Looking Back at When Star Trek Made Its Own Galaxy's Edge
This month, Disney is celebrating the Season of the Force at its theme parks—new additions to Star Tours, character tweaks at Galaxy’s Edge, and more merch and snacks than you can wave a lightsaber at. It’s the apex of what the company has done with Star Wars at the parks so far... but a long time ago, in a galaxy closer to home, the other Star franchise of our hearts did its own bang up job.
We wrote about Star Trek: The Experience before, right when Galaxy’s Edge was preparing to open for the first time. But now that Batuu is firmly wedged into the world of Disney parks, and Star Trek itself has risen to new highs in its streaming renaissance, we wanted to take another walk down the promenade, and reminisce about the ultimate Star Trek immersive experience.
Enterprise, Las Vegas
Plans for an extensive Star Trek attraction in Las Vegas were already underway in the early 1990s, when former Disney Imagineer Gary Goddard drew the interest of a consortium of downtown Las Vegas businesses with a wild pitch: build the USS Enterprise into a life-size, replica-meets-attraction-meets-restaurant that would’ve landed one of the most iconic sci-fi starships smack bang on Earth itself.
While the local businesses and government were energized by the idea, one person at Paramount was less so—arguably the most important of all, Paramount president Stanley Jaffe. Jaffe killed the pitch almost immediately, fearing that if the Enterprise venue failed, due to its sheer scope it would still remain standing after it closed its doors: a living, Constitution-class-shaped reminder of his failure.
The Experience Begins
But Goddard’s dream wasn’t quite dead. A few years later, he was approached by the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel—which had already gotten Paramount on board for a Star Trek project designed to bring people to the hotel’s off-strip location and into its own casinos. There was also already a basic idea in place: visitors would come, be beamed away on a Star Trek mission, and put back on Earth after the adventure.
Although much less grand in scope than a ginormous Enterprise, Goddard got to work on something still wildly ambitious. What would become Star Trek: The Experience when it opened in 1998 was more than just that kernel of an idea about beaming away on a mission: visitors would walk through a museum display charting the path from NASA to Starfleet, be beamed to the Enterprise-D for a time-twisting adventure and simulator ride, and then be plonked back in Vegas’ very own replica of Deep Space Nine, teeming with shops, food, and of course, Star Trek aliens and officers milling around in character.
Klingon Encounter
That adventure was “Klingon Encounter”—instead of being immediately put onto a simulator ride, guests would be “beamed” up through an incredible light and motion trick, with moving wall panels and gushes of air, and brought onto a full replica of the bridge of The Next Generation’s Enterprise-D. Not unlike how, say, Galaxy’s Edge’s second main ride, Rise of the Resistance, tricks people into thinking they’ve gotten onto a transport ship and physically moved to the confines of a Star Destroyer from their earthly travels, it would be in this setting that pre-recorded messages from Jonathan Frakes’ Will Riker would tell visitors that one of their number was in fact a direct descendant of Jean-Luc Picard—and that the Klingons were trying to manipulate time and erase the Enterprise captain from existence by eliminating his family line.
From there, visitors would move through the Enterprise’s hallways, into a turbolift attacked by Klingon saboteurs, and only then actually onto the ride itself—a simulator “shuttlecraft” with Geordi LaForge, taking them back to their home time and actually back over and into Las Vegas itself, selling the feeling of actually having travelled through time and space. After a farewell message from Picard “Klingon Encounter” dumped you back on Earth... of a sorts.
Welcome to Deep Space Nine
What actually awaited people as a hop and skip over to the next Star Trek show: Deep Space Nine. A replica of a section of the space station’s promenade—both floors of the circular ring were made, although the second remained inaccessible for the best part of a decade, until it was opened up to visitor access to a captain’s lounge-style venue area—became home to a series of themed Star Trek gift shops, and even a restaurant.
A Trip Down the Promenade...
The promenade’s offerings weren’t a 1:1 recreation of the show, of course—there were no jumja stick vendors, or the Replimat to grab a raktajino at. Instead, there were six different stores, a tribute to the might of Ferengi commerce:
Moogie’s Trading Post, named for Quark and Rom’s mother, which sold merchandise exclusive to The Experience as well as starship replicas and other Star Trek merchandise,
The Admiral Collection, a high-end props and replica store selling licensed costumes and masks, as well as art,
The Molecular Imaging Scanner, a photobooth that let visitors put themselves into Star Trek scenes and locales,
Latinum Jewelers, selling, of course, jewelry,
Zek’s Grand Emporium, named for the Ferengi Grand Nagus, which sold general Star Trek merchandise,
Garak’s Clothiers, named for the plain, simple Cardassian tailor, which sold Star Trek-themed clothing...
... And Dinner at Quarks
After all that shopping and being nearly murdered by Klingons, people were probably hungry—so it’s a good job the Promenade included its most famous DS9 establishment, Quark’s. Although you couldn’t have a round or six of Tongo and Dabo in there, Quark’s sold Star Trek-themed food and drinks. Although mostly Trek-themed via pun names rather than attempts to replicate iconic snacks from the series—the Holy Onion Rings of Betazed, anyone?—there were a few actually inspired by the shows, like the Warp Core Breach cocktail, and of course, Saurian Brandy.
The Borg Invasion
In 2004, the experience expanded to finally incorporate the third of the ‘90s Trek shows with “Borg Invasion 4D.” Although not as immersively themed as “Klingon Encounter,” the ride still featured elements of live-action actors as well as recorded clips from Voyager stars Kate Mulgrew, Alice Krige, and Robert Picardo as Captain Janeway, the Borg Queen, and Voyager’s holographic Doctor, respectively—as visitors were taken to Copernicus Station to undergo tests for a supposed immunity to Borg nanotechnology, only to find themselves assaulted by a Borg Cube and whisked away (via 3D simulator rides, of course) to safety.
End of the Road
But by the time “Borg Invasion 4D” arrived, The Experience was on its way out. Reduced budget cut down the amount of actors used in both the rides and milling about the Promenade, and with Star Trek interest waning on screen as Enterprise came to an end, it was announced that by the end of 2008, The Experience would close its doors for good—ironically, a year before Star Trek returned to the big screen in the J.J. Abrams “Kelvin Timeline” reboots.
Just as it lived, the venue died in Star Trek themed fashion: it wasn’t just closed, but given a Starfleet decommissioning ceremony, where it was announced that props and replicas used in The Experience would be relocated to a new home at the downtown strip mall Neonopolis. But plans fell through, and most of what was once shown at Star Trek: The Experience went into the hands of private collectors, auctioned off in the years since. And while the attraction itself is gone, it does leave a peculiar legacy: elements of the sign advertising the experience, including the Starfleet delta badge, are still standing on the side of the Hilton.
The Final Frontier?
But now, Star Trek finds itself in a very different place to where it was when The Experience shuttered in 2008. Although the year after Trek returned to the big screen, it’d take almost another decade for the franchise to take the voyage home to TV with Star Trek: Discovery, anchoring the launch of Paramount’s nascent streaming service (known then as CBS All Access). Now, there’s more Star Trek than there ever was in its ‘90s heyday, and yet more on the horizon.
After Galaxy’s Edge has proven this kind of immersive experience can still thrive (and, in the case of Galactic Starcruiser, how not to do it), could Star Trek sustain the idea again? It’s hard to say what form such a thing could take. Would it embrace the nostalgia of the beloved ‘90s shows and essentially re-do what The Experience did? Would it theme itself around the modern offerings? There’s no solid plans for such a thing yet either way... but it’s nice to dream that Star Trek could match Star Wars with such a thing, a quarter century after it beat it to the punch in the first place.
