A morning on Batuu: my day in Galaxy’s Edge

Wow. I had the opportunity to visit Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland, and it was honestly better than I could have hoped for. With the reservation system that they have in place until June 23rd it wasn’t overly crowded, and we got to experience a lot of what the land had to offer. There are a million and one blogs out there recapping every single experience, food item, or nook and kranny of Galaxy’s Edge. Instead of going over all of that I can at least walk you through my 4 hours on Batuu.

Arrival

Our reservation was for 8am-12pm, and they were letting people into the park to get their wrist bands 2 hours ahead of time. We were staying at Paradise Pier and woke up around 5am, got to the gates by around 5:40. It was pretty dead by this point but we didn’t mind the early morning – we were still on east coast time so 5am really felt like 8am.

At the gates they scanned our park tickets and looked at our reservations. We were then directed back to Tomorrowland to enter the Launch Bay, where we got on line for wristbands.  We were told to wait at Galactic Grill. We could walk upstairs to see the Galaxy’s Edge merchandise or head directly to the Grill.We walked through quickly but it was the same stuff you could find all over Disneyland – World of Disney, by Space Mountain, etc.

Galactic Grill was serving breakfast so we got coffee and a breakfast burrito while we waited. We were definitely towards the front of our group. At around 7:50am we were led on the long walk to the back of the park. We were held right by the entrance to Galaxy’s Edge until exactly 8am, when they did a countdown and let us in!

Cast members were everywhere directing you where to go – the main places that people seemed to be lining up for were the Millennium Falcon, Oga’s Cantina, or Savi’s Lightsaber Workshop. We had our plan ready: straight for the cantina for 11am cocktails!

Oga’s Cantina

We were allowed to get in line, but for many people arriving after they started doing a text based reservation system – you gave your number and they would text you a time to come back. The wait wasn’t bad at all for us since we had been towards the front – we got in around 8:25.

The atmosphere inside Oga’s Cantina was incredible. It was so well themed and decorated, and felt very lively and fun with all the other guests inside. We got a spot at the bar (no seats here) and ordered our first round of drinks. We were told we were limited to a 2 drink maximum and 45 minutes.

While Oga’s does have a breakfast menu, with a few snacks and breakfast specialty drinks, their full drink menu was also available. We started with 3 different cocktails: The Jedi Mind Trick, the Fuzzy Tauntaun, and the Bespin Fizz. All of them were pretty tasty. I thought the Jedi Mind Trick went down pretty easy, and while I do think it was strong it was deceptively so. The Fuzzy Tauntaun had an odd foam on top that created a sort of numbing feeling in your mouth. The Bespin Fizz was definitely the most fun, being served with dry ice.

For round 2 I absolutely got suckered into the atmosphere and the fun. I’m a big fan of beer and I really wanted to try the flight, but because it comes in a collectible set of mugs it was $75. Why not? We’re on Batuu, let’s do it! I enjoyed all 4 of the beers – three of them were really excellent, while the red amber was just okay.  Jason got a Skyhopper for his second drink, which was probably my favorite out of the cocktails we tried. Kristin went with the Toniray Wine, which was fun for the idea of it being blue wine, but otherwise a mediocre white wine.

DJ Rex was a big highlight – he was previously on the original Star Tours and has found a new home here! I loved the tunes he was spinning and his little dance moves. We headed out right at around 45 minutes. No one was asking us to leave or really keeping an eye on the time as far as we could tell, but we had other things we wanted to do.

Blue Milk

The Blue Milk stand is right near Oga’s, so we had to stop there to grab one. It’s non-alcoholic and at about $8, only one of us got it but the others tried sips of it. I really enjoyed it! Despite the name it is not dairy at all, but more like a slushie. It was very refreshing, with citrus flavors that were sweet but not overly sweet. I would definitely get it again.

Photos

We wanted to wait for the line for the Millennium Falcon to die down a little bit before we got on (I think it was at about 40 minutes at this point) and get some photos. We did a photopass location near the entrance to Galaxy’s Edge. Then we went to the big photo opp – the Millennium Falcon! We had photos done by a CM not in the offical line, but then we joined the long Photopass line to get those as well.

