“We’re all ‘Star Wars’ nuts,” Barry Ray says as his spouse, Melissa, and daughter Evie play close by.
Evie is aware of all of the “Star Wars” characters from a number of readings of the Little Golden Books sequence. She’s sporting a Princess Leia costume so, in line with the canon, her mother and father are dressed as Darth Vader and Padmé Amidala.
They’ve traveled from Granbury, Texas, to rejoice Evie’s sixth birthday in the midst of a 100-acre dry lake mattress that’s the following smartest thing to Tatooine. The earlier night time, they’d watched the 1977 unique, “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” inside a two-bedroom cave.
“We’ve had a good time,” Barry says, “and it’s an expertise she received’t ever neglect.”
“It” is OutpostX, a swath of uncooked desert flush with science-fiction iconography that founder Travis Chambers refers to as “a film-set resort with a narrative.”
The entire thing feels prefer it’s a part of a special galaxy, despite the fact that it’s not all that far, distant.
A ‘postapocalyptic sanctuary’
Throughout a 2013 go to to a pirate-themed Airbnb in Southern California, one thing clicked inside Chambers. He began touring the world, racking up 30-something nations in brief order.
“I acquired to the purpose the place I’d reasonably keep in a shack within the jungle in Belize than go to a 4 Seasons,” Chambers says. “Luxurious simply doesn’t do it for me.”
That very same yr, he based the digital advert company Chamber Media, which might land him on a Forbes 30 Beneath 30 listing. Finally, he says, the corporate was a method to an finish. In 2021, Chambers cashed out with a reported $17 million to fund his actual dream.
OutpostX is a complete lot of nothing, and that’s by design. Imagined as a “postapocalyptic sanctuary,” the retreat covers 240 acres but feels considerably bigger given the dearth of seen borders. You’ll be able to see for miles there with out recognizing something aside from mountains and scrub.
Chambers identifies luxurious, service and site because the three components on which most motels compete. “We didn’t observe any of these,” he boasts.
There’s no reward store, no restaurant, not even a merchandising machine. You could possibly full your keep at OutpostX with out interacting with one other soul.
The lodging encompass three cave dwellings, 4 Zen Domes and a handful of tents. Whether or not you buy the substances from OutpostX or convey your individual meals, you’ll be cooking for your self — both in your kitchenette or the firepit within the widespread space.
As an alternative of a employees to pamper visitors, there are scorching tubs, a chilly plunge and a sauna with a wood-burning range. A solitary hammock gives its occupant a silence most won’t ever know.
Consistent with Chambers’ tastes, OutpostX is aggressively anti-luxury, and visitors are very happy to pay for that vibe. Zen Domes begin at $320 an evening, the one-bedroom caves at $390 and the two-bedroom cave at $475. Forward of its opening in 2023, the retreat was bought out for its first yr.
“We’ve gotten feedback on the web, ‘You need us to pay to remain in a Third World nation?’ ” Chambers says. “And we’re like, ‘Yep. Precisely. A Third World nation 2,000 years from now.’ ”
A mythology of its personal
Not solely is OutpostX harking back to the Skywalkers’ house planet, visitors can discover its outer reaches from inside sand cruisers, custom-built automobiles that significantly resemble Luke’s banged-up landspeeder — minus the hovering.
Simply don’t anticipate anybody concerned within the enterprise to say the phrases “Star Wars.” (It’s a bit just like the episode of “The Simpsons” through which the household hires a singing British nanny named Shary Bobbins who insists she’s “an unique creation, like Ricky Rouse and Monald Muck.”)
As an alternative, the retreat comes with its personal backstory involving brothers Maa and Naa Hyer, who had been separated at start to keep away from being recruited into the galactic navy. What you expertise at OutpostX is the settlement because it’s being rebuilt after The Empire destroyed it with a photo voltaic flare.
That story performs out within the multi-episode podcast that’s despatched to visitors so that they’ll have one thing to take heed to in the course of the 180-mile drive from Las Vegas or the 100-mile journey from Zion Nationwide Park.
Indicators round OutpostX inform extra of the story, the best way a state park may showcase its wildlife. The caves, they inform the visitors who discover them, had been constructed with supplies hauled out of far-off granite quarries by large Armaados, whereas the Zen Domes had been constructed from the blast glass salvaged from a crashed ship.
Company usually break down into thirds, Chambers says. There’s the “sci-fi geeks and nerds” who’ll take to the origin story and lease the corresponding costumes; these searching for seclusion; and the Burning Man/hippie crowd. The communal Kaan Lounge gives Frank Herbert’s “Dune” books for the previous. For the latter, it additionally homes a guitar, drums, a sonic vitality handpan and a “Sound Bowl Expertise.”
Extra is on the best way
“Each very sensible individual informed us that it was a horrible thought,” Chambers says.
They’ve began coming round, although. OutpostX is 90 p.c booked six months prematurely. Related areas are deliberate to open in Moab and Puerto Rico this yr.
By then, potential visitors could have found out whether or not the minimalist idea is true for them.
“I’ve seen individuals present up in a Maybach or a Bentley and get out,” Chambers says, “then get of their automobile and depart.”
The OutpostX clientele, he provides, isn’t a lot a demographic as it’s a character: somebody who’s inventive and imaginative — and keen to pay a premium to train these attributes.
“I feel when everyone seems to be at OutpostX,” Chambers says, “they’re experiencing what you’ll construct with your folks when you had been 14 years previous.”
