Friday, November 29, 2019

Is Galaxy's Edge Too Alien?

I'm not a big Star Wars fan; I've seen all the movies, of course, (some more than once), and I am enjoying The Mandalorian, but it's not a big part of my life the way much "real" science fiction has been.

That being said, from what I've read about it I would probably enjoy visiting the Disney theme park's Galaxy's Edge. I think it's extremely cool how they've made it so immersive. Unfortunately, it seems that it may be too immersive for the casual Disney visitor.
The Batuuan terminology used by cast members for real-world conventions has slowly but surely faded out—going to one of the stalls in the marketplace might still get you a “Bright Suns” instead of a “Hello,” but you’ll be asked if you’ve got an Annual Pass discount instead of a credit reduction these days. If you’re looking to find Savi’s workshop, the place where you can build your own lightsaber, castmembers no longer engage in the sly wink that all the workshop sells is “scrap,” in order to mask its true purpose from the watchful eyes of patrolling Stormtroopers. Instead, they’ll just tell you the Lightsaber Shop is thataway and it’s 200 bucks plus tax for the pleasure.
It’s easy to see why these changes are happening, even just six months after Galaxy’s Edge opened. Your average Disney or Star Wars fan isn’t coming to Disneyland to do the sci-fi equivalent of dressing up at a Renaissance Faire. They wanna ride the ride, buy a t-shirt with Baby Yoda on it, and maybe eat one of those sausage wraps they’ve heard so much about (Ronto, what’s a Ronto?). They want to be in a theme park, like the rest of Disneyland, not necessarily within a galaxy far, far away. The theming is nice, but having to engage with it on the level Disney first envisioned Galaxy’s Edge with—some of which has yet to materialize, like a reputation system built using the Disney Play app’s functions throughout the land that would see cast members react differently to you depending on who you were aligned with—is an abrupt ask for people, especially considering nowhere else in Disneyland operates like that.
So it sounds like if you are a Star Wars or science fiction fan and you are planning on visiting Galaxy's Edge, you should do it soon, before they dumb it down to the same level as the rest of the Disney properties. 

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