How Disney’s Star Wars hotel fits into the canon of a galaxy far, far away

polygon.com:

Disney World Resorts’ Star Wars hotel experience, called Galactic Starcruiser, officially opened its doors on March 1. Guests are booked for a two-night stay where they participate in a novel live theater performance that lets them choose to support either the First Order or the Resistance. According to Lucasfilm, that story itself is canon — an interstitial part of the sequel trilogy — and the overall Star Wars storyline.

Like Disneyland’s Star Wars area, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Galactic Starcruiser has its own story beats, ones that repeat Groundhog Day-style every time a new group of guests come aboard. According to Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin, senior creative executive for franchise story and content, that has allowed his team to fill in several gaps in the larger timeline — and even extend it into new areas, like novels.

A post shared by Matt Martin (@matthewcmartin)

The majority of that lore applies to events that take place on the planet Batuu, the setting for Galaxy’s Edge. That makes the Starcruiser a key that unlocks even more narrative content inside the theme park.

“Since we were working on Galaxy’s Edge and Starcruiser around the same time,” Martins told Polygon, “we were able to plant story threads in Galaxy’s Edge that can pay off [on the Starcruiser]. So as a passenger, you will take your transport to go to Batuu, and even if you’ve been to Batuu before, it really recontextualizes a lot of the things.”

[Ed. note: What follows will spoil key narrative events that take place at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.]

For instance, one of the highlights of a trip to Batuu is meeting Chewbacca, who roams around the park interacting with guests and generally keeping a low profile. In the canonical fiction, he’s