Lucasfilm vice president and executive creative director Doug Chiang has spent a lot of time figuring out what stuff looks like in the galaxy far, far away, as the design director for six mainline Star Wars films. The interiors of the Halycon are the setting for the new two-day immersive hotel experience at Disney World.
It's kind of an ongoing joke with all of us at Lucasfilm, where are the toilets? When I talked with him during the media junket that followed my stay on the Halcyon, he told me that you never see any. We did see a refresher on the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian, but it was barely glimpsed.
It turned out to be nothing special. Even in far- flung planets, people want to sit down on white porcelain to use the toilet. The design process for that part of the ship shows how difficult it was to make the place look like a real hotel while also ensuring it functions like a real hotel.
The sets for films are very temporary, they are cheated and we can add visual effects after the fact. We brought that up to the next level because it was unguided. The environments there had to be safe for people to interact with. The Galactic Starcruiser brought that to a whole new level, because now it is a two-day experience instead of several hours.
The illusion had to go beyond what was designed for the films he has worked on, including The Phantom Menace, and The Rise of Skywalker.
The design process was the same as the films, and we had to make sure it looked like Star Wars. If a guest goes behind a door they weren't supposed to go in, it still holds up. What does the back side of that door look like? The buttons have to work because they can be arbitrary decorations.
Striving to hit such lofty, perhaps unprecedented design goals meant that Chiang got deeply involved in the entire process, from initial designs to final buildout, a process that included group reviews between Lucasfilm andWDI to debate the merits of a particular carpet sample, swatch of fabric, or hue of The team succeeded for most of the time, but the best part of the experience is simply being on the ship for a few days, and having the chance to see some of the movies.
The bar/lounge was my favorite spot on the ship, where you can order an elaborate, in-universe mixed drink and play a round of darts. Even with half the patrons in t-shirts and flip-flops, the intergalactic watering hole fell like it fell out of the movies.
The Halcyon's closest equivalent to a hotel lobby was what Chiang was most impressed with. It is where guests will gather to see key portions of the narrative play out, many of them taking place on the high walkways that border the room, which is the biggest tipoff you aren't actually in a Star Wars movie. The walls have large displays and windows that give a view of space. You feel like you have stepped into another world when you walk into the hotel from the elevator. The experience was gratifying for Chiang.
The scale of that was enormous, and it had to be physically work for the guests and serve all the functions. The initial design was ambitious, and to have it realized at this level was very impressive for me. It felt like I was walking into a real Star Wars environment when I first came on this morning. Not just a movie set.
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