Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Hotel Disappoints

When Disney Parks gets something right, I love it. For example, the Cosmic Rewind coaster… everything I’m hearing behind the scenes and in public reveals is awesome. The Coco addition to Philharmagic is great. I enjoy, for the most part, the new lighting package on Spaceship Earth. However…

The latest video showing off the Star Wars hotel, also known as the Galactic Starcruiser, leaves much to be desired. 

So we’ve already found out that the neato lightsabers that look and act more like the fictional weapons are performer-use only. You can bet that was put out there prior to D23, on purpose, to temper expectations. But my gosh, I don’t know how you could temper expectations this much. We’re talking about a few days in a larping hotel for six-thousand dollars, and this is what people can expect out of it? You can’t buy enough positive press to spin this into something worthwhile, and the reviews are going to be absolutely brutal.

The Walt Disney Company should hit pause before they open a hotel this poorly conceived.

Months ago, I exclusively revealed how the Starcruiser lightsaber experience works, right down to the nitty-gritty technical stuff. I even talked with someone who had done the prototype set up in a banquet room in the Contemporary for testing. But I could not have foreseen how poorly this would be implemented. There is no way people can be happy about paying this amount of money to hold a cheap-looking toy that they then wave at a laser beam that can be pointed in different directions. It doesn’t look like a Star Wars laser, there aren’t wall effects; this is literally just a laser pointer with a bit of fog and you waving a toy at it. I can right that up for you at a grand total of ten bucks.

Then the video we see has what can only be described as a very cheap looking arcade game in which you slowly move a reticle over Star Wars ships to blow them up. There are games from the last generation of consoles that look better than this, and not by a little bit. Are you serious, that you are asking people to pay thousands of dollars for this? Seriously?

NGL that lightsaber training demo in the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser looked lame as hell pic.twitter.com/OmLgmAaBJa

— Christopher Ghareeb (@LeekoRae) November 21, 2021

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m way out in left field and Star Wars fans everywhere are loving this reveal. But I’m telling you, this is absolutely nothing compared to what Disney Imagineering is capable of pulling off, and I’m embarrassed for them.

If people pay thousands of dollars for this, consumers can only blame themselves when Disney releases something this poorly conceived with glowing press releases and media coverage.