The Galactic Starcruiser, Disney's mind-bogglingly expensive Star Wars hotel, met an ignominious end in 2023 when it shuttered after only 18 months of serving the galaxy. Now, it appears Disney is mining it for parts, so it's well and truly gone for good.
The Wrap reports that the Disney has decided to convert the Galactic Starcruiser into office space for Walt Disney Imagineering, the "secretive arm of the company" that is responsible for creating new attractions, retail locations, and cruise ship experiences. According to their sources, Imagineering is currently working on adding Disney park experiences based on Encanto and Indiana Jones, as well as Cars, Monsters Inc., and Disney villains. So presumably they'll now be making some of those plans from cubicles built in the ruins of the the Starcruiser's galley or something.
While the Starcruiser is being converted into office space, The Wrap also reports that some elements of the immersive experience might make their way out to the main Disney parks, specifically Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars-themed land that already exists. Apparently, one element of the Starcruiser experience that was originally planned for Galaxy's Edge was a dinner theatre performance. Disney changed lanes and decided to incorporate that into the Starcruiser. Now that the Starcruiser has sailed into the scrapyard, the dinner theater experience may make its way back over to Galaxy's Edge as originally planned.
What went wrong with the Star Wars hotel?
All told, this is a pretty astounding tale of a corporation taking a massive gamble that fell utterly, hilariously flat. The Wrap reports that Disney spent around $1 billion on the Galactic Starcruiser (Disney claims its cost was "much, much lower"). It opened in March 2022 and closed September 2023, just 18 months later.
The big sticking point for the Galactic Starcruiser was that it was prohibitively expensive for large swathes of the public; a weekend there could cost as much as $5,000 for two people, and since it was an immersive experience you had to spend an entire weekend there if you went at all. Suffice to say, there are a lot of Star Wars fans who could not afford that price tag no matter how much they may have wanted to check it out.
And that was only one of many issues with the Galactic Starcruiser. Around the time it closed, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson posted a four-hour breakdown of everything that went wrong with Disney's Star Wars hotel, a riveting watch that's very much worth the time. Although let's be real, if you're reading this article you've probably already seen it; as of this writing, Nicholson's video has racked up more than 12 million views. That's around 169 times more people than actually went to the Starcruiser, which only served around 71,000 guests by the time of its closing.
So long to the Galactic Starcruiser. We hardly knew you.
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h/t StarWarsNews.net