Built nearly three centuries ago on Corellia – in the same shipyards that produced the famed Millennium Falcon – the Halcyon starcruiser offers an expert crew with deep knowledge of the galaxy’s space routes. Its clean, elegant lines are reminiscent of Leia Organa’s personal ship, the Tantive IV, while evoking the glitz of high galactic society.
For the past many months, we have been given hints as to what to expect from the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. However, over these past few days, we have finally gotten our first chance to really learn first hand about the Halcyon and what lies in store for guests able to take a cruise to a galaxy far, far away. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this first of its kind venture was the dining. We have all seen the pictures of the blue shrimp and the bubble grilled cheese sandwiches but actually hearing from Culinary Director Chef Brian Piasecki about these dishes made them more than just pictures.
As with a typical cruise at sea, food is an important part of the experience, so it is no surprise that the planning and preparation for this seems to be taken to the next level. For the two-night experience, special effort has been put into making sure you live the part and that starts in the Crown of Corellia Dining Room. Named for Corellia, the planet known galaxy-wide for the shipyards that created not only the Halcyon starcruiser, but also the famed Millennium Falcon, this will be where guests will enjoy their meals among the stars. Described as a “customizable food and beverage experience” guests will start with a buffet dining operation for breakfast and lunch to two very distinct dinner operations. Each of the items will be customizable and in-story, tying into the history of the planets and of the ship itself.
The development of the food gave the chefs an opportunity to really give the passengers something that tastes familiar but looks different. For me, the grilled cheese and tomato soup is a perfect example of taking a basic offering that everyone is sure to be happy with but turning it into something isn’t the norm. The breakfast items are another perfect example — there isn’t much you can do with the standards that can be found at Chef Mickey’s but the presentation and a simple change of the way it is shaped has the ability to transport you from Walt Disney World to a Starcruiser traveling to Batuu.
Speaking of Batuu, something that Chef Brian and his team set out to do is to make sure the dining styles were two separate experiences. Guest dining at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge are in a rustic outpost where the food is more suited for that area, but onboard the Halcyon is more of an upscale celebratory event. The team took the approach of “if we were in space, what would it look like? What could we do? What can we do? How much fun can we have with this?” Drawing inspiration from the planets, characters, and even some of the Star Wars Universe gave way to design of not only food offerings but also the dining vessels, some of which are based on Halcyon itself.
Of course dinner, is the big moment of each of your two nights — each night will be very different and unique. The first night will be more of a casual dinner show feeling with the the meal being three different boa buns and four different dipping sauces. This will provide many options as guests enjoy a live performance from Gaya, the Twi’lek musical superstar who captivates her audience as she moves throughout the room singing her biggest hits. Again, the term “customizable” was used for some of the different options, such as green rice, to encourage guests to feel as they are in a safe environment to try new and different offerings.
Dinner the second night offers the “Taste Around the Galaxy” dinner experience, where each course hails from a different planet. The chef will come out and describe each course and what inspired them to put that course together. This was described as the “dining greatest hits” including cheeses and bread inspired by the planet of Mustafar to the blue shrimp from the dense jungles of Felucia, again going back to the familiar taste with a different look. At this point is when the deep cuts started to come out as they were talking about the texture of the cocktail sauce and how it was different because Felucia is a “gummy planet” so it needed to fit perfectly to feel like the correct planet.
Another interesting highlight for me was when Chef Brian started talking about the fruit onboard. It would be easy just to have fruit each day and no one would have a second thought, but they went into the detail of “how long it would be between port stops” and that would change what is available from meal to meal. As the trip progresses guests will see fresh fruit, dried fruit, and even compressed fruits because the pressure of space would have an effect on them.
No one expects you, as a reader of this, to go “gosh that food sounds and looks amazing — I’m going to book one of the most expensive vacations I’ll ever take.” I do want to drive home that this is not just a normal hotel and everything I saw and heard reinforced one of my favorite Walt quotes "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is something that very few of us will ever have the chance to visit but I firmly believe that if we do it will be a once in a lifetime experience.
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