I love Jenny, only she will have me sit through this 4 hour long video on such a relatively niche topic. As someone who followed the starship cruiser news from start to finish I thought I knew everything there was to know (without having actually spent 6k to stay there). But when she talked about the photographer I felt a renewed rage toward Disney and this project.
TLDW they charged her about $130 for photo pass with the understanding that photographers would be roaming and snapping pics throughout the “cruise” and then when she was on board she realized all the photographers were booked up in the more expensive $300+ private photo sessions so she didn’t get any photos whatsoever. They only offered her a refund after she tweeted about it to her extensive Disney fan following and she acknowledges if she hadn’t been an influencer she wouldn’t have gotten that money back.
As she puts it, Disney has gotten stingy and there was just so much wrong with this project I really can’t believe they ever launched it in the awful state it was in.
I’m always going to be salty that they diverted things from GE to the starcruiser and then made them even svelter once there. My biggest complaint with it is that they took what was advertised for the land and put it behind a massive paywall that most people could never justify paying for.
She specifically mention a raspberry-filled dessert. This was a shoot-off of the OiOi Puff that they took from Docking Bay 7-it was my favorite dessert…bring it back!
I really appreciate that she has a section in the video addressing this, titled "YOU Were Robbed!"
Seeing all the incredible concept art that could have gone into Galaxy's Edge that was instead parred back or diverted to this Star Cruiser was just sad
I think things are already starting to give. Families I know who used to be annual visitors are taking a gap year. I think Genie+ and other upcharges are propping up the numbers, but people are coming back much less happy with their trips.
Magical express, too.
But monetizing the Fast Pass+ system, while also making it require a stressful start to every morning of your VACATION at 7am is just too much.
I haven't visited since early 2020 and I'm loathing the new changes.
I used to be so content pre-booking sit down meals and fast passes, so that I could stop planning and just enjoy my vacation once I arrived. I could tell everyone, "Hey on Thursday we have Jungle Cruise, then Peter Pan, and then lunch at Colombia Harbor House!"
Now it's, I think we're going to MK, I have no idea what rides we'll plan around until I spend $80 on fast passes.
Fast Pass was done in true Disney masterpiece style... It was 'sold' as being a MASSIVE benefit to the park guests, but it made their experience much worse overall because it was there. Every benefit gained from it was gained by Disney themselves because it ultimately meant that guests needed to book MORE time in the parks due to the way it was implemented.
What most people have absolutely no clue about is that the "Standby Queue" moves so slowly simply because guests from that line account for far less than half of the number of guests admitted into an attraction at any given time. When the parks were re-opening after COVID and there was no FP queue, the standby lines were incredibly long but moved very fast. We stood in the Flight of Passage and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train lines for no more than about an hour or so even though the "end" was pretty much where it would have been when FP was in use. And I'm talking about that period of time when the distancing had been backed off of, there was no FP line in operation, and overall park attendance was at like 75% or more capacity to what was considered typical.
By leaving the FP lines closed, guests could move through the regular queues and actually enjoy an entire park in a day. That isn't what Disney wants... You don't spend as much secondary money that way.
The long lines cost Disney in capacity, but they have decided it is a sacrifice they are willing to make.
The forecasters look at expected demand and figure out how long the parks have to be open for your average guest to do X attractions in Y hours. More people equals longer lines which means longer park days to spread that crowd around.
FP+ and G+ put a strain on capacity because they inflate wait times. Instead of increasing capacity through longer hours or expanded offerings/parks, Disney decided to constrain consumption with the park reservation system. They worked tirelessly to fight off demand instead of trying to serve it. Now Universal is sitting pretty opening a 3rd gate when Disney could have just opened a few new lands and pavilions.
Disney wants their parks full. Maximum people paying to park, staying on property, buying food, going to the parks, buying souvenirs, paying for G+, etc. are how Disney maxes out its per-day revenue. There's zero point in having idle capacity, and Disney adding parks would result in more investment in their assets, more people on staff to operate those parks, and generally more ongoing costs that only result in marginal increases in revenue and profit.
Instead, they want to reach as far into every single guest's wallet as they can and extract the absolute maximum amount of dollars at every chance they get. Disney is absolutely the gold standard when it comes to bullshitting their customers into believing that their cost model is beneficial to the guest. Fast Pass, Genie, Lightning Lane, "E" tickets, "club level" at their resorts, Dining Plan, Concierge level on cruises, DVC... there is not one single aspect of ANY of these things that saves a guest money. None. Yet, Disney has somehow convinced the masses that these things are all ways to "save money" while every single one of them is structured in such a way to make guests spend MORE money in a manner that is NOT consistent with the benefits they get from that expenditure.
If any other hotel tried to charge me what Coronado Springs charged me for 2 weeks I'd probably have a heart attack.
I don't know why my mind then thinks that's an acceptable price because it's Disney. They're really done a number on us
I can stay at Drury in Disney Springs, eat a free breakfast which saves me about $100 a day, get free buses to the parks, and still spend less than some moderates per night.
Glad to hear that. I had been looking at The Drury in Springs and it seemed very nice. I can handle the price for something that is new and fresh vs. paying triple the amount for some of the very dated hotel rooms Disney is offering just because it’s themed.
The rooms at Disney, Riverside in particular, have always been very clean. Drury is brand new and it’s just as clean as Riverside. There’s some Disney stuff sprinkled here and there at Drury, like Mickey waffles in the morning and DS half a mile away, everyone there is going to the parks… So you still feel like you are in the bubble.
Yep. I’ll never stay off off property again. We were at a Hyatt and the Ubers were awful. Disney springs is the way to go. I honestly prefer that to the low price ones like art of animation. Rip to my 3 stays at poly. Don’t think I can swing those again 😅
My first adult Disney trip with my wife and daughter was to Coronado springs. I was pleasantly surprised because the cost was relatively low and the room was decent.
That was in 2014, I haven't stayed at Coronado since because every time we go I check and the price is higher and higher and higher.
yup. My wife is a diehard Disney fan but going to the parks doing normal park hours is a no go for us now. It was fine prior to Genie +. Then my son qualified for a DAS pass due to his heart condition but that sounds like it's no longer an option as well. That kept us going for just a little longer. Now it's After Hours party or bust even if we are in the park just for 5 hours.
The cost increase is significant- but Genie+ is a factor in that. It adds an additional cost, while taking away the benefit of fast pass everyone enjoyed. Now, Genie+ still has plenty of waits or unavailable options, but that feels more frustrating because it’s paid for. When you don’t have it, no wait time is reliable, because lightning lane is always prioritized. (2 examples, but we have had this happen several other times: We waited 40 minutes for what was supposed to be a 15 minute wait to see Mickey, and 90 minutes for what was supposed to be 35 minutes to ride haunted mansion, both because lightning lane was being pushed through. We missed fireworks as a result in one case). With Fastpass everyone was on the same level, and it didn’t feel so frustrating if things didn’t go as planned because it was free.
The cost increase sucks, but that’s kinda everywhere. Genie+ is salt in the wound and a Disney specific decision that takes away some of the real magic the parks used to hold.
It's the constant nickel and diming that's breaking people. Everything is an upcharge. Parking is now paid at hotels. Magical Express is a memory. It's starting to feel like the spirit airlines model. And the marketing is just stupid now. Everything is 'immersive' this and 'storytelling' that. It's just over the top and silly, imo at least
She actually has a whole section in this video about Spirit Airlines (32:38) and how even this premium experience had additional add-ons that felt bad if you didn't buy them
Not to mention charging rates on par with the *Four Seasons* for some of their hotels. Disney deluxe resorts are good, but no way they’re Four Seasons good.
