Elegy for a Starcruiser: What the Star Wars Hotel Can Teach Us About Storytelling
Reason & Whimsy #10
The following post contains major spoilers for Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, which no longer exists, so there’s no reason to stop reading.
The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser was most ambitious storytelling/narrative experiment ever. Which is why it failed.
(If you are already lost, SWGS is the name of the absurdly expensive Star Wars-themed hotel at Walt Disney World that features an original story and interactions with dozens of actors. After roughly two years of operating, it’s taking its final “voyage” this week. If you want to go super deep into the experience, I highly recommend Adrian Hon’s 12,000 word recap and analysis.)
Last October, my brother and I spent two nights (the mandatory stay length) on the Starcruiser, and while I am still trying to decide if it was “worth” it, the questions the experience posed still linger more than a year later.
Did I Even Like It?
The Starcruiser experience features long stretches of wondrously weird storytelling punctuated by shorter, but affecting, moments of awkwardness. Like when the wannabe-musician character asked us for our help “writing a song” and then we workshopped both music and lyrics for 30 minutes. In other words, it was weird.
Making the most of the experience required full commitment, and some people (like introverts or people who get uncomfortable when watching a performance as the sole member of an audience) just aren’t built for that level of participation. For me, I loved 80% of it and wish I could have just skipped the rest.
(BTW the song winds up being featured in a stage show the following night, cobbling together lyrics from the several groups who separately contributed, which was a nice simple touch.)
Who Was This Thing For?
I know the answer to this, and it’s one of the reasons it failed. The Starcruiser was trying to appeal to every possible person who 1) can afford it and 2) is a fan of Star Wars. Because of this, it couldn’t cater to varying attributes of guests like a real hotel can. Its ambition is hindered by the need for the entire thing to be entirely family friendly, which is fine for every other experience at Disney World, but less so when that experience takes place over two days and tries to tell a fairly elaborate, interweaving story with genuine dramatic beats. One moment you’re being asked to fiddle around with a bunch of random levers on a mission in the engineering room, and a few hours later at dinner you’re watching a 10-minute dialogue between the evil Lt Croy and the noble Halcyon Captain Keevan about the nature of leadership (or something, I had had a couple of Dagobah Vimlets and a bottle of blue wine by that point so I can’t be sure what they were talking about).
Did that really happen?
That being said, there were some remarkable moments and elements to the experience:
The commitment of the cast, who not only have to stay in character and improv the whole time, but also determine the right level of interaction for each individual guest’s comfort level (and they all remember every guest’s name throughout)
· The “virtual” windows throughout the hotel (LED screens which provides views of space) are all perfectly synchronized, which is a tiny detail that goes a long way towards successfully creating the immersion
· Each room has a panel that lets you converse with a “droid,” which was either the most sophisticated Siri ever or a real person behind an animation, because the conversation is flowing, sometimes funny, and always aware of what is currently happening on the ship
· A genuinely emotional cameo from Yoda’s force ghost
Why do I feel the need to italicize the name of a hotel?
There’s nothing in the Reason & Whimsy style guide, so I’m guessing it’s because the experience felt like a true part of the Star Wars universe (and according to nerds, it is canon). George Lucas famously said that across its many episodes, Star Wars “rhymes,” and the hotel honors both the themes and continuity of the movies.
More interestingly, it also makes the adjacent Star Wars theme park land (which you visit on the second day) more interesting. It recontextualizes the two rides in Galaxy’s Edge by filling out their stories, in the same way the prequels filled in gaps for the original trilogy.
A cynic would call this a $6,000 ride pre-show, but for the fans who love piecing together easter eggs and exploring layers of the story, it’s worth every penny.
What’s the difference between a story and a narrative?
The ultimate undoing of the Starcruiser is its insistence on building a complete narrative instead of imparting a story. Comparing this experience to NYC’s Sleep No More doesn’t do either any favors, but the latter made a choice to let the audience decide how coherent they want the story to be, giving each individual the agency/burden to piece together the plot. The Starcruiser (in part because of my earlier all-things-all-people approach) spells it out for everybody, providing a linear beginning, middle, and end like a classic Star Wars movie. And while there are many options for how a guest winds through that flow, you can almost feel the decision tree as you shuttle through different options.
It’s a lesson that marketers should learn as they try to tell their own stories. All the work that goes into developing consumer journeys will be for naught if we use them linearly. Instead we should think of them as mosaics made up of hundreds of opportunities to engage or inspire. If we don’t accept that humans will make a story their own no matter what, that ultimately we don’t have control, then we’re destined to fail.
Will we ever get something else like this?
I hope so, but it feels like a missed opportunity. I keep wondering if this would have been successful if it didn’t have the baggage of Star Wars IP and the ridiculous price-tag? Or what if it was in New York or LA or London where there’s thousands of wealthy people who are into weird, avante-garde types of storytelling?
But those are all hypotheticals for now. Adrian Hon provided the real answer to this question in the essay linked above, and it’s this:
“What’s strange about the Starcruiser isn’t that it’s being shut down, I thought. It’s that it was built in the first place.”
This Week’s Whimsies
Random diversions, curiosities, and explorations that might inspire a new thought.
A bit more Star Wars: This piece about Andor’s relationship to the rest of the Star Wars universe touches on the “Who Is It For?” question
My relationship with The New York Times vacillates between angrily failing to cancel my subscription and being transcendentally grateful it exists. But this review of a new book about the paper takes an inside-out look at the changing role it plays in the world.
German readers: do you have a word for the very specific ennui experienced by sports fans whose favorite team is clearly destined for nothing very early in the season?
Programming Note: the newsletter will be on hiatus the next two weeks while I am on the road.
Upcoming Topics
A snapshot of thoughts that are coming together for future posts…
Something about digital identity related to the French Revolution (MEDIA)
When to make the Performance to Brand Leap (MARKETING)
Prediction: How the “Streaming Wars” end (MEDIA)
An Elegy for a Starcruiser (CULTURE)Cultural Procrastination (CULTURE)
R&W Holiday Gift Guide (MARKETING)
The danger to cultural legacy when we lose content ownership (MEDIA)