What Went Wrong with Disney’s Star Wars Hotel?
One year ago this week, Walt Disney World made the surprise announcement that it would be permanently closing Galactic Starcruiser, its “Star Wars hotel.” This came amidst struggles filling ‘voyages’ despite discounting, but was nevertheless surprising that it happened so fast.
The closure of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser itself was not a shock–we predicted that as a high-probably outcome even prior to it even opening–but the abrupt manner after only a little over a year of operations was. Surely, we thought, Disney would attempt to pivot once the initial wave of hardcore fans and affluent enthusiasts got their fix.
Nope. Instead, Walt Disney World announced the Starcruiser would make its final voyages by the end of the fiscal year, taking accelerated depreciation of a whopping $300 million. On the plus side, I guess, Disney did manage to sell out the final voyages in fast fashion as the hardcore fanbase that had quickly formed around Starcruiser–and those who thought they had more time to wait for discounts or whatever–rushed to book spots on the remaining months of voyages.
The struggles of Starcruiser are well-documented. We’ve written a number of articles about it over the years. It was a fascinating and troubled topic even pre-closure. Many fans absolutely adored it, whereas others loved to hate it. Starcruiser crashing and burning so spectacularly after under 2 years of operations has only added to the mystique. It will be deconstructed for far longer than it was constructed and operational.
In the grand scheme of the Star Wars and Disney fandoms, very few people had the opportunity to experience it. We’ve previously remarked about how there were dozens–if not hundreds–of YouTube videos about the Star Wars hotel that were watched by exponentially more people than ever stayed at Starcruiser.
One such video just dropped within the last week, and is singularly responsible for renewed interest in the doomed project:
“The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” by Jenny Nicholson has already racked up nearly 5 million views with roughly 30,000 comments. It has “broken containment” from the Star Wars and Disneyspheres into the broader internet. I’ve had several people ask for my thoughts on it–from regular readers to non-Disney normies (that’s how you know it’s a big deal).
Aside from a scattering of clips I’ve seen on social media, I have not watched it. The video is roughly 4 hours long, which is like a weeklong viewing affair when translated to being a new parent working around the demands of a baby. (I can’t even watch a 2 hour movie without breaking it into multiple viewings.)
I’ve heard the video is incredibly thorough and well-done, and a lot of people whose opinions I trust have said it’s well worth watching and is actually concise because it’s so dense with information. So I can’t really recommend it, per se, but I also haven’t read Anna Karenina and am similarly confident that’s good content despite my lack of firsthand knowledge.
Nevertheless, I can’t open social media without seeing arguments about the video…and people keep asking for my opinions on it…so I’ll offer some indirect, roundabout thoughts on Starcruiser that (hopefully? maybe?) will suffice. Obviously, that’s not the same, but the alternative is writing my “response” in 3 years when I have free time, and I feel like the moment will have passed by then.
Most of the questions I’ve received about the Starcruiser and/or that video have been variations of this post’s title. (The rest have been super-specific stuff, many revolving around “influencer culture,” for lack of a better term.) Spoiler: I don’t have an answer to the titular question because there is no single thing that went wrong with Galactic Starcruiser. It was pretty much everything.
The main problem, of course, was the price. Not to belabor the point here, as the overwhelming majority of discourse about Starcruiser has revolved around the prohibitive pricing. This was patently obvious to just about everyone from the beginning, and one of the biggest reasons why so many fans cheered for its failure. (For more thoughts on this expensive pricing, see Is Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Worth the High Cost?)
Basically, Walt Disney World had something that was awesome and envelope-pushing, but had astronomical operating costs and even higher price points for guests. The end result is something highly exclusionary that reduced a potentially large consumer pool into a very small one.
The margins on Starcruiser were not nearly as healthy as many fans assumed at first. Yes, the price was high, but the operating costs were staggering due to the high number of frontline Cast Members and performers, as well as the low number of rooms. It was basically a math problem, and I’m still shocked that Disney greenlit Starcruiser knowing it would be so expensive (for them) to run and require high occupancy rates.
