Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser – Disney World Orlando (Closed)

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is the biggest example of immersive theater gone mainstream. The experience took you into your own Star Wars story aboard a Halcyon ship; while the Resistance made moves under the nose of the First Order, you encountered new characters and familiar ones from the saga’s recent era in a heavily participatory experiment.

While Galatic Starcruiser’s price grabbed a lot of headlines—a room (that could fit six people) for the two-day, two-night experience cost about $6,000—the bang for your buck varied depending on many factors. That included your own participatory initiative, which depended on how familiar you were with immersive theater experiences. You also had to be okay with actors tasked to engage with as many people as they had the bandwidth to (they should have been paid extra to deal with guests as camp counselors); doing phone puzzles on your “data pad” (read: your cell phone, on your own battery life); visiting sparsely themed exclusive spaces; and venturing into a tourist filled theme park to visit Galaxy’s Edge. Despite the Starcruiser’s many opening year limitations—the biggest of which was getting general audiences (often families) game for a theater camp on steroids as part of a Star Wars production role play—it received the highest guest scores of any Disney experience for its ambitious storytelling adventure. Unfortunately, it closed last year with a lot of untapped potential.