Galactic Nights: Love letter to ‘Star Wars’

There are holidays, and then there are “Star Wars” holidays. An upcoming special event at Walt Disney World is designed to add cheer and share insights about Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the land under construction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park.

The one-day event — dubbed Star Wars: Galactic Nights — will be held at Hollywood Studios on Dec. 16, the day after “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” opens in theaters. Ticket buyers will be privy to exclusive experiences, said Michael Roddy, show director, Disney Parks Live Entertainment.

“It is a love letter/fan celebration to ‘Star Wars,’” Roddy said.

A panel of Disney Imagineers will enlighten fans on “what we can expect from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge as a land and also what their thought process was bringing that land to life,” Roddy said. Details have come in dribs and drabs since the project was announced in 2015. Disney recently released the name of the planet that will be represented at Galaxy’s Edge: Batuu, a remote outpost not previously included in the “Star Wars” lore.

Galaxy’s Edge is scheduled to open to the public in 2019. A similar land is going up at Disneyland Resort in California.

During Galactic Nights, the fan base will get more immediate satisfaction via an exclusive projectiondriven show on the park’s Hollywood Tower Hotel, aka Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The structure has been used recently as a canvas for a holiday show called Sunset Seasons Greetings.

The tower will be home of Galactic Destinations for the “Star Wars” event, Roddy said.

“You’ll look at the end of Sunset Boulevard, and we’ll hyperspace into one of these great destinations from one of your favorite planets and overtake the entire building, which will be really fun,” he said.

“We are going to go everywhere in the Star Wars universe. There will be references to planets from the original ‘Star Wars’ films all the way to the latest ‘Star Wars’ films and beyond,” Roddy said.

“We’re probably going to go to the Death Star … but we might go to a planet you really haven’t seen too much of yet,” he hinted.

Projecting onto the tower is a different experience than when Disney uses the Chinese Theater as its base, Roddy said. Some of that is a matter of horizontal versus vertical.

“It gives us a lot of opportunity to do some really cool things — really tall things. And you know, wookiees are tall,” he laughed.

The “destinations” theme extends to photo backdrops for the event.

“You can actually step in these scenes from ‘Star Wars’ and take away oneof-a-kind photos,” Roddy said. He cited the Malechor temple from the “Star Wars Rebels” animated television series and a Luke Skywalker habitat from “Last Jedi” as firsttime backdrops.

“They are exclusive to our event,” he said.