across the board and um the you know leadership all of a sudden just kind of starting getting pulled out of meetings and i was like oh
this this seems really strange um and a lot of my co-workers were all part of the the not all of us but like probably 90 percent of passenger services crew were disney college program so we all had program end dates mine was um august i think my official day was august 10th something like that so um and that was an extension i was supposed to leave at a certain day and then i extended it as far as i could um so i i already had a day where i knew i was probably gonna have to leave but i
was thinking about you know trying to go full time and staying because i loved it so much so um we're all kind of sitting and waiting and then we were told to gather in the atrium which is like you know the big lobby and it's every department you know entertainment's there we're there there's all the other all the other collections the culinary whatnot um there's a lot of moving parts there and it's unfortunately not everybody who worked there because not everybody had to be there for this
training and we were told about not too long before general public knew you know like it was it was about to go live on the internet i'm not really sure what happened there i don't know if it was an official press release or you know got leaked things things happen um but i am glad they at least made the effort to tell us before it hit everything yeah for sure but much better than yeah we even they didn't they didn't yeah exactly it wasn't sugarcoated you know they they told us
hey like really this this sucks but we're this is what's happening you know it's closing on this day and let's go talk about it so we all kind of broke back into our respective teams so passenger services stuck together and they let us ask questions you know but at that point i think they also realized that we just wanted to like think you know sit with it sit with the news the hardest part was the fact that we had to go to work the next day you know and everybody
all eyes were on us yeah and um again this is when leadership yeah leadership was so supportive and they they were like listen we know this is gonna be hard and if you just need to step away for a second just let us know and we'll try to cover you um because i was the first one of the first employees to come in the next day um and you know there's like tissue boxes and like it's like very haunting site of sadness so i'm like picking all this up to make sure that everything looks good
um but yeah it and that that is the day i know i referenced this before i started recording that's the day that our audio stopped working with that first day after oh and we were joking we're like ah the healthy and fighting back um but yeah that's that's really what it was it wasn't anything like you know and it i did feel very bad though for my co-workers who weren't there because just by chance you know they had to find out from the internet so um you know our our work group
chats getting messages like is this real and those of us who are there like and there are you know more disney college program kids who are about to come in so we're like are they still gonna come like are we the last ones it was very up in the air because a lot of them their programs wouldn't even end till like january february of 2024 so you know there's these are these kids that were expecting to work for a long time yeah that's how it felt for us too if it if it makes you feel
like as as out of nowhere as it felt for the general public that's how it felt for at least me i was just wondering um as far as like visitors coming in like if there was any sort of like drop off and noticing of like attendees before this happened or if it like was just completely blindsided yeah i mean it really didn't seem like it was much different than it had been ever since i started working there i know that like a week or two after i started working there is when they
announced that you know we were gonna have to cancel some voyages just to do some maintenance and stuff but that was you know general public everybody knew that they knew at the same time i knew that so that i didn't really know what that meant i just was like okay yeah we gotta do maintenance like this thing's been around for almost a year there's chipped walls you know she's she's getting a lot of love um i'm not really sure if there's anything else behind that
you know i'm a very my position i was very base level there wasn't really much i knew that the general public didn't know so i i personally didn't really notice anything unusual and that's really what made it weird is if anything it you know it seemed like we were doing really well especially from what we were discussing you know with how well our performance was and yeah so there really wasn't any strong indication that that was the path that was going to get taken
and that's why it was such a shock for all of us um who you know our passenger services crew and we really i have to say though you know at least the positive of it is how close it really brought a lot of us who were working at that time um you know that night like a bunch of us who lived at exactly um a lot of us who lived at disney's um housing that they provide for the college program kids you know we all got together and just kind of talked through everything and that's
honestly a nice memory i have because it's nice our saying is like on our crew rest our success is one of the things around the ship and so like that was a huge thing our ship is only as strong so it's like seeing that actually kind of play out it was like a bittersweet result of what had happened but um it was very surreal that whole stretch of time from the the closure announcement and i can also tell that our amazing incredible general manager who's one of the most amazing
people i know like there's no other word i can describe him with he he was just gutted too like you could just see it on his face that he probably hasn't known that this was going to happen for long either so he's one of the most caring bosses i've ever had i don't even like if he heard me call him a boss like he'd be like don't don't say that because he was very um insistent on making us all feel equal but um he is very empathetic so it was it was a hard day for us but it was a hard
