The expensive and immersive Star Wars hotel at Walt Disney World in Florida is closing after just one year of taking guests on a two-night ‘voyage’ that could cost up to $20,000.
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was originally sold as an experience rather than a hotel and costs around $1,200 per person per day. One ‘tricked out’ suite has been reported to come in at a whopping $20,000 for the trip.
The immersive lodging, which is based in Orlando – and does not have any windows – will carry out its final ‘voyages’ in September, four years after it was announced at D23 Expo in 2019 as part of the park’s $1 billion Star Wars land.
The news of the closure comes just months after DailyMail.com reported that Disney was struggling to fill up bookings and had reduced availability for the fall.
The hotel, which is located near Disney World in Orlando, Florida, created major buzz when it first opened over its price and its amenities.
Included in the two day experience is a cabin or suite, ongoing immersive entertainment, food and beverages in and out of the space, and admission to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
A room that can accommodate three adults and one child is priced at $5,999, not including taxes and fees.
A cabin with two guests comes in at $4,809 while three guests comes to $5,299.
The Starcruiser “immersive experience” is three days pretending you are living in a cruise ship in the Star Wars universe.
This video is a walk through of the attraction.
That looks like it would be fun for a few hours, or a cool theme restaurant, but unless you are a ridiculous Star Wars super-fan into LARPing, that’s gonna get old fast.
Considering the $6,000 price tag, the only people willing to pay for that are Star Wars super-fan into LARPing.
Did Disney have it’s head so far up it’s own ass that it thought that there were enough Star Wars super-fan into LARPing to sustain this as a business?
Because clearly, there are not.
This took $350 Million to build, so they didn’t recoup their investment.
It’s not DeSantis that is killing Disney jobs in Orlando, it’s dumb fuck decisions like this.
My boys and I are big SW fans (but not so much into LARP’ing). We were planning on doing this until :
1) We saw the price, and even that might have been doable except…
2) Biden-flation jacked up costs on everything and my investments dropped 30%
3) Some unexpected expenses that ended up being even more expensive than ‘padding’ I had set aside (see #2)
4) Disney decided to go extra stupid on the Identity Politics
All those put together and said trip went the way of the dodo.
Among the factors that TantivV mentioned above, it’s just damn expensive to go pay tribute to the rat. There was a DailyMail article that showed the average cost of a 5-day trip for a family of four was close to $8500, it was pushing $10k when airfare was factored in.
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There’s a helluva lot that you can do with the family for $10k.
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Combine people not wanting to spend a used car on a vacation and with not wanting to put money in the pockets of companies/people that hate them . . . yup, kind of a predictable outcome.
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I know people from when I lived in Orlando in the shadow of the mouse who were big Disney fans and really liked what Walt originally created. Disney Cruises, annual passes, the works. Nowadays, they won’t spend a penny on anything Disney and are, I would say at least passively, rooting for Disney’s demise. I imagine they’re not alone.
Disney *HATES* annual passes, and has done everything they can to discourage people from buying them — even (especially?) people who have bought into one of their timeshares. They’ve added blackout dates to annual passes that cover a big chunk of the year (over a third, from what I recall), and done the same with the lower-price passes they sell to Florida residents.
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The Florida parks kept Disney going through most of COVID, and now Iger is attacking the guy who re-opened the state and let Disney make some money. My money is on Iger getting into the presidential race this cycle, and his “war” with DeSantis is him playing to the Democrat base.