In mid-March, I’ll be headed to the planet Batuu with may family on the galactic starcruiser Halcyon.
In other worlds, I’ll be staying at the new Disneyworld Star Wars hotel in Orlando, Florida. We’ve wanted to go since the concept for the hotel was first announced several years ago. In part, this is because both my wife and I are of an age that the original Star Wars trilogy had a huge impact on how we saw things and approached even fundamental matters like ethics, religion, and purpose. We never ascribed these cultural substructures to Star Wars directly – but that was what lines the bottom of Plato’s aviary for a lot of people.
A second reason I am personally fascinated by the idea of the Star Wars hotel is that I’ve been working on technological installations for over a decade, starting with large touch screens and now in VR and Spatial Computing (MR, AR, whatever you want to call it). The world I work in is the opposite of the prescription that form should follow function. In the world of using technology to augment reality, form is playful and function is whatever you happen to find in it – which we also call “experiences”.
The Star Wars hotel is the ultimate “experience”, recreating through sensory tricks something many people have imagined in their mind’s eye since childhood. This is the ultimate goal of all the “V” and “A” and “Meta” realities. But as most insiders know, the best fake reality always has a bit of real reality in it to heighten the effect.
We had assumed that we’d never be able to book passage for at least the first year but then something funny happened. Three months before the maiden voyage of the Halcyon, people began canceling their reservations. Whether this was because of the COVID upsurge at the end of 2021 or because people were getting cold feet, I don’t know. In any case, openings started appearing on the cruise calendar and I was able to book a cabin.
So now we spend our evenings practicing Sabacc, printing greebles, and exploring the Star Wars fashion universe. We also watch the nanology (sp?) of films. We tell each other intricate back stories about our characters on the cruise, which may never come up. We debate whether we should support the resistance or the fascist New Order. We buy sensible walking shoes on Zappos that are in line with the Star Wars aesthetic. We eat lots of preparatory salad because the Galactic buffet is supposed to be extensive.
I feel fortunate to be in a position to do this with my family. It is supposed to be an interactive theatrical experience backed by lots of tech. Our cabin will have a large window with digital stars going by outside (for just this alone, I would have wanted to go).
As we pack for the trip, I’ll blog (a moribund medium, I know) about the preparation we are doing to get ready for our first cruise. Stay tuned.