Perhaps they can introduce viruses to the mix. Not just COVID – before the pandemic, cruise liners were well known to be places where norovirus was often transmitted.
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Jokes aside, I feel like something like this is totally outside Disney’s wheelhouse here, though the (terrestrial) cruise + dinner theatre comparison is the most apt.
This money pit is an attraction you sleep at basically, which is counter to the short, digestable entertainment that is the theme parks: wait X minutes [hours, sigh], ride Space Mountain, exit, repeat. Trying to make something with all the gee-whizzery excitement of an Immersive Adventure in Space, plus also managing mundane details like checking in, buffets, laundry service, and places for your guests to sleep and poop… it’s a landlocked cruise ship on a two-day sail, and you’re paying for specific stateroom decor and some jump-the-line advantages at the “port” (park) when you dock.
Actually, as I type this, it’s also kind of brilliant. It’s not a boat, so you’re dealing with on-land upkeep, something familiar to a company that already manages parks and hotels (the wife and I honeymooned on-site in the Florida park, a long, long time ago.) Disney knows how to be immersive, but Star Wars has its own expectations and built-in fanbase, and honestly, we’re kind of prickly about detail. That honeymoon was fun since the theming was along the usual line of Disney: antebellum South, so “nostaligic history, whitewashed.” Big Space Liner is a reach for them, but I think the core elements are there. They may have swung and missed with this one, and $5K is absurd for a swing-and-miss. We’ve been saddened to see how high and hard the prices have spiked at the parks. We’re just close enough now to the California parks to have taken the kids on occasion for a 5-day park hopper. It looks like we’re never going to be able to comfortably manage that again.
But themed resort-style attractions? Disney can do that. This was a poor choice of IP, though it makes total sense with Galaxy’s Edge. But if they opened a Haunted Mansion themed hotel? (Nostalgic antebellum whitewashed spoopy South.) How would that go, and what would Boingers do? Personally, I’d give it some serious consideration.
With Star Wars this feels like Uncle Disney trying to hang with the cool kids and use hip slang and whatnot. There’s enough of the realities of hotel/land-cruise trappings to break the illusion, enough costs to put it out of easy reach, and enough rabid fandom (including me) to not suspend our disbelief enough for the magic to work.
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Yeah, I can’t make too much fun of the Star Wars hotel, because if there was a Haunted Mansion themed overnighter I’d be there like a shot.
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I think if I was in what was intended to be an immersive Star Wars experience, and I was completely unable to move objects with my mind, I’d feel like a failure. If they could do that, ideally without a surgical implant, then I’d have some interest. Something more sophisticated than turning the lights on with the Clapper, or a SW themed Alexa.
You do get to move some rocks with your mind in the “climate simulator” area.
But as a grumpy burnt-out Luke once told Rey, the Force isn’t about lifting rocks anyway:
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I think if I could fetch my phone with telekinesis I’d be somewhat satisfied. Someone needs to build a phone case with hover jets that can scurry your phone over to you.
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Even within the Star Wars universe the ability to do that kind of thing was so rare that even seasoned space travelers like Han Solo regarded stories of The Force as nothing but myth and superstition. So a whole cruise ship full of force-sensitive civilians would be bizarre to say the least.
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True, but it seems kind of like going to a Fantasy Baseball Camp and then sitting in the stands while the pro players play among themselves, as it’s unlikely you’d be good enough to actual play with pros.
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Given that the whole premise is supposed to be that you are a civilian taking a space vacation it might be more like boarding a cruise ship full of celebrity entertainers and then finding out that you’re not allowed to go up on stage to do magic tricks with David Blaine.
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So, Star Peace, then. Because it’s a little weird taking a space cruise during war time.
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There’s always a war going on somewhere.
Maybe you’re supposed to imagine that you’re kind of like one of those privileged profiteering elitists on the casino planet from Episode VIII.
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The nice thing about that theme is that any anachronistic earthly objects that don’t belong there can be easily explained away as the natural result of a night of heavy drinking.
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i.e. as one faction of the writers said to the other
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It’s even more complicated than that, which is where I think a lot of the problem is.
According to the previous promo videos, the Halcyon was an old cruise ship that was recently restored. So you’re staying on the Star Wars Queen Mary, basically.
It’s a complicated theming choice that will be lost on most casual fans, I think. Everyone is asking “why is it so clean?” because “kinda dirty” is the only “theme” thing 99% of Star Wars watchers know about that universe. This hotel requires you knowing that the Halcyon existed in the extended universe outside the movies, and that it was old and dated at the time and that now this is what it would look like with a sympathetic restoration… in order to get immersed in the theme of the hotel.
It’s a lot to ask of Diane and her kids from South Dakota.
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That’s not even true about the original trilogy, as discussed upthread, but a lot of oldsters (myself included) tend to forget that for many, many Star Wars fans the prequels and animated series are just as big and valid a part of the Star Wars universe as any of the original movies. The Phantom Menace came out 23 years ago, so for anyone in their 20s or even a bit older the sparkly clean aesthetic has always been a part of the series.
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Yah, I know, which is why I specified “Star Wars watchers”, not enthusiasts or fans. Ask any rando who doesn’t care about the franchise either way but has seen the movies what they recall about the setting, it’ll be “light sabres and dirty spaceships”. For decades the series was lauded as being revolutionary specifically because “the spaceships were dirty”. It was championed as a break from the sterile sci-fi of 2001 and similar properties before it. One can forgive non-enthusiasts for having this impression. It’s easily the top factoid about the franchise in the cultural gestalt over the past 40+ years.
So it shouldn’t be too shocking for the general public’s reaction to this hotel being “why isn’t it dirty?”
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Fair enough, but I think it’s also safe to say those folks definitely aren’t the demographic that Disney would expect to pay to stay at a Star Wars hotel anyway.
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