hard day for him and um yeah it was it it i i honestly don't know how long he knew before we did just based on his reaction i i certainly hope that uh they did what they could to try and keep as many people employed as as possible in other positions around the park right i mean um you know that's my hope at least because that's a that's a lot of a lot of positions just to be chopped like so fast you know yeah so abruptly yeah yeah yeah to my knowledge everybody was taken care of
in terms of everyone who was going to be working at the time that we closed was going to be offered you know a position somewhere else in disney world at the resort whether you know the only sad part is they're splitting up you know these people who have been working together since a few months before opening now you know they were like a family and they're being split up so that was really the most heartbreaking part for um a lot of the crew and i feel almost like not like guilty
but almost guilty that you know i got out of there like right before the closure happened so i never really had to worry about it um about the you know the unknowns of what's it going to be like and having to see the stuff standing there but um at the same time i was like ripping the band-aid off knowing like man i'm so close to the end and i'm not working it um but yeah everybody was taken care of i would say what what wasn't very helpful but you know people can't but they're curious
that's the question we kept getting asked from that day forward is at least once on every voyage it's a passenger being like so what are they going to do with you when this is closed or what are they going to do with this place when it's closed and i'm like man what are you and and and especially an immersive environment like please don't ask me that how am i supposed to answer that so you know we had to we had to have discussions on how we respond to that in stories so we're not breaking
immersion and you know it's just you want to enhance the passenger experience you don't want to focus on a negative when these people are you know paying all this money to come and have this life-changing experience you don't want to be like oh yeah you know i don't know what my job is going to be it you know you don't get a trauma dump at work i will think they should have introduced a new storyline which was it was the halcyon's last voyage so then you can kind of yeah yeah
yeah i mean i used to like i don't know if i had the creative freedom to do this but i sometimes would joke because in the lego star wars like summer vacation special we had a pool deck but we never had a pool so i used to be like you know i hope that we like i heard we might be closing for renovation just to you know get a pool but then you know some people think like legitimately that's what's happening they're like oh really like is that why it's happening i'm like no
like i'm sure somebody's gonna hear that and be like oh gosh i i i'd love to like get a whole spreadsheet of just everyone's you know like you know everyone who worked aboard the halcyon just like what do you think happened to the halcyon i'm sure i'm sure a number of people probably put it on the list that it's in the mix of all those ships at the end of episode nine you know showing up for that one last fight maybe it's out there somewhere oh gosh yeah you saying that just
reminds me we had a massive headcanon about that a massive headcanon that we were in the battle you know the battle lexical given me there's so many ships in there you i i love to think that um but yeah we we definitely all you know tried our best to make light of it so sometimes you know making kind of ridiculous stories was our way of coping with what was gonna happen so while we were smart enough to not you know say that on in front of people in front of passengers you know
it was something that made us feel a little bit better behind the scenes yeah do you um because this this this uh experiences is it was so ambitious and you know again like i think i may have said it earlier like it's just almost hard to believe it ever happened but do you ever see this sort of happening again i mean obviously like this is all speculation and one can only guess as to what they'll do with sort of everything they've built there it's just sort of sitting
there gathering dust but uh i mean like like what sort of like future do you see in this kind of entertainment you know having now worked in the in the theme park business and uh you know like what kind of uh future would you hope that this sort of attraction has brought in terms of positive feedback they can now roll out to something else that might be perhaps more successful in their vision you know for the future yeah i think well first of all huge hands off to everybody who
brought this to life because this is the first of its kind like a you know multi-day multi-night yeah completely immersive experience like absolutely brilliant it just and nobody nobody ever left that experience with like the bitter taste in their mouth that you know some people have for it having not gone which again i totally understand that because it's not really clear what goes into it so i can't really hold that against people you know for being like oh
it's too expensive for a hotel it's like i get it it's not just a hotel though yep um but i think i think they they already um they already kind of in a way like played around with like a shortened version because they wanted to in the in the final you know weeks make sure that crew members got to you know say goodbye and whatnot and bring maybe bring like one or two family or friends to see it so they the you know their arrangements made and like they're able to do like you know a dinner and
like a show you know and i think just again i wasn't there um yeah exactly some sort of experience so i think that now they can learn to because i think maybe the the part they were hurting in the most is like the length of it like it was just so long like you know people were there for two days it's just and then that requires a lot of you know money on both ends so um not i don't know if monetary things were the issue if that's the case then doing a shortened version that's maybe like
you pay for this multi-hour experience would totally still be worth it right um the only downside with that is you don't get the bond with the characters as much because like one of the most rewarding parts of doing multiple days is like by the end of your last day like wraith cole knows me by name and lanka mock is like able to thank me and by name and you know so those special relationships can't get as deep but i think that can be stuck yeah yeah but i definitely
