hotel , a two-day “immersive experience” that, after years of hype and extravagant shareholder promises, opened in March 2022 and, at a loss of $250 million. Nicholson, who paid over $1,600 a night for her stay, chalks the hotel’s failure up to numerous factors—the 246-minute runtime leaves room to point a lot of fingers—but sums up by tying her pricey but lackluster stay to a larger Disney trend: charging more for luxury-branded products while providing less and less.
By toggling between early promotional materials and her own experience, Nicholson pinpoints several places where the grand visions of the hotel’s conceptual stage were whittled down to an underwhelming nub, and others where nifty aspects that were originally pitched as part of the related Galaxy’s Edge theme park were relocated inside the much pricier confines of the Galactic Starcruiser.
Unfortunately, the answer, at least thus far, seems to be no. The show pulls back from its most audacious possibilities in a way that suggests the heavy hand of brand management, chipping away at anything that might rock the boat. There’s a pattern here, a desire to shake things up followed by a fear of the consequences.