Just as fast as it materialized, Disney’s “Star Wars”-themed hotel, the Galactic Starcruiser, went belly up in one of the company’s biggest busts in recent memory, the nearly $1 billion resort unceremoniously shut down by the entertainment giant less than a week ago. The relatively straightforward idea for an ultra-themed hotel wound up — thanks to a combination of hubris, mismanagement and greed — as perhaps the greatest Disney theme park disaster ever.
The 100-room resort, which one ex-Imagineer estimated cost the company more than $1 billion, was supposed to be the next big thing for Disney’s theme parks, an interactive and wholly immersive experience, built around a traditional hotel but including elements of live-action role-playing, improvisational theater and more common theme-park mechanics.