Some fans still don’t seem to believe this, which is odd to me. If the only thing Disney needed to do for Starcruiser to be a success was lower prices…they would’ve lowered prices! It’s not like they wanted the thing to fail and to take the tax writedown. Disney would’ve been much better off had Starcruiser succeeded and actually made money.
This is just one of several ways Disney boxed themselves in with Starcruiser and didn’t have much room to pivot. Another example of this is the character choices and setting–as with the land itself, it’s fair to say there probably would’ve been more interest if Darth Vader and other familiar characters and environments were featured. The whole thing made more sense as a “wish fulfillment” experience that would’ve let adults relieve fond memories of formative films from their childhoods.
Then there’s the niche nature of the experience. Starcruiser was a live-action role-playing game and interactive entertainment kinda endeavor–and one that required multiple days to experience. The time and nature of the experience were two big barriers to entry, with the high cost being the third of the trifecta. We heard from so many Star Wars and Disney fans who were curious about Starcruiser and could’ve afforded it as a splurge, but ultimately couldn’t justify the risk of their vacation time for an unknown concept that they might’ve not enjoyed. Hard to blame ’em!
Another issue was the marketing of Starcruiser, with the company having a difficult time conveying what it was (and wasn’t). What most affluent consumers able to afford Starcruiser’s prices actually wanted was a boutique hotel set in the Star Wars universe, but that’s not what it delivered. (On a related note, here’s Why Walt Disney World Will NOT Reimagine Starcruiser Into a Star Wars Hotel.)
This is just a partial list of what went wrong with Starcruiser. (There’s a certain 4 hour video you can watch that I assume offers a deeper dive into all of this and more.) I would’ve loved to see Disney at least try to pivot, but I can also understand not throwing good money after bad. Starcruiser was booking to half-capacity a year after it opened.
While it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback and assert they should’ve done X or Y differently, and that would’ve fixed everything, I’m skeptical that would’ve been the case. The problems were more fundamental and multifaceted. In actuality, I suspect its original creation would’ve had to play out differently for the outcome to differ. (Still, I wish they would’ve tried day trips to the Halcyon.)
I’ve also been asked my thoughts on the video itself–and have seen a lot more of “The Discourse” in the last week on social media. Let’s start with the title, “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel.” It’s weird to me to see people arguing about whether Starcruiser was a failure.
From my perspective, this point is well-settled. Given that the Star Wars hotel closed and Disney took a massive $300 million writedown on it, of course it failed. Going out of business is incontrovertible evidence of failure. So I’m not interested in relitigating this question. If Starcruiser succeeded, you could still book voyages on it.
I guess you could argue that it was actually a creative triumph or the true success was the friends we made along the way. All of that seems like a stretch. Creatives don’t operate in a vacuum, and even if the experience was fantastic for a select number of guests, the bottom line is that it wasn’t booked enough to remain in business.
Again, it resulted in a $300 million loss for Disney. Let that sink in, because it means the bare minimum that Disney sunk on this project was $300 million. It’s possible that Starcruiser lost even more, but they’ve recycled some of the assets and didn’t take a writedown on those. I know Disney has become so adept at losing money with movies and Disney+ that it might seem like Monopoly money at this point, but that’s real money. Imagine losing your wallet full of $300. Would you excitedly tell your spouse about this great success, or feel upset about it?
The fact that something perceived so positively by many/most of those who experienced it still had to close isn’t exactly the ringing endorsement that some fans believe it is. I don’t think that makes it better–it makes it worse! “We had this great thing people loved but it lost a ton of money and also was seldom fully booked until we announced its closure” isn’t something to brag about.
To be abundantly clear, this doesn’t undermine your enjoyment of Starcruiser and passion people still have for it. It doesn’t invalidate the work Imagineers and so many other talented Cast Members undertook to bring it to live, and breathe life into it. There are a lot of people who have (very understandably!) grown attached to Starcruiser, the people who inhabited its spaces, the stories they experienced, and friends they made along the way. That is great–I loved it, too!
