Day One on the Halcyon, Part 1

A chronicle of starcruising events

Alright, this post is for all my friends who said they wanted to know everything — or for anyone else looking for a deep dive into the Galactic Starcruiser experience.

At least, this post will start it, because I barely got halfway through before it started warning me that I was “near email length limit.” So this post will have the first bits of Day 1, another post will finish Day 1, and then… well, we’ll see how many it takes to get through Batuu and the second afternoon and evening! (I’m also writing this as a straightforward chronicle, not attempting to put it into a proper narrative form; if I did that, we’d really be here forever, I could write a whole book.)

Look, those of you who know me know that if you ask for “everything”, you’re gonna get every-damn-thing. So really, you brought this upon yourselves.

I’m also doing this before doing my analysis, partly because just talking through it, to myself and to you, will help me organize my thoughts, and partly so that the analysis will have context for those who haven’t had the chance to experience it.

---

Warning: here there be spoilers! I really couldn’t go in depth without giving away the game, so if you’ve got a voyage yet ahead of you and want to be surprised by all the magnificent things that will happen, bookmark this for after you get back.

This is, though, only my experience. (Well, and most of Noah’s). There were whole tracks and subtracks I didn’t even touch! I love so much how many different stories play out simultaneously; this is just my path.

As a general overview: I said already that this is just the most amazing experience. I think without exaggeration that it’s the single greatest event I’ve ever participated in. It really does make you part of a Star Wars story, and both the digital design and, most importantly, the performers do such a wonderful job of making each individual feel like you are critical to a mission’s success.

If this comes back in some form, I hope it isn’t watered down to be just “Star Wars hotel”. That might almost be sadder than if it didn’t come back at all. I’m going to hold out so much hope that it can be re-imagined in a financially sustainable way without losing the magic, because…

Well. Take a look at all that would be lost:

---

Day One, Part One

(If you haven’t already, you might want to introduce yourself to Lady Annazena before diving in here)

Early: Noah and I went to EPCOT After Hours the night before, which had the benefit of making me too tired for “too excited to sleep” to plague me. We technically had until noon to check out, but knowing that people start lining up for Starcruiser entry early, we were not inclined to dawdle. We took the Skyliner over to the Riviera for a really lovely breakfast at Primo Piatto. I love the Riviera. It’s so beautiful and peaceful. Then we went back to Pop Century to get kitted up in our first day costumes!

11:00am: We began departing Pop Century for the Starcruiser. We knew we could get luggage services to hail us a cab, which Disney would pay for (it’s their way of accounting for the fact that they don’t have any other transport to the Starcruiser the way they have buses, boats, monorail, Skyliner connecting all the other resorts). As it turned out, we should have called down to luggage services rather than heading down first, as there was quite a line! But we got a cab summoned for us, and headed for the Halcyon!

11:30am: Or slightly before? We rolled up to the Halcyon and got checked in. The blueshirts (the passenger services crew — or, in usual Disney terms, the CMs) out front were all so friendly and kind! We got our pictures by the entry wall, then were ushered into the building. So glad we were early enough to make it inside, because folk who arrived much later were stuck outside in the heat. Mind you, the blueshirts did a very good job keeping people shaded, and they were passing out waters both inside and out.

We ended up in the hallway close to a bunch of the other deeply invested, already-in-costume folks, some of whom I recognized from the . So we started making friends! Noah and I both had cards to hand out, introducing our characters and linking to our real-world selves, since we’d seen on FB that that was, apparently, a thing people did. I was all prepared to feel awkward about it, but we immediately started getting handed back swag and cards and all sorts of lovely things.

1pm-ish: Boarding officially began at 1pm (although I think they took the first group into the pre-entry safety briefing a little earlier than that). We were in the second group taken onto the transport shuttle. We didn’t get entry photo by the glowing logo at that time because we didn’t want to hold matters up, and the blueshirt seemed eager to get the safety briefing underway — which, considering how many people were in line behind us, I completely respected.

