A bazaar of the bizarre!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…
…but we absolutely made the most of her one day off, starting with the fabulous space neighborhood of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We never thought we’d see it person, yet here we were. The Millennium Falcon ride was pretty great and Rise of the Resistance was THE BEST, but Galaxy’s Edge is more than just a souped-up space carnival. It’s…well, okay, it’s an extremely souped-up space carnival. It’s an opportunity for Star Wars fans like us (rather noticeable on this site throughout the years) to feel transported to that one galaxy out there and explore its worlds up close like a window-shopping anthropologist.
Well, some of its worlds, anyway. We saw no signs of Dagobah, Kamino, or Mustafar. Sand was in far shorter supply than on Tatooine, though the architecture was similar. Maybe they hired the same design firms as Jakku and Scarif. And the buildings were a little too short and scruffy for Coruscant. I also doubt Florida would’ve been the proper place to recreate Hoth, unless this was a faithful rendition of Hoth in summertime. We’ve all just assumed the entirety of Hoth was Space Antarctica for however many months its years have, but what if we only saw it in wintertime and it in fact offers some wondrous tropical vacation climes in some other hemisphere that Lucas didn’t bother to show us? Then again, maybe there used to be a Hoth section, but they pulled the plug on it sometime before March 2023 because it was using too much freon and Disney needed some funds freed up to hire more lawyers to punch Ron DeSantis in the face. I’m sorry we missed it.
Anyway: more Galaxy’s Edge! We walked and stared and stayed awed. It was like walking through a gallery of wallpapers writ large.
We ran past Star Tours so quickly on our way to Rise of the Resistance that we completely forgot to come back to it. Maybe if we ever return someday…
The initial view upon our approach.
More Galaxy’s Edge without Anne in front of it. Some shops were fake, some were real.
Space knickknacks at a fake shop, I think,. The Porg stump would look cool in our backyard.
Rack of used speeders for smaller aliens.
Droid corral. Sentience sold separately.
Resistance members enjoy making and trading action figures based on their enemies.
We grabbed breakfast at Ronto Roasters, which used this space industrial thingamabob as its centerpiece.
House of Jedi worship? Tomb of the Unknown Jedi?
Live standoff between Rey and Kylo Ren.
“ACTING!” “Brilliant!” “THANK you!” “Thank YOU!”
A TIE Echelon from the sequel trilogy.
One of the real shops. The most popular one, where you can make your own lightsaber for an exorbitant price, requires pre-ordering weeks ahead.
A replica of Vader’s melted helmet was likewise priced outside our comfort zone.
Someone’s collection of big-game trophies.
A Wampa stuffed and displayed on the second floor where we couldn’t pose with it.
Space frog! Like a smorgasbord for Grogu.
Hiding in his office, Dok-Ondar is an Ithorian shopkeeper who’s all over the New Canon ancillary stories, including comics that didn’t mean much to me when first published because, again, we never expected to come here.
The peak of our Galaxy’s Edge emotional high, taken moments after we exited Rise of the Resistance.
We lamented having to exit Galaxy’s Edge at last, but we were surprised to learn this still wasn’t all the Star Wars that Hollywood Studios had to offer.
To be continued!
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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete major trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts. For further signs of life between entries, wave hi to me on . Thanks for reading!]
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 
Wow! What a great entry of MCC! My thanks for your writing it up and sharing it w/the world!
Unless ‘Ron DeDantis’ is some kind of pun or reference — to Dantooine, perhaps? — I suspect that the governor’s last name may have been inadvertently misspelled.
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Much as I’d love to toss off an Anakin-esque speech about how “DeSantis gets in everywhere”, he isn’t worth the effort. Typo is fixed. Thanks as always!
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