But I also don’t need a label of “success” to be the enduring legacy of the project. And I know that, no matter what I or anyone else says, that absolutely will not be how Starcruiser is remembered. It’ll be as a costly and colossal flop that Disney pulled the plug on less than two years after it opened. That doesn’t undermine anyone’s memories. I happen to love the movies Mulholland Drive and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Sarah says I shouldn’t admit to that) despite both flopping–a fact about which I never think while watching them!
I’ve said this before, but Starcruiser reminds me of the Adventurers Club–but with childhood love of Star Wars and a massive barrier to entry in the price. Both were also immersive experiences that involved a degree of role-playing, or at least had an in-group dynamic. People formed friendships and forged strong bonds through both.
Many fans found their adopted “families” at both, and the closures hit certain people hard. In the case of Adventurers Club, the diehards held out hope for years that it would return–clinging to every bit of speculation, rumors, and/or wishful thinking. It was painful to watch, even secondhand.
It’s probably fair to say that the same thing is already happening with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, which is why so many people are taking this video–or anything negative–personally. It’s perceived not as a critique of the creative and business decisions of a multi-billion corporation, but an attack on family. It is personal. (Not for me. I really liked Starcruiser, but not that much.)
I understand why it’s happening, but it still seems misguided to me to pick apart this video, trying to poke holes in the arguments. Even without watching it in full, I’m glad it exists. And this is without knowing whether I’d agree or disagree with the substance of the video.
In fact, I probably would not agree with some of the specific critiques given that we really enjoyed Starcruiser and she didn’t. (Our full Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Review is mostly positive.) But that doesn’t much matter–she can’t invalidate my experience just like I can’t invalidate hers.
It’s not just us, either. There are dozens upon dozens of glowingly positive reviews for Starcruiser all over the internet. And not just from bloggers, vloggers, influencers, etc. Countless average guests considered it the best thing they’d ever done at Walt Disney World. It had one of the highest guest satisfaction scores at Walt Disney World of all-time.
I suppose you could say every one of these people is biased or suffered a mass hallucination after catching Gaya’s gaze. Or there’s the more straightforward explanation…a lot of people who did Starcruiser really liked it?
From what I gather, Jenny’s voyage was a comedy of errors and issues that Disney declined to fix–or did so belatedly. I’ve also seen comments suggesting she did X or Y the “wrong” way, which strikes me as patently absurd and dismissive. Given the price point, the service and attention to detail should’ve been immaculate.
Sadly, this is nothing new or unique. We heard from others who either had negative experiences or for whom Starcruiser didn’t “click.” Although secondhand, there are anecdotes of guests not realizing what they had signed up for and having a disappointing time. To be clear, this was not our experience–ours was amazing and Disney firing on all cylinders at the highest caliber. But we are not everyone.
One thing that is/was key is distinguishing between the terms expensive and luxury when describing Starcruiser. Something can cost a lot of money–as this did–without being luxurious–as this was not. This is a common thread with Walt Disney World. We’ve pointed out time and time again that Disney cannot hold a candle to real world luxury hoteliers, which is why they outsourced that to Four Seasons several years ago. Disney mostly does themed resorts, not luxurious ones.
The specifics here don’t really matter, anyway, since the thing in question is dead and gone, so it’s not like my review can persuade anyone to do Starcruiser or vice-versa. At this point, everything written or recorded about Starcruiser is essentially a postmortem on the project, with much of it serving as a cautionary tale or a prism for commentary on Disney as a whole.
And that’s why I’m glad “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” video exists. Because–at least from a couple clips that I’ve seen–it essentially views Starcruiser as a symptom of a larger and systemic problem. The company’s proclivity for treating Walt Disney World like its cash cow–nickel and diming guests, charging more and offering less.
We’ve been critical of the company, with Is Disney Ruining Its Reputation? and Disney’s Reputation Falls Further covering the company’s self-inflicted brand damage and loss of goodwill in the last several years. That has happened, at least in part, because Walt Disney World is charging more and offering less as compared to 2019.