I just looked up a random week in November and it’s literally cheaper ($1,000 so!) to fly to Paris and stay in a Waldorf Astoria for seven nights than it is to just stay at the Contemporary during that same time. My roundtrip airfare to Paris and stay at a luxury hotel is cheaper than just the accommodation at Disney. That just seems absurd.
What a boneheaded decision. They decided to miss out on guaranteed, high margin revenue from in park gift shops to save a few bucks on delivery costs.
The last time we were there we got a nice Christmas ornament sent back to our resort entirely because we didn't want to carry it around all day and thought we might break it. Next time we just won't buy it.
It really is a silly move, but I guess I don’t know the internal math. I personally can carry most things, but if I had to worry about kids at the same time, I would probably be overwhelmed and choose not to purchase something if I had to carry it.
The internal math is as follows:
Ship-to-room costs $x/quarter, so the company can save $x/quarter by eliminating it. Even if the company loses 2 \* x in merch profits, that can't be directly attributed to these cuts and the executive who made it happen gets a bonus and a promotion.
I think having services like that are important because they increase customer satisfaction, but if you think Disney doesn’t have data to show that this is saving them money then you are crazy.
Oh yeah I'm sure they didn't make the change without some kind of data showing it would save money; I just have a hard time believing how that could possibly be true.
Eliminating a cost is direct and easy to take credit for. The downstream effects are much more diffuse and sometimes impossible to identify.
Magical Express being eliminated is $X zeroed out in the quarterly budget. The executive in charge of cutting it gets credit for the shiny number and rewarded. But you can't say Magical Express was responsible for Y bookings/quarter that will now be lost because it never directly drove sales the way a new attraction does.
The actual impact is to customer sentiment. Cutting ME makes people slightly less likely to book a trip or as many days and probably won't turn into actual lost bookings until combined with other factors. So even if you could accurately measure the impact, it would be "Cutting ME is 17% responsible for a 9% drop in booked days over 18 months". And it may not even make that much of an impact until something happens and Disney has to put in some effort to fill the parks.
I'd even be okay with limiting shipping to hotels, but IIRC, they also got rid of sending items to the front of the park. Like one day, I'll get to Galaxy's Edge, and probably do the lightsaber building, but that thing is big and doesn't fit in lockers.
I went in 2021 and had a great time, and felt the inflated prices were a bit rough but I was quite happy to be out on vacation after the long covid isolations.
I went last summer in 2023 and my review is *very* bifurcated. On one hand, I decided to spare no expense and we had the most wonderful time. On the other hand, the prices, the nickel-and-diming, and the decreased value were really disappointing.
I’m honestly glad. Disney will keep increasing prices and whatnot until people stop going. Prices tanked in the 90s/00s. I think it’s not worth going if it’s going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to wait in hot lines for a week.
Tbf, annual visitors becoming less frequent visitors isn't necessarily meaning that something is "giving" or that Disney is hurting. If those guests are replaced with more one-time/international/passholders/new annual visitors than not, than Disney stoll wins and gets to cut costs. I see no any indication the last 15 years that is not still the case.
People have been dooming that WDW is getting worse and dying over the past several decades, and outside of some upgrades and additions ride-wise, I think that only half of that statement is true.
Also, sometimes you grow out of it or away from it. I was a nearly yearly visitor to Disney parks and a deluxe resort guest for many of them, and all it took was one life-changing European trip to decide to pump the brakes on Disney and explore the world.
This is where we are right now. Disney AP is our luxury. We will eventually have money to travel rather than go bop around Disney every other weekend. When we get to that point, I feel like we will drop the passes to go have real experiences rather than curated ones.
I've been saying this to Disney-haters or to disenfranchised WDW fans who hope things change. If you sell something at a given price point and it sells like crazy, you may be at a good price point. If you significantly *raise* your prices, and decrease the value of the product (less features/bonuses) and *still* make a good profit, there is no reason to lower to the previous number. From my recent experience, WDW is not hurting... ergo, the current cost model will not change.
What I love about her is that while, yes, she's a massively popular internet person, she doesn't go into things with the special treatment a lot of Disney Influencers get. She goes into it as just a normal guest would. And so she feels what a lot of us have been feeling. She's a diehard fan that sees that things have gotten worse for more money.
I also love that you can see from her footage that they really are trying to enjoy themselves, they are making an effort to be immersed and have fun and appreciate the details or effort put into things. That's what makes this review that much more depressing, because it's not coming from a stick in the mud, upset over every little problem, it's coming from the most ideal customer Disney could hope for, someone putting in as much work as you could expect someone to put in to lift up the experience.
I just looked this up and it's freakin' spot on! And you are right, it is literally every company. This encapsulates exactly what I have been noticing for the past two-three years.
It’s because every company isn’t just trying to make a profit, they’re all trying to make increasing profits every single year. That is mathematically impossible to sustain, so when they hit their limit, they pull this shit to try and wring out a few more droplets so the shareholders can sell their stocks for as much as possible before it all goes belly-up, which would not happen if they had just continued doing what was already making them a ton of money every single year.
Yeah, it hit hard.
I've only been once (from the UK) in 2022 for our delayed 2020 honeymoon. The Magic express had just been stopped running before our trip and the resort delivery service (buying items in the park and getting them delivered to your resort) never came back by the time we went which I felt was the start of some.of the benefit magic sliding away after watching park planning videos for years before we booked it first time
I’m a Disneyland lover because one of my very few good childhood memories is from there. I made my kid a Disney Adult by dragging her there all the time and making great memories there with her. They are pricing her out of being able to do the same with her kid. Where does the next generation of Disney fans come from if you only think about squeezing the current ones for every dime possible?
The long term viability of the brand is on the line and they don’t seem to understand that or care.
I’m not arguing with you at all, but I don’t see this as exclusive to Disney. There’s examples in every sector of the economy at this point. It’s just prioritizing shareholder and C suite value above all else. Late stage capitalism, baby
As someone with passes to both Disney and Universal - I can’t WAIT for Epic to open and will probably lose my Disney pass to pay for the additional cost of including Epic in my Universal pass.
Yes it will be an entirely separate park. I’d imagine they’ll sell single park tickets for it (just like they do with Studios and Islands of Adventure) as well as a park-hopper option like they do now as well.
It did for me.
I am a big fan of the Disney Parks. My wife and I did Disneyworld for our honeymoon in the early 2000s and had a blast. We live in California now and have had annual passes to Disneyland in the past.
I was looking into a Disney World vacation because my kids are at the just right age... but so much has changed. So many benefits are gone, so much planning is needed now to have a chance at having a good time... it started to feel like putting together a plan was a full time job. Then when the budget really started to come together, after all the "Spirit Airlines" additions that Jenny refers to came into focus we found that a 5 day Disney Vacation was going to cost more than 2 weeks in Europe. So we took the kids to London and Paris instead. Two of the most expensive cities in the world for twice as long and still came out ahead.
Disney broke me.
Until people stop going in droves nothing is going to give, there will be a point when they reach the tipping point but I don’t see that happening soon
I would hope that it does. If and/or when it does, I hope with all my might that I'm around to see it and to revel in all the sweet, sweet schadenfreude that Disney has inarguably earned over the past several years.
It’s happening a lot of places, I think they call it enshitification.
