Disney World Closing Star Wars Hotel
Walt Disney World has announced that it will be permanently closing Galactic Starcruiser, its Star Wars “resort.” This covers the official announcement of the closure, dates & details, plus our commentary about the decision.
According to Walt Disney World’s official announcement, the final voyage for Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser will take place September 28-30, 2023. In other words, it’s one of the first cuts to be made and revealed before Disney’s new fiscal year starts on October 1, 2023.
“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 experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our Guests and fans,” Disney shared in a statement.
Walt Disney World will be contacting guests booked for voyages departing on or after September 30, 2023 to discuss their options and modify their plans. To prioritize these guests with previously-booked reservations, Walt Disney World is pausing new bookings until May 26, 2023.
The company’s statement goes on to say that they are so proud of all of the Cast Members and Imagineers who brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life and look forward to delivering an excellent experience for Guests during the remaining voyages over the coming months.
We want to start by addressing Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser from a planning perspective. Probably an odd approach, given that it’s closing. However, you will likely have a chance to book it after the dust settles for voyages between now and the end of September 2023, and there are still discounts available for summer voyages.
For those who are on the fence about doing Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, we highly recommend it. Not because you’ll have bragging rights a decade from now as one of the very few fans who experienced this limited time offering. Rather, because Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is awesome.
The experience is definitely not for everyone, but we think it’s more broadly appealing than some might assume. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is an incredibly well-done, memorable, and personalized experience. Everything about it is amazing. You become emotionally invested in the outcome of the storyline and the whole thing is just immensely satisfying.
Turning to commentary about the closure of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, this is sad but unsurprising news.
Before it even opened, we predicted that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser might struggle to find an audience once the initial wave of hardcore fans and affluent enthusiasts got their fix. We also predicted that Walt Disney World would be slow to pivot, and would quietly offer targeted discounts to Cast Members and other groups to avoid publicly “admitting” that the Starcruiser was not a big success. The exact things that have been done to date.
With news of discounts and reduced departure dates, we expressed frustration. Our perspective was that if the status quo was maintained, the Star Wars resort’s woes would only get worse over time. Galactic Starcruiser debuted during a period of pent-up demand and free-spending consumers. Its first year largely exhausted the supply of hardcore Star Wars and Disney fans who have the money and interest in an experience like this. The tides have since turned, and in a big way.
Our point was that those measures did not fix any underlying issues. Namely, they did not expand the audience or appeal of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. It’s a band aid approach that simply resulted in Starcruiser losing less money and failing slower. As we said months ago: if this is Walt Disney World’s only fix, then failure is inevitable.
To that point, another prediction we made even before Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser opened was that if it failed, it would close. There were possible pivots (past tense), but converting this building to a standard hotel is not one of them. Many Walt Disney World fans seem to assume this is a plausible or inevitable outcome even with the “experience” of Star Wars: Galactic Starcuiser ending. It is not.
Starcruiser does not have a laundry list of amenities that a normal guest would expect of a hotel–everything from a pool to outdoor common areas to working windows. Part of the reason Starcruiser has been such a challenge to market is because it is fundamentally not a hotel. It’s an immersive experience that offers a place to sleep.
Starcruiser is also very small. The entire thing is only 100 rooms. The scale does not work as a hotel, especially given the level of investment that would be required to convert this into a standard hotel. It would be like throwing good money after bad.
Honestly, even if Starcruiser could somehow be operated as a hotel without any material changes, it’s not viable. The operating costs of staffing, servicing, and maintaining it–even without entertainment performers–are too high given the low number of rooms. (The margins on Starcruiser are not nearly as healthy as many fans assume. Yes, the price is high, but the operating costs are staggering.)
If you’re a newer Walt Disney World fan, you might be shocked at the idea that the company would just abandon the building entirely. If you’ve been around the block as a Walt Disney World fan, you might remember Pop Century’s Legendary Years, River Country, Disney Institute, Discovery Island, etc.
Heck, you could argue that even Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge and Play Pavilion are similar to this (albeit not quite on the same scale). In short, Walt Disney World has a time-honored tradition of abandoning buildings and letting them rot. It’s as much a part of their rich 50-year history as The Wand, Sorcerer’s Hat, Giant EPCOT Dirt Pit, or in-park tombstones!
Like some of the other aforementioned failures, maybe the physical infrastructure of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser will eventually be repurposed. It’s possible the ‘day trip’ concept to the Halcyon that we’ve mentioned previously will still come to fruition at some point, but departing out of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and with totally different branding for the experiences. (Color me skeptical about that at this point.)
Regardless of what happens down the road, don’t expect that announcement anytime soon–and don’t be surprised if it never happens. Walt Disney World has let plenty of things rot in plain sight before; this would not be a first. (Starcruiser isn’t really in plain sight–it’s behind Cast Member parking at DHS, and the odd location is arguably part of why it won’t be converted into anything else.)