The shuttle was so cool. It’s the most elaborate elevator anyone has ever been in, designed to very much look like the interior of a shuttle. It has viewscreens at the top where you can see other ships taking off and leaving, and then as you ascend, it goes to blue streaks -- although I have some quarrel with the idea that you go through hyperspace to get up to orbit. I get that they wanted to give everyone that classic experience, but canonically, it makes no sense. You don’t go to lightspeed within atmosphere.

Another lovely blueshirt, Tara, took us up to our room, chatting a bit along the way about what brought us to the Halcyon, so we started dropping a little backstory. The only real downside to all of this was having to use our real names for check in, a problem that continued with dinner and events and such. If I had any small tweaks to suggest, it would be that they could map character names to overwrite those real names for people who come prepared! We did make it clear, though, that those were just our Earthen aliases — because we wanted it clear from go that we were there to play.

About this time, we also got our first messages from Cruise Director Lenka Mok. She introduces herself, welcomes you to the Halcyon, and then gives four dialogue options geared to start you down one of the narrative paths: Resistance, First Order, Scoundrel, or Jedi. This definitely doens’t lock you in, but it kicks things off, especially for people who don’t immediately go around the ship looking for trouble. Noah picked the scoundrel answer; I picked Resistance.

We didn’t spend a ton of time exploring the room, because, well, we knew what it looked like, and we knew there’d be more time later at night to investiage its details. It is stunning, though. It really does feel like you’re in a spaceship. That viewscreen is beautiful — and cameras don’t do it justice, since they pick up some glare.

We also took a moment to introduce ourselves to D3-09, the ship’s logistics droid, who has a communications panel in each room. We had a lovely chat with her! Truly, what a charming droid. She encouraged us to explore the ship and go to muster — which is just what we intended to do!

We went shopping first, though! I knew I wanted to snag a few items and didn’t want to risk them running out. I used the code phrase I’d learned to get the special Resistance pins (“I’m looking for something special, something that will really ignite the spark of conversation at social events, you know?”), as well as a normal pin, a patch, an SK-620, and a few other things. (I… I did some serious damage to the gift card loaded onto my spira. But it was all free money from my Disney Visa rewards! Which I had saved specifically for this purpose).

We also stopped by a console and, in playing around, tried to just casually access some restricted systems -- which got us our first comms message from Raithe! He was impressed at our willingness to bend the rules! He helped us get into the restricted systems, then asked for our help with something in Engineering. We decided we’d see what we could do to assist him! … After lunch.

Then we hit up Passenger Services to get our bridge training changed from 4:30 to 6:30. I truly didn’t want to engineer our experiences too much or try to force certain interactions, but I knew that 4:30pm was the same time as the Captain’s Reception, which is a good time to meet a lot of different characters, and we wanted that opportunity. So I told the blueshirt that, “We’re very sociable people” and didn’t want to miss it! They were able to switch us into the 6:30pm training with no problem.

Then we finally headed down to the Crown of Corellia for lunch, where we took a moment to talk to Chef Diego, who was so wonderful about our dietary needs. He looked out for us so well, including remembering to ask Noah about gelatin and warn him about some things that we might not have realized had animal products in them.

Lunch was yummy! I had tip yip chicken, among other things. We also got our first celebratory drinks of the voyage. (Throughout, we stuck to wine; the Halcyon offers an impressive array of mixed drinks, but many of them have vodka, which counts me out right away, and they’re, well… much more expensive than wine, and Disney drinks are generally mixed pretty weak. Sticking to wine or beer is generally better bang for your credit!)

And yes, I stole those coasters. (It’s not really stealing; they’re cardboard and disposable).

3:00pm: After that, we took Raithe up on his challenge to see if we could get into Engineering. We could. It was… crowded. The poor blueshirt stationed in Engineering was having to ask everyone “Um, why are you here?” and not all the passengers were giving well-considered answers. We offered Noah’s excellent services as someone very familiar with ship operations, and we both managed to complete our tasks for Raithe. I was told to help keep Gaya’s communications private, setting up a secure channel in the Systems Patch Bay; Noah was told to make sure there was an escape pod ready for her if needed, using the Mechanical Systems.