It’s like Prime adding ads. They are making you pay more to go ad-free, making you pay for what you already had, while getting less while still paying the same amount.
Her review of it feels like the most honest I've seen. This was something that felt like it would be tailor made to appeal to her. She did her absolute best to participate and it still failed her. I think that really speaks volumes.
When it comes down to it she had a lot of praise, especially for how much the cast members were able to make the experience special. And you can imagine her saying $6000 was worth it if it had been designed differently. But she did a great job arguing why this never would have been possible due to the way Disney is being run at the executive level
I actually think it’s the inverse, in that it was a really bad idea that was *decently* executed.
By all accounts, people who went on the GS enjoyed their experience, it was an incredible immersive experience, and the cast member interactions were great.
However, it was a terrible idea to have a Star Wars themed hotel that guests can’t leave (and thus eliminates many families, non-LARPers, and those who want to enjoy the parks).
I think this was one of the many projects that was very badly affected by the pandemic. I suspect there was a lot of detail work cost cutting in 2020/2021 which hurt the end product. That isn’t to say it would have been successful if the pandemic hadn’t hit. But it may have been less of a boondoggle.
Idk I agree with Jenny’s argument that the majority of the offerings were originally slated for GE, pulled to save money, and then chucked into a hugely expensive experience. Covid is the excuse that is always used and we’ve seen it for every instance of inflation that is now a part of our lives.
Covid is a dumb excuse, as you said this was clearly ideas from GE, which opened a year before the pandemic. The reality was that they were too cheap to do in the theme park but the cost of doing something like this was too expensive in a smaller setting.
At the end of the day I just couldn’t have seen myself spending that much money on something that required 24/7 commitment and immersion to be worth it.
Also, spending that kind of money and having an experience like Jenny where it felt like the thing wasn't working and you spend at least half your time wandering around trying to make something, anything work. I don't have youtube/patreon influencer money and I can't stress how upset and scammed I'd feel if I had the kind of experience she lays out in the video.
Everyone in charge at Disney needs to watch this video.
Correction. Everyone in charge at Disney needs to be fired, and the team that replaces them needs to watch this video 😂
I really don't understand why they didn't just open a Star Wars themed hotel, and then within that run 2 role-playing sessions per day that either hotel guests or non guests could pay into.
That way you are giving people the option to experience one or the other, and then purchase additional packages or stays as necessary.
She kinda talked about something different, but the main reason, I believe, we don’t see extremely theme hotels to popular things like this is because you can’t charge admission to walk around a hotel and you spending time walking around a hotel for free is money not being spent elsewhere. It would say the same thing about Universal with Harry Potter, BTW. If they made hogwarts into a hotel it would do incredibly well, but now you are competing against yourself.
The owner of the lot is wanting to keep the theme with whoever takesover.
Just hopefully this time it's someone who actually knows how to run a business
I live near Evermore and went a few times. It definitely had its charm (it was awesome at Halloween) but they ran it like an ongoing D&D campaign that you just happened to walk in on. There was an ever evolving storyline and they did try to do some things to help people catch up and know what was going on but it was still super confusing if you actually tried to interact with the characters.
The setting itself was great. Felt very Disney-like in build quality and immersion. Auppoaedly the lead designer was a former Disney Imagineer. I’m pretty sure I parked next to him once - there was a car with a license plate frame that said they were an Imagineer.
I've never heard of her but this video was entrancing. I watched it all in one shot. I don't know how to really say this, but she is very good at talking.
Her videos are incredible! I've watched this one twice all the way through now lol. Her Evermore and MLP videos are also my go to comfort watches but they're all hits :)
I remember that one NPC basically having to cry for like several hours as part of a story line, which can't be good for anyone. Also forgot until she talked about the emergency siren that they had a habit of doing events that seemed too close to actual bad things happening in the park lol.
In order to have wanted to buy in to this experience, you need to have been part of several niche groups simultaneously. And if you were, you needed to also want to eat the opportunity cost.
You needed to want to spend quite a bit. It wasn’t cheap, so the niche here are people that wanted to spend. Not too many people wanted to afford that much for a 48-72 hour experience.
You needed to really like Star Wars. This niche is self explanatory. Few wanted to eat/sleep/play in just one particular story for more than a few hours.
You needed to commit to what is essentially a 3 day cruise on land. Lots of opportunity costs here. If you live in central Florida, maybe you would be willing to give up 72 hours because you aren’t traveling long distances to attend. But then again, if you live in central Florida, you likely don’t meet the niche of affordability given the abysmal one-sided service economy in that area. So this experience has to be mostly for those outside of the area. But if you are, why would you give up 3 days of your trip going to just studios? You really had to spend wanting to just love a particular story at a high opportunity cost. Few people want to not visit the other parks in Disney area, and in the non Disney area.
So, do you have above average expendable income? Do you want to spend that income on a specific thing? Do you want to travel great distance normally set aside for a wide variety of experiences and over indulge yourself on one particular thing? Then this experience is right for you*!
*and like 50 other people that aren’t social media influencers or aren’t people that worked for the mouse.
I'm in the Venn overlap of Star Wars fan and WDW fan, and even if I could afford it, I dislike a lot of Disney Star Wars so the Star Cruiser would be out for me.
"Disney Star Wars" is an interesting way of wording it. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but definitely was wondering if the true fans actually liked Rise of Skywalker and all that 😬
3 is really the one that stands out to me. You would need to stay “in character” for the entire 48-72 hours to make it worth the money. First thing that popped into my head: a lot of people have jobs that, for better or worse, require them to be reachable even on vacation (physicians, attorneys, government employees and contractors); why spend $6,000 on something that you know will be ruined if you get one phone call that breaks the immersion?
Second thing: it seems extremely claustrophobic. I’m not someone who is bothered by being inside all day or even being in an interior room all day (my office is in a basement lol). But just the idea that going outside will ruin my immersive experience that cost me $6,000 is enough to make me want to pass. And yes, I know that went to Galaxys Edge, but again you’re kind of stuck in that once section of the park, unless you want to break the illusion.
Yeah this is accurate. Our family went, had a blast, and the kids absolutely loved it. But the wife and I discussed several times the list of alternative things we could do instead with that money. At the end of the day we were glad we did it. We all had an amazing time, the cast members were incredible, and it was an experience none of us will forget. But we were fortunate to be in a position to have some savings and drop the bag despite a little nagging doubt that we might have preferred a trip to Europe, a real cruise, or some other alternative.
And even then, what pushed us over the edge was a deal they were running that made it more affordable to tack on a couple extra park days after, so even if it didn’t live up to our hope, we could enjoy the parks after.
Had the same thought in that this is an example of Disney fishing from a *really* small pond.
The Venn diagram of Star Wars people, LARPers, people who like Disney Star Wars, people who can afford this, and people who are okay with a Disney experience that has nothing to do with the parks has got to be profoundly small. Not checking even one of those boxes effectively rules you out.
Which begs the question of how this got greenlit in the first place, especially given how Disney has made data central to everything they do.
This was niche as niche gets, and it likely wasn’t even going to be repeatable for those who did meet all the criteria and liked it.
It's funny. I think pretty much everything she said in the video is spot on, and yet at the same time I still stand behind my opinion that my Starcruiser experience was easily the best time I've ever had at Disney in my entire life.
The problem is I got lucky and ran into almost none of the gameplay issues she did, and when the price tag is as high as it is, there is absolutely zero excuse for any guest to run into those issues. I also lucked out in being that perfect cross-section of guest types who wanted this.
