Inside Disney World’s Star Wars hotel lightsaber training experience

Polygon was invited to visit Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, Disney World Resorts’ new high-concept hotel experience in Florida, during a press preview event last week. The facility’s 2019 highlight was the lightsaber training program. This promised to recreate the scenes in which Luke Skywalker first used a laser sword in 1977. The technology was quite simple, so I tried it out during my visit. But, like much of the fun to be had aboard the Halcyon, it’s more about the vibe than anything else.

YouTube has just uploaded a three-month old demonstration of the lightsaber training experience. You can see the process clearly in this video. The participants stick their special lightsabers into the beam of light. If they are timing it right, the lights will flash and vibrate. Shields play an important role in this experience. They add tactile involvement and help to prevent fingers and hands getting smashed on the backswing.

Honestly, it really doesn’t look anything all that much like it does in the movies. It doesn’t even look much like the early concept art. It is quite self-explanatory, I think.

Photo: Matt Stroshane/Disney Parks

Laser swords aren’t real, and even if they were, there’s not an insurer in the world that would let guests wield a weapon that could cut through metal. Laser weapons are not legal. Are real, their beams don’t form coherent bolts of light that zip through the air like tracer rounds. The laws of Physics take the joy out of lightsaber training. It feels a lot like playing reverse Laser Tag. But according to Disney’s creative director, Sara Thacher, this was still a major step forward for the tech.

“This is the maximum, epic challenge,” Thacher told Polygon. “When we started the project, [we noted]There are so many incredible VR lightsaber experiences. Those are great, but they are very hard to share with the people that you care about — to be there together, to be experiencing the same thing together.”

Thacher described it as a compromise. Safety is the main focus of this training experience. Participants are not allowed to fight one another and everyone faces forward. The technology works; I can personally attest to that, and she said that’s in no small part thanks to the legendary Disney Imagineer Lanny Smoot who protoyped the concept nearly a decade ago — before the Galactic Starcruiser was even on the drawing board. But it’s more of a team-building experience than a whizz-bang special effects extravaganza.

Your lightsaber guide is a Saja. This actor plays the role of one of the Guardians of the Whills descendents. Star Wars Story: Rogue One. The Force-sensitive refugees have made their home aboard the Halcyon. Their message during the lightsaber training experience is simple, but impactful: It’s our duty to protect each other, and we are stronger together than we are alone. The Saja give the experience its heart — and they help to tie it into the larger storyline of the two-day immersive experience as a whole.

“The actors are so essential,” Thacher said. “From early, early playtests forward they have all been with an actor. We’ve been continually working on that, because what you notice and how you feel doing it is as much about what the what the technology of the room is telling you, and the game part of the room is telling you, [and] it’s about what that person is telling you and how they guide your focus changes your experience. It is crucial that you have a script and they communicate with you. We found we could not play test them separately.”

The lightsaber training can be seen as only one piece of the overall picture. As real as any passenger on board the ship, you feel like the Saja who guides you through that room. They’re someone that you can talk to and role-play with all throughout your stay. While these actors are away from the stage, the Play Disney Parks application takes over. This allows guests to access the Data Pad and reinforce what they have learned. You can unlock exclusive narrative experiences through the app, such as additional training in Force or a personal visit to Jedi master Yoda.

Still, for Star Wars fans burnt out on an uneven prequel trilogy or jaded by the prospect that they might never be able to afford the hotel’s roughly $5,000 price tag, this can feel like another disappointment.