The incredibly immersive – and incredibly expensive – Star Wars Hotel in Disney World was SHUT DOWN. Why did Disney World bring an end to one of their most ambitious and unique projects to date?
The Galactic Starcruiser
There’s a lot more going on than just that $6,000 price tag…
The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser may only have opened a couple of years ago, but this experiment was short-lived as Disney shut down the 2-day immersive experience/hotel in September 2023. What happened? Was this a major failure on Disney’s part? Did they misjudge their audience? We’re taking a look at what went wrong, and what went right.
Galactic Starcruiser Shut Down
The final voyage for the Star Wars Hotel was September 28th-30th, 2023. Here’s the statement Disney released when they announced the hotel’s closure: “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 100 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.”
Gaya performs on Night 1 at the Crown of Corellia Dining Room
What Was the Galactic Starcruiser?
This question might be one of the reasons this thing never really caught on. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was a two-day, two-night all-inclusive, totally immersive, part murder-mystery-dinner-theater, part escape room, part cruise, part choose your own adventure game, and it was all set within the Star Wars universe (specifically the events happening between the last two films of the sequel trilogy).
Inside the cabins
But, if you ask people who have been on it…that explanation really doesn’t capture what the experience really was. It was something very hard to explain, especially to someone who wasn’t interested in role play games or immersive theater.
Sublight Lounge
The marketing surrounding Galactic Starcruiser didn’t quite manage to show you what to expect, especially in the first few promo spots – Disney actually scrapped their initial “first look” promos due to incredibly negative backlash, and the reputation of the Starcruiser never really recovered.
Why Did It Close?
Negative Publicity
The Galactic Starcruiser got a LOT of flack starting back in August 2021 when they first announced pricing for the two-day trip. Before that, though, people were excited, but that $4,000-$6,000 sample pricing shocked a lot of people, and the reality of how much you’d end up spending to step into the Star Wars universe suddenly made this potential future vacation a pipe dream or bucket list trip for a lot of people.
Stormtroopers aboard the ship.
Those initial promos made matters worse when things didn’t fit into what people expected to see from this experience. Die hard fans were worried it wouldn’t live up to their expectations, the hype, and that price tag. And critics lambasted the design for looking cheap and not very Star Wars-y.
A console on the Star Wars hotel bridge.
Things improved a little once the Galactic Starcruiser actually opened in March 2022, but it became very clear, very quickly, that this was a very specific vacation for a very specific group of people – even if that group was absolutely LOVING it, this hotel still wasn’t for everyone.
Niche
The main audience for this hotel was the major Star Wars fans – maybe they won’t bat an eye at that price tag, but a lot of them were saving up since that initial 2017 announcement of this project. Alongside those super fans, you’ve got the hardcore Disney fans, the curious people who have money to burn on a vacation, and lots of folks in between.
Galactic: Starcruiser
The Starcruiser had to be a LOT of things for a LOT of different people, and with a focus on higher-end dining, few activities for little kids, and a fast-paced FOMO-inducing storyline that you had to arrive READY to experience or be OK with missing a lot of value, there’s practically no way it could tick all the boxes for such a varied group of people. And at that price tag, it’s pretty crucial to tick as many boxes as possible (or risk gaining more negative feedback).
Price
Yes, without a doubt the Starcruiser was expensive – we’ve compared it to a Disney Cruise, priced out how much the components of the trip would cost individually, and while you can definitely make the argument that this vacation could be 100% worth it…a $6,000 two-day trip for a group of four is still a tough pill to swallow.
Outside the Hotel
Disney offered discounts for some affinity groups – Disney Vacation Club, Disney Visa Card holders, and Annual Passholders all had offers of 30% off for dates into September 2023. This may have been a test to see if lower prices would actually help fill bookings, as this is Disney’s bread and butter group of vacationers who are more likely to take advantage of a discount than a wider audience.
Captain Keevan
Reduced pricing paired with reducing the number of “sailings” was already starting to sound some alarms that this hotel might not be doing quite as well as Disney hoped. Originally, the Starcruiser had check-ins every single day of the week, but that got bumped down to just two or three sailings a week in early 2023. And cue the negative publicity once again. The fact of the matter is, this is an incredibly complex operation to run, and the costs for Disney were likely starting to become a stress point.
Complexity
The Starcruiser experience spanned technically three days – you would check in at 1PM on the first day, spend two nights at the hotel, and check out by 10AM on day three. The entire cast, including most (if not all) of the waitstaff, guest relations Cast Members – basically ANYONE you would interact with during your stay – was the same for the entire duration.
Chewbacca on the Galactic Starcruiser
With stories that took two days to tell and a full cast of eight main characters, it was tough to ensure continuity for the guests and create a sustainable work schedule with enough backup performers to keep the whole thing running.
The welcome screen in the Galactic Starcruiser cabin
The Walt Disney Company was in the midst of some rough times around the time of the closure, with streaming and general film production revenue down in the past few quarters. At the time, theme parks were still the same money-makers they’d always been, but demand for Disney World vacations was starting to weaken. Disney World may have been tightening the belt for a time to help prepare for the immediate future when fewer people may be visiting the theme parks, and the Galactic Starcruiser was first to the chopping block.
Walt Disney World
Disney promised investors they’d be cutting costs by $5.5 billion, but with stock prices continuing to fall, and streaming continuing to operate at a loss, the company doesn’t have room to be running more operations at a loss right now.
