my way to fix the star wars hotel would be directly inspired by my decade of experience doing edutainment in-universe-fiction summer camps for kids; a thing that also has big overlaps with immersive theatre and LARP! one thing I know from experience is that being in-character for an entire week, without breaking kayfabe, produces a kind of magic in the performers, but let us leave that aside for the moment: the way to solve the riddle of whether the guests are witnesses or agents is to have something for them to learn.
If you have something to teach, and you have an environment that can just-barely-support the faΓ§ade of the fiction, you are supplying a familiar role to play that helps the guest transition from "I am a person from outside the fiction, suddenly inside the fiction in a way that is unstable" to "I am a person, playing the familiar role of "student"; "student" is always a role I have played inside somewhat alienating circumstances, alongside others who are alienated more and less than me". people who are unfamiliar with LARPing still have played many roles in their different lives, this being one of them. you use the interstitial space of student-ness to also reinforce what is true about this small fictional space, and then the joy of learning and the joy of the fictional space tie together to overwrite any discomfort around being in the role of student or in the fiction.
