Genesis 2:9
And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
Reflection
In March of 2022 Walt Disney World in Orlando opened a Star Wars themed hotel called the Galactic Starcruiser. The idea was unique and had never been done before. You check in (at a rather high cost of around $5,000 for a couple, for two days) to an all-immersive experience. Once you arrive at the “hotel” you are taken in an elevator. But the elevator is where the experience begins. It appears as though you are in a ship going to space… and when the doors open you are in a ship (the Starcruiser) in space… on a “yacht” in the Star Wars universe. Every window looks out into space, the food is exotic even as you meet aliens at the lounge bar. The ship (during your interactive stay on the ship) is taken over by bad guys and you are assigned ways that you can help the good guys. Think of it as an interactive dinner theater for two days on a high end, luxury, Star-Wars-Universe spaceship. The Washington Post speculates that it cost Disney 1 billion dollars (Disney never shared their costs). It closed 18 months later in September of 2023.
I never wanted to go. Frankly I have not liked how Disney has handled the acquisition of Star Wars once George Lukas sold it in 2014. As it turns out, one of the biggest criticisms of the experience was that you could not go outside and get a breath of fresh air or see the grass. You had to stay in the facility, or it would ruin the allusion (of course in cases of emergency you could leave). In order to deal with this, Disney had created a place where you could walk outside and look up to see the Orlando birds fly above… but in the experience of the universe you were in, the explanation for that space was that you were entering a hologram. As it turns out people wanted to feel the openness of being outside in God’s creation. The experiment of this hotel was a complete and utter failure. Major egg in Disney’s corporate face. We may consider that going to Mars for extended stays may not be all that it is cracked up to be. God created for us a beautiful planet… the only one he meant for us to live on (for good reason).
Prayer
Lord, we marvel at the grass, and the sky… and all of the beauty of your creation. You spoke the world into existence and You called it “good.” It is good and we are grateful.
