Today was the last sea day for our cruise, in addition to being Star Wars Day At Sea! The Fantasy hadn’t been overtaken too much during the cruise with Star Wars other than all the movies being shown throughout the cruise. All of that changed in the morning. As soon as we stepped outside the room into the hallway, you could hear the Star Wars themed music playing (which went on all day).
Our plans for the day included going to hear the special guest lecturer, Leland Chee. He was talking in the Buena Vista Theatre at 10:00 AM. We also had character meet and greets at in the late morning and early afternoon. The girls really didn’t have any interest in any of the Star Wars activities, they went off to their clubs and we hardly saw them all day.
Nancy and I made our way to the Buena Vista Theatre and settled down to wait for the guest lecturer.
Leland Chee got up and began to tell us his background of working for Lucas Arts. He’d started as a game tester and worked on lots of the Star Wars games from the mid 1990s on. While working at Lucas Arts, he came across a job description that required database experience and “extensive Star Wars knowledge”. He knew he had found his dream job. He became the keeper of the Holocron, which is a database that stores everything that Lucas Arts (and now Disney) considers part of the Star Wars canon (the official story line).
Every planet, ship, weapon, and person in the Star Wars Universe is cataloged in the Holocron and it is used across the company to keep everything aligned. This includes not only movies, but animations, stories, and merchandising.
One of the benefits that Leland got to experience as the Keeper of the Holocron was working with the merchandising department. When they needed faces to use for Jedi figures, he got his likeness portrayed as one. Wired magazine did a story on Leland at one point that highlighted his role at the company. Soon after, George Lucas started to call him to ask him Star Wars questions. Leland said it was one of his favorite moments of working for Lucas Arts.
After talking for about 45 minutes, Leland opened the floor up for questions. One of the best questions was about the color of the Jedi Light Sabers. Leland explained that each Jedi must seek out a crystal and bond with it. The crystal takes on special properties from the Jedi it bonded with. That gives each light saber a particular color. He then told us that Mace Windu was the only one with a purple light saber, and it was because Samuel Jackson’s favorite color was purple.
After the questions were over, Leland continued to talk with various people and was nice enough to take pictures with people if they wanted to.
After the lecture, we headed up towards our first character meet and greet. However, on the way, we ran into a Gamorrean Guard. These are the guards for Jabba’s palace. He was nice enough to pose for a quick pictures.
Our first character meet and greet was with Chewbacca. We had previously met Chewbacca at Hollywood Studios, but he is always fun to talk to. We tried to get the girls to join us, but they had no interest in it since they had already met him. The meeting location was Deck 1 forward and we were assigned a time of 11:30 AM. We were at Deck 2 forward and tried to go down the stairwell, but there was a long line. Chewbacca wasn’t moving very fast and the queue to see him had grown pretty long. We eventually got to the front of the line. The cast member there was happy to use our camera to take some photos.
Our next character encounter wasn’t far behind at 12:30 PM. I believe this one was at Deck 1 midship, but we encountered the same issue of a backed up line. This meeting was with Kylo Ren, who we had also met at Hollywood Studios previously. I don’t personally think this was a great character for a meet and greet since he just stomps around and points a lot. He also tries to force choke you, which totally didn’t work on me.
We then headed towards the atrium, where we had previously seen lots of characters walking around. The Tuskan Raider was particularly hard to get a photo of, because he would try to take your phone or camera and keep it (or give it away to someone else). Nancy managed to get a great photo by demonstrating her phone to him. Here is a photo of a selfie in action, in addition to the selfie!
There were Jawas trying to sell some of the props in the atrium to anybody that would buy them. They were also tough to get pictures of people they wouldn’t stand still for them.
Nancy cornered Boba Fett as well and got a nice selfie.
Zam Wesell from Attack of the Clones was also on board, hopefully she met with a better fate at Castaway Cay than she did in the movie. This was an odd character to have on board, since she spent most of her time creeping around and nobody quite knew who she was. We had to google for about 15 minutes to figure out who she was.
We met most of the characters we wanted to, then headed to Deck 4 to relax and enjoy a beer. While we were relaxing, these two guys strolled up and told us to be on the look out for rebel activity.
Sometime during the day, we went off for brunch. I wasn’t very hungry, so I just got the Cherry Crepes for lunch. I believe the brunch was served in Royal Court. No special Star Wars menu for lunch though.
There were a lot of different Star Wars activities spread throughout the ship. We didn’t particularly search any of them out. We did see a lot of them just walking around the ship. Here are some pictures of the costume contest. There were a good number of people dressed up for Star Wars Day (maybe about 10% or so of the passengers). The Jedi Knights were introduced first, high above the atrium. There was one knight that had some Rapunzel going on as well, but she seemed to make it work.
Down in the atrium, there was a kids costume contest. There were lots of dressed up kids on the ship, most of them carrying light sabers. Each one got to show off and talk about their costume.
That was most of the Star Wars things that Nancy and I took part in. I believe there were other activities as well, but we basically enjoyed the day at sea and relaxed. Dinner tonight was back at Enchanted Garden, but was definitely had a Star Wars theme. The child menus also doubled as masks!
The menu tonight was a special Star Wars Menu, complete with some normal food items that took on Star Wars names.
The bread service didn’t have any sort of special name, but it was good. I’m not positive, but I think the dip was the roast red pepper dip that they normally serve in Animator’s Palate.
Here is the menu for Star Wars Day At Sea. The menu was a bit hard to photograph because it was sort of holographic. It was shiny and sparkly as well.
This was the only night that I got a little annoyed at our server team. They asked the girls if they wanted BB-8 cups to drink out of. They, of course, immediately said yes and mentioned what they wanted in them. At this point, the assistant server mentioned that they were an additional cost. We could have refused, but I would have preferred to have been told the additional cost before she offered them to the girls. They did bring the cups home, so we have them at the house and they occasionally drink out of them.
For appetizers, we ordered the Bantha Steak Empanadas, Gungan City Dumping Soup, and the Padme Amidala Souffle. Our server tried to talk me out of the soup. I wasn’t feeling very well (I had a sore throat), so I decided to chance it. It wasn’t too bad, basically tomato soup with meat balls. The Empanadas were fantastic. I didn’t try the souffle.
We ordered various entrees and all of them were really good. This might have been one of the better nights on the cruise for entrees.
Then it was dessert time. The dessert menu was themed as well.
We all ordered a dessert and they were tasty.
The award for the best themed dish of the night went to the Princess Leia’s Warm Apricot Pudding. Just look at it!
After dinner, the girls scattered to their clubs and Nancy went to the room. I wanted to go up to watch the Star Wars Summon The Force Show. Nancy didn’t have any interest in it or the fireworks that would follow. I ran into the cruise director, Jimmy Lynett. Jimmy was the cruise director for our very first cruise to Alaska on the Wonder. He was nice enough to pose for a photo with me!
Here is the video I took of the show:
The Star Wars Day At Sea was a lot of fun, but I’m a Star Wars Fan. If you aren’t a fan, you could have avoided most of the Star Wars activities and enjoyed a quasi normal day at sea. You could also immerse yourself into the activities if you are a fan. We did make sure to watch Rogue One again during the day, even though we had seen it over Christmas Break when it was released.
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