Starcruiser is seen as the culmination of this, which was precisely why there was so much schadenfreude among Disney fans about its failure. Fans cheered for Starcruiser’s downfall not necessarily because it was bad in isolation, but because it was the biggest and boldest exemplar of a problematic trend. The most expensive upcharge at a time of ever-increasing upcharges. Starcruiser opened at the height of that, in the darkest days during the Chapek era when everything was being cut…except prices.
Although we first covered the topic many years ago in Is Disney World Eroding Fan Goodwill?, the trend really accelerated post-pandemic during the pent-up demand “era” when Walt Disney World was doing record-breaking numbers regardless of the guest-unfriendly decisions and changes they made. (See also, Top 10 Guest Complaints About Walt Disney World and Walt Disney World Could Fix the Guest Experience by Improving These Things.)
From my perspective, there is way too much uncritical commentary of Disney. This site certainly doesn’t shy away from positivity when it’s warranted–but we also aren’t afraid to offer blunt and frank assessments when those are warranted. One of the reasons Disney Adults are the subject of so much derision (besides the fact that we’re super cool and everyone is jealous of us–clearly) is because there’s so much unflinching positivity or knee-jerk negativity in the community. (Critical commentary is distinct from negativity–you can be reflexively negative by complaining about any and everything without offering thoughtful and coherent critique.)
This is the main reason I’m most looking forward to watching the 4 hour Star Wars hotel video. I don’t really care about Starcruiser itself anymore–what’s done and gone is gone–it’s how the lessons learned (or not) by the company will be applied (or not) in the future at Walt Disney World that really matters to me.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on what went wrong with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser? If you’ve watched “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” what was your take on the video? Did you also experience the Star Wars hotel? Do you agree or disagree with its assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Thanks for the thorough analysis. I haven’t seen the video in question, but I’ve heard that it dismisses anyone who speaks positively about Galactic Starcruiser as being a Disney shill or someone suffering from sunken cost fallacy, so it’s nice to see such an even-handed article on this topic.
Of the problems you mentioned, I would think the most significant was the marketing. To me, Galactic Starcruiser is to immersive theater as Disneyland is to amusement parks. When Disneyland was being built, people told Walt it was sure to fail because amusement parks are dirty, and he not only told them his park wouldn’t be like that, but even ran a weekly television show so that everybody in the country knew what Disneyland was. In comparison, Disney failed to explain what Galactic Starcruiser was, even though nobody had a frame of reference for understanding it, described the pricing structure so it looked like a hotel, and then never corrected that misunderstanding. They got this so wrong that people are still incorrectly calling it a hotel to this day.
Sure, because immersive theater costs twice as much as traditional theater, some people will say that costs too much. And because for a family of four Galactic Starcruiser costs 10 times as much for its 20-hour show as a single 2-hour immersive theater show, some people will say they can’t handle that big of a price all at one time. Those are the people for whom price was the main problem. But I saw nobody making complaints like that; I only saw complaints saying it costs too much compared to “other” hotels. That’s not a price problem; that’s a problem of not knowing what the price is for, which is a problem of marketing. It’s comparable to saying tickets to Aladdin on Broadway cost too much for renting a chair. There were huge numbers of people who mistook Starcruiser for an over-priced hotel with no windows, and if they had actually known what it was, maybe only a small fraction of them would have actually attended, but that could have been enough guests to keep it running for years.
So from that perspective, the main disagreement I have with your article is the statement that Starcruiser was a symptom of a larger problem. It is in fact a very different situation from Disney charging for virtual queues that used to be free, or removing free airport transportation, or reducing the menu options at restaurants, or closing early to offer more expensive evening events. This is a case where they were building a new form of entertainment, at a larger than ever scope and unprecedented personal interaction, which had low margins and a very limited upper bound on profitability. It’s not an upcharge, but a completely separate option for a small number of travelers. This is the opposite of nickel and diming, offering an all expenses included premium experience even if they aren’t making nearly as much on 400 people every two days as they would on a new attraction that serves 400 people every 20 minutes that you can get on faster if you pay more. Creativity and innovation is what Disney should be doing instead of cutting costs, but it’s safer to make sequels than original content because everybody knows what those are.