©Disney
In the wake of 6,000 employee layoffs and the decision to cancel Disney’s Lake Nona office project in Orlando, Disney is definitely reining in spending and reducing budgets across the company, even in the theme park sectors which have traditionally performed well.
What’s Next?
Many people are going to brand the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser as a failure – and there are plenty of merits to that point, but let’s take a look at what else happened:
- Disney dipped a toe into something incredibly complex, interesting, new, and exciting.
- It was 100% an experiment that didn’t work out exactly as planned – but how many innovative, envelope-pushing, nobody’s-ever-done-this-before shots do? They tried something HUGE and they learned from it.
- Disney now knows the shortcomings, the troubles, and potentially how to make something like this happen again in the future on a more sustainable level.
Bunk Bed in a Galactic Starcruiser cabin
Disney has made no announcement yet of what may become of the hotel.
- Could it become a regular hotel that anyone can book for a single night or 14+ nights without all the story lines and characters?
- Could the restaurant inside open for an immersive dinner theater?
- Could it just be a regular restaurant with a Star Wars flair and maybe blue shrimp?
- Could Disney try again with a different franchise? Or a different storyline within the Star Wars universe?
Blue shrimp
We’ll have to wait and see what Disney does with this space, but we think this level of innovation on Disney’s part is something we should commend even if the Galactic Starcruiser is no longer sailing.
Halcyon Coin
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I have to disagree with you. I believe the #1 reason that this failed is this cruise took place between The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker. THESE two films completely divided the Star Wars fan base. Many die hard star wars fans that grew up with the original trilogy HATES Disney SW because of the disrespect to the original trilogy heroes. I believe less than 30% of Star Wars fans are fans of the Sequel Trilogy. That being said…. those are also younger fans. They are not established financially, and they could NOT afford to go to an experience this expensive. IF this was based on the original trilogy universe, George Lucas’s Star Wars, this would have been a success. I booked in the very beginning. Then I saw the commercial that was quickly taken down. I then cancelled my reservations!! No way would I pay that much for the Rey and Ren story line. I have no desire to participate in anything that destroyed the Star Wars that I grew up with. I don’t buy anything from them any more. I have a HUGE vintage Star Wars collection. Life sized figures in my theater room. I will never pay a penny for anything that has to do with the sequel trilogy. Disney/Lucasfilm forgot who their main audience with money is… and they paid the price. THAT is why this failed.
The other massive fail was the box truck transport to the park. Then you walk past a few bushes and you’re into the park…. Just like everyone else. What a massive letdown.
The hotel looked like cheap dorm rooms. The whole thing was a massive Chapek cluster.
This is one of the best balanced articles on this I have seen. It nails the reason right at the start – the failure to find a way to market this that could truly convey what the experience is like. All the other naysayer criticisms wouldn’t have mattered if marketing effectively could happen. That is proven by the inredible guest satisfaction ratings and near universal praise from those who actually went. It is why repeat bookings went completely through the roof for the final 4 months once the closure was announced.
If there is ever a next time for something like this, marketing effectively and repetedly in the parks, on Disney+, and elsewhere, plus perhaps introductory pricing to start to get to the visitor word of mouth ahead of naysayer traction will be key.
It’s too bad that a marketing failure led to this end for the greatest entertainment experience Disney has ever created.
Please stop calling it the Star Wars Hotel. It’s press like that which has lead to its closure. The marketing missed the boat and did not convey that this was an immersive 45 hour experience, not a hotel.
We went on this once in a lifetime experience and was completely blown away. So we went again, and were lucky enough to get a final voyage before it closes.
This was an experience like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and just wish the marketing and press did a better job of selling that.
For me, a casual fan of episode 4,5 and 6, the immersion has too many gaps in it. 1) guests were not required to be costumed during their voyage, this created a conflict right from the start. 2). Truck transfer from somewhere to the cruiser/hotel. Not emersive, no buck story to bring the guest along in the story, transition process including the costuming was needed, then transport guest in a specialized shuttle craft vehicle up to the mother ship. From there, you were either a player or not. They could have very easily added in a training session for the speeders on Endor. A 3-D experience could have easily been incorporated in the 3 day program. Too many gaps, holes in the experience for the price tag. This was a reality vacation, like baseball camp, comedian camp, etc. Disney just did not plan this out with the usual Disney attention to detail.
Best use for the facility from here on is to turn it into a hemmed dining experience that does not require a park ticked. Open to off the street guests, with private dining rooms, (former bedrooms) cocktail meeting rooms with Star Wars Characters as guest. There are many possibilities. Park guests with a park ticket can use the former shuttle mechanism to create a memorable 2 hour dining adventure.
I agree that the primary issue is that this was themed around an era of Star Wars that most fans – especially the ones who could afford it – were not happy with. If this was set during the OT era or the Mandalorian era (shortly afterwards), I believe that it would have been successful.
The Chapek greed equation is being solved one piece at a time. His determination (and Christine Sullivan’s? Ok, she reportedly had him fired but for what motives?) to cater to those with unlimited cash to toss into the sorcerer’s hat has cost them an expensive hotel, declining stock, maybe those streaming customer cancellations, and who knows how much good will.
It didn’t cost Bob much, though, did it? Volley the damaged goods back to Eiger, including the RCID debacle, and walk away with a king’s ransom. Nice payday for two years on the throne proving you really were in over your head.
Whether die-hards will continue to throw copious quanties of moolah at The Mouse will solve more of the equation over the next few years.