In other words, this news that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is permanently closing is not going to be followed by another announcement that a “brand-new” Star Wars Resort is opening. That is not going to happen. But who knows, maybe they’ll turn it into a prison–it has the right look and we’ve heard there’s interest in one of those around Walt Disney World!
One of the things that makes this closure news so sad is that guest satisfaction for Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is excellent. We’re talking higher scores than just about anything else at Walt Disney World. I have heard this from multiple people with knowledge of the Halcyon, and I have no reason to doubt them. (This also comports with our Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Review, which is incredibly positive about everything except for the price.)
I have no issue calling out the many mistakes that Disney has made with this, but the actual experience is not one of them. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser having some of the highest guest satisfaction scores of anything at Walt Disney World should be entirely unsurprising for anyone who has actually done a voyage.
For those who haven’t, it’s an incredibly well-done, memorable, and personalized experience. Everything about it is amazing. You become emotionally invested in the outcome of the storyline and the whole thing is just immensely satisfying. Walt Disney World has had its hits and misses in recent years, but this delivers in just about every regard. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is classic Walt Disney World–a true triumph of Imagineering.
How much fans would love the Galactic Starcruiser experience if they could afford the cost is without question the most saddening part of the news that it’s closing. We know a lot of bloggers or vloggers who have axes to grind with Disney or Star Wars. There are plenty of people who have been openly hoping for the failure of Starcruiser. We are not among them. We were cheering for changes because we really, really wanted this to succeed and for more people to be able to afford it. It’s such a shame that so few fans will get to have experienced Starcruiser.
The main problem, of course, is 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 have been cheering for its failure. (For more thoughts on this expensive pricing, see Is Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Worth the High Cost?)
Again, guest satisfaction is incredibly high, but there’s selection bias at play. That only surveys those who did Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, which means it’s the perspective of those who could afford to do it. Not polled are the ~95% of the potential audience for this that either could not afford it or don’t want to invest the time in a multi-day live action role playing experience.
Basically, Walt Disney World has something that’s awesome and envelope-pushing, but has high operating costs and even higher price points for guests. The end result is something highly exclusionary that reduces a potentially large consumer pool into a very small one.
The only viable solution would have been expanding the consumer-base. This is accomplished by offering something that’s more approachable, both from a pricing perspective and also a time commitment one. It’s not either/or, it’s both.
Due to the scale and operating expenses, there’s likely only so much cost-cutting that can be done to reduce pricing on the 2-night experience while still maintaining profitability. That’s fine, because price is not the only impediment to people doing Starcruiser–it’s also investing 2 nights of limited vacation time into an experience that might not be for everyone.
As we’ve suggested before, the solution is/was debuting ‘day trips’ aboard the Halcyon. Walt Disney World could offer 8-hour experiences that condense key moments of the storyline into a single day visit. The branching script could be rewritten in a way that hits the major high notes, basically turning the Halcyon into a boutique theme park or interactive narrative experience. (Somewhat like Meow Wolf, but exponentially more expensive.)
This shorter experience would have been very attractive to a wider cross-section of Star Wars and Walt Disney World fans. It also would’ve been significantly cheaper. It would have introduced a whole new audience to Starcruiser, and whetted their appetite for even more. It could have resulted in even more bookings of the 2-night voyage as people learned how good Starcruiser really is. Sadly, all past tense now.
It’s really sad that Walt Disney World didn’t even test this before opting to instead permanently closing Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. Perhaps it was hemorrhaging more money than we thought, and was deemed unsalvageable. It just seems like the only attempts made at turning things around–discounts and cutting voyages–were half-measures at best that never would’ve been sufficient. Again, very hard to say from the outside looking in.
Ultimately, we really wanted to see Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser succeed. That’s why it was so frustrating that Walt Disney World did not make changes to fix the underlying issues, but instead made half-measures causing it to circle the drain a little slower. Now, everything is going to be flushed away at the end of Disney’s fiscal year. This decision has big “we’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas” energy.
We understood why so many fans were frustrated by the Starcruiser and openly cheered for it to fail. It was dumb of Disney to make this so exclusionary, both in pricing and appeal. There are dozens of ways Disney could’ve approached this so it didn’t alienate so much of the audience. Yet they opted against all of that and remained steadfast in their refusal to fix the underlying issues. In a sense, Disney is getting what they deserve with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser failing.
However, this is not what the creative team behind the Starship Halcyon deserve, nor do the passionate performers who poured their hearts and souls into making these characters and the whole experience come alive. It’s also not what Star Wars or Walt Disney World fans deserve–and that includes those who have bashed it. There are so many fans who have done so out of justifiable frustration, but who would actually love the Starcruiser if given a chance to experience it.