think they've learned you know what the weak points are of something like this what the strong points are i don't think in any case it was a failure and not that like this has been insinuated but i don't think it should ever be really regarded as a failure because it did like open you know open this perspective and like experiment like they did it they went out on women they did it yeah yeah it's a huge win really you know but being willing to try stuff out that's really
beyond what anyone else would think is capable for technology and available availability now yeah 100 and everything that went into this was nothing but like love and passion and like a true just like drive for making new experiences for changing people's lives for telling stories every single person i talked to no matter what level of what they were involved with they wrote the story they made the technology like all they wanted was to just see this dream come alive
which you know made it all the more harder after that day of learning about the closure and seeing meeting some of these people and being like oh it's just horrible but it's not for nothing it was never for nothing no i know i know that there are lessons being learned and something is going to happen i just i don't know what it is but i know they'll figure it out because they were able to do this and yeah i think you're totally right in the sense that it was a success
because you know they it's basically just taking the magic of disney and infusing it into star wars you know and giving that to the theme parks and i know on like the i don't know how many of the behind the attraction videos or or documentaries on walt disney that you've seen but i've frequently sort of heard this opinion of walt you know always wanted to be have disneyland be immersive to the guests right and i feel like this just successfully took this you know whether it was a financial
success or not it successfully took the guests to that next level of immersion you know yeah and and i feel like it was sort of the crown jewel even though it only lasted for like two years maybe at best like you know it feels like it was always ever going to be this is like the pinnacle of what we can do for guests you know at the parks and you know and and it's amazing to think that that's what happened you know for a period of time yeah it was a very lofty absolutely and yeah that was
a point that came up a lot was what did what was walt disney's original intent it was that immersion and like that word i used earlier play like letting people feel like they can just play again like their kids yeah and that's exactly what it was was people who could just come and like literally be in space and just forget the outside world existed for two days that's exactly what would happen of a star wars themed yeah exactly and and that's why again like the the may fourth voyage
was the perfect example of that it's just it you stuck out if you weren't dressed in the most gorgeous cosplay like it just was amazing what i saw and you know i will never forget yeah because if they do anything like this again if they ever do anything like this again that's a star wars fan or like star wars themed the big fans like josh and i even once like the full immersive experience make sure you go may the fourth because that's when yeah everyone who
who's everyone's gonna be there when it's happening yeah full immersion experience absolutely yeah oh yeah molly i gotta i gotta ask if there's any social handles that you'd like to share you know feel free to to share those at the moment and i can also put them in the description but is there is there anywhere that audiences can perhaps like look you up and follow all your stuff yeah um really just i'm pretty active on twitter these days or x i guess um molly brazel is
me on twitter and then um if you're interested in reading some of my green rant stuff you can uh look me up on screen rant same name molly brazel and look at some of my pieces and hopefully you will find my little halcyon pieces i've written so maybe those little easter eggs and get to know the characters of the halcyon and get to know what it was like the day the halcyon closed on the news side so look around for those yeah for sure yeah and again
feel free to send me those and and i'll link them down below but uh yeah molly thank you so so much for for coming on and and joining us and you know having this chat i mean uh we've been we've been so excited to to hear all about your experience and working with the halcyon and all that we've been wondering about this whole thing since it started we really were excited to get some firsthand details yeah yeah thank you so much for giving me the platform to do it and to get to
talk about it again this experience was you know a dream for me and i can only wish that every star wars fan could have experienced it in both you know honestly the passenger and the worker side it was just amazing from start to finish so thank you for letting me talk all about it it really means a lot especially from such a positive direction it's just very meaningful oh absolutely and and uh you're always welcome back i mean i'm sure
you know when whenever there's more mandalorian stuff that pops up maybe that movie perhaps we can get you on again and and uh you know i mean we got you in the discord now so any time that that you see a a subject pop up that you want to be a part of just uh just pipe up in the chat and you know we'll get you back on again oh absolutely you see mandalorian in the title and you guys need to guess you just let me know we'll do absolutely all right big uh big thank you again molly and uh
blake and we will see you in the next one yeah for sure thank you again molly just want to just uh put on our yeah of course thank you all right yeah of course and thank you we'll see you out there keep flying all right and a big thank you to our audience uh for tuning in thus far make sure you go check out those links in the description below uh go look up molly and uh and her articles and her socials and um yeah and uh once again for all those of you who are following all our
other episodes uh make sure you uh shoot us an email just get in touch with the podcast and we love those five stars we'll love to see that uh as always we'll see in the next episode of star wars escape pod and may the force be with you