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 really wanted to experience this, just for creativity’s sake alone because it’s so unique… but no one else in my family wanted to role play. And there aren’t any single rooms, so it’s just really hard to justify the cost. We ended up booking a concierge room on the Dream in January for what would have been the same price. I think it’sa great idea in theory but if it can’t work out how to find an audience and make it profitable then you didn’t really do your homework. It’s been interesting to watch and I wish we could have experienced it. It’s definitely sad to see it closing but not surprising. I also heard that the job of working at starcruiser takes an extreme toll on the cast members which could be a hidden cost that we don’t see. Let’s be real, these types of jobs are normally done in other countries (All inclusives) or on cruise ships (flagged in the Bahamas). There’s a reason AIs and cruise lines aren’t based in US – to make them profitable you would have To charge such an exhorbitant cost that almost no one would go.
Sorry, but anyone with any business experience should have realized this was a money losing proposition from the start! Disney built a multi year project that paying customers would only support for a few months. Anyone who thought someone would pay for this more than once is, quite honestly, an idiot. This is a classic example of not understanding your customers.
I’m actually very sad about this. I’m a huge Star Wars and Disney fan, and this sounded like a dream come true. I always thought this was something I thought I would do someday, but we just couldn’t afford it so far. Really a bummer, but price was the barrier.
the missing Disney magic with this from the start was the catering to small market fans with big pocketbooks. The whole reason Disneyland and DisneyWorld worked as a whole was Walt’s original vision of a place where anyone could take their kids for a family day or vacation that was affordable to the masses. And I’m a HUGE star wars fan with a six figure income. But in no way could I justify the cost for what we’d be doing as a five person family. But that’s been Iger’s calling card- cater to the theoretical big spenders or boutique communities with more exclusionary experiences / content while ignoring or downright offending the larger established customer base. Call it the Bud Lite effect.
I wish there was something to do with the complex.. make it a drive-to second star wars “mini-gate” within the park… kind of a variation on the Hogwarts express and diagon alley / hogsmeade campuses in Universal. It sounded awesome.
The same Walt who set up the exclusive Club 33? The one who created different tiers of tickets? The one who chose a site in central Florida which, in the early 1970s, was far removed from everywhere, expensive to get to, and only had his own hotels anywhere near the Magic Kingdom? Sure, that all sounds very inclusive. Walt always knew he had to appeal to different audience segments; that’s why there were spinners for the little ones, more thrilling rides for older kids, and exhibits for the older adults. Your ‘Bud Light effect’ is akin to saying that, by building rollercoasters, theme parks are setting out to alienate families with young kids who don’t make the height requirement. They aren’t; they’re trying to include more people in their fanbase.
Maybe it would make nice, inspiring offices for Imagineers…
I know, right? Couldn’t they at least do that, use it as offices rather than let the poor thing rot???
It wasn’t just the price, although that was nuts. We are lifelong WDW fans and I’m a former (long time ago) CM, & I never had even the slightest desire to go to this experience. There is literally nothing else Disney I can say that about. There are a whole bunch of people for whom this sounded like way too much work and not very much relaxation at all. I do not want to talk to people or play act anything for 48 hours. I do not want to stay in teeny tiny rooms that you aren’t really expected to spend much time in. I don’t want to not be able to see the sky for most of the day, and just hearing about the experience made me feel claustrophobic. I also could not get past the experience not including characters we know from the films.
Way to go Kathleen kennedy. Great job another stunning success while you really taking Star Wars to new heights
While the idea was amazing, like many many others I’m not surprised that this is not sustainable.
The fact that it did not last longer is the biggest surprise in my opinion. I would have imagine them lower prices and lose money for a couple years before taking such a decision.
This is a bit of a stretch since most of us were priced out to begin with due to the nature and price of the experience, but I wonder if this is an exemple of how brutal the slowdown is going to be for Disney for the other half of 2023/2024
Do you think that they expect it to be so bad that they rather close it all together for now than losing any money at all?
The problem is that new Star Wars is like new coke. No one liked the new Coke and no one likes the new Star wars. If they had made this star Cruiser thing somehow tied to real Star Wars the original classic Star Wars and the real characters this thing might have been a success.
i feel like this is another idea they could have tried first. that said, i’m not the least bit surprised it’s shutting down.
LOL at no one likes new Star Wars. You might not like it, and of course the majority will always prefer the original (that’s what led to making new ones in the first place), but plenty of millions of people truly love it.
I’m sorry to say it….but this is another example of Disney not understanding its audience. Yes, this was a very bold and creative concept. Something must be said of the degree of creativity that imagineering did on this concept. I applaud them for that. This concept was aimed at the hard core Star Wars fans…yes….hard core. The Starcruiser would be too intimidating for the casual fan, especially at that price point. Even for the hard core fans, except for a few…this was a one and done. Someone has to explain to me how that makes this a sustainable endeavor. For the most part, the people that this was geared to went on it last summer or fall. After that, understandably…occupancy fell.
While I’m a better than a casual fan (somewhere between casual and hard core), role playing has no interest for me. To spend what it was going to cost would have been a waste of money.
Agreed on your point. I love SW old and new and am exactly who this is aimed at. I also could afford this experience but the thought of being in the play instead of in the audience kept me away. I didn’t think it would be worth the high price to sit back and watch from the side.
This could work as a new DVC themed hotel/resort for Star Wars. Trade the amenities for theming. My kids always want special themed rooms. Disney could maybe come up with some inexpensive Star Wars amenities. They could keep the special entrance for people into Star Wars land. Huge perk if you want to be first in line for ROR.
