Step inside the Star Wars restaurant Imagineering dreamed up for Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland - OCRegister

Step inside the Star Wars restaurant Imagineering dreamed up for Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland - OCRegister


Step inside the Star Wars restaurant Imagineering dreamed up for Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland - OCRegister

Posted: 24 Apr 2021 10:33 AM PDT

Walt Disney Imagineering dreamed up an otherworldly Twi'lek restaurant and cocktail lounge concept for Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios that never made the jump from page to park, according to a new book on the art of the twin Star Wars lands.

The new "The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" coffee table book publishing on Tuesday, April 27 gathers together hundreds of pieces of concept art created by Lucasfilm and Imagineering conceived for the Star Wars themed lands built in Disney parks in California and Florida.

Among the 256 pages of architectural, character and attraction designs are more than 40 pieces of concept art for the Kalikori Club table-service restaurant once envisioned for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.

SEE ALSO: 3 unused Star Wars ride concepts dreamed up by Imagineering for Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland

Disneyland has not made any announcements about bringing the unrealized restaurant to the Anaheim theme park. But Imagineering never throws away any ideas and the restaurant could show up someday in some fashion in a Disney theme park.

Concept art by Lucasfilm concept design supervisor Erik Tiemens and concept artists Eddie Del Rio, Khang Le, Ric Lim, Karl Lindberg, Iain McCaig, John Park, Eduardo Pena and Evan Werneck show an elegant table-service restaurant and interstellar cocktail lounge located next to Oga's Cantina.

"We had concepts for a Twi'lek club and spice den that were the same thing," Imagineering managing story editor Margaret Kerrison said in the book. "The final name we came up with was the Kalikori Club, which was our idea for the table service restaurant. It was an old bath house converted into a dining establishment."

SEE ALSO: Disney Imagineer Kevin Rafferty's journey from Disneyland dishwasher to Cars Land designer

Concept art of the two-story restaurant features an outdoor courtyard and upper level balcony. The courtyard was inspired by Domus Aurea in Rome, the "Golden House" palace built by Emperor Nero in 64 AD.

The corridors and arched niches of the restaurant — which appear to have been carved from cave walls — are lined with pipes and metal plates. In one sketch, water falls from broken pipes. A musical wall built into a Hoth-like carved rock room features a pipe organ with Gaudi ironwork.

Guests check in inside a boiler room filled with pipes, valves and tanks that doubles as the restaurant lobby. An alien creature works the hostess stand in the boiler room lobby.

Concept art shows diners sitting on bench seats in the restaurant under curved walls with carved niches filled with ornate vases. R5 astromech droids serve as cocktail waitresses bringing drinks to customers in the lounge. Guests play hologram games at lounge tables. A backing band jams with otherworldly instruments, including an alien citar. The fully-realized interiors for the restaurant and lounge include details as small as interior lighting fixtures.

SEE ALSO: Imagineer Joe Rohde reflects on 40 years of dreaming up Disney theme park attractions

Several pieces of concept art show a multi-story glowing blue aquarium housing a tentacled beast.

"Early on we thought the lobby would have a beautiful fish tank with a piece of kelp moving around in it," Imagineering creative portfolio executive Chris Beatty said in the book. "But then when you went downstairs into the cantina underneath, it wasn't kelp. It was a giant monster. It was an aquarium that had a big creature swimming in it that could be seen from multiple spaces."

In the backstory created for the Kalikori Club, the restaurant and lounge are owned by an underworld boss named Gaya.

"The table service restaurant in concept is supposed to be almost a speakeasy, a hidden club," Beatty said in the book. "It is part of the under-the-underground world. It was owned by a Twi'lek proprietor. She is also the performer there. And in early concepts, I think she was running the underworld. Then we ended up shifting that story. When this went away, that character story line shifted to Oga Garra."

Garra owns Oga's Cantina and runs the underworld in Black Spire Outpost on the Star Wars planet of Batuu in the backstory created for Galaxy's Edge.

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