Okay, so where were we?
Recently The Nerds of Color were lucky enough to visit the planet of Batuu, aka Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. And wanted to pass down some of our tips and tricks to you, our readers, for your next visit! In case you missed Part 1 of our coverage, we discussed intros to the land and linguistics while there, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, Blue and Green Milk, Oga’s Cantina, and Dok-Ondar’s Den of Antiquities. In this part, we’ll be discussing some of the food of Galaxy’s Edge, the shops at Black Spire Outpost, the Droid Depot, and Savi’s Lightsaber workshop.
So without further ado, punch it Chewie!
Docking Bay 7 and Ronto Roasters
“For the Jedi it is time to eat as well.” At a certain point, flying the Falcon 4 times, ducking the First Order, getting drunk at the cantina, and hunting for kyber crystals works up a heck of an appetite — especially if you need a palate cleanser after drinking green and blue milk. Thankfully Batuu has a few options for provisions that will help you fill your tanks.
The primary counter-service restaurant on Batuu is Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo. Docking Bay 7 serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We had a chance to try a few items on the breakfast menu.(I really wish I could have eaten more, but I wasn’t super hungry!). We will eventually be back to try the lunch and dinner menu, but it unfortunately wasn’t in the cards for our first two trips.
On the recommendations of a few blogs, we tried the Rising Moon Overnight Oats. It was basically just oatmeal mixed with a bit of yogurt. While it wasn’t detestable, it was a bit bland overall. On top it was served with a couple of dragonfruit cubes, a star fruit, jackfruits, and a few grapes. None of them really helped with the blandness. I would recommend a bit of sugar if you’re going to try these.
We next tried the Mustafar Roll. This also wasn’t great. It was almost like a cinnamon-raisin danish with Red Hot-flavored icing and Oreo cookie crumbles on the top. It sounds like it would be okay, but honestly, the Red Hot-flavored icing just didn’t work. They would have done better with regular cinnamon roll icing with red food coloring to be honest.
The one really nice highlight of the breakfast was the Moof Juice which was essentially a non-alcoholic fruit punch cocktail that was reminiscent of POG juice from a Hawaiian vacation. It wasn’t bad at all. Pretty sweet, but not sickeningly so. Honestly, if they were to put blue food coloring in it and sell it as Blue Milk I’d be more open to that (sorry I’m whining wayyy too much about Blue Milk).
I’ve heard that the lunch and dinner menu is much better. For instance several folks have said that the Braised Shaak Roast (served at dinner) and the Smoked Kaadu Ribs (served all day) were quite good. So while breakfast was a bit of a mixed bag, I am looking forward to returning for a much better offering.
What I did love, however (and what might be perhaps the tastiest new item I’ve had at Disneyland in years) was the regular Ronto Wrap at Ronto Roasters.
I might not be able to recommend this for everyone, as it’s strictly for meat-lovers like myself. But think of it as a really good, thin polish sausage inside of a pita, with chashu pork, and slaw, garnished with a peppercorn sauce. I really loved this one. For me the balance of the flavors was actually pretty perfect: the saltiness of the pork sausage really blended with the sweet creaminess of the slaw, combined with the nice little spiced bite of the peppercorn sauce in the nicely toasted pita. It was phenomenal. The only complaint I had was that, as a fan of chashu pork, the flavor of that gets a bit lost. It adds texture but that’s about it. That being said, it doesn’t stop this from being my official go-to snack of choice when I come back to Batuu.
As we continue on with future visits, we’ll have a much deeper analysis of some of the food we didn’t get to try. While we weren’t able to get to everything, we do hope this will at least help a few of you out there with your food choices from your visit.
The Shops at Black Spire Outpost
One of the most elaborate things about Galaxy’s Edge is how much thought and effort the Imagineers put into the creation of in-world shops that make up the marketplace at Black Spire Outpost. Walking into the marketplace, you’re greeted by several sights, sounds, and smells that make you feel like you’re actually shopping within a planet in the Star Wars universe. We started our exploration with Kat Saka’s Kettle.
Kat Saka’s is a popcorn stand, where guests can buy sweet and spicy flavored popcorn, as well as thermal grenade Cokes (for $0.50 less than the stand across from the Milk Stand). The popcorn was not bad. It tasted a bit like fruit loops. The spicy red popcorn wasn’t super spicy, and blue tasted a bit like blueberry candy.
Next we headed over to the Creature Stall. The nifty little shop has some very cool Easter eggs for fans, including an animatronic Loth-Cat sleeping in a cage, a Worrt, and a Felucian Snail just hanging out in tanks.
The cool thing about this is that you can actually adopt a many of these creatures. The Creature Stall sells interactive versions of Porgs ($45), Loth-Cats ($45), Rathtars ($29), Tauntauns ($40), and probably the most expensive, Kowakian Monkey-Lizards ($70), as well as a bunch of other creatures seen in various films. My sister couldn’t resist and took home her own Loth-Cat:
Additionally, there are 3 other stores in the area: Toydarian Toymaker, Jewels of Bith, and Black Spire Outfitters. Toydarian sells in-world hand carved toys similar to the Stormtrooper doll young Jyn Erso had in Rogue One, or a plush Yoda. Jewels of Bith sold more traditional souvenirs, like magnets and keychains, or shirts and hats, that said Black Spire Outpost on them. And Black Spire Outfitters is where you’d go for authentic, screen-accurate cosplay gear. Perfect for anyone looking to cosplay as Rey or Padawans training to become a Jedi.