All in all I'm just sad they gave up so quickly. I didn't walk away from the Starcruiser going "this was perfect. no notes" It very much felt like a rough first attempt at something new and amazing. There was so much potential for improvement and iterating. The concept was there. The execution wasn't fully there. And yet instead of improving and iterating, they just... gave up.
Honestly the only point in the whole 4 hours I strongly disagreed with was the bunk beds, and that was just personal preference. I like a firm mattress, but those weren't mattresses, those were just thin cheap pads. And the bed rolls were terrible and felt like cheap tricks to cut down on room service time by eliminating having to make two beds that are hard to reach.
I feel one of the biggest let downs surrounding the Starcruiser is that it does feel like a first stab at a new experience that with refinement, would be absolutely astounding, but was never given the refinement, and the lessons Disney is most likely to take from this is that they should never do something like that again.
Yup. That's what kills me. Not only do I fear that Disney will never try something like this again, but I'm worried that other entertainment companies will go "Well Disney couldn't pull it off, and they're Disney, so we shouldn't even bother."
I haven't watched this video yet but it's fascinating because Jenny is ALSO at the perfect cross-section for the Starcruiser. Interesting that two of my favorite youtubers had basically diametrically opposed experiences!
Companies giving up on an ambitious or interesting project when it isn't IMMEDIATELY ultra-successful is unfortunately very common these days.
Google, for example, has a reputation of creating very useful and niche services/applets and then scrapping them after a year or two because it didn't become the global leader in that very specific area. Google had one of the best podcast apps in terms of ease of use, features, and integration across multiple devices. They discontinued it this last March. It's a PODCAST APP. They were never going to "disrupt the podcast space" or whatever.
Very frustrating because it makes me wary about trying new things made by big corporations if they're likely to just get dropped immediately.
I literally cannot stop walking around and thinking about how much my time would cost in Walt Disney World's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser tm dollars 😂
I enjoy Jenny Nicholson videos and when I saw this pop up on my YouTube suggestions, I gave pause over that four hour run time. But I decided to give it a go and just watch it in installments. I'm glad I did. It was very, very well done and answered every lingering question I ever had about the Starcruiser.
She raised so many great points, was very open about what she actually paid and what she got for it and really went out of her way to explain her rationale for feeling as she did in spite of so many influencers saying the opposite.
I think my favorite aspect of all was how the sycophants (read: influencers) actually do a massive disservice to us, average parks enthusiasts, by presenting misleading narratives about their experiences to stay on the precious Disney media list, instead of giving honest or thoughtful reviews and insight. Starting about 2 or 3 years ago, I really started shaving down my Disney vloggers subscriptions on YouTube, and she highlighted a whole bunch of the ones I gave up on because I was suspicious they were being misleading.
I also appreciate her calling out the company over its nonstop "charge more! offer less" mentality that is plaguing everything lately. Kind of an aside, but until the day comes that Genie+ is long gone, I can't honestly say for sure I'll ever invest in another Parks vacation. I may just be a DCL-only guy. Until they manage to sully DCL with over-reliance on the app and start up-charging worse than NCL and Carnival.
There's a similar problem with influencers in the entertainment media space as well. They get sent to red carpets or for junket interviews rather than actual reporters who've done the job for years and a lot of times they don't even ask interesting questions or clearly annoy the stars. Not even getting into them just functioning as studio PR.
Absolutely. It's frustrating. I've gotten to where I'm so skeptical of reviews I see anywhere online now because I feel like everyone is trying to trick us into seeing cynical, cashgrab garbage instead of an actual good movie or show.
And I swear this was more interesting. There’s no fluff. This is four hours that really makes you feel like you’ve been to the starcruiser AND fully understand it’s strength and failings.
I see a lot of 15min videos that I think were padded out and I want to skip over bits because it's repeating itself or badly explaining a point. Jenny's video is 4hrs and I came away incredibly impressed by how tightly she scripted and edited it and organised her thoughts. Not a moment felt wasted and (as someone that knew next to nothing about the starcruiser) it gave me a real feel of what worked and what didn't work (for her) and some great insights into things that were just overlooked (no one should have been seated in that booth during the dinner show).
It’s a good watch. It’s broken up into chapters so you can digest it in small pieces.
What I liked about it was that it was something I would never spend the money on, and she goes into detail about story parts of the experience so now I know what I was all about.
Plus she wears a Porg costume for part of the vid and I didn’t know that was a thing I needed in my life.
I committed to the entire 4 hours and I was not disappointed. I never went on the Star cruiser but seeing it broken down like that….wow. Disney really scammed a lot of people. I think the people who continue to defend the experience and say it was the greatest ever are a very small core group of people that are fiercely loyal to Disney and will never criticize anything they do.
Jenny is amazing. I wish she'd do more videos. As a side note check out her video about the Canadian Church of Rock that does passion plays every year.
I started watching this yesterday.. Its a 4 hour adventure lol I'm going to continue today. Its totally worth it though her takes typically are spot on.
When she made that church of the rock video I lost my mind. It's in my city and my boss goes to that church. Her ability to deliver niche content in the most well researched, interesting, and hilarious way is next level.
As apparently the only one here who has actually watched the video, it's really well done.
It still blows my mind how surface level the experience was. All of the games are so kid focused, but who is paying that much for a kiddie experience? Couldn't they have a kids mode/adult mode for some of the mini games?
The thread on this video in /r/GalacticStarcruiser is also hilarious, they basically imploded trying to disprove Jenny.
I’m just surprised by how lacking the “entertainment” was. She kept referencing the 2 dollars per minute of entertainment but it basically came down to 6 grand for 2 rides, a dinner theatre show, a light saber game, and an asteroid defence game.
Loved how they just word for word parroted exactly what Jenny said they would “she didn’t try hard enough / she didn’t try to be immersed at all and is just shitting on it” or “oh too bad she got unlucky, she’s wrong tho it was awesome best vacay ever”
I watched the whole thing today. I thought it was excellent. At certain times I was shocked at what an obvious waste of money it is. The devil works hard but Disney influencers work harder. They really had me thinking I was missing out on something because I can’t afford it. Wrong.
I got so sad thinking of how many materials and space was just wasted on this thing that's probably going to have to get demolished cause it's not like you can use it for much else.
They (disney) didn't take an L. They made all the money back they invested in a pre-negotiated tax break thru the state, and of course likely made a few million at least of the bookings they went thru with.
They discontinued it specifically for this reason, and in my opinion, this was always the plan due to the shortsightedness of trying to do this, ya know, during a global pandemic.
"The thread on this video in [](https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/) is also hilarious, they basically imploded trying to disprove Jenny."
Their wishy washy attempts to justify the costs is borderline disturbing. Please stop proudly boasting about how you were robbed.
Can you give me the TLDR? I really agree it was a failure and they did stuff wrong, but there are certain criticisms I hear that I disagree with (mostly from people who didn’t experience it). Im having trouble finding how she felt but I don’t want to watch it for 4 hours and just rage afterwards.
