The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel
Jenny Nicholson4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2024–2026
documentary · general · evergreen · 2024–2026 on HN
Jenny Nicholson's roughly four-hour review of her two-night stay on Disney's Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser immersive hotel. She goes through the experience, its story and production, and why it failed.
HN people strongly recommend it as the best overview of the Galactic Starcruiser and a case study in misaligned incentives and poor guest experience, engaging despite its length.
Up next
4 mo on HNCompost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great? - Onion Talks - Ep. 1
The Onion
4 HN recommender · 2013–2026
3 mo on HNBlueHat Seattle 2019 || Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story
Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)
2 HN recommender · 2020–2026
6 mo on HNYou Suck at Excel - Joel Spolsky (Reupload)
Cool Bug Facts
7 HN recommender · 2024–2026
11 mo on HNAntonin Scalia - On American Exceptionalism
AmericanRhetoric.com
12 HN recommender · 2019–2025
10 mo on HNYouTube's copyright system isn't broken. The world's is.
Tom Scott
13 HN recommender · 2020–2024
14 mo on HNMicro Men - 720p (2009)
gimpymoo
15 HN recommender · 2015–2026
12 mo on HNProject Code Rush - The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla Documentary
The Documentary Network
13 HN recommender · 2015–2026
10 mo on HNEd Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small
Stanford Graduate School of Business
9 HN recommender · 2010–2017
9 mo on HNLISA11 - Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos
USENIX
9 HN recommender · 2012–2026
6 mo on HNSecret History of Silicon Valley
Computer History Museum
6 HN recommender · 2010–2026
5 mo on HNThe Secret History of Silicon Valley
Google TechTalks
5 HN recommender · 2008–2016
5 mo on HNNetscape Mozilla Documentary 1998 - 2000 ProJect Code Rush - creative common licence
znoopy2k
5 HN recommender · 2011–2013
4 comments from Hacker News
> Though closed now, the Star Wars hotel experience was probably the best one on the planet. No. Nope. About the furthest thing from it. Not even the best Disney has done. This video is 4 hours and somehow was engaging to me (who never went to the Star Wars park) for its entire duration: ▶ this video Doing proper immersive experiences where the participants are involved is a ton of work, often without a ton of replay value. This makes them tricky to attract customers to and limits the potential for massive returns, so they are overwhelmingly passion projects.
and for anyone with 4 hours to kill... here's as an incredible documentary covering the misaligned incentives and poor guest experience at the now-shuttered Disney Star Wars hotel. ▶ this video She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
Obligatory link to the Jenny Nicholson Galactic Starcruiser review[0] since there's really no better overview of the experience. [0] ▶ this video
I’ll take this opportunity to plug the YouTube videos of animatronics super fan Jenny Nicholson. Her videos on the Star Wars hotel: ▶ this video and the theme park Evermore: link are peak YouTube content.