I watched “The Spectacular Failure” just yesterday! It’s amazing how hooked I got as a viewer and watched the whole thing. I didn’t expect to watch the entire four hours. I definitely recommend watching it, even if you have to watch it in pieces! She breaks it into 20 chapters.
This morning, I woke up thinking of it and went back and re-read your review of the Starcruiser to compare. It’s interesting how similar some of your expectations and excitement for the immersive storylines were, but then how different your experiences ended up. Her experience was marred with technical difficulties. She never really got set on a storyline path and wouldn’t receive most texts on her Datapad. She was locked out of most areas until near the end, when Disney default opened them to everyone. She got invited to a few events via paper invitation, but when she’d show up at the allotted time, she’d find out it had just ended. Once she got invited somewhere (engineering) on her Datapad, but then the invitation was deleted when she arrived, and nothing happened. To me, for that price point, everyone’s experience should have been like yours and worked seamlessly, and Disney should have had a failsafe mechanism to quickly catch people whose experience wasn’t working.
Also, I agreed with her assessment that most of the interactive features should have actually interacted with the physical environment. I think she had some really great ideas for “game play” and further interactivity. Alien pets in the cargo hold would have been something my teen kids would have loved! I also liked your idea of having the Batuu experience before park opening hours.
Ultimately, it’s an experience I would have loved to have had the chance to participate in, but it was too cost-prohibitive for us. I would have been really upset if we did make the splurge and then had the same disappointing experiences she did. That definitely shouldn’t have happened to any guest on the Starcruiser. I’m glad to hear, though, that most people did have a flawless experience and that multiple storylines worked so well for most. It’s too bad it’s something we can’t do “one day” since it did, in fact, fail.
Here’s the way I ‘watch’ all my YouTube videos… playback speed 1.5/1.75 and Bluetooth headphones to ‘listen’. Anything that seems important to see on the screen I can find later if needed. I listened to the whole thing and it took less time sped up. I got the whole gist and it all made sense. Listen in a couple car rides or when editing photos! I clean houses for my job and that’s when I listen to all the things!!!
It’s a really thorough and good video.
just looking at the female characters one could guess why…
A lot of the die-hards (the likes of which you may find writing or commenting on Disney travel blogs perhaps) don’t seem to acknowledge that at this price point the only people who would book rooms are the media/influencer types making their content/money and Disney fanatics who are often biased to the point that criticism is cognitively impossible. The first group is heavily incentivized to be positive owing to business dealings, and the second group mostly for their own sanity.
It was just too expensive for a lot of people who loved/love Star Wars. No matter how much we would love to go first class on airlines or stay in deluxe resorts , we just can’t afford them. Even the dream that we could save up and do it once is beyond us these days. The 1% is just that, a tiny percent of the population that earns a median income of $54,000. So I knew from the beginning that it was only a dream, no matter how good it was.
I hope you do get a chance to watch the video and share your further thoughts, Tom. I’m sure you’ll find a lot to agree with Jenny on in terms of the recent changes in Disney culture and attitude towards customers. Something I’ve always appreciated about this blog is that you engage with and don’t discount experiences that differ from yours. Considering you had a great experience with Starcruiser and still came out on a “Maybe?” as to whether it was “worth it”, I’d appreciate your thoughts after you watch Jenny’s video on how Disney could have improved her trip. It seems like a basic problem with the setup that the experience relies so heavily on tech, but there was no obvious “tell” for her that anything was glitching,
Oops posted too early! To finish my comment above, since there was no obvious “tell” for her that anything was glitching she didn’t think to ask for help until it was too late, so it feels like the hotel needed a way to better gauge how things were actually going for guests. And even if she’d gotten help quickly, that’s still time out of your day missing story and breaking the immersive experience – it feels inherently hard to remedy that in such a short, jam-packed timeframe for a very expensive trip.
