Yesterday, we learned a great deal of new details about the Disney Cruise Line’s newest ship, the Disney Wish. Today, StarWars.com shared an even closer look at the Star Wars: Hyperspace Lounge aboard the new ship, including an interview with senior creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering Danny Handke.
- Handle is spearheading the Star Wars: Hyperspace Lounge, a high-end, immersive Star Wars bar for adults, coming to Disney Cruise Line’s new Disney Wish ship in summer 2022.
- The concept for the new lounge simply came from the idea of adults wanting to hang out in the Star Wars universe.
- “We always talked about the fact that kids get to immerse themselves in Star Wars,” Handke said. “But as a grownup, and a parent, I’m jealous that I don’t have my own space on the ship where I can immerse myself in Star Wars, since Star Wars is multi-generational. So we pitched the idea, ‘What if we did a lounge that’s for grownups only at night? It becomes an adult playground for the world of Star Wars.’ And everyone just loved that idea.”
- As was the case in creating Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in the Disney Parks, Handke and his team had to decide what location this lounge would take the theme of, given the plethora of iconic locations from the Star Wars franchise.
- “We decided that since we’re on a cruise ship, it would be fun if the lounge is on a Star Wars ship,” Handke said. “Around that time, we had The Last Jedi and Solo, and it was kind of the more refined side of Star Wars, like Canto Bight and Dryden Vos’ ship. We thought, ‘Boy, that’s really unique and different. You know, we have Oga’s Cantina at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. What if we explored, as a nice juxtaposition to that, doing kind of a Dryden Vos yacht ship?’ We landed on that, doing something sophisticated, which also matches the design of the Disney Wish.”
- And of course, it’s not called the “Hyperspace Lounge” for nothing.
- “We came up with this idea, ‘the Hyperspace Lounge.’ Think of it like a party ship through the galaxy. We’re jumping to different locations and getting a tour of space, and sampling amazing drinks from those different planets.”
- It’s not just space that this lounge will be jumping through, but time as well. This will allow for the lounge to showcase elements from the various eras of Star Wars lore.
- “We want to see a little bit of Empire-era Star Destroyers and TIE fighters,” Handke said. “And we want to see the Resistance from the First Order era, the prequel era, a familiar ship from The Mandalorian, and Rogue One.”
- And these ships won’t just be passing by. The lounge will provide a much more immersive experience than that.
- “The visual effects are all-new for the Disney Wish,” Handke said. “We worked with ILM. Each sequence is almost like a mini-storyline that plays out. You’ll see iconic ships, you’ll see really cool things happen. ILM adds so much eye candy and they take it to a whole other level for us, which is so awesome. They work in all sorts of Easter eggs and little details.”
- Some of the destinations this lounge will visit include:
- Tatooine (set during The Mandalorian)
- Batuu (featuring the Star Destroyer from Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Hondo Ohnaka’s ship)
- Mustafar (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story era)
- Endor
- Hanke revealed the Endor location to StarWars.com and expressed his excitement for this particular location.
- “It’s my personal favorite scene,” he said. “You see the forest moon from Return of the Jedi and Kef Bir, the water moon from The Rise of Skywalker. When we designed this scene, we were talking about, ‘What should it be? Do we see Death Star debris? Let’s do the First Order era for that.’ So I asked the Story Group and ILM, ‘Could we do like, a little bit of Star Wars? What happens if we have some Resistance cruisers, and the First Order shows up? Can we do a little battle?’ They said, ‘You can do a little skirmish. Not a full-on battle, but a skirmish.’ And so we staged this really cool skirmish scene, where the Resistance and the First Order are fighting each other. You get the laser fire, you get the TIE fighter explosion, and then at the very end we have these three X-wings that come down in front of our screen and protect us. I am so stoked about it.”
- Not many details were shared regarding the drinks guests will find in this new lounge but Handke did say they will be brand new options and not things fans will already find in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
- And of course, no Star Wars experience would be complete without plenty of Easter eggs scattered throughout.
- “Just like from Dryden’s ship, there’s the idea of collected items from around the galaxy,” Handke said. “So each of the gallery pieces are from different planets that you see through the viewport. It might be a volcanic crystal from Mustafar. We have an idol that was unearthed from Batuu. We just wanted to have different oddities that bring color to the space, but also celebrate the overall hyperspace story that we’re telling.”
- Star Wars fans will be able to experience the Hyperspace Lounge when the Disney Wish sets sail in summer 2022.
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