My earliest happy memory goes a little something like this: I’m sitting on the stoop of the apartment building my family lived in, somewhere in Anaheim. From there we can see the Matterhorn — not the one in the Alps but the one that rises over Disneyland. It’s the closest thing the flat plains of suburban Orange County has to a skyline circa 1979.
After the sun sets, the stars are blotted out temporarily by a fantasy in the sky. For thousands, this is a uniquely magical event, but to a four year old living in the umbra of the Resort it’s just another night.
Flash forward a few years, to a dark day for my temporarily rebuilt family, made endurable for my mother by keeping her promise to take me to “that space movie” that had been rereleased. That day, a door swung open to another world and I walked through it. It would become my constant in a biography that shifted through home after home, until we landed on the other side of the Bay from where George Lucas and his team of industrialized wizards conjured up their far away galaxy.
Last week I did something I had only dreamed of: I visited that world. Not in my imagination. Not in a video game, or VR, but with my own two feet. And I did it not far from where that front stoop was.
The home in my heart, made manifest in my original home.
You know by now that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is the most ambitious project Disneyland has played host to in years. From a business standpoint, it’s the largest single franchise expansion in the history of the parks, with unfathomable amounts of money and people hours sunk into building Black Spire Outpost, a smuggler’s den on the planet Batuu at the fringes of the known galaxy.
The aim of Galaxy’s Edge is to create an immersive experience, which is where we come in, since that’s our beat. That it so happens to be Star Wars is a heavy layer of icing on the cake.
Now when you hear “Immersive” and “theme park” your imagination is bound to run to scale … and scale is a thing here, but it’s running in dimensions you might not be tuned for. There’s a tendency in our culture right now to want things to be bombastic as hell, which is demonstrated by the popularity of over-the-top film franchises like Fast and the Furious and the CGI battlescapes of the third act of every Marvel movie. This has led creatives in every medium to attempt to overwhelm audiences with action and imagery, to leave audiences exhausted by sheer spectacle.
Yet there is another path. One that rewards curiosity with a constellation of details, hints to mysteries that lay at the borders of the imagination. You can see the thirst for such things in the parts of our culture that are obsessed with deconstruction every frame of a blockbuster trailer or endlessly weaving fan theories and fan fiction out of the smallest threads.
Like a T-16 blazing through Beggar’s Canyon, the creative team behind Galaxy’s Edge seeks to carve a high velocity path between these two impulses, and with only one of two e-ticket attractions open at launch, the motivating charm of Black Spire Outpost is the loving details that are baked into every cubic meter.
After a little while in the land, its most striking feature reveals itself: while visiting Batuu it’s not possible to see “off world” from the ground. Gone are glimpses of the Matterhorn, Sleeping Beauty Castle, or Space Mountain. While there are always spots within each land that occlude the rest of the park at Disneyland, it’s always possible to glimpse beyond the local reality bubble. Not here. Not without getting onto the second floor of a particular attraction where Big Thunder Mountain is visible (it complements the aesthetic) and where the top of the Disney Princess Pavilion stage can be seen by small kids and anyone willing to make a little effort.
It’s a subtle touch, and one that clears a path for the tiny fonts of magic placed around the Spire to work their mojo.
The sensory details around every turn — from the burned out astromech shell being used as a stove, to the way the line for Smuggler’s Run smells of vulcanized rubber and motor oil — create a layer that invites guests to let go their Earth bound selves and step into a larger world.
Like the tree on Dagobah, what you find depends greatly on what you take with you.
Naturally, I showed up with my Batuudonym — Cerk Katarn, who became Cerk Tython by the end of the day — picked out and a mission to see just how deep I could dig myself into the alternate reality of Black Spire Outpost. What I didn’t expect was that I’d experience catharsis in the yard of Savi & Sons Salvage.
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The road to that moment started in a stall in the marketplace that sells robes and belts fit for those on the path of the Force. It was there I clumsily asked the shopkeeper about acquiring a lightsaber. He told me to watch what words I used… and that if I wanted some “salvage” I should head down past Dok Ondar’s Den of Antiquities where I might just find what I’m looking for.
We took the bait, and found ourselves in the courtyard where a group of people had gathered. It’s a little obvious for an underground collective of relic hunters, but balancing the demand for a lightsaber building experience with the demands of the fiction leads to some necessary suspension of disbelief. The price — 200 credits, um, dollars — is on the high end of the custom saber market here on Earth. (Yes, that is a thing and has been since before the Dark Times.)
Since the Joy is in the details, I’ll spare you much of what goes on within the Savi’s Handbuilt Lightsabers experience. Obviously you get to build your own lightsaber, and there will be countless comparisons to Ollivander’s wand shop at Universal.
Having seen both now, but truly only experienced Savi’s, I’ll say this: there’s something more democratic about Savi’s. When you’re filed into the “special” entrance at Ollivander’s at Universal Hollywood, one person is chosen to experience the wand selection process. At the end, after being the subject of a fantastic display of effects, that one person is pulled aside from the others to talk financing. In essence, the whole wand and pony show is an elaborate upsell.
There’s no such chicanery at Savi’s. It’s 200 credits at the door, and then everyone who goes in gets the same chance to build the lightsaber they’ve always dreamed of. (Batteries included. Accessories sold separately. Lightsaber blade not guaranteed to work on Mandalorian beskar, cortosis ore, most metals, or organics. Okay, so it’s not a real blade—but the hilt, oh the hilt.)
While there is a serious variable in the form of who leads the building session, the overall structure of the experience is crafted to create some “Am I really doing this?” moments.
My own approach to playing in these spaces is an outgrowth of my training as an actor, which finds me committing to the moment as offered. There was one point — and I suspect I’m not going to be alone in this, so I won’t say exactly what it was here — where I found myself in the moment before taking an action I had imagined for decades. And in that moment, I couldn’t help but find myself choking up, with tears starting to well up.
With the process complete, we’re handed carrying cases for our newly constructed sabers. Disney wants us dropping the cash on them, but doesn’t want us running around with laser swords. Outside, I ran into some of the creators of the land, who had sat in on our session.
I told one that I had started to get emotional inside. He pointed to a nearby tree in the courtyard and — after telling me its name, which I promptly forgot— said that a wish or an oath made in front of that tree was binding. Practically before he had finished speaking, I gave a quick nod and without a word, strode over.
The very much alive tree had strips of blue and red cloth tied to the branches, and I found myself in front of it, with one of the heaviest things in my heart at the top of my mind.
I won’t say what I did — that’s for me alone — but soon I was weeping openly while holding onto a tree branch in the middle of the world’s most famous theme park. It probably isn’t the case that this place was designed with classical catharsis in mind, but it is a testimony to the instincts of the makers that they’ve created a space where such a thing is possible.
One of the functions of myth is to allow us to come into contact with that which is eternal about being alive. It’s a current that some call “divinity,” and those of us weaned on Star Wars know it as “the Force.” In my experience, the ability to have moments of epiphanies and catharsis are not imposed from without, but are supported by external stimuli. This is what I found on Batuu: a place that gives the individual space to find their own path.
Of course, it’s early yet. When I was there the digital app wasn’t up and running yet. Neither is Rise of the Resistance, the other e-ticket ride. There’s kinks to be worked out and refinements to be made. Maker willing, those refinements will only add depth to what’s already been put in place. It will be all too easy to flatten out the contents of the space just to push more bodies through and extract more value from guests.
But the conditions are right for the other path. The path of wonder. One where for a brief moment, you can touch a dream.
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is now open to those who have made reservations at Disneyland. The expansion will open to the general ticket-holding public on June 24.
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