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HALCYON – The Galactic StarCruiser

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THIS WAS MEANT TO BE PUBLISHED IN JUNE OF 2023, but I never hit “publish,” so my bad.  I’ll put a little note at the end about my results.

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Yesterday was a rollercoaster of a day. I’m going to talk about my stress and Disney and being a geek, and if that stuff doesn’t interest you, feel free to check out. It may be long. (I always do this. Sorry. Not sorry. You can choose to check out at any time.
WHAT IT IS: So for those of you that vaguely heard something about Disney and the Galactic Starcruiser, here is the situation in a nutshell. Disney built a very ambitious hotel which would immerse a guest in the Star Wars universe. They hired actors who play aliens of all different races, each with a back story, wrote a story that would take place over 48 hours, and basically created a 48 hour Star Wars LARP that includes special effects, and a total immersion that only Disney could provide, not only as the license owner of the intellectual property, but as the people who constructed the hotel and were able to mix special effects into the construction. The hotel, which only has 100 rooms, is meant to be the Galactic Starcruiser, a ship that travels through space….so in order to keep that illusion going there are no windows, unless they are generating a starfield background. In addition, you have to take a “space shuttle” to get there, and I’m not even sure how that works, if it’s a bus or a simulator or both…probably both. Parts of the hotel must be attached to motion simulators, if not all of it. The food has been designed to look alien (there are blue shrimp, I hear, that are delicious) and all the actors, ALL of them, have back stories so you can ask them about their lives, how they ended up there, what they’ve been doing, etc. and THEY ARE READY not only to answer those questions, but also to give you pieces of information that will influence your choices for the next 48 hours.
You can choose to side with the Rebels, the First Order, the Smugglers, whatever you choose. Your choices affect the trip. I found out yesterday that if you share details with someone else and then in a conversation with one of the actors if they find out you know something, they will commission you to be a spy, sometimes not for the team you were intending to play for, and that the First Order can be a bit aggressive about that. (How do you know that? WHO told you? WHO WAS IT?). You can also be taught how to play the card game Sabacc (there is a tournament on the ship) be given Jedi Training (included in the trip!) and be taught how to run the bridge or be given a tour of the engine room (both also included). There are also “excursions” you can pay for just like any cruise ship. Rob introduced me to a friend of his, Kat Cawley, (she does STUNNING cosplay, and if you get a chance to check out her page you should) who had done this trip TWICE already, and was hoping to get in a THIRD trip before it shut down. It turns out there are MANY people like that.
This level of immersion, as you can imagine, requires very personal attention, and also a lot of attention to details. Hence the maximum 100 rooms in the hotel. And the exorbitant price tag. A room on the Starcruiser costs approximately 2K per person for 2 days. And because of that, the Starcruiser wasn’t filling up as much or as fast as they hoped, and the project, which was originally meant to run indefinitely, was scrapped, and given a final voyage date at the end of September.
Except there were people scheduled after September…so all those people had to be contacted, and given first choice of rescheduling earlier. They set about a week to do that, and then said they would open reservations to the public at 7am on Friday morning.
WHO I AM: I love Star Wars. I’m not a nerd about it (not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m a little envious of it to be honest but I just can’t remember that much detail), but Star Wars makes me cry and squee and it brings me so much joy I can’t express it. I am emotionally invested in this property in a way I can’t explain. It’s not real life, but it matters to me who wins, because there is so much shit in the world right now and SW is a bright spot where good and evil are constantly in flux, and the people can always join together and make a difference, your moral structure and belief in kindness and goodness actually matters, and it is inspiring and beautiful. Going on the Starcruiser has been part of my dream since I heard it was being built, and the financial end of it has been a bone of contention in our house for a long time. The week before they released the news that they were shutting down I was literally having a discussion about getting a second job to do this because it was so important to me, and I was afraid that they were going to shut it down.
When the news came out I was devastated. I was crying quite a bit, and I’m crying now just typing this. I wanted this thing so very badly, and now it was now or never. Rob and I re-discussed everything and decided to re-allocate some funds that were put on the side for a different trip so that we could do this. We figured out a flexible plan deciding when we would leave and come back in relation to the trip (Arrive the day before, stay in a DVC, head to the Starcruiser, head home right after checkout, lose as little work time as possible, do NOT extend the stay). Then we just had to wait until Friday for the release date and hope we could get in.
