If you’ve been slavering for your chance to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to head to Walt Disney World’s upcoming Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser experience, might I suggest you towel off your chin for the time being? Disney has released a video preview of some of what awaits families who come aboard the Halcyon, and it doesn’t look particularly enticing.
The first thing you should know about this video is that it stars Disney Parks Imagineer Ann Morrow Johnson and The Goldbergs’ sitcom actor Sean Giambrone. The two take a very short tour of the Starcruiser, but instead of them just talking like normal people about what people who come to the Halcyon can expect, it’s scripted and painfully unfunny. You’ve been warned. But this video also raises an important question, which is: Disney wants $US6,000 (A$8,413) for this?
The video only showcases two areas of the hotel, the ship’s bridge and bar. The former looks OK, and will presumably be more interesting if you’re actually doing the “bridge operations training” event Morrow mentions. She also says the ship occasionally goes into hyperspace, which I assume is her being coy because if I paid six grand and didn’t get to watch the ship go into hyperspace I’d sue. The bar also looks surprisingly small, and while the Twi’lek singer/diva Gaia sounds fantastic, it’s really weird to hear someone singing in Star Wars in English. Also, she’s just… standing around? There’s no stage? Even those jizz-wailers at Tatooine’s cantina had a stage. It all just seems kind of meh — fine if you could wander into them while you’re in the Galaxy’s Edge section of Disney World, but nothing worth the Starcruiser’s exorbitant price.
If you want to give the Galactic Starcruiser the benefit of the doubt, there’s presumably a lot of cooler stuff coming as indicated by the plethora of old concept art the video trots out, including the (non-retractable) lightsaber training. But if you want to be suspicious and mean-spirited, like I do, you can point out the major difference between the excitement and vibrancy extolled by the many pieces of concept art and the lacklustre reality of the bridge and bar. If nothing else, while Disney presumably has a slew of videos coming that showcase different parts of the hotel, it really feels like it should have waited until there was more to show than just this.
The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser experience begins in March 2022 at Orlando’s Walt Disney World, but you’re going to have to at least July before you can book a room. That will give you more time to save up for the exorbitant $US6,000 (A$8,413) needed to spend two days and two nights at the hotel.