Disney formally announced on Saturday at the D23 Expo that it will open an immersive hotel in Orlando, as part of Walt Disney World’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge (due 2019), and it has all the makings of a superfan’s wildest dreams. The hotel will feature employees in-costume and in-character at all times, be elaborately designed from lobby to elevator to room as a starship, and include only fake windows with expansive views of outer space. (Apparently, there’s no such thing as a bad room view: Walt Disney Parks and Resorts chair Bob Chapek confirmed that “every single window has a view into space,†whatever that means.) Most intriguing — perhaps unnervingly? — each guest who stays in the hotel will immediately enter into their own “story line†and undertake “secret missions.â€
Disney officially describes this feature as an interactive experience that will “touch every single minute of your day.†That sounds, well, a little intense. It also sounds a lot like HBO’s Westworld — except, instead of gunslingers and saloon barkeeps, Disney is advertising lightsaber duels and droid butlers. How family-friendly! Let’s look on the bright side here: As long as none of the employees are secretly programmed to go on homicidal revenge missions; as long as there’s no time-jumping funny business; and as long as the programmers themselves aren’t really also part of the interactive experience, thereby making it impossible to distinguish reality and fantasy, we should be fine.
