What’s in a Name?

The past couple of days I have heard a lot of complaints about a name change at Walt Disney World. The whole thing has to do with the menu at Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios version of Galaxy’s Edge. Very quietly, the names of the dishes at the restaurant were changed. The actual items remained the same, it is just the names that are different.

The change has not gone over well with some Star Wars fans. Their point is that Galaxy’s Edge is supposed to be fully immersive. You are supposed to totally feel as if you are on the planet of Batuu. To such fans, ordering Fried Endorian Tip-Yip feels a lot more Star Wars than ordering Fried Chicken. I can see their point.

Then again, Galaxy’s Edge wasn’t created just for Star Wars fans. There are plenty of people who walk through it every day who have no idea that (spoiler alert) Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. For them, Fried Endorian Tip-Yip sounds strange, while Fried Chicken sounds more “normal”.

The complaint that people didn’t know what they were getting does not hold a lot of water, though, if someone decided to just read the descriptions on the menu. The description for Fried Endorian Tip-Yip was “crispy chicken, roasted vegetable potato mash, herb gravy”. I’m not sure what was so hard to understand about that.

One thing that I find interesting in this whole “controversy” is that the original names are still listed on the menu for Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo at Disneyland. I don’t know if the names will be changed there eventually, or if people in California are better at reading than those in Florida.

Ultimately, the names of the menu items at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge are not going to change the experience for me. I still feel like I am going to cry tears of joy whenever I walk through, and I go a lot. Of course this whole discussion will die down and probably be forgotten by December 5. That is when Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance will open, and it is going to be amazing!