Star Wars land will sell blue milk, lightsabers and ... space Diet Coke?
When Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens in Disneyland next month (and Disney World in August), we'll finally see how many details Lucasfilm and Disney Imagineers have sweated to make the experience -- set in a Resistance base called Black Spire Outpost -- extremely immersive.
You'll be able to sip blue milk at a Cantina (featuring the first new music from Cantina band The Modal Nodes in 42 years), hack outpost computers with your phone, barter for lightsabers, and browse a store of Jedi artifacts where you may well have a Force-filled encounter with Yoda, voiced by Frank Oz. Amazing, it all sounds.
Unlike other Disney parks, real-world tchotchkes and brands will be kept at bay. Except one.
As revealed at the Galaxy's Edge panel at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago Saturday, Coke will be selling its various brands at the park -- albeit Coke in grenade-like bottles and a logo in the in-universe Star Wars language, Aurebesh.
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The reaction wasn't entirely positive. For some fans, bringing a sugar water brand to the Galaxy Far, Far Away fell on the wrong side of the "immersive experience" line.
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For others, thirsty for more details from the still-mysterious park, the Coke reveal poured cold water on their enthusiasm.
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The panel did discuss Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, a ride where groups of 6 will interact with the famous cockpit as it faces a First Order gauntlet: pilots steering in the front, gunners blasting in the middle, engineers in the back repairing the hunk of junk. Get it wrong and sparks will literally fly in a beat-up corridor on your way out.
It also teased the other main attraction of the park, Rise of the Resistance. Attendees discover the Resistance base amidst ancient ruins, get captured, and must escape a Star Destroyer. Rey, Poe, Finn, BB-8 and Kylo Ren will appear in the attraction.
The app that interacts with Galaxy's Edge allows you to play an augmented reality game in the park, flipping various light panels from First Order to Resistance control and back again, as well as scan the contents of various crates. A "translate" function turns Aurebesh signs into English. And a "tune" option allows you eavesdrop on radio chatter that tells various stories from the Outpost.
A shop run by an Ithorian named Doc Ondar allows you to barter for various objects seen in Star Wars movies -- easter eggs for hardcore fans. A food stall cooks a hunk of "space meat" over an open flame from a converted podracing engine.
"Everything in the market feels like it was made by people on that planet for people on that planet," Galaxy's Edge imagineer Scott Trowbridge told panel host Josh Gad.
Well, unless you count the Coke grenades.
Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opens at Disneyland in Anaheim on May 31, and at Walt Disney World in Orlando on August 29.
Topics Star Wars
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