When my friend saw the Falcon she was so excited she started to cry. A CM started talking with us (in character – everyone on Batuu is a resident there, not someone working at Disneyland!). A few moments later he came back to find us and said, “Hondo has requested a private meeting with you three specifically.” He then led us to the ride and directly to the fastpass line! Fastpass is not being used yet so there was absolutely no wait. It was an incredible moment of Disney magic, and just another reminder of how the company and the CMs go above and beyond.

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run

We stepped right into the first section of preshow, which is where the Hondo animatronic explains the basic mission and what you’ll be doing. He is a really well done, very cool looking animatronic.  

From there you’re led on a small line where they divide you into groups of 6 and you get your assignments. Each crew has 2 pilots, 2 gunners, and 2 engineers. On this trip Jason and I were the gunners and Kristin was an engineer. We rode it a second time and Kristin and I were pilots while Jason was an engineer. You then wait in a small area until they call your crew’s color – there’s a great photo opp here with the chess table!

Once your color is called you’re led into a hallway to watch a short video. Then it’s time to enter the cockpit. Pilots are in front, then gunners, then engineers. You have different things to do that will affect your mission. The pilots steer the ship, the gunners have to shoot down tie fighters, and the engineers have to fix the damage done to the ship. It’s extremely cool. The first time we rode we failed miserably because our pilots crashed into everything. The second time we did much better and it was actually a longer ride/mission, since we didn’t crash!

It felt like a tiny bit of a learning curve the first time to figure out how it all worked and what exactly each job was supposed to do. I could definitely ride this many, many times – if you have the chance to do it twice I would, just because the first time is a bit of sensory overload.

Droid Depot

From there I wanted to build a droid! The line wasn’t long but it was still a bit of a wait – maybe about 25 minutes. You pay at the counter first and are then led to gather your droid pieces. You can do an R-unit or a BB-unit. I chose a BB. They tell you what pieces of need and then you grab the ones you want off of a conveyer belt. There are different colors and designs!

Once your pieces have been gathered you are directed to a building station where you assemble your pieces. There are CMs there to help but they were running around like crazy, so we tried to follow the directions on our own to put it together. Unfortunately we had a lot of difficulty screwing the two head pieces together. The CM eventually came over and couldn’t do it either – I guess that piece was warped and didn’t fit properly. She said they’d been having that problem.

But eventually my little BB unit was assembled and we activated him! He popped into my carry-case vibrated happily.  I didn’t get the chance to test out his interactivity with the land, but they say that they interact with things and with other droids. He would randomly vibrate so I don’t know if maybe he was saying hi to other friends nearby.

We finished around 10:55 and raced to ride the Falcon once more before the 11am reservation group came in and it got much more crowded.

The Shops

After getting off the Falcon again we had about half an hour left, and I had wanted to look in the shops and make some purchases.  The market place is very well themed, but the shops are SMALL. They aren’t really shops but more like market stalls. You could fit maybe 10 people packed together in most of them. It fits so well with the themeing of the land but seems super impractical.

Some of the things we had wanted to purchase were sold out, like the sabaac cards and the gift card that looked like a galactic credit.  I still made some purchases, including a Chewbacca doll, a Black Spire Outpost mug, and a coke bottle. I already had my droid and my rancor teeth flight so that was plenty!  We headed towards the more open area near where Rise of the Resistance will open up later this year.

Characters

Characters from Star Wars are walking the land, but they are living or working there, not posing for photos or giving autographs. Frankly I like this – it’s a lot of fun! There were two stormtroopers out by the imperial shop in the morning. At noon when we were over by the X-Wing we saw Chewbacca. He walked around for awhile interacting and then started doing repairs on the X-Wing. I’ve also seen reports of Rey and Kylo Ren being around but we didn’t see either of them.

Overall Galaxy’s Edge is truly an immersive, exciting experience. I don’t know if I could pick a favorite part because all of it was pretty awesome – riding the Millennium Falcon, hanging out and drinking in Oga’s Cantina, and building my droid.I can’t wait to go back, though I’m nervous to see what the crowd situation will be like in Florida.

I would love to write more blog posts on Galaxy’s Edge, but I’d like to know – which things would you most like to hear about? What questions do you have?

What do you think you would most enjoy doing in Galaxy’s Edge?