On May 18, when Disney announced that it was shutting down its ambitious Star Wars-themed Galactic Starcruiser hotel in Orlando at the end of September, just 19 months after opening, company executives did not immediately elaborate on what went wrong, framing the closure as merely “a business decision.”
A somewhat fuller explanation came four days later. Speaking on May 22 in Boston at a J.P. Morgan investor conference, Disney parks chairman Josh D’Amaro stated the obvious: “It didn’t perform exactly like we wanted it to perform,” he said. “Despite the fact it was a never-before-seen experience and raised the bar, we thought it was time to sunset this in September.”
D’Amaro told conference-goers that Disney would accelerate depreciation on the Galactic Starcruiser by up to $150 million in each of the last two quarters of 2023. In other words, one of Disney’s grandest, most innovative experiments will end up a $300-million write-off.
Read more at Forbes.com
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