There's One Attraction That The Imagineering Story Season 2 Needs To Cover (But Probably Won't)

Most Disney Parks fans would likely agree that The Imagineering Story is one of the best shows available on Disney+, so it was no surprise that when Leslie Iwerks announced a second season was coming to the streaming platform at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, people cheered. I was certainly one of them. Although the more I think about it, the more I’m assuming the episode I most want to see probably won’t be there.

The first season of The Imagineering Story debuted alongside Disney+ in 2019 and it told the entire story of WDI from its inception through the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which had happened earlier that same year. The trailer for Season 2 indicates it will pick up right where the first season left off, with the closure of the parks from the pandemic in early 2020, through the new attractions that have opened since, and including the numerous projects that are currently in development all over the world.

The trailer gave us brief glimpses of basically every attraction that has opened in the last six years and the ones that we already know are on the way. However, there was one thing we didn’t see in that trailer that opened, and closed, in the period that Season 2 is clearly covering, the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.

The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Was A Massive Undertaking

I never got to fully experience the Galactic Starcruiser, most people didn’t, but I did get to visit it for an afternoon just before it opened to the public. I was fascinated by something that I truly saw as a step forward in what themed entertainment experiences could be. There simply had never been anything quite like it.

Perhaps not since Walt’s original Imagineers designed Disneyland had WDI taken on a project with so little idea how to do what they were doing. A story in a Disney attraction lasts only a few minutes normally, but the Galactic Starcruiser made you part of a story for multiple days, even while you slept. Every meal, every step, everywhere you looked, was part of that experience.

I wanted to do the full Galactic Starcruiser experience, not because of any particular Star Wars fandom, but simply because, as a fan of themed entertainment, I wanted to do something I’d never done before, that had never been done before. It’s the same reason I would love to see The Imagineering Story cover it, details of its design and planning would have to be fascinating.

Where did this crazy idea come from? How did it ultimately take the form it did? Just what were they all thinking?

Galactic Starcruiser’s Failure Probably Isn’t A Story Imagineering Wants To Revisit

Of course, there’s a pretty good reason we probably won’t hear much about Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser during The Imagineering Story Season 2. By any metric, it was a failure. The location was only open for a year and a half before unceremoniously closing. 

The place where it stood is now an office building where Imagineering is working on the future of Walt Disney World. Few are still talking about the Starcruiser. It’s clear most have moved on.

The first season of The Imagineering Story did deal with Disney’s struggles. It openly talked about the early problems with parks like EuroDisneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. However, those places ultimately succeeded. New investment transformed them into the successful parks that we have today. There’s a happy ending, a Disney ending.

There’s no such positive spin to be put on Galactic Starcruiser. It was attempted, and it didn’t work. Then it closed. there was no pivot or reinvestment to try and make it successful. The day may come when the lessons learned by the Starcruiser result in a future success, but that day hasn’t yet come.

Starcruiser’s Failure Is Exactly Why The Imagineering Story Needs To Cover it

While it’s easy to understand why The Imagineering Story wouldn’t want to rehash the debacle of the Galactic Starcruiser, that’s exactly why I wish they would. WDI took a big swing in creating this experience. It was a huge, and quite expensive, risk. Most of the time Disney’s gambles have paid off. This one did not.

I would love to know more about exactly what happened. From the very beginning many people, myself included, wondered if there really was enough of an audience that could afford such an experience that would sustain it long term. It appears the answer was no, but was that really the whole story?

Certainly that question was one Disney itself had to address before work ever started. It still opened the Starcruiser, so Disney must have believed it would work. Perhaps there was more to the attraction’s struggles than it appeared. Whatever the reasons, I would love a deep dive into why this didn’t work.

The trailer for The Imagineering Story Season 2 promises “no filter” and to me, that means being honest about the realities of both success and failure. A famous Star Wars character once said “The greatest teacher, failure is.” and that means there’s something for all of us to learn from the Galactic Starcruiser. We've all experienced failure now and then and had to find a way forward. Let Leslie Iwerks' series tell that Imagineering Story.

Just because the Starcruiser wasn’t featured in a trailer doesn’t mean it won’t be addressed. Maybe it will be there after all. I understand why Disney would want to simply move on, but I hope that doesn’t happen. There’s a story here, potentially one as compelling as any of Imagineering’s great successes. It’s a story that should be told.