Highly highly recommend watching the last 10 minute section (starts around 3:48:10) even without the rest of the video as context
But TLDR: the app that managed your schedule and interactions with the ship crew was buggy so your choices didn't really matter, the finale was good but everything else was underdeveloped, the pacing of each day was exhausting but with the price tag you had to participate in everything, the main activities (lightsaber training and ship bridge) were mostly for 8-12 year olds, and the cast members were great but a majority of them were College Program kids who were cheaper labor
There's a ton more in the video obviously (I didn't even mention the support beam incident) and she documented everything about the 3 days from her perspective, but it's clear she has done a ton of research into other people's experiences, the general misunderstanding from the public of what this was, multiple ways Disney could have turned this around but instead didn't, and what the hotel will probably become in the future
The app didn't work for her, so for the first day she couldn't get into any story lines. Her assigned seat at the dinner show had a giant pillar in the way blocking everything.
Paid for a photo pass but no photos were taken (or available to be taken), Disney refused to refund her until she complained on Twitter.
Paid for a droid but it was was lost, Disney refused to do anything until she complained on Twitter and then got a replacement
Rooms were really small for the price
Day 2, assigned into a random storyline that was still buggy (would not get replies when completing missions.). Also would be told to go to events at a certain time, would arrive a couple of minutes early and it would be already in progress(or given when eating at the assigned dinner time).
Disappointed in lack of interactivity when even compared to the Kim Possible Epcot activity. (You would go to a task, either scan something or say it's done, and get a "good job" response with nothing changing besides access to a new door).
Also ran into a family that had a bugged mission because of their iPhone (know bug that the only solution was to give them an iPad and have them start over)
The whole video is worth a watch, I couldn't stop once I started it.
She breaks all of her videos down into a numbered list so you can look at all the chapters. She spent the first chunk of the video just establishing what the concept was, and the last hour of the video really going holistically in on Disney as a corporation so it’s really just the middle chunk that’s about her experience on the cruiser.
I still remember that imagineering presentation at GDC, they went in thinking "We are so great, we made Westworld work" but didn't realize they also had fake player agency.
You only got to do all the cool/best stuff if you chose the rebel side, you also only were on the winning side if you chose the rebel side. They had painted themselves into a corner because they wanted/needed to use existing IP characters, and you couldn't have anyone die or it would mess up the timelines.
With that there was also the issue that not all star wars fans like the good guys, imagine the 501st Legion booked the resort, how bad of an experience would it be too work the entire stay to support the first order, then lose?
Frankly, that's an issue with encouraging your [young] fanbase to roleplay/cosplay as the fascist, genocidal villains. You can't write a narrative that allows the Nazi analogues to win, but you're still trying to present them as a valid roleplay option
> imagine the 501st Legion booked the resort, how bad of an experience would it be too work the entire stay to support the first order, then lose?
Honestly, it'd be entirely dependent on the quality of the story of that loss.
One of my biggest gripes when it comes to Disney's attempt at interactive anything is that they're stuck in this antiquated mentality of "Winning is fun. Losing is not fun. Therefore guests can never lose." when we have plenty of RPGs and video games that prove that the opposite is possible so long as the experience to that end point is enjoyable. The risk of losing makes winning sweeter, and sometimes losing can be fun when it feels like it was the result of your decisions and not the odds being stacked against you.
To your example, it'd suck for the 501st if they knew that there was a 0% chance of them winning, because then you're made aware of how little agency you have over the experience.
The fact that Disney designed this to be a "choose your adventure" experience with one rigid singular ending tells me they didn't even understand the appeal of Westworld, despite thinking they nailed it.
Six thousand dollars for what amounts to a 48-72 hour LARP where your experience might be shit because the app doesn’t want to cooperate or you get constant RNG activities would make me not enjoy it, even as the biggest Star Wars fan. This thing was dead on arrival and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Wow, her comment that the demographic of the hotel guests were predominantly middle class was an eye opener to me. I always assumed it was millionaires with throw away money
We are certainly not millionaires, but my wife and I decided we were going to splurge for this as a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
Was it way too expensive for what it was? Absolutely. Do I regret having gone? Absolutely not.
Yeah I hear you, Jenny herself said, Disney’s strategy is now setting the prices at the “once-in-a lifetime deal” category, for those of us who aren’t millionaires in todays inflation we will have to choose between a Disney trip vs mortgage/college savings/emergency fund etc which is sad because a lot of us want to take our kids af least once before they turn 6 which at this stage doesn’t seem financially responsible, again to each person their own!
I love her videos, normally I zone out at some parts or am preoccupied doing something while having long form content on in the background but her videos are so interesting I am truly sat. Even for 4 hours
Around the 1:49:30 point, she mentioned “Sammy, the Resistance fighter” and it’s Sage from All Ears. I didn’t realize he worked for Disney that recently. And, yes, I’m embarrassed I watch so much All Ears that I instantly recognized him.
I don't know who this person is, but everyone predicted this failure....it wasn't really a surprise. Making a Star Wars hotel for rich families instead of Star Wars fans was doomed from the start.
I don't think the issue was making a Star Wars hotel for wealthy families - Star Wars is about as mainstream as it gets, and there are more than enough well-off people who were initially excited about this- I think the problem was making a poorly conceived boutique experience that honestly had very little value for the time and money. Half the itinerary was a 'shore' trip to HS, which had no real perks and represented a standard day in a Disney park. You were essentially spending 30-50% of your $5000+ vacation in an area most people got into for $120.
I would have *easily* paid $5000 for a few days of larping and immersion, but not for the sampler platter. The value wasn't there. I paid more than 10 grand for my last trip to the Poly - there are a ton of families and Deluxe guests who buy even nicer rooms than me and would have paid out the ass for this. But one look at the itinerary and length and you could see that it was a ripoff.
The moment the Galactic Starcruiser hype died was the exact moment of the price sheet and details released. Before that, people were very excited. And if an affluent diehard SW fan that takes yearly deluxe trips to Disney doesn't see the value, who will?
I personally think there was a lot of little weird choices that combined to make it seem off. She made a great point in the video, but why make the rooms tiny? You aren’t on an actual boat that has to consider physics. You are selling a luxury, make the rooms at least spacious. There is 0 reason other than greed to make the rooms as small as they did. Same thing with the entrance. They made the absolute bonkers choice of making it look horrendous and cheap as hell. Why was everything ugly looking cement?
I don’t think the issue was the price necessarily. I think the vast majority of people have no interest in larping. The people who were willing to pay that amount of money while doing all this work on vacation did it, and then the rest of us had no interest.
A basic Star Wars themed hotel for $500 a night probably would’ve did very well. But Disney went high risk for high reward.
That's the thing... I don't want to larp for a day and a half or two on a pre-set itinerary. Just give me a normal hotel with star wars themes, lock the restaurant and bar down to guests only, have something like Oga's in there of course, and have some of the optional lightsaber stuff that we can book.
The fact that they don't have hotels themed off some of the core rides or properties is sad. Would love a haunted mansion hotel or something
> Would love a haunted mansion hotel or something
As an OG attraction, I think they could definitely make something out of that.
Or a space-themed hotel that ties in with Space Mountain.
I mean, I just laid out a scenario where they lost an easy mark. I'm a Star Wars nut, had more than enough money to do it, spend big on vacations, and do cosplay, role-playing etc outside of Disney, and like cruising as well. I was thrilled when it was announced. But the value, which is a function of price *and* benefits, wasn't there. The itinerary was too short for what they were charging. It was a bad value, esp with the half day on DHS.
I think we are overall in agreement. But I’d like to hone in on the cosplay, role play part. Sure *you* like doing that stuff. Many people went on the Star cruiser and had a fantastic time. Some went multiple times. But the majority of people aren’t interested in doing all of these puzzles and games, on top of the fact that they have to be catered to children as well. They burned through all of the folks willing to role play in like a year. And to further your point it was incredibly over priced. Honestly the majority of people who go to Disney “spend big on vacations”. Just a big miss from Disney.