Ageee!
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t at least leave the lobby/bridge/bar/shop/restaurant open and shuttle people over a la Rafiki’s Planet Watch for a high end dining experience. I’d likely spend $200pp for a few hours there. Regardless, I’m very sad and will be spamming their phone line next Friday to try to get on that last trip.
As you and many have said this is simply not surprising. I enjoy Hawaii once or twice a year. For the same price I can have an oceanfront room at a beautiful hotel for a week. Mauna Lani, Andaz, Fairmont, etc. is the same price for 7 days. I understand this is an unbelievable experience, but the price for two is insane compared to what you can get elsewhere, and that is the challenge. WDW hotels are over-priced in the first place (but people pay) and part of why we bought into DVC in 2005. I pay enough in dues already that paying $5 or $6K for two nights is just crazy. And again, as I mentioned, look what else you can get in the world of travel and experiences. It’s sad and as a Disney stock holder I root for success in all ventures. I sure wish they could have pivoted and offered, as you mention an 8-hour experience or a one-night stay. But at that price…destined to fail…sadly.
You can definitely get a lot more value for the $$ elsewhere, but there is nowhere else that you can get this. It’s absolutely the closest thing to stepping into the actual world of Star Wars, and there is nothing that quite compares to the triumph of rising to the challenges, forging fast friendships to help each other in the midst of ‘danger,’ and discovering one’s connection to the force. I really do wish there was a way Disney could have made this more affordable, because it’s a self-building exercise like no other, and I felt like I could actually be me, even though I was playing someone else. It was worth every penny, and I am truly regretful that more people won’t be able to experience that magic.
I wish I was able to experience this. I wanted to surprise my husband for our 10 year anniversary with a stay at the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser cause he is a huge star wars fan…but looks like that’s not going to happen unless they make it into something else, which I hope they do. so sad it failed but I agree, the price was a bit outrageous, especially those traveling from afar.
My husband and I were planning on going for our 20th anniversary this winter – guess that won’t be happening. So frustrating.
While I don’t disagree that the price and experience limited the audience, I don’t agree that it limited the audience to only those who were affluent.
I know college students who have gone, people who shared rooms saying that if they didn’t they wouldn’t have been able to afford it, etc
It was limited to Star Wars fans, but I also heard people who said they went with family and weren’t fans, but had a great time.
To me, I think the biggest failure of the project was the marketing and not trying to facilitate success. Disney had no way to facilitate people splitting rooms. They knew it was happening, but it had to be done via Facebook. I don’t think they tried to expand the audience beyond Star Wars fans either.
Maybe I’m just being cynical, maybe I’m just a bit angry, I dunno.
After going and talking to a bunch of people, it seemed like everything was in place for it to succeed and Disney just dropped the ball
There is a silver lining to the closure. Had this been successful, it can be assumed that WDW would be allocating more of its investment budget toward attractions catered to those with unlimited budgets. If they had any other similar ideas, those are less likely to happen and what comes down the road will be something that a wider audience can partake and enjoy.
When I got to the part of your article about possibly converting it to a prison, I had already had an even more horrible thought. It sounds like the type of building that would serve well as a morgue. To make it less horrible though, it could become Haunted Mansion II. (I’m kidding. Too far from MK).
I imagine Disney will let it go to seed like they almost did with Art of Animation. Making it an extension of Star Wars Land would be acceptable too. More likely though is it will become a storage building. I saw this coming. You saw this coming. Everyone saw this coming. Because we saw it coming doesn’t make it a less bitter pill for Disney to swallow.
T’was definitely on our ‘to do’ list, but we were waiting for a special occasion to justify the expense. Shoulda learned from the pandemic not to wait.
Well if you could look back at a post I made to your blog back when it opened, I believe I gave it 3 years max and I was wrong, it could not even make 2 years:( I said it would not survive because it was gear to a very specific group of customers, diehard SW fans and that once that initial wave of customers had visited that they would be hard pressed to draw the non-diehard customers. I will give WDW an A+ for the outside the box idea bit a big F for foresight. A couple of ideas that may have helped would have been to prepare 2 shows before opening and then swap them every 6-9 months after “going dark” for a month to rehearse and prepare the hotel, to draw repeat guests . I would have also offered a discount 30-40% to returning guests. Even now the discount they’re offering ($700 off if you stay at 1 of their most expensive resorts for I believe 2 nights), is a joke.
The 2 families I know that went had the exact same response to their trips. Each family had a couple of big SW fans and 1 or 2 that liked SW but we’re not big fans. The family members that were big SW fans thought it was GREAT but the other members thought the hotel was great but was mostly lost with the interactive part because they didn’t know all the characters etc. I also wonder what they will do with the hotel now.
The repeated problem for my family was the inability to justify the value proposition.
Galaxy kinda’ had our discretionary budget in mind, but what was being offered simply failed to provide the same value for us as the more common add-ons – like Dessert Parties, pre-Rope Drop & post-closing Events in the Parks, and other VIP access tours – provided by Disney. Said differently – for $200 we could buy Lightning Lanes for Rise of the Resistance, or spend $5,000 to wait on the same Park lines when staying at Galaxy (which burst the notion of an all-immersive experience).
Since there was little premium access provided at the Park, folks were paying a premium for interactive components at a sequestered hotel (without a swimming pool). For us, it was too expensive and too much work to be a one-and-done.