Inside Galactic Starcruiser, a tiny Star Wars hotel filled with gigantic performances

polygon.com:

Disney’s new Star Wars hotel experience, called Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, is a spectacle that’s almost overpowering in motion. The media giant has spent nearly seven years developing the immersive Star Wars experience, investing millions of dollars into a new facility, novel technologies, and intensive training for its staff.

This week, Polygon was invited to Walt Disney World for an abbreviated four-hour preview of what would normally be a 60-hour-plus experience. What we found isn’t Westworld, not by a long shot. The narrative isn’t dynamic so much as elastic. You can’t steer the story off course by sheer force of will, push the bad guy out an airlock, or hook up with a robot. However, if you put in the effort, you will experience moments of profoundly intimate immersive theater.

It’s far from perfect. I found that the facility itself feels tiny, at times verging on claustrophobic. The price point — roughly $5,000 for a family of four for a two-night stay — puts it well out of reach for many American households. And the actual hotel experience of it all would fall flat without the cast of characters, a team of skilled, tireless actors who help bring this corner of the galaxy to stunning life. In spite of those flaws, it’s an experience I’ll always remember, something of a dream come true for a Star Wars fan.

The journey starts curbside, as most trips to a hotel do. Guests arrive by bus or car at a shockingly spartan, almost brutalist concrete bunker. That’s when the claustrophobia starts to creep in. Guests are escorted down a narrow hallway, into a tiny chamber dressed up to look like a small shuttlecraft. From there, thanks to a few hydraulic rams and a pair of clever viewport-shaped computer screens, you’re