WHAT HAPPENED: Friday I had the day off from work, but I set my alarm for 6am. I wanted to make coffee and be awake to start dialing. I had gone to the website, looked at available “sail dates” and written down four dates in order of preference. I had written down all information needed, and had my credit card ready. I drank my coffee and waited for 7am. All the sale dates through the end of September were pretty open. It seemed like it wouldn’t be too hard.
When I started dialing, I couldn’t get through. I DON’T MEAN GET THROUGH TO A PERSON. I mean the circuits were so busy the call was failing. That message didn’t even come from Disney…it came from Verizon. I just kept hitting redial, and I started keeping little hash marks because I was going to have a story, and it was going to be funny about my dedication and all the calls I made.
By the time it was 7:20 I had called 60 times already. I knew I would have to stop counting and figured I would estimate it at 180 calls per hour. Couldn’t be much longer, right? I would have to get through at some point, and when I did, I’d get a reservation.
At 7:35 I started getting a message that said, “All circuits are busy,” so that was a step up. But it still wasn’t getting through to Disney at all. I wasn’t daunted. I kept going.
At 8:45 I got through to Disney for the first time, but not to a person. I got a message that said, “You have reached the Galactic Starcruiser….yadda yadda….We are not accepting reservations at this time.” I sent a text to Rob saying, “WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” Were they full? Did they stop? Did the systems go down? WTAF? And meanwhile, the reservations in August were starting to fill up. Anxiety started to kick in. I didn’t give it too much weight and just focused on redialing and redialing. I realized that not everyone interested in this thing would be able to just drop and go the way we could. I had spoken to my boss, telling him that I was shooting for late June, (Anything later would definitely affect my High Holiday work and I truly wanted to avoid that) but that I would have to take whatever was available, and I wouldn’t know until we got the date and he was okay with that…but I didn’t want to drop and go tomorrow either. But Friday was the 26th, and there WAS a sailing leaving on the 27th…could we get there in 24 hours? I didn’t even know if that was possible.
At 9:20 I was still redialing. I set up a text chat with Disney on my computer, and they said that all we could do was keep trying. I had thought surely this would have been resolved by now, but no.
At 10:45 I got a real message. It said that I was on hold for a cast member, and the approximate wait time was ten minutes. AWESOME. I waited, gathered all my information. I refreshed the available dates page….August was filling up, but if it was going from latest to earliest like it seemed to be going I would have no problem getting mid June. Piece of cake.
EXCEPT when I got a live person they said that the system is down, they aren’t taking any new reservations at this time, and that I should call back later in the day…maybe give it about four hours, and try again.
I could tell the person that told me that wasn’t a fan, didn’t understand this at all, and was delivering a message he was told to deliver. To quote my friend Andy, “LISTEN, KAREN! THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH!!!!” and in my head I’m screaming, “YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME.” I decide I’ll call every half hour until I get through, and then set a timer for a half hour from that moment.
At that point I felt really lost. I asked Rob what to do, because him and his mom are usually the ones that deal with Disney reservation drama, and I was worried that I was being excessive. At that point it was 11:35, and I had been calling non-stop since 7am. I couldn’t tell if I was doing the thing that I needed to do in order to get the thing I want, or if I was being obsessive and I should just let it go. I had no idea whether I should continue or what. Rob didn’t want to pressure me in any particular direction, but he supported me if I wanted to keep calling. Then I looked at the website again, and more dates in August were down. I went back to calling.
It started to be a rough pattern. It took about a half hour of redialing to get the point where I would be put on hold to speak to a person, who would tell me to try again in about four hours or later in the evening, and I would say thank you, hang up, and hit redial, and keep doing so for about a half hour until I got through to a person again, who would tell me the same thing.
By 1pm I was losing faith. I was crying. There was only one sail date left in August, and July was starting to fill up. When I got a live person I was crying on the phone with them. I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I know it’s not your fault. I’ve just been calling nonstop for five hours.”
The June dates we were looking at were still open, so that was good, and I just kept calling. At 1:20 someone told me that they were working on 6 hours of backlog in the calls…but before then it was 4 hours, so SOMEBODY was getting through. And reservations were being made, I could tell when I refreshed the available sail dates. At that point, I started getting angry and resentful…not that I had to go through this process, but that we hadn’t done it sooner, when there was no pressure and no rush, when we could have had our pick of dates. I was recognizing that I might not get to do this thing, and it was because we had been fighting over money and that’s stupid when we pay off our credit card in full every month. I could miss out on this amazing thing because we didn’t want to carry a balance, and once it’s gone it’s gone, I will not have this opportunity again. This will not exist again.