While we were down there, we decided to check out the climate simulator — which is a little atrium giving you access to fresh air, as much as that term can be said to apply in central Florida. Outside the simulator, I scanned a crate, found a kyber crystal, which caught the Sajas’ notice! The Sajas are a new type of character created for the Halcyon — not Force-users, but students of the Force and its history. It’s sort of a handwave for how they can have lightsaber training as an activity, but the Sajas are all such lovely, heartfelt people, and I’m really glad I got the chance to interact with them. Saja Tycer’s message asked about my interest in the Force and hinted at maybe needing my help with recovering some artifacts on Batuu.

3:30pm-ish: We wandered onto the bridge to check it out ahead of Muster, and that’s where we met our first non-blueshirt character (in-person, as opposed to just in the app)! Sandro came in and introduced himself. What a sweetie. He’s an aspiring musician who’s a big fan of Gaya, so we talked a bit about why he was there and gave him some encouragement!

4pm: Muster! This is the first “big event” on the ship, which seems wild considering how much we’d already done! We were in Cresh section, led by Saja Kyr, who is cute as a button. By her instruction, we were trying to also keep an eye on mechanic/engineer Sammie, who was “helping” with muster drill and seeming to have a hard time of it.

Then, the welcome was rudely interrupted by the First Order! Lieutenant Croy showed up, all disingenuous smiles, telling us that he had to investigate suspected Resistance activity on board, and that anyone helping the Resistance was guilty of treason. I muttered that I wasn’t sure how he made that out, considering I certainly didn’t remember swearing loyalty to his Order in the first place. Lenka didn’t do a great job hiding her feelings about the whole thing, but the Captain kept a cooler head.

The Captain went on to tell us about the amazing dinner show we would be enjoying — but she was interrupted by Raithe Kole, letting everyone know that Gaya wasn’t actually on board yet and that we needed to go pick her up. The Captain did not seem pleased about this detour — but considering how many happened over the next few hours, it was really just a drop in the bucket. At least Coruscant is close to Chandrila.

Then, the Captain’s reception, where we did get to be sociable and talk to many people. We chatted to Raithe and made ourselves known as people who love mutually advantageous friendships. We tried to drop just enough backstory to give him the hook to draw us in further. He palmed me a card to scan, which triggered some necessary information for later.

I really love this picture Noah snapped! I think I look quite the proper Tapani diplomat, making new connections.

We also got to meet SK-620, the Halcyon’s astromech droid! I asked them how they like their work, are they well taken care of, you know, making sure the ship’s droids are well-respected for their labor. We mentioned being very big on droids’ rights. I think they quite liked us! We were both encouraged to scan our M-bands on them — which would become important later.

Then we got to talk to the Captain! I let her and Lenka catch a glimpse of my starbird tattoo, while Noah talked about how we don’t care for the First Order getting in the way of people going about their lives in the galaxy. They cause impediments. So the Captain drew me aside and offered us a tour of the climate simulator. We picked up a few others along the way, but I got to walk with her and tell her a little about the Tapani blockade. She was very sympathetic.

When we got to the simulator -- only six of us, I think, a very small and intimate group -- she told us what she was doing with the Resistance, asked if she could count on us if need be, and promised to keep everyone on the ship safe. This all felt very cool, to get drawn into something private so early. She told us to meet her in the cargo hold at 7:45pm for further instructions.

Afterwards, we also got messages from Lenka about the scan from “overly trusting” SK. But no worries, of course — we could be trusted. It turns out SK had given us the location of the Resistance base on Batuu, which I solemnly vowed to keep safe.

And that, I believe, is where I will stop the first part of this, as Substack tells me I’m approaching the email length limit!

To be continued in…

• Day One on the Halcyon, Part 2: Escalation

• Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 1: Batuu

• Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 2: The Heist

• Day Three on the Halcyon, Part 3: Coaxium