So where do we hope we’ll see the pieces of the Galactic Starcruiser show up? This is the easy part…

1. More entertainment in Batuu

Anyone who’s been following Disney Parks for the last half-decade can tell you that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t exactly feel the way fans were promised. In fact, one of the major selling points for this “Living Land” was that guests who visited Batuu would find themselves in market stalls run by alien merchants; bumping into free-roaming Droids traveling throughout the land; gazing up at actual ships landing and departing from Batuu; and yes, caught in high-energy stunt shows that would pop up around the land.

All of those promised experiences were present at the land’s celebrity-packed media preview, where Rey and Kylo Ren battled along embedded rooftop stages, ships flew over the land (using clever drone technology), and character interactions were plentiful… but on the first day that the land opened to guests, they’d all mysteriously vanished and have never returned.

Fans knew to place the blame on penny-pinching then-Parks Chairman Bob Chapek, who famously decided to cut the land’s entertainment budget and decided to staff the land’s shops with well-meaning Cast Members rather than union actors. But regardless of who’s at fault, anyone who’s visited Galaxy’s Edge will agree that the land is disappointingly lifeless. At best, Rey, Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, a pair of Stormtroopers, and a rotating cast of Disney+ characters can be found milling around, but they don’t really have anything to do.

And to add insult to injury, what did guests who forked over $6,000 for the Starcruiser experience find? Yep – Aliens! Droids! Ships! Battles! Given that Disney’s statement mentions, “we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans,” we hope that the lesson is loud and clear here… and more to the point, that the immensely talented Cast Members who created such incredible moments on the Starcruiser will soon find themselves doing the same for the rest of us back on Batuu.

2. The long-awaited Star Wars restaurant

In another case of Disney over-promising and under-delivering, one of the explicitly-announced experiences planned for Galaxy’s Edge was a full service restaurant that would see guests choose between an elaborate galactic dining room with entertainment from visiting guest acts, or a sleazy underground nightclub of lounge singers. Concept art of the experience was widely shared by Disney. And of course, when the land opened, it was no where to be found.

Interesting, the physical space for the restaurant is literally there, right behind Oga’s Cantina and visible from satellite imagery. They just… y’know… didn’t build it. Which, again, would be fine except that they kinda did build it… but only for guests who paid $6,000.

In fact, the Starcruiser’s “Crown of Corellia” Dining Room was considered by many to be a highlight of the Starcruiser Experience, and like the formerly-flexible schedule of Be Our Guest Restaurant, could even shift from a less formal lunch to a moody dinner service with a performance by “intergalactic pop superstar” Gaya.

All throughout, guests dined on Star Wars foods like spiral dumplings, alien veggies, “bantha” tenderloin, fried “tip yip,” and of course, the legendary blue “Felucian shrimp.”

It’s depressing enough that a full service restaurant filled with Star Wars entertainment got cut from Galaxy’s Edge… but it’s salt in the wound to know that it existed aboard the Starcruiser, and that now, it’ll sit dark while the empty space back at Hollywood Studios just remains vacant. It would be great to see Disney port the idea over to the park, where we have no doubt that a prix fixe menu could earn them enough “credits” to make the move worthwhile.

3. Bolster Disney’s other “Living Lands”

If Galactic Starcruiser is best thought of as a small, controlled lab meant for prototyping new methods of interaction, then the best we can hope for is that the lessons learned there will translate throughout Disney’s other “Living Lands.”

It would be the best of a bad situation if the experimentation Imagineering accomplished with the Starcruiser was the first domino in a chain that will eventually see ACE naturalists and “living” Pandoran creatures interacting across The World of Avatar; interactive “missions” and explorable spaces dispatched throughout Avengers Campus; heck, even to get the “reputation” system built into Galaxy’s Edge to actually work, so that your performance on Smugglers Run, your choice of Droid, and your Lightsaber color actually have a meaning in the land.

It really wouldn’t be such a bad thing if some of the research & development money poured into the Galactic Starcruiser could now ripple outward, benefitting Disney’s projects well beyond Star Wars.

Lessons Learned & Ideas Grown

Let’s be honest – while fans are definitely owed some schadenfreude as they watch Bob Chapek’s ultra-elite, ultra-expensive, upcharge pet project fail to move forward, we should also acknowledge that the people who worked on Starcruiser – both in its design and its day-to-day operations – must be heartbroken right now.

So look at the bright side – hopefully, Disney really takes time to reflect and learns the right lessons from its grounding. Even better, hopefully we see the hard-won innovations and the guest-facing DNA of Starcruiser used to improve the experience for those of us who can’t drop $6,000 on a two night “cruise.”