Together As One

A first response to my experience on the Halcyon Starcruiser

So, I’ve returned from the Halcyon Starcruiser.

It was… sublime. Beyond incredible. Beyond all my expectations. As high as the hype was, as much as I was hyped for it… it went higher.

It’s going to take me some time to process everything, but I’ve got a couple of in-depth posts planned. One (or, possibly, one set, so as to avoid a behemoth post) will be, well, very personal, focused on the experience itself. For all the friends who said, “Tell me everything!”, this will be for you! And for me, too, to help me lock absolutely everything, carved indelibly into my memory. I’ll walk through the story I got to live, step by step, moment by moment.

The other post (or set of posts) will be more analytical, using my immersive-experience-professional brain to think about how Disney Imagineering managed to craft such an astonishing thing -- and, possibly, how I think the marketing utterly let them down (and what might be done to remedy in the hopeful event of a revival, someday).

This one, though… this is just raw feeling. Unfiltered. Unprocessed. Just… what’s been churning in my head since leaving the Starcruiser yesterday. (And this post will be spoiler-free, for anyone with a journey yet ahead of them in this last month; the other two will be, of necessity, spoiler-full).

I truly could not have had a better time. There is not a single thing I would have done differently. The whole experience felt absolutely charmed. Every choice I made panned out into something spectacular. I got tapped for exciting components of much larger group efforts. I made connections with some absolutely amazing people, both among the performers and my fellow passengers. I was surprised and delighted by moments I never could have anticipated stumbling into.

As much as I would love to have the opportunity to go back, it would be very different. Nothing would be quite the same as getting to make those discoveries in each individual moment for the first time.

And there was just… there was so much. Especially on Day 2. Noah and I spent four hours in Batuu, and almost all of that time was completing missions. We were running around all over the Outpost. And then once back on the Halcyon, we had a little breather (and much-needed time to clean up, considering the effect that Batuu’s balmy climate has) followed by lightsaber training, but from 3:30 onward? It was just go-go-go. Of the four major paths available, I ended up on three of them. (Or, at least, pieces of each -- there are sort of sub-tracks to at least the Resistance path, with different characters and objectives). My schedule was bonkers. I think I had seven alarms set on the evening of Day 2 to make sure I moved when I needed to.

If you’re willing to go hard, it pays off. You absolutely cannot do everything -- many things are mutually exclusive just due to scheduling. But you can do a lot if you’ve got the energy, the focus, the time management skill, and the willingness to dash up and down a few flights of stairs many times.

Anyone who was inclined to mock the price tag has no idea just how much goes into creating something like this -- both creating it in the first place and then running it on a daily basis. I have some idea, but the work I do is on such a smaller scale, to say nothing of a smaller budget. But I know how many documents it takes to get the story set, to plan the props and scenic elements, to train the performers for something that’s really just a couple of hours of “on” time, without the complex branching trees the Starcruiser has. To do something for a 45-hour long experience, with so many variables… it would have to be utterly gargantuan.

I would fist-fight a gundark to get a look at some of those behind-the-scenes materials. The scripts, the beat sheets, the branching trees for dialogue and individual choices. All of it. It’s the sort of thing I do for work, but I… I want to see how it goes when you have Disney-level resources and Disney-level scale.

My heart is just breaking for everyone involved in this project. To see it shut down so soon… It’s awful. It’s a tragedy. Every inch of the Starcruiser was created with care and creativity and so much love for the world. The Imagineers thought of everything. There are so many clever details, so many subtleties, so much pure worldbuilding craft.

And the performers and crew… every single one of them appeared to be throwing their whole heart into the effort. I truly cannot praise them highly enough. The performers are… stars. Absolute masters of their craft. And doing this kind of acting? Is a wildly different skill set than just doing stage or screen acting. You have to be able to think so fast. You have to react to the unexpected, then steer things back on track. These performers were stellar. The way they managed both large crowds and intimate moments… well, I’ll have a lot of thoughts later about the crafting of the immersion on that level. And then the blueshirts! The passenger services crew were so wonderful as well, so kind and helpful and ready to engage.

I hope they know, all of them, on-stage and behind-the-scenes, how much the Starcruiser’s closing is absolutely no reflection on their work. Disney Corporate let them down.

I’m so grateful I got this incredible opportunity. Star Wars is… it’s the IP that means more to me than any other. It’s the IP that made me want to be a writer and a creator of worlds. I have wanted to be a part of it since I was eleven years old, staring up at a screen full of stars. Since I was a kid trying to stand on her head so she could use the Force.

The Starcruiser had so much for adult Cass, who tells stories and crafts immersive experiences and builds worlds. But it also had so much for that eleven year old Cass (who is, truly, never very far from my heart). I got to be a part of this universe that I have loved for so very, very long. It was truly magical. And as much sorrow as I have for what will be lost when it closes, my heart is brimming over with joy and love for what it was and is, for the memories I made there that I will truly cherish forever.

After all… you never forget your first ship.