There is no stronger signal from a company that it has a failing property than when it abandons it. Disney Parks is doing just that with Star Wars.
The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser was supposed to be a runaway success. An Imagineering smorgasbord of role playing, gamesmanship, and high tech immersion, the expensive price tag for families wishing to attend was but a small hurdle in the minds of planners prior to the pandemic. Originally intended to be connected directly to Hollywood Studios’ Galaxy’s Edge, the hotel was kept nearby with a shuttle ready to take guests on exclusive experiences there as well. Given the number of Star Wars fans anticipated when planning began in late 2016, this was sure to be a moneymaker for Disney Parks. Perhaps it would be the springboard for more experiences just like it in the future!
Today, things are far different. According to sources familiar with Disney’s planning, the Galactic Starcruiser is seen as a major disappointment. For Star Wars, it is a potential canary in the coal mine for the sequel trilogy. Not to worry, though, there are about one-hundred dead canaries over in the merchandising side of things, so it’s not like they needed more signals that Rey and Kylo are albatrosses around their Lucasfilm necks.
Only six months since opening, the exclusive experience with just one-hundred rooms is already beginning to run voyages under capacity. According to sources, and likely true given our following of the date availabilities, the Starcruiser ran with empty rooms in August and has done so again in September. Not even padding of rooms with special guests is able to keep everything full. Though it seems destined to run at less-than-optimal numbers for the months ahead, Disney is hoping that the third season of The Mandalorian, combined with potentially bringing in Mandalorian characters to the experience, will be enough to get guests back into the faux starship. If they can get through 2023, the thinking is they can buy themselves some time to generate a budget to redo things that aren’t working.
Despite our repeated warnings that Star Wars and Kathleen Kennedy’s Lucasfilm are failing, many fans and the access media crew don’t want to run that narrative. For fans still hanging on, it’s an emotional thing to accept that The Last Jedi wiped out enough of the fanbase that the brand is permanently damaged. For those fans, it is a hard pill to swallow given that Star Wars has been overwhelmed with political and world view issues that tie it to the passions of modern ideology. And for the access media, reporting on just how far Star Wars has fallen is a dangerous sport. Bringing negative attention and press to The Walt Disney Company can be a one-way street to no more perks, no more premieres, and no more backstage passes.
But it’s getting very hard to keep that story going now…
According to Disney Parks supersite, WDWNT, the company is abandoning a Star Wars expansion planned for years for Disneyland Paris. This is a huge, huge story. Not only is the company dropping millions of dollars in planning for a new Galaxy’s Edge, but they’re going to replace the project with a Lion King expansion instead.
Listen, I know that Star Wars has struggled to find major success outside of the United States as of late, but being replaced by a cartoon from the nineties is a heck of a fall. It was just years ago that Star Wars was being given the most primo land in all of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. It received the last of the easy-access undeveloped land. Now it’s being scrapped as an expansion elsewhere. If ever there was a way for even the most ardent skeptics to see that Disney recognizes it has a Star Wars problem, surely this is it. If you can’t see there’s an issue now, you’re going to struggle to ever see one. After all, if Star Wars was a successful brand, they’d be putting it in Disneyland Paris and enjoying the money that rained down upon them. Instead, they put Marvel in… but they cancelled Star Wars!
After many, many months of speculation, Disneyland Paris executives confirmed that they were likely not moving forward with plans to build a version of “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” in Walt Disney Studios Paris as part of the parks ongoing overhaul and expansion plans. Speculation has run rampant since that was stated as to what could replace the space as the final phase of the park’s announced overhaul following Avengers Campus, a “Frozen” themed land, and more. Well, according to sources, Disneyland Paris is currently considering building massive themed lands for either “The Lion King” or “Avatar”.
“The Lion King” has done very well with guests in entertainment offerings at Disneyland Paris many times before, currently with “The Lion King Rhythms of the Pride Land” show in Frontierland at Disneyland Parc.
— Tom Corless, WDWNT
So that’s it. The company is admitting in the only public way it can that Star Wars has fallen. It can’t do more than eliminate the franchise from the box office and from park expansions. They’re not going to come out and publicly state they have a Lucasfilm problem in some sort of press release or public announcement. Even if they did, this speaks louder.
For those who have been waiting for Star Wars to move back to timeless storytelling and a heroic version of Luke Skywalker, no better news could happen. Perhaps the rumors of Kathleen Kennedy stepping aside in 2023 are true. I hope so. Not because I hold animosity towards her but because I want Star Wars to be apolitical and true to the vision that George Lucas began with.
For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts.
