Trivia / Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge

• Demand Overload:
  • Some merchandise went fast after the land opened. By the time the reservation period ended, a number of items were unavailable such as sabacc decks, lothcats, and especially kyber crystals. While Savi's still had crystals for the workshop, Dok-Ondar's limited theirs for months to "buy one with purchase of a holocron" and only had out-of-packaging red and blue ones.
  • The digital queuing system to get onto Rise of the Resistance was regularly reaching capacity within 30 minutes of park opening for its first month in Florida. Likewise in California, the digital queue regularly filled up within minutes of the park opening at 8 a.m. It got so packed that the infamously lengthy wait for Peter Pan's Flight at Disneyland dropped from 50 minutes to 30 minutes. It took, of all things, the COVID-19 Pandemic to finally make it relatively possible for guests to ride after joining the line at any time.
  • When plushes of the Child (Grogu) were introduced to Toydarian Toymaker, the first thousand all sold out by noon.
• Follow the Leader: Several aspects of Galaxy's Edge are Disney's attempts at replicating features of Universal Studios' The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Savi's Workshop emphasizes building a connection between a lightsaber and its user even more than Ollivander's does with wands. The Datapad and Bounty Hunter games that require using a smartphone to scan QR codes around Black Spire Outpost (as well as a MagicBand+ for Bounty Hunter) are analogous to Wizarding World's wand-activated interactive props. Blue bantha milk and green thala-siren milk are defictionalized drinks like butterbeer and pumpkin juice, and Dok-Ondar is an animatronic who goes about his job like the goblins in Gringotts.
• God Never Said That: There were claims that cast members were not allowed to say "younglings" because of the word being used in the films as referring to Anakin's massacre in Revenge of the Sith, supposedly banned due to Moral Guardians taking it as a death threat to their children. However, this has since been refuted, as it was later clarified that it was just a joke by one of the cast members, and there have been confirmations that the word has been used.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: An Aurebesh decal (supposed to be like graffiti or stickers vandalizing public places in real life) reading "Mara Jade Lives" was discovered in late September 2019 on one of the bathroom stall doors, but was confirmed as fake by Matt Martin.
• Release Date Change: Galaxy's Edge was originally going to open in Summer and Fall 2019 for Disneyland and Disney World respectively, but the opening dates got bumped up one season ahead.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The TSA temporarily banned bringing the soda canisters aboard planes, even if they're empty, because they look like grenades, which caused the TSA to label them "mock explosives." Fortunately the TSA received sufficient pressure and reviewed the bottles which caused them to back down.
• Spin-Off Cookbook: It has an official cookbook for fans who want to make the food they ate at the in-park restaurants at home.
• Troubled Production: Rise of the Resistance was delayed for four months after the opening of Galaxy's Edge in Hollywood Studios, and six months in Disneyland, because the NFC chips that guide the trackless ride vehicles were discovered to be buried too deeply in the floors for the vehicles to detect them, requiring all of the floors to be torn up and replaced. Even after the ride opened, technical problems sometimes cause it to be shut down for maintenance, or for the transport shuttle preshow to be skipped.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Galaxy's Edge was originally going to have much more going on. Things that were promised at D23 2015 included bounty hunters who would come after you if you did poorly on Smuggler's Run, fights in the streets between Rey and stormtroopers, and a dinner theater. However, Bob Chapek, head of parks and resorts at the time, viewed the entire land not as an immersive experience that would rival Universal's The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but as another way to aggressively market IP-based merchandise, as had been done in 2018 when Paradise Pier was partitioned between Pixar Pier and Paradise Garden, the former being criticized as a cheap overlay. The land was hit with major budget cuts, putting the kibosh on the bounty hunters, stunt shows, and dinner theater; the earliest casualty was a Bantha ride around the land on an elevated track as a sort of spiritual successor to the beloved PeopleMover. As a result, the land opened somewhat bare-bones with only Smuggler's Run, Oga's Cantina, several smaller food stalls, and lots of gift shops (Rise of the Resistance's troubles are detailed above).
  • The entrance to the building where the dinner theater would have been located is still visible as the archway between Oga's Cantina and First Order Cargo, which is now usually occupied by a drinks cart.
  • The media preview for the opening day of Rise of the Resistance at Disney World provides the best look at what the land could have been. This stunt show was originally intended to happen in front of park visitors every day — all of the dialogue was written, the choreography was planned out and the performers rehearsed it — but in order to cut expenses it was only performed this one time for members of the press.
  • Dinner theater and stunt shows (including a lightsaber duel between Rey and Kylo Ren) eventually became part of the guest experiences on Galactic Starcruiser. The failure of the hotel after a year and a half indicates that the expense associated with supporting this cast of actors — as well as the actors' understudies, wardrobe and makeup, lighting and sound, dining, hotel services, the behind-the-scenes dungeon masters, and paying off the loan to finance construction — is so high that Disney can't find enough paying customers to offset it.
  • Early concept art for Galactic Starcruiser called for a more extensive use of animated video displays to simulate views into space, which seems to have been scaled back to save costs. The windows in the guest cabins were supposed to be larger than the ones appearing in the final hotel. There was going to be a full video screen at the front of the Atrium instead of a static star chart. The transport pods (elevators) would have had a larger screen spanning the whole ceiling, and the shuttlecraft to Batuu would have been minibuses with actual video screens, instead of box trucks with only a voiceover from the droid pilot.
  • Originally Bob Iger wanted the attraction to be based on Tatooine shortly after (or before, sources vary) the fall of the Empire but Lucasfilms CEO Kathleen Kennedy convinced him to base it on a new Outer Rim planet during the Sequel Trilogy era. Part of the reason Tatooine wasn't used as a setting is that not only could the land not have any trees planted in it, but it would have to conceal the views of all of the trees elsewhere in the park. If it rains (which is more frequent in Florida than California), that would also break the immersion of being on a desert planet.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • Like all the Disney parks since 2015, toy blasters and guns are not sold at Galaxy's Edge. The only exceptions are the blaster accessories attachable to R-units from the Droid Depot.
  • Within a week, the black kyber crystals were pulled from store shelves due to bad behavior from guests trying to find one and scalpers reselling them. Disney eventually reintroduced them, but lined the containers with black paper to prevent people from shining lights through them to find the black crystals. As concession, black crystals are much less rare than they were before, dropping from a 1 out of 100 chance to 1 out of 7.
  • Originally, Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo had special (yet impractical) custom sporks as silverware, but people started stealing them and selling them online. Soon after, plastic utensils replaced the sporks before being replaced with normal silverware. In January 2020 the sporks returned, but were available only for purchase at $11 and limited to just one per customer. They come in a bag that says in Aurebesh: "SPORK Property of Docking Bay 7".
  • Docking Bay 7 initially had its dishes named after in-universe edibles but they were eventually replaced with their real world food names, except for a handful of desserts. Currently, the food names have seemed to meet a middle ground of In-Universe names and real world food.
  • There were plans for autonomous droids rolling around the park alongside guests, with a few test runs in Tomorrowland. But ultimately they were cut due to worry of them breaking from the large crowds as well as negotiations falling through with the Puppeters' Union. Eventually this started getting softened, with R2-D2 making free roaming appearances in the park starting January 2020, followed by BB-8 in 2021, and Chopper and BD units in 2023.
  • Downplayed with Jedi robes. The official rules are that guests can purchase Jedi robes from Galaxy's Edge but not wear them until out of the park due to concerns that people might use them to impersonate cast members or lure children. However, many guests report that this rule is rarely actually enforced.

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