- It was ambitious, kind of fun, and much too expensive for what you got.
Are you an extreme hardcore Star Wars fan? Do you have thousands of spare dollars sitting around that you won’t miss?
Well, that’s too bad because you’ve missed your chance to go on a space cruise through the Star Wars galaxy.
That chance was Halcyon, the Galactic Starcruiser. It was a two-day simulated cruise in a hotel built to look exactly like a luxury tourist ship from Star Wars.
And when we say “exactly,” we mean it. Even if you loathe the franchise, you can’t help but admire the effort put into the hotel.
Every room, from the public lounges and restaurants to the guests’ private rooms, was carefully modeled and furnished to look like they had ripped straight out of the movies. The staff was appropriately dressed and Disney even hired actors to dress up as alien guests on the “ship.”
One year and six months later, the Halcyon was put permanently on the dry dock.
What happened? The concept actually sounds kind of fun, so why did the Galactic Starcruiser fail?
Let’s take a look at the story of Disney’s ambitious and ridiculously expensive space cruise.
Build It and the Nerds Will Come
In 2017, five years after the company bought the rights to Star Wars, Disney put out an online quiz to gauge consumer interest in a hotel themed after the science fiction franchises. The response was overwhelmingly positive, so Disney started making plans.
Those plans were revealed at the Disney 23 Expo later in the year. The company called it “100% immersive” and “Disney’s most experiential concept ever,” and they weren’t kidding.
The Start Wars hotel concept was introduced as the Halcyon, a luxury space liner. Guests would go on a simulated two-day cruise in an environment that fully put them in the Star Wars universe.
According to the initial promises, visitors would get to train their lightsaber skills, pilot spacecraft, and dine in restaurants straight out of the movies.
Sounds like a tall order, but that’s what Disney set out to construct. Five years (with a year-long delay caused by COVID-19) and an estimated $350 million later, the Halcyon set out for its first trip on March 1, 2022, near Florida Disneyland.
Star Wars in Real Life
Although Disney’s plans might’ve sounded overambitious, they actually delivered. If you liked Star Wars, the Galactic Starcruiser was probably everything you could hope for and more.
In its backstory, detailed on displays in the appropriately furnished lobby and on the “ship’s” walls, the Halcyon space cruiser had a whopping 13 decks. Guests, however, could only access four of them (as that’s what the actual real-life hotel had).
Still, there was a lot to see. Deck 4 (that is, the first floor) contained the Crown of Corellia restaurant, a lightsaber training room, a surveillance room of the ship’s engineering area, the gardens of the “climate simulator,” and the transport dock (aka the exit).
On Deck 6 was the Halcyon’s bridge, the Sublight Lounge bar, the Chandrila Collection souvenir store, and the customer-… Excuse us, the passenger assistance desk. Guest rooms were sprinkled across Decks 4, 5, and 7.
As the guests arrived, they got to don Star Wars-appropriate clothing. Then, a space shuttle of a bus took them from the lobby to the Halcyon, which was waiting in orbit.
The first day consisted of an action-packed storyline that the guests could move through at their own pace. They got to “navigate” the Halcyon on the bridge, help manage the engines, and engage in other suitably Star Wars-y activities.
On the second day, the Halcyon arrived at the planet Batuu — which was the Star Wars area of Disneyland Florida. Another space shuttle would take the guests there before they returned to Earth.
You Don’t Have the Credits
All in all, the whole thing sounds pretty fun. Nerdy as all hell, sure, but what do you expect from a Star Wars resort?
Yet, Disney closed Galactic Starcruiser in September 2023, only a year and a half after it opened. As it turned out, the project was just too ambitious and the Halcyon navigated itself into a black hole of financial unsustainability.
That’s to say the two-night stay was obnoxiously expensive. Two guests would have to pay $1,209 each for a total of $4,809. Coming in a group of five would knock the price down to an oh-so-affordable $749 per guest, or $5,999 total.
Granted, that’s about on par for a luxury resort. But the thing is, unless you were really, really, REALLY into Star Wars, the Galactic Starcruiser wasn’t that luxurious.
The spaceship experience ended up being a bit too authentic. The guest rooms were cramped, there wasn’t a single window to let daylight in, and fresh outdoor air isn’t a thing in space.
And even if you were a massive Star Wars fan, you had very little reason to come for a repeat stay. You’d just pay the sky-high price for the exact same experience you got before.
Finally, although the Halcyon wasn’t a real spaceship, it might as well have been for how much the hotel cost to maintain. As just one example, consider the alien actors. They had to pull 24-hour shifts in the stifling rubber masks so that guests could always interact with them — and that didn’t come cheap.
What it came down to was that there just aren’t that many diehard Star Wars fans with thousands of dollars to burn on one overnight “cruise.” And try as you might, you probably can’t Jedi mind trick the bouncer to let you in.