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is actually awesome, innovative, and a leap forward for the world of interactive storytelling. Imagineering created something outside the box that offered full immersion, interactivity, entertainment, and personalization in a highly-themed environment. It’s an absolute shame that more fans will not get to experience this, and that Disney is now throwing away the millions of dollars in physical infrastructure and R&D by permanently closing Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.
If this news makes you happy or gives you a sense of schadenfreude, that’s certainly your prerogative. However, if you think Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser closing is going to “teach Disney a lesson,” you are sadly mistaken. Unless the lesson that you want the company to learn is that they should be more risk-averse and push the creative envelope less, in which case: mission accomplished!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on Walt Disney World permanently closing Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser? Think the company will convert it to a regular resort, reopen it as something else, or abandon the building forever? Would you have preferred a more conventional hotel stay at a Star Wars-themed or decorated hotel? Do you agree or disagree with our 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!
I am heartbroken. As a west coast Disney fan, I only make it to WDW once every couple of years. I had the Starcruiser on my aspirational list, right up there with the Deluxe resorts and Signature dining experiences that I dole out a bit at a time. Really sad that now I won’t get to do it because making another trip happen between now an September just isn’t in the cards. I understand the fiscal year issue, but it would have been nice if there was more warning for those of us who were still hoping to squeeze in a voyage.
I’m actually really surprised by this. It seems unlike Disney to admit defeat and flat out close an attraction. They usually modify or re-theme, but to just close it after all this investment? I’m surprised. I knew it was struggling but I thought they would try to keep it open with day trips and changing the story.
I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan since the very first movie came out in 1977, but upon seeing the price of this experience, I knew there was no way I would ever be able to justify paying that much for a 2-day stay. From the very beginning, this experience was WAY too expensive, and targeted at WAY too small of a demographic, to succeed.
I never did see how this was going to be sustainable and to no one’s surprise, it wasn’t. However, this still might resurface along your idea of a paid. experience. The HOTEL is closing permanently, but that doesn’t mean that something else might not use the same facilities. People who pay for the Halloween and Christmas parties might be willing to pay for a 4-6 hour dining or other immersive experience. People who couldn’t pay the room price here would be willing to put out $150.00 for such an event. The questions are how many people could be let in and would it be enough to pay the bills?
So, I won’t be surprised if the Halcyon still has Halcyon days in its future. But I also won’t be surprised that if years from now its one of those abandoned Disney landmarks for those in the know, like River Country was once upon a time.
This makes me so sad. I was planning on taking my son Fall of 2024 and coupling it with a MNSSHP night. Don’t think I’ll be able to fit it in between now and closing.
We literally got off the Starcruiser Wednesday. We had a fantastic voyage and were talking about when we could go again. it was an amazing experience with incredibly talented actors and crew. We are very happy we got to go before the news hit and very sad we will not be able to go again. Yes the cost was excessive but to us worth every penny for the equally amazing experience. Everything in Tom’s post is 100% on point. we are very sad it is ending and grateful we got to go.
Too bad Disney couldn’t incorporate the cosplay/building as an attraction. Utilize the “shuttles” between GE and the star cruiser. Incorporate some OT characters and such.
Disney has to allow imagineers to design the park experience and not cost controls dictating.
I’m heartbroken by this, it was such an incredible experience. You have to wonder if Disney will ever take another big creative swing like this again.
I wonder if alternatives would’ve cannibalized better profit margins elsewhere in WDW. So not an option.
Which stinks :^(
Omg do it if you’re on the fence!!! It was a super experience!
Now if all hardcore Disney fans would boycott Genie+ and get them to go back to free Fastpass+.
It’s not the hardcore fans that would move the needle on that–it’s casual guests.
With an economic slowdown (or worse) coming, I wouldn’t necessarily rule out the possibility–really depends on how bad guest satisfaction is on Genie+ and whether it starts cannibalizing sales of other discretionary/impulse purchases like souvenirs and snacks.
Dang, this really cheese my crackers. Given the price point of a WDW vacation plus the added massive expense of this, we had been waiting for pent up demand to die down a bit. With the announcement of park rezzie removal, we finally planned to book an early 2024 trip that would have included the Starcruiser. All four of us love SW and were looking forward to the experience. I will look at a last minute trip after they open new bookings, but I don’t feel optimistic given what else we’d like to book for the rest of a WDW trip. I just don’t see how I can find availability and get it all to line up. Sigh. So disappointed and, frankly, irritated if not simmering some anger, that this was so short lived with basically no effort to pivot beyond the weird discounts and reduced voyages. How utterly absurd to make this kind of investment in both time and money and not try any other alternate offerings to try to make it work.
This makes me so sad. It was amazing.