The Droid Depot
I’m sure everyone who has ever seen a Star Wars film has wanted to take home an astromech droid the same way Poe Dameron has his buddy, BB-8. And Galaxy’s Edge has the perfect place to let fans create and take home their little custom droid buddies at their Droid Depot. The workshop allows guests to pick and choose whether they want an R-unit or a BB-unit, and allow them to build their remote controlled bots with as much panache and flair as they can muster.
Of the lines at the park, this is probably the third longest behind Oga’s Cantina and Savi’s Workshop, so plan accordingly. It does move relatively fast. But you basically start out by going in line, registering for your spot, paying for your droid ($99), and picking the type of droid you want to build.
You’ll be sent to a work station, where you’ll see a bunch of prop droid parts circling above you. However the parts you’ll be working with are in the conveyor belt below you. You can pick various colors and accessories and heads.
Once your droid is assembled, they give you a nice carrying kit, and a remote control, and you can send that thing flying with you in an X-Wing for repairs. The only thing that sucks is you can’t build a protocol droid or a K-X security droid (that would come in super handy for me in my day-to-day life).
On the other side of the workshop is the traditional store, where you can pick up droid-based shirts, light up hats, and nice high-end figurines of your favorite units, even IG-droids. But the biggest prize of all is the $22K R2D2 statue at the corner. Once I become Tony Stark-rich by writing blog entries for a non-profit blog, it will be mine!
Savi’s Lightsaber Workshop
At last we come to the most anticipated part of our recap — Savi’s Lightsaber Workshop. This is the second most popular experience in the park, with lines generally exceeding what the small 14-20 person workshop can fit, so if you go, make sure you line up for this one ASAP. Unfortunately this is one of the experiences I didn’t personally attend, but was able to get a very detailed walkthrough by one of my friends who did complete it.
You basically start by falling in line, and securing your registration time, and paying the $200 for your lightsaber. When you register you’ll be asked to choose from a set of 4 pins. This will determine what parts your lightsaber will be made from. The options are Peace and Justice, Power and Control, Elemental Nature, and Protection and Defense. You can also look through the assorted parts that correspond to each pin.
As soon as you get your pin, you’re escorted into the workshop and assigned to a station. A cast member playing a “Gatherer” comes in and a short show begins, in which he tells you about how they collect scrap metal across the galaxy. Then gives you a bit of the history of the lightsaber, and legends like Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker.
Then he shows you a kyber crystal and tells you how it’s the heart of a lightsaber, then goes through a few colors, name dropping popular characters who have green, and blue, and red blades/crystals. Then they tell you to close your eyes and pick the crystal that calls to you, after which the rest of the background gatherers come up to everyone at a workstation with a metal cylender and allow the guests to pick the crystal that will power their saber. They can choose between blue, green, red, purple at the workshop with other colors being found at Dok Ondar’s (as stated in Part I).
Once everyone chooses their crystal, they move on to the hilt. The gatherers look at guest’s pins, and pull out the corresponding lightsaber hilt parts from a drawer in front of them, and place them in front of each person at the workshop. Then the gatherer assigned to a section will walk their designated audience members through the construction of the hilt using the parts and the crystal they chose as users screw in the little pieces all together to create their hilts. Personally, the parts for the Peace and Justice, and Control and Power pins look a bit like a conventional lightsaber found in any Star Wars film. The Protection and Defense parts usually show a bit of ancient markings and gold parts, that make them stand out. And the Elemental Nature hilt parts contain objects that look like Rancor teeth or creature bones. So depending on your preference, choose wisely! Here’s an example of an elemental hilt:
Once all guests have put their hilts together, the primary Gatherer discusses how the next step is adding the blade. He has guests place their hilts on their trays at their workstations, then take a step back. The other gatherers around the room walk up to each station and take the hilts and stick them in a compartment at the workstation called the Crystal Stabilization Chamber (aka the glowing bulb chamber). They insert the hilts and twist to lock in the blades into the hilts. As soon as that’s done, the workshop lights go dim, and a green light fills the room. Then the familiar voice of Frank Oz’s Yoda begins to speak about what a wonderful job everyone has done, and speaks about the mysticism of lightsabers and how they bond users to The Force.
Then once that’s done, the primary gatherer asks everyone to step forward, and place their hands on their hilts to activate the sabers at the same time. The audience does so, and upon activation, the Crystal Stablizations light up with the color of each owner’s blade. Then the chambers open up, allowing the owners to pick up their light sabers and raise them high with pride.
Yoda congratulates everyone on completion, and the Gatherers present every owner with their own lightsaber sheath (which doesn’t really make sense in the context of the Star Wars universe considering that the blades are supposed to retract, but hey free sheath), before the room clears out and the next group of lucky Jedi come in.
Overall, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is a unique and amazing experience! Whether you’ve followed the movies or not, you’ll still have a ridiculously fun time, but it’s especially fun if you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan, because everything you see will mean something significant to you. Every detail is beautifully thought out, crafted, and furnished, and it offers such a unique experience for fans to really live out the fantasy of playing a role in this universe.
Batuu has officially opened in Disneyland, and will begin taking in off-worlders without the need for reservations starting June 24th, while its Disney World counterpart will open in August.
We hope you enjoyed our tour and experiences, and hope we could provide some helpful tips and suggestions to you all to prepare you for your visits. Most of all, we hope to see all of you nerds at a galaxy far far away very soon. Now off to fly the Falcon again!