August and September were now completely full, and only four dates were good in July. But the dates we wanted in June were still good.

 

By 1:45 only one of them was good. I had to refresh our optional sale dates. This time I chose six dates based on availability.

By 2:40pm only six sail dates were left…and one was sailing the following day. I was starting to get through more often, but it wasn’t to the actual starcruiser line…it was to a customer service center that handles the overflow. So they couldn’t make reservations, and they didn’t get the geek thing, and it was heartwrenching. I kept calling because I knew if I gave up I would never forgive myself for not doing everything that I could do. Hangup, redial, hangup, redial, hangup, redial.
At 3:04pm I got a response that was different. I got a cast member, and she asked me questions that were different. Among them was, “Are you aware that if you get a date you need to put X percent down at the time of booking?” WHAT?!? We’re talking MONEY?!? Am I close? Does that mean I’m in?
There were only four dates left, one of them being the following day and not possible. She transferred me to a different line, where the hold time was five minutes.  I got a person.  We talked.  I refreshed the availability and three dates were left.  AS WE WERE ON THE PHONE ANOTHER DATE SOLD OUT…And then we got in.
It wasn’t the original plan. I wanted Juneteenth weekend because I wouldn’t miss any days of work at all, but that date was sold out…but I am grateful. And I scribbled the following information as fast as I could from the phone call. It isn’t everything, but it’s some of the “onboard” activities.
11 am check in and bag drop off
Orientation at 1:45
4:30pm reception
7:15 “regalia” whatever that is
9:45 show
7-11am breakfast
Batuu from 8 to 330 or stay on board for activities
Celebration at 9:30pm
Breakfast between 7 and 10am
And of course, there is all the extracurriculars of role play.
Rob and I are spending the day watching the newer movies again…because Ren makes an appearance, as does Kylo and Chewbacca….so that means it’s later in the timeline, and we want to be well versed.

……I called for 8 hours straight. And I got in.

 

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I am so glad and so grateful that we did this.  If I had huge amounts of disposable income I would have done it twice, but I do not.  I just know that I would have regretted it forever if I didn’t do it.  The experience was great, and if you’re not a geek or a larper you would still have enjoyed it, but for me with my SW love, it was heaven.

 

TOGETHER.  AS ONE.

 

Halcyon Forever.

I have to start taking my own advice.

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When I was younger, I was angrier. There were a whole bunch of reasons for that. But I think one reason in general is just hormones, rebellion, teenage angst, etc. I went to protests and gatherings and yelled and danced and held signs. I did many things.

When I got older there was a Pagan Pride march, and there was a woman who was pressuring me to march. I told her, “I did that stuff already. That’s not where I’m at anymore,” and she got angry and started yelling at me. I don’t think she knew she was yelling. She said that everyone had to march, everyone had to be active, Pagan Rights were violated every day,” etc., etc. And I can’t argue with the latter, they still are.

But I’m thinking now that there are so many ways to be active. There are so many faces to activism…there’s microcosmic, like working with the people in your neighborhood, or even just on your block or street, and there’s macrocosmic, where you try to change governmental policy, or the world.

For me, the marching is best left to younger people. Youth has an idealism and a belief that things can change, while I become tired and frustrated that they never will. Youth has a strength and endurance, while I have a lack of faith. Youth has fire and anger and their lives depend on the future, while I’m in what must be the latter half of my life. (I’m not living to 100 I don’t think. Most people don’t.) When the future happens, I’m only going to have to live with it for a short while.

But there are other things, too. Letter writing, standing up for injustice whenever you see it, discussion with people who are able to listen to reason, even if it won’t change their minds it might open them a little, or expose them to an alternate point of view.

I’m trying a little bit to have internet discussion, but it’s so draining. It’s hurtful. It’s like constantly parrying attacks and coming back with open arms. It takes patience, and an ability to step back and not take things personally that I’m only just learning…I shouldn’t have tested it so early. I’m doing okay on the surface, but I’m waking up with anxiety, I’m crying, I can’t even finish (and this is pretty telling) ONE cup of coffee in the morning without starting to have my body react really quickly with my hands shaking and my heart beating quickly like a caffeine overdose. It’s not the caffeine, it’s me. It’s my PTSD.

I tell other people that not everyone can do everything. That there are many jobs. That we can’t all be good at everything. Last night I was crying on Rob saying that I want to be able to express myself better, I want to be clearer, I feel like I’m failing miserably, I want to make a difference in the world, and I feel like I can’t, like I’m powerless, like I can’t make a difference at all, no matter how hard I try.

Rob said, “You made a difference to me.”

“Look at all these people you helped,” and he listed a few from this month. “You made a difference to them. And you made a difference to me. You changed me and my life.”

I said, “And you love me anyway, even if I CAN’T change anything?”

“Yes. But you can. You do. You have.”

I have to take my own advice. I have to withdraw from these conversations and leave them to other people, they hurt me too much. And I have to stick to the smaller things. I have to do what I can, and stop judging myself for being unable to do what I can’t.

So to all you people that are doing those things, judging yourself for the things you can’t do, fighting things even though it hurts you more in the long run…I just want you to know that I do it, too.

And I’m going to stop. You can too.