In January 2022 – just two months before it opened to the public – we asked Theme Park Tourist readers to “Place Your Bets” on whether Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser would be a blockbuster or a bust. No matter which side of the debate you “locked in” on, you probably didn’t expect to have an answer this soon. But it’s true: just 18 months after its debut, former CEO Bob Chapek‘s premium pet project will close forever after its last voyage returns on September 30, 2023.

The public never quite seemed to “get” the Starcruiser, whose experience (and pricing) was modeled after a cruise swirled with a low-capacity boutique theme park sprinkled with an escape room. The landlocked experience invited guests into one of 100 intentionally-compact “cabins” with screen-based “windows.” There, they set up camp for two nights’ accommodations, exploring the ship’s bridge, engine room, & chambers, engaging in app-based missions, enjoying all-inclusive dining and entertainment (including all-you-can-drink Blue Milk on tap), traveling to and from Batuu, and meeting-and-greeting Star Wars characters in the context of an immersive, multi-day story.

Though reviews from those who visited were glowing, fans suspected that it wouldn’t take long before Disney burned through the minuscule market where “Star Wars ultra-fans” and “People who can afford a $6,000, 2-night cruise” overlapped. And besides, in an era of slashed perks and new upcharges, the ultra-elite experience for the economic 1% read as a tone deaf “gatekeeping” of sought-after experiences. So it’s really no surprise that fans felt some schadenfreude seeing the Starcruiser’s bookings drop.

Announcing the Starcruiser’s sunsetting, Disney’s spokesperson acknowledged, “This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans.” So what do we hope Disney learned from this costly experiment? And where would we like to see its DNA live on?

LESSON 1: The problem was the price

It would be way, way too easy for Disney executives to decide “Well, the problem was that we didn’t have enough characters” or ‘it should’ve been three nights” or “the beds weren’t soft enough” or “it didn’t have windows.” So let’s make sure we’re clear about the first lesson Disney needs to learn – Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was too expensive. Full stop.

Of course part of that was corporate greed – something Disney Parks fans are no strangers to. But frankly, it was also inherent in the formula. When Disney settled on 100 rooms for this boutique experience, they split the associated operational costs among a relatively small group of participants. If the hotel had 200 rooms and each cabin cost 30% less, the whole formula might’ve changed. Of course, that would also make it a less enjoyable experience in many ways, and less “premium” as well.

Disney’s statement suggests that they acknowledge that Starcruiser served as a small sample size prototype. Ultimately, that proved unsustainable. But before Disney can learn anything else from this experience, they have to learn that the primary problem was the price.

LESSON 2: Immersive doesn’t have to mean captive

One incredibly wrong message Disney could take from the Starcruiser’s grounding is that people just don’t want immersive experiences. That would be a very, very bad thing for them to decide. Ever since the Wizarding World opened at Universal Orlando in 2010, “immersive” has been the name of the game, with “Living Lands” across Disney and Universal parks that let guests step into the worlds they’ve seen on screen.

In many ways, Starcruiser represented an extreme of that; a 40 hour-long Star Wars themed escape room in which guests would (literally) eat, sleep, and breathe the Star Wars universe. The only peek into the outside world came from a visit to the “Climate Simulator” – an outdoor patio used for smoke breaks. The only real “break” from the fully-enclosed hotel was a truck ride to Disney’s Hollywood Studios (disguised as an interplanetary shuttle) to visit more Star Wars things, completing missions to recontextualize the goings-on of Batuu.

On one hand, it’s true that frankly, that’s a lot of Star Wars, leaving all but the most dedicated super-fans feeling that two days of role playing was more exhausting than exciting. But on the other hand, very few intellectual properties but Star Wars could maintain that level of fandom.

We did a little “Blue Sky” brainstorming about other immersive hotel experiences we’d love to see, and even with Starcruiser’s failure, they all still feel like great ideas! That’s because it’s hard to picture any of them being so rigidly programmed and obsessed with realism that they keep guests trapped. It’s almost like Disney did it just to prove they could… and maybe it was too much.

LESSON 3: Maybe Disney’s preferred Star Wars timeline needs to expand

Before Batuu was a sketch on a page, Disney famously drew up concepts for a Star Wars-themed land that would lean into the “Original Trilogy” – y’know, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, etc. However, once Disney put their “Sequel Trilogy” into production, the scale of the land grew, and its timeline leapt forward.

The timeline of Star Wars is studied with almost-academic precision, and in keeping with that tradition, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is firmly rooted on a single day set between Episode VIII and IX. Frankly, that kind of made sense when the movies were a thing happening in real time. But Disney’s Sequel Trilogy officially concluded in 2019 when Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker landed with a historic thud, leaving a bad taste in fans’ mouths for the adventures of Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren.

The result is that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and its E-Ticket rides are tethered to a corner of the Star Wars universe that doesn’t seem likely to be revisited anytime soon… Basing a permanent land off of the sequels to a beloved, classic film is already a bold move, but especially now that the future of Star Wars looks to be in the past (“The Mandalorian” is set closer to the Original Trilogy than the Sequel Trilogy), it’s beginning to look short-sighted…

Our guess has been that Disney recognizes their mistake, which is why they went with a very different model for Avengers Campus, and why characters from “The Mandalorian” and other Disney+ series have slipped into Batuu despite being anachronistic. Look: Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren are compelling characters who will probably always be the stars of the land’s rides, and it’s probably true that in ten years, a generation raised on the Sequel Trilogy will grow into young adults eager to see those characters in Disney Parks. But on a larger scale, Disney probably does need to re-think its allegiance to its films and maybe do the impossible: admit that when people think Star Wars, they think of the Original Trilogy first, and probably always will.

While those are the three big lessons we hope Disney learns from the Starcruiser, we still have to talk about the places we hope we see its DNA pop up in the parks… Read on…