Disney has deleted a promo video for their Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel from their social media accounts following backlash. The Star Wars-themed hotel, Galactic Starcruiser, opens in March of 2022 at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012 and has found success with an almost yearly Star Wars film since 2015 and with the hugely popular The Mandalorian Disney+ series. Capitalizing on that success, Disney released the concept art for the Star Wars-themed hotel in 2018. The hotel has slowly taken shape over the years and is now very close to completion, with pricing and reservations now available.
Disney shocked fans when they released the Star Wars hotel's extremely high prices. The hotel is a two-day experience that costs $4,809 for two guests and $5,999 for four guests. While the hotel has received some backlash for the pricing, that backlash reached new heights when Disney posted a promo video showing footage of the actual Galactic Starcruiser hotel. The video featured Walt Disney Imagineer Ann Morrow Johnson and The Goldberg's star Sean Giambrone. The video quickly racked up numerous dislikes and comments from viewers slamming the hotel for seemingly looking cheap, and for choosing a non-Star Wars star for the promo.
As reported by Inside The Magic, Disney has now deleted the promo video from Twitter and YouTube. While the video has been completely wiped from social media, Disney has not yet issued any statement or addressed the now missing promo video. While the studio offered no explanation, many are assuming that it was in response to the negative backlash that the video received. It remains to be seen if any replacement promo will be released for the Galactic Starcruiser.
Viewers found issue with nearly every aspect of the apparently poorly executed video. According to many users, the inclusion of Giambrone felt random, and some criticized the video for a weak script and poor performances. More importantly, though, viewers expressed that the hotel was not what they were expecting. Many pointed out how cheap and unlike Galaxy's Edge it looked, and others suggested it might be better as a Star Wars-themed restaurant, but not as a $5k hotel. While Disney didn't respond to the criticism, it is very likely the promo was taken down in response to the backlash. Despite the promo's negative reception, however, the Galactic Starcruiser is sold out for 4 months upon its opening. It remains to be seen if those numbers will change at all after the promo video failure.
It isn't uncommon for companies to remove videos and social media posts from their account that give them bad publicity. Unfortunately for Disney, there are still numerous snippets of the promo available online from YouTube and Twitter reactions. While the video itself is gone, many of the reactions, comments, and negativity are still circulating social media. Of course, the entire hotel cannot possibly be summarized with a brief sneak peak video, and it remains to be seen if the video was an accurate depiction of the Galactic Starcruiser venue. While the hotel has certainly caused some controversy, it won't be known until 2022 what kind of guest experience it truly provides. The backlash Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser has received means it will truly have to dazzle its guests upon its opening if it wants to rise above the negativity.
Source: Inside The Magic