I am not surprised it closed based on how difficult it was to try to book. I wanted to surprise my family, but was never able to learn how much the booking would cost. I had a party of 8 and was interested in the suite option, but was never given a price since the dates I specified were already booked. I asked if there was a min/max cost range that could be provided, but I was told no….only that “it was expensive”.
So without knowing a price – or cost range- for the suite option, I didn’t know if I should continue throwing out different dates or just book 2 standard rooms. So, I gave up trying to book the Starcruiser.
I watched the whole four-hour video the day it was released – probably not a surprise, as I’m massively invested in the Legacy of the Starcruiser. The commentary on your thread has been pretty wonderful Tom, but unfortunately many friends I know in the community have been approached online and insulted or jeered at merely for having voyaged on the Halcyon and enjoyed themselves. Because of that, I can’t say I’m glad this video exists, because even as thorough as it is…even when it compliments the parts of the experience that were done right – it seems that most people are only hearing the parts they want to hear, to justify whatever part in the experience they were most mad about existing.
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The cost is an issue that comes up a lot, and part of that problem was the obfuscation of the prices – it WAS difficult to price-check the Starcruiser and then book it. Most of my voyages however, the cost for me individually was right around 1500, which I consider to be a very fair cost for the experience. For families, obviously, that becomes a lump sum and thus is a harder pill to swallow.
The marketing comes up a lot as well – and on my final voyage I brought a pile of median-income distant relatives with me who had never heard of this, and who would have absolutely gone and brought all of their friends as well. So there was actually a significantly untapped audience that was never reached – or who only heard about it after the negative backlash had begun.
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I wish to argue the ‘Spirit Airlines’ point, however. Unlike Fastpass, the Starcruiser was not an experience in which you needed to spend a single cent more to have an incredible time. There were up-charges available, but none of them were required or even really enhanced any part of the experience. Even failing to book the Captain’s Table (which I would have loved to have done at least once) did not stop me from having an incredible relationship with Keevan. Upcharging is definitely a problem elsewhere at Disney, but…I really don’t see it having been an issue here.
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I would even like to argue the main point that the video makes in the ‘You were Robbed’ section, because I hear it often stated that all of what was promised in Galaxy’s Edge was put behind a paywall in the Starcruiser. I don’t disagree that this is what happened, but I do disagree with the idea that it was because Disney specifically wanted to up-charge everyone – and the reason I disagree is the exact same reason that the Starcruiser Failed – the operating cost. In order to deliver an experience in which fans can expect a reasonable amount of magical interaction with a cast-member or piece of technology, you have a person/space/cost ratio. This ratio was challenged even on the Starcruiser, where the populace was limited by the number of rooms. Any more people, and the experience would not be good enough. Not even talking ‘worth it’ here…just good enough. Trying to imagine anything close to that happening in Galaxy’s edge with Bounty Hunters, Droids, Repulation scores, spontaneous shows with audience interaction…it becomes utter chaos to the tune of mobbing the Mandalorian. It was not scaleable, or sustainable. I think the Starcruiser was actually a last-ditch effort to put that into a space where it was actually meaningful to those who experienced it, and the price tag that went on it was just what that had to cost for the infrastructure to exist. I’m not defending corporate Disney with this – I’m sure someone thought it would make money too. But it really seems more like someone did some calculations and went ‘if we want this to be good? This is how we have to do it. Make it niche, and make it boutique.’ And that…was what we got.
Just wondering if you ever experienced Star Wars Weekends (which were INCLUDED) in admission price? Because that’s the argument a lot of us had about Disney now up charging for every single thing that made Star Wars FUN. Now to even get on the newest attraction you have to pay EXTRA. No more Jedi training for kids. No more character meets everywhere. No fun guest speakers or panels. All Disney had to do was include so much of SWW into Starcruiser at AFFORDABLE price point and it would’ve been a huge success. Not against the up charge for special things (we did the VIP package on day at SWW and 1000% worth the price at the time)