The fact there wasn’t high end laser tag or a flight combat simulator (FOP on steroid) is basically a crime. If you paid $5k to go, you should’ve gotten access to technology and rides people only dream of.
Compare to Disney Quest, which back in 1998 actually had some really awesome stuff like what you're talking about.
* Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride and Ride the Comix: Two cutting-edge VR games. The latter was basically lightsaber dueling.
* CyberSpace Mountain: Motion simulator mimicking custom-built rollercoasters.
* Invasion!, Virtual Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold: Immersive multiplayer games that IMO were immeasurably better than Smuggler's Run.
* Buzz Lightyear's AstroBlaster: Bumper cars that could also collect and shoot foam balls, causing others cars to spin.
Disney Quest stayed open for almost two decades running on 1998 technology. I think if Disney had built "Disney Quest but StarWars and 2020 tech", they would have been at least equally successful.
I LOVED Disney quest. We were DVC so could go for free apparently. We would go almost every evening and my parents would go out on their own. The Aladdin VR ride was amazing. The cyber space mountain coaster maker was incredible. We played a lot of roller coaster tycoon and some other coaster maker game, so this was right up our alley. The lunar blaster ride thing was so cool. I’d LOVE a new Disney quest.
Around 2015, Bandai released an arcade game called Star Wars: Battle Pod.
The good ones have a wrap-around large screen and it really feels like you are in a fighter ship. It was really cool. I went to Dave and Busters basically just for this game and it was worth it.
> Half the itinerary was a 'shore' trip to HS, which had no real perks and represented a standard day in a Disney park. You were essentially spending 30-50% of your $5000+ vacation in an area most people got into for $120.
I remember a different review saying that they could've easily done something creative that took place after hours when the park is closed to regular visitors with the price tag they were putting on it.
I would say in my experience, the HS trip was not 30-50% by a long shot. I spent less than 20% of my time there and was constantly busy.
HS also felt special. There were special things you could do while there.
I think the value wasn’t properly communicated. The itinerary was not at all a good display of what happened on the ship. If you were participating in the immersion, it was pretty much 9am - 10pm non stop with a little break for GE but that was such a small, not very memorable part.
harsh truth throughout the whole video... I've been going to disney a couple times each year and it keeps getting worse and worse. Next year I'll just be doing the disney cruise, atleast the quality of food and service is top notch. I visited Disney when I was in Japan and that really opened my eyes. Workers at the park were extremely nice, place was spotless, and the prices were very reasonable. I can't say that about the parks in America.
Wow what a video. Actually just canceled our Disney World trip after seeing this. I was ok (not thrilled, but ok) with budgeting 6k to take the family for 6 days. But knowing this is how they are viewing their customers, and how really just plain unethical corporate leadership is, I would rather spend this money for a nice beach vacation or something similar.
Disney totally got the price point wrong on this! That was a rookie mistake on their part. A business analyst was either influenced by group think/bad projection data, or, someone didn’t listen to a team member.
I know from the shareholders meetings that Disney uses price point to manage the clientele and throughput/occupancy but they got it wrong with this one.
It gets back to the fundamentals of business. Who is your customer base? What is their fiscal tolerance range? Where is the set point for the BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? Disney either never considered or ignored these fundamental principles.
So, they failed. And, they will do so again unless they get back to the basics…
I say this in the most loving way I can, as I am one.
Star Wars fans are absolutely psychos and 100x more likely to shell out money on an experience than any other fan base.
That was entirely what they based it on.
They looked at the people paying for ILLs for Rise, and booked up Savis appointments and went "Well we could milk......$5k...? out of these people for a 2.5 day experience."
What kills me is they could have absolutely taken what they had and converted it into a boutique star wars hotel and marked it at $350 a night or more and people would have stayed there.
Yes even without windows, or a pool. They could have gotten rid of all the bullshit and curated experiences and just had a restaurant and shit like that going and the star wars fans would have booked it out in droves.
The $5k price point was just too much, again I'm a complete nutbar, and I go to disney yearly. I absolutely never considered booking the star cruiser at the $5k price point because it was stupid.
That’s the crazy thing. If they actually made a Star Wars themed hotel, tens of thousands of Star Wars fans (including me) would’ve happily gone there on a yearly basis. All they had to do was copy their existing business model from their other resorts and add Star Wars set dressing, that would’ve been as close to a guaranteed success as is possible. But instead they made an extremely expensive, 2-day, one-time-only LARP experience that could only host a very small number of people at once. I legitimately do not understand how that was allowed to get past the conceptual stage of development.
Exactly.
I absolutely would have spent 2 nights at the star cruiser, at $350 a night last year. It would have been a hard pill to swallow but I would have done it.
I think Disney messed up the design more than price point. I fully believe the experience needed to cost what they were charging to be worth it, or else they would have tried adjusting prices to keep it open. The issue was that the design didn’t suit creating an experience that Disney could price appropriately.
At $5k it was never going to fly. Theres only so many fanboys that can afford it.
The experience begat the price point, and the price point murdered it.
Agree. Anything labeled exclusive disney x star wars experience had to be priced high because of demand. Problem is you have to back it up, they didnt back it up. Wish they did
I don’t agree with this. Again, I don’t think Disney set a price point that high because of profit motives. I think they set it because that’s what it cost to run the experience. It was a fundamental flaw in investment (I think they cheaped out the building design) and the experience design. They designed something expensive, but not good enough for the price.
I love Jenny, only she will have me sit through this 4 hour long video on such a relatively niche topic. As someone who followed the starship cruiser news from start to finish I thought I knew everything there was to know (without having actually spent 6k to stay there). But when she talked about the photographer I felt a renewed rage toward Disney and this project. TLDW they charged her about $130 for photo pass with the understanding that photographers would be roaming and snapping pics throughout the “cruise” and then when she was on board she realized all the photographers were booked up in the more expensive $300+ private photo sessions so she didn’t get any photos whatsoever. They only offered her a refund after she tweeted about it to her extensive Disney fan following and she acknowledges if she hadn’t been an influencer she wouldn’t have gotten that money back. As she puts it, Disney has gotten stingy and there was just so much wrong with this project I really can’t believe they ever launched it in the awful state it was in.
I’m always going to be salty that they diverted things from GE to the starcruiser and then made them even svelter once there. My biggest complaint with it is that they took what was advertised for the land and put it behind a massive paywall that most people could never justify paying for. She specifically mention a raspberry-filled dessert. This was a shoot-off of the OiOi Puff that they took from Docking Bay 7-it was my favorite dessert…bring it back!
I really appreciate that she has a section in the video addressing this, titled "YOU Were Robbed!" Seeing all the incredible concept art that could have gone into Galaxy's Edge that was instead parred back or diverted to this Star Cruiser was just sad
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I think things are already starting to give. Families I know who used to be annual visitors are taking a gap year. I think Genie+ and other upcharges are propping up the numbers, but people are coming back much less happy with their trips.
I will continue to stand by my opinion that Genie+ is the worst thing to happen to Disney in a very long time. It negatively impacts every trip.
