Disney’s Star Wars hotel hasn’t cracked the thrill of lightsaber training just yet

polygon.com:

Polygon was invited to visit Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, Disney World Resorts’ new high-concept hotel experience in Florida, during a press preview event last week. One of the bullet points that really sold fans on the facility in 2019 was a lightsaber training experience, one that promised to evoke the earliest scenes of Luke Skywalker swinging a laser sword way back in 1977. During my visit, I gave it a try and found it to be, technologically speaking, kind of tame. But, like much of the fun to be had aboard the Halcyon, it’s more about the vibe than anything else.

One of the first major demonstrations of the lightsaber training experience showed up on YouTube just three months ago. In it, you can clearly see how the system works. Participants stick a special lightsaber into a beam of light and, if they time it correctly, the lights flash and the saber vibrates. Shields also play a role in the experience, adding more tactile participation while helping to keep fingers and hands from getting whacked on the backswing.

Honestly, it really doesn’t look anything all that much like it does in the movies. It doesn’t even look much like the early concept art. The reason for that, I hope, is fairly self-explanatory.

Laser swords aren’t real, and even if they were, there’s not an insurer in the world that would let guests wield a weapon that could cut through metal. Also, while laser weapons are real, their beams don’t form coherent bolts of light that zip through the air like tracer rounds. Basically, the laws of physics take a lot of the fun out of the lightsaber training experience, making it feel a lot like reverse Laser Tag. But according to Disney’s creative director, Sara Thacher, this was still a major step forward