A four-hour YouTube video investigating why Walt Disney World Resort’s Star Wars-themed hotel and live-action roleplay experience shut down after just 18 months has made waves online, resonating with people both inside and outside the Disney fan community.
YouTube video essayist Jenny Nicholson, who specializes in content about theme parks, Star Wars and niche fandoms, described how she paid over $6,000 for her and another guest to share one room on the Galactic Starcruiser, the two-day, live-action role-play and resort experience.
The hotel, billed as a unique “immersive experience,” opened in March 2022 and shut down in May 2023, with many Disney fans saying it was unaffordable and poorly marketed.
Nicholson calculated that it cost about $2 per person, per minute — and according to her, it not only wasn’t worth it, but reflected an evolution in Disney theme parks from providing free perks for resort guests to selling them as expensive add-ons.
Despite being her longest video ever, her review of the Galactic Starcruiser has been viewed nearly 3 million times in the four days since it’s been posted. The video has gotten major reactions well outside its target audience of theme park and Star Wars enthusiasts, with Nicholson’s name trending on X for days.
Casey Neistat, one of the best-known YouTubers, weighed in, writing that Nicholson’s video “should be a case study for theme hotels/amusement parks/all things ‘experiencial.’”
Nicholson’s analysis that Disney greatly overcharged fans, leading to the experience’s premature closure, struck a chord with people who expressed shock online at seeing what the Galactic Starcruiser actually entailed versus what it cost. The general consensus behind many of the reactions to Nicholson’s video was that the experience was not just overpriced, but mediocre, while a few Disney vloggers and fans who also attended the experience disagreed with Nicholson’s review.
More than half of the video was…
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