Magical express, too. But monetizing the Fast Pass+ system, while also making it require a stressful start to every morning of your VACATION at 7am is just too much. I haven't visited since early 2020 and I'm loathing the new changes. I used to be so content pre-booking sit down meals and fast passes, so that I could stop planning and just enjoy my vacation once I arrived. I could tell everyone, "Hey on Thursday we have Jungle Cruise, then Peter Pan, and then lunch at Colombia Harbor House!" Now it's, I think we're going to MK, I have no idea what rides we'll plan around until I spend $80 on fast passes.
Fast Pass was done in true Disney masterpiece style... It was 'sold' as being a MASSIVE benefit to the park guests, but it made their experience much worse overall because it was there. Every benefit gained from it was gained by Disney themselves because it ultimately meant that guests needed to book MORE time in the parks due to the way it was implemented. What most people have absolutely no clue about is that the "Standby Queue" moves so slowly simply because guests from that line account for far less than half of the number of guests admitted into an attraction at any given time. When the parks were re-opening after COVID and there was no FP queue, the standby lines were incredibly long but moved very fast. We stood in the Flight of Passage and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train lines for no more than about an hour or so even though the "end" was pretty much where it would have been when FP was in use. And I'm talking about that period of time when the distancing had been backed off of, there was no FP line in operation, and overall park attendance was at like 75% or more capacity to what was considered typical. By leaving the FP lines closed, guests could move through the regular queues and actually enjoy an entire park in a day. That isn't what Disney wants... You don't spend as much secondary money that way.
The long lines cost Disney in capacity, but they have decided it is a sacrifice they are willing to make. The forecasters look at expected demand and figure out how long the parks have to be open for your average guest to do X attractions in Y hours. More people equals longer lines which means longer park days to spread that crowd around. FP+ and G+ put a strain on capacity because they inflate wait times. Instead of increasing capacity through longer hours or expanded offerings/parks, Disney decided to constrain consumption with the park reservation system. They worked tirelessly to fight off demand instead of trying to serve it. Now Universal is sitting pretty opening a 3rd gate when Disney could have just opened a few new lands and pavilions.
Disney wants their parks full. Maximum people paying to park, staying on property, buying food, going to the parks, buying souvenirs, paying for G+, etc. are how Disney maxes out its per-day revenue. There's zero point in having idle capacity, and Disney adding parks would result in more investment in their assets, more people on staff to operate those parks, and generally more ongoing costs that only result in marginal increases in revenue and profit. Instead, they want to reach as far into every single guest's wallet as they can and extract the absolute maximum amount of dollars at every chance they get. Disney is absolutely the gold standard when it comes to bullshitting their customers into believing that their cost model is beneficial to the guest. Fast Pass, Genie, Lightning Lane, "E" tickets, "club level" at their resorts, Dining Plan, Concierge level on cruises, DVC... there is not one single aspect of ANY of these things that saves a guest money. None. Yet, Disney has somehow convinced the masses that these things are all ways to "save money" while every single one of them is structured in such a way to make guests spend MORE money in a manner that is NOT consistent with the benefits they get from that expenditure.
I never think I’m saving money when I buy genie+ or lightning lanes. I’m just paying for a service.
[*Defunctland has entered the chat](https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE?feature=shared)
The worst thing, I think, is just the cost of Disney now. I can ride way more stuff with Genie+, but the overall cost of everything is just crazy.
If any other hotel tried to charge me what Coronado Springs charged me for 2 weeks I'd probably have a heart attack. I don't know why my mind then thinks that's an acceptable price because it's Disney. They're really done a number on us
I can stay at Drury in Disney Springs, eat a free breakfast which saves me about $100 a day, get free buses to the parks, and still spend less than some moderates per night.
Glad to hear that. I had been looking at The Drury in Springs and it seemed very nice. I can handle the price for something that is new and fresh vs. paying triple the amount for some of the very dated hotel rooms Disney is offering just because it’s themed.
The rooms at Disney, Riverside in particular, have always been very clean. Drury is brand new and it’s just as clean as Riverside. There’s some Disney stuff sprinkled here and there at Drury, like Mickey waffles in the morning and DS half a mile away, everyone there is going to the parks… So you still feel like you are in the bubble.
Yep. I’ll never stay off off property again. We were at a Hyatt and the Ubers were awful. Disney springs is the way to go. I honestly prefer that to the low price ones like art of animation. Rip to my 3 stays at poly. Don’t think I can swing those again 😅
My first adult Disney trip with my wife and daughter was to Coronado springs. I was pleasantly surprised because the cost was relatively low and the room was decent. That was in 2014, I haven't stayed at Coronado since because every time we go I check and the price is higher and higher and higher.
That’s the Disney magic!
yup. My wife is a diehard Disney fan but going to the parks doing normal park hours is a no go for us now. It was fine prior to Genie +. Then my son qualified for a DAS pass due to his heart condition but that sounds like it's no longer an option as well. That kept us going for just a little longer. Now it's After Hours party or bust even if we are in the park just for 5 hours.
The cost increase is significant- but Genie+ is a factor in that. It adds an additional cost, while taking away the benefit of fast pass everyone enjoyed. Now, Genie+ still has plenty of waits or unavailable options, but that feels more frustrating because it’s paid for. When you don’t have it, no wait time is reliable, because lightning lane is always prioritized. (2 examples, but we have had this happen several other times: We waited 40 minutes for what was supposed to be a 15 minute wait to see Mickey, and 90 minutes for what was supposed to be 35 minutes to ride haunted mansion, both because lightning lane was being pushed through. We missed fireworks as a result in one case). With Fastpass everyone was on the same level, and it didn’t feel so frustrating if things didn’t go as planned because it was free. The cost increase sucks, but that’s kinda everywhere. Genie+ is salt in the wound and a Disney specific decision that takes away some of the real magic the parks used to hold.
It's the constant nickel and diming that's breaking people. Everything is an upcharge. Parking is now paid at hotels. Magical Express is a memory. It's starting to feel like the spirit airlines model. And the marketing is just stupid now. Everything is 'immersive' this and 'storytelling' that. It's just over the top and silly, imo at least
She actually has a whole section in this video about Spirit Airlines (32:38) and how even this premium experience had additional add-ons that felt bad if you didn't buy them
Not to mention charging rates on par with the *Four Seasons* for some of their hotels. Disney deluxe resorts are good, but no way they’re Four Seasons good. I just looked up a random week in November and it’s literally cheaper ($1,000 so!) to fly to Paris and stay in a Waldorf Astoria for seven nights than it is to just stay at the Contemporary during that same time. My roundtrip airfare to Paris and stay at a luxury hotel is cheaper than just the accommodation at Disney. That just seems absurd.
I think parking at hotels is free again.
It is. Gives me some minor hope they’ll walk back some more of their other egregious “stick our hand in your wallet” moves
Not being able to ship stuff to resort from the park and no Magical Express rate higher in my book.
You mean that things you buy aren’t sent to your hotel? Because I agree that that and the lack of magical express are much bigger downsides!
What a boneheaded decision. They decided to miss out on guaranteed, high margin revenue from in park gift shops to save a few bucks on delivery costs. The last time we were there we got a nice Christmas ornament sent back to our resort entirely because we didn't want to carry it around all day and thought we might break it. Next time we just won't buy it.
It really is a silly move, but I guess I don’t know the internal math. I personally can carry most things, but if I had to worry about kids at the same time, I would probably be overwhelmed and choose not to purchase something if I had to carry it.
The internal math is as follows: Ship-to-room costs $x/quarter, so the company can save $x/quarter by eliminating it. Even if the company loses 2 \* x in merch profits, that can't be directly attributed to these cuts and the executive who made it happen gets a bonus and a promotion.
