The Force is Weak with This One

Walt Disney World Florida’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Hotel is slated to close on 28 September 2023. The Star Wars-themed luxury destination appears to be joining the tattered remnants of Lucasfilm’s once mighty Star Wars Intellectual Property (IP) on a one-way trip to the Sarlacc pit—therein, as C-3PO set forth, to: “… find a new definition of pain and suffering as [they] are slowly digested over a thousand years.”

Employees were notified on 18 May of Disney’s plans to shutter their workplace.

Disney is contacting reservation-holding guests for purpose of affording them opportunity to move their stays to earlier dates. New bookings for what Disney refers to as the hotel’s “remaining voyages” will be paused until 26 May.

In a statement, Mickey Mouse et al. set forth: “Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is one of our most creative projects ever and has been praised by our guests and recognized for setting a new bar for innovation and immersive entertainment. This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of one-hundred rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans.”

Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser project in 2017, promising Star Wars fans a “revolutionary experience” by dint of which they could live out their cosplay fantasies—don their Han Solo vests, Darth Vader helms, and Princess Leia hair buns—and participate in immersive activities the likes of lightsaber training and droid racing competitions. Those fancying themselves galactic scoundrels could learn to play Sabacc—a fictitious card game beloved of Lando Calrissian.

“It’s unlike anything that exists today,” Chapek enthused.

Disney, albeit to largely farcical ends, endeavored to devise items and experiences of Lucasian derivation with which to occupy guests. These included ostensibly real lightsabers, culinary oddities such as blue shrimp, and haphazard mergers of actual and virtual entertainments.

The attraction—which has been said to more closely approximate a cruise than a hotel stay—opened in March 2022 and included a “transport shuttle” by which guests were delivered to the Star Wars section of Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

In addition to lethal doses of hokeyness and hyperbole, the hotel was done-in by its rates, which—during off-season weekdays—started at an eye-watering $4,809 per-couple. Family rates, which entail four people, topped $6,000.

Reviewers complained of the Galactic Starcruiser Hotel’s less-than-magical arrival scene, its “utilitarian” bathrooms, and an “unexciting” lightsaber experience.

Of his second stay at the Galactic Starcruiser Hotel, Len Testa, president of the theme-park trip-planning site TouringPlans, stated: “On the second trip it was obvious that Disney was going to have unexpected operational issues when the hotel wasn’t full. And apparently there was no way to fix that without losing money.”

Mr. Testa contended a number of key Star Wars-themed activities failed to hit home in the absence of an unspecified but perceptible number of participants, stating: “There were not enough people to staff the ship’s deflector shields, for example. So the ship should’ve been destroyed during the battle. But it wasn’t, and it was never explained how the ship survived. It really poked a hole in the story.”

In point of fact, the 20th Century’s defining science-fiction properties—namely Star Trek and Star Wars—have been so unrelentingly ravaged by 21st Century Hollywood’s outright hostility to canon that the immense worldwide fanbases once enamored of Kirk, Spock, and the Skywalker clan have walked, en masse, taking their principles and pocketbooks with them.

FMI: www.ilm.com