I still maintain that this could have been sustainable if the storyline focused on the first three movies produced (i.e. what is now known as Episodes 4, 5, and 6.) The dates these came out (mid-1970s to mid-1980s) coincide with the youth apex of the Baby Boomer generation, which I’m right in the middle of. We are the ones who were able to conduct our working lives during relatively better times for employees – we might have inherited money from our “Greatest Generation” parents – so we tend to have more of the financial resources necessary for this trip – not to mention the time commitment, as many of us are retired. This is not to say every Baby Boomer is in this situation – many were not lucky, and many are trapped in high medical expenses – but I’d think there would be more that could afford a $6,000, 2-day adventure than later generations can manage. So – focus on the old IP familiar to the rich older ones who treasure the original Star Wars, which totally transformed the movie experience! We can’t keep up with the later episodes, they do not have the same quirky humor, we prefer going to physical movie theaters and playing our old VHS tapes or DVDs. I think Disney did not match their dream with the audience they should have targeted.
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong–the original trilogy obviously is what made people Star Wars fans and has more staying power than the Disney-made Star Wars content. Even fans of the latter would probably agree with that assessment.
However, I still don’t think that would’ve been enough to move the needle long term. It could’ve bought Galactic Starcruiser another year or two, but the fundamental issues of cost and time commitment still would’ve existed. Those are the insurmountable issues IMO.
Yes, you’re right. That Baby Boomer generation is starting to die off anyhow. I would be interested, and might have paid the cost if I had a partner or friend equally enthusiastic to go with, but I (age 66) have serious digestive issues that limit my diet so much that it’s hard to eat anywhere at Disney World. That’s what comes from decades of acid reflux with no doctor interested enough to see what it was doing to my esophagus.
I’m glad to see it go. Not for lore or imagineering. just cause it was a bad idea from the start just like the nba experience. Very specific experiences not designed for many. Bad ways to get extra dollars from die hard fans. Like make a star wars value resort and see if anyone could ever get a room.
Bring back Disney Quest!
Drat. I was planning to do it once they watered it down a little. Now to figure out how much prices are going to spike for this summer.
I guess is the one high end hotel they can’t rescue by carving a ton of rooms out for DVC. We personally would rather be there (without all the entertainment) than many of the other properties.
I’m not happy this is closing and I never wished for its demise but I’m also not at all surprised. I’m squarely in the target audience for this experience. We’re fortunate that this is well within our annual travel budget and I’m a gigantic Star Wars fan. The problem is that while my son is also a giant Star Wars fan, my wife and daughter have no interest at all. We only have time for one big vacation a year and it’s generally Disney World as we all enjoy different aspects of it. For my son and I to do this would mean we have two and a half days away from my wife and daughter. Hard to split up a family vacation that way. I also do believe that the timeline they chose (sequels vs original trilogy) did factor into this a bit. The old Star Wars fans are much more aligned with the original trilogy characters. I realize that Disney had its hands tied by the timeline of Batuu and licensing arrangements with Lucas as to why they didn’t chose the original trilogy but the real money is in the hands of the older fans and they want to see what they remember from their childhood. Also, not everyone wants to role play for two and a half days. I have no doubt it was done to an incredibly high standard but the audience for this is very niche and then you throw the price on top for the average person and your pool of possible customers starts to get very small very quickly. I’m glad they did a moon shot but not all moon shots succeed.
Major bummer! My kids are too little to truly appreciate it but my husband and I had it on our planning calendar for when the littlest can be left with grandparents as an anniversary splurge next summer.
i guess its no surprise, given how much it cost to build and run the place, that they were never going to recoup that with the limited pool of customers willing to pay/experience the place…
very few who would have been willing to go could afford to pay the going rate…that was perhaps the biggest flaw in the plan…maybe if they were willing to lower prices and run it as a loss-leader for a few years to gain word-of-mouth, it could have succeeded, but that’s not in the company’s best interest at present…
kudos to them for shooting for the stars for a completely immersive experience, which seems to have been unforgettable for those who have been able to partake…
perhaps they can use the data from this to create a more traditional attraction with the interactiveness…sort of a more immersive Rise of the Resistance type of experience…
“maybe if they were willing to lower prices and run it as a loss-leader for a few years to gain word-of-mouth, it could have succeeded, but that’s not in the company’s best interest at present…”
I really wondered if they might do exactly that, but it seems like the original PR push was dominated by headlines about cost and, after that, there was absolutely no buzz whatsoever.
It’s too bad the ‘resort’ wasn’t structured in such a way that outside guests could’ve booked dinner shows and caught a glimpse of the action (or something) in the process. The way it was so isolated from the rest of Walt Disney World really killed ongoing organic publicity IMO.
It’s a shame. This experience is incredibly creative, but far beyond the affordability of mainstream America.