'The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel' is the best piece of Star Wars content in years

Jenny Nicholson is deservedly going viral for her four-hour examination of the failed Disney World attraction.

“YouTube Star Wars commentary” is not a genre with a particularly excellent track record, especially not when the running time exceeds four hours. Way too often, it consists of some dude ranting about how Disney and/or wokeness and/or women have ruined Star Wars, or arguing that the masterpiece that is The Last Jedi is actually bad. 

Jenny Nicholson is a YouTuber with over a million subscribers who has produced various Star Wars content. In the last week, she’s gone especially viral for a more than four-hour video called The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel. 

Nicholson’s video, which is just as good as advertised, takes an in-depth look at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a Star Wars-themed hotel and choose-your-own-adventure experience that opened in early 2022 and closed only 18 months later. The video represents a review of Nicholson’s visit to the attraction and looks deeply at where the concept fell short. 

Above all, Galactic Starcruiser sounds like so much work. With a price point in the $6,000 range, attendees got what approximated a cruise, except the activities were set within the Star Wars universe. The problem was that the app that was supposed to control the adventures didn’t work, and there were little mistakes, such as Chewbacca not being in the right place when the task was to look for him. 

Nicholson calls the experience “Spirit Airlines in space” because the hotel rooms were pretty shabby, especially for that price tag. 

The Internet has a long history of creators running down failed efforts, and it’s so often been done in a mean-spirited fashion. But that’s not Nicholson’s style. Instead, she’s perfectly willing to praise the aspects that she liked, especially the work of the cast members. 

Overall, using expert storytelling and her videos, Nicholson makes an excellent case for why Galactic Starcruiser failed. 

Unlike many of my friends, I’m not a habitual attendee of Disney Parks. I went to Disneyland and Disney World once each as a kid, and again once each with my kids once I became a parent. When I went to Disney World in 2017, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge wasn’t there yet, but I noticed that the Star Wars characters were as well-represented as Mickey, Goofy, or any of the princesses. Also, my son got to take Jedi training. 

But on that same trip to Florida, we stopped somewhere else: the Legoland Florida Hotel in Winter Haven. It wasn’t quite as immersive or ambitious as Galactic Starcruiser would be. However, it was still super-creative and often hilarious, whether it was costumed Lego characters in the hotel lobby or a scale Lego model of the Las Vegas Strip. Also, it didn’t cost anywhere close to $6,000. 

The Nicholson video arrives at a strange time for Star Wars. New movies keep getting announced and then canceled, and the Disney+ shows, other than The Mandalorian and Andor's first seasons, haven’t exactly broken through.

There’s a great book to be written about Disney’s stewardship of Star Wars and all the strange things that happened at that time, and the Galactic Starcruiser chapter may end up being the most fascinating one.

So please, watch Jenny Nicholson’s video. You can watch it in parts; sitting at once for four hours is unnecessary.