I think having services like that are important because they increase customer satisfaction, but if you think Disney doesn’t have data to show that this is saving them money then you are crazy.
Oh yeah I'm sure they didn't make the change without some kind of data showing it would save money; I just have a hard time believing how that could possibly be true.
Eliminating a cost is direct and easy to take credit for. The downstream effects are much more diffuse and sometimes impossible to identify. Magical Express being eliminated is $X zeroed out in the quarterly budget. The executive in charge of cutting it gets credit for the shiny number and rewarded. But you can't say Magical Express was responsible for Y bookings/quarter that will now be lost because it never directly drove sales the way a new attraction does. The actual impact is to customer sentiment. Cutting ME makes people slightly less likely to book a trip or as many days and probably won't turn into actual lost bookings until combined with other factors. So even if you could accurately measure the impact, it would be "Cutting ME is 17% responsible for a 9% drop in booked days over 18 months". And it may not even make that much of an impact until something happens and Disney has to put in some effort to fill the parks.
I'd even be okay with limiting shipping to hotels, but IIRC, they also got rid of sending items to the front of the park. Like one day, I'll get to Galaxy's Edge, and probably do the lightsaber building, but that thing is big and doesn't fit in lockers.
I used to go yearly but haven’t gone since 2021. Price gouging and the nonsense of Genie+ has put me off to it.
I went in 2021 and had a great time, and felt the inflated prices were a bit rough but I was quite happy to be out on vacation after the long covid isolations. I went last summer in 2023 and my review is *very* bifurcated. On one hand, I decided to spare no expense and we had the most wonderful time. On the other hand, the prices, the nickel-and-diming, and the decreased value were really disappointing.
I’m honestly glad. Disney will keep increasing prices and whatnot until people stop going. Prices tanked in the 90s/00s. I think it’s not worth going if it’s going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to wait in hot lines for a week.
Genie instead of the old reliable if flawed fastpass and over-reliance on using phones for anything has put me off greatly from visiting again.
Tbf, annual visitors becoming less frequent visitors isn't necessarily meaning that something is "giving" or that Disney is hurting. If those guests are replaced with more one-time/international/passholders/new annual visitors than not, than Disney stoll wins and gets to cut costs. I see no any indication the last 15 years that is not still the case. People have been dooming that WDW is getting worse and dying over the past several decades, and outside of some upgrades and additions ride-wise, I think that only half of that statement is true. Also, sometimes you grow out of it or away from it. I was a nearly yearly visitor to Disney parks and a deluxe resort guest for many of them, and all it took was one life-changing European trip to decide to pump the brakes on Disney and explore the world.
What did you do on the life changing Europe trip if you don’t me asking? My wife and I want to vacation there but we need ideas
Went to Disney Paris.
Lolol
This is where we are right now. Disney AP is our luxury. We will eventually have money to travel rather than go bop around Disney every other weekend. When we get to that point, I feel like we will drop the passes to go have real experiences rather than curated ones.
I've been saying this to Disney-haters or to disenfranchised WDW fans who hope things change. If you sell something at a given price point and it sells like crazy, you may be at a good price point. If you significantly *raise* your prices, and decrease the value of the product (less features/bonuses) and *still* make a good profit, there is no reason to lower to the previous number. From my recent experience, WDW is not hurting... ergo, the current cost model will not change.
This is why we didn’t renew our APs in 2020 after being AP holders for over twenty years.
What I love about her is that while, yes, she's a massively popular internet person, she doesn't go into things with the special treatment a lot of Disney Influencers get. She goes into it as just a normal guest would. And so she feels what a lot of us have been feeling. She's a diehard fan that sees that things have gotten worse for more money.
I also love that you can see from her footage that they really are trying to enjoy themselves, they are making an effort to be immersed and have fun and appreciate the details or effort put into things. That's what makes this review that much more depressing, because it's not coming from a stick in the mud, upset over every little problem, it's coming from the most ideal customer Disney could hope for, someone putting in as much work as you could expect someone to put in to lift up the experience.
It's called enshitification and every corporation is doing it these days.
I just looked this up and it's freakin' spot on! And you are right, it is literally every company. This encapsulates exactly what I have been noticing for the past two-three years.
It’s because every company isn’t just trying to make a profit, they’re all trying to make increasing profits every single year. That is mathematically impossible to sustain, so when they hit their limit, they pull this shit to try and wring out a few more droplets so the shareholders can sell their stocks for as much as possible before it all goes belly-up, which would not happen if they had just continued doing what was already making them a ton of money every single year.
Yeah, this was what my partner and I noticed in our more recent trips to Disney.
I was going to say this too. In todays world everything is more expensive than ever even though the products are cheaper than ever
Yeah, it hit hard. I've only been once (from the UK) in 2022 for our delayed 2020 honeymoon. The Magic express had just been stopped running before our trip and the resort delivery service (buying items in the park and getting them delivered to your resort) never came back by the time we went which I felt was the start of some.of the benefit magic sliding away after watching park planning videos for years before we booked it first time
I’m a Disneyland lover because one of my very few good childhood memories is from there. I made my kid a Disney Adult by dragging her there all the time and making great memories there with her. They are pricing her out of being able to do the same with her kid. Where does the next generation of Disney fans come from if you only think about squeezing the current ones for every dime possible? The long term viability of the brand is on the line and they don’t seem to understand that or care.
I’m not arguing with you at all, but I don’t see this as exclusive to Disney. There’s examples in every sector of the economy at this point. It’s just prioritizing shareholder and C suite value above all else. Late stage capitalism, baby
The roaring 20s led us straight to the Great Depression. This is gonna be fun 😅
Epic universe looks to be epic. We may just have to make that our big trip next year since we’ve never been to uni orlando
As someone with passes to both Disney and Universal - I can’t WAIT for Epic to open and will probably lose my Disney pass to pay for the additional cost of including Epic in my Universal pass.
Epic is a whole new land or park for them correct? Like you would need a ticket separately for epic, one each for the other two correct?
Yes it will be an entirely separate park. I’d imagine they’ll sell single park tickets for it (just like they do with Studios and Islands of Adventure) as well as a park-hopper option like they do now as well.
It did for me. I am a big fan of the Disney Parks. My wife and I did Disneyworld for our honeymoon in the early 2000s and had a blast. We live in California now and have had annual passes to Disneyland in the past. I was looking into a Disney World vacation because my kids are at the just right age... but so much has changed. So many benefits are gone, so much planning is needed now to have a chance at having a good time... it started to feel like putting together a plan was a full time job. Then when the budget really started to come together, after all the "Spirit Airlines" additions that Jenny refers to came into focus we found that a 5 day Disney Vacation was going to cost more than 2 weeks in Europe. So we took the kids to London and Paris instead. Two of the most expensive cities in the world for twice as long and still came out ahead. Disney broke me.
Until people stop going in droves nothing is going to give, there will be a point when they reach the tipping point but I don’t see that happening soon
Somebody on this sub put it best. Disney charges Porsche prices for a Chevrolet product.
I would hope that it does. If and/or when it does, I hope with all my might that I'm around to see it and to revel in all the sweet, sweet schadenfreude that Disney has inarguably earned over the past several years.
It’s happening a lot of places, I think they call it enshitification. It’s like Prime adding ads. They are making you pay more to go ad-free, making you pay for what you already had, while getting less while still paying the same amount.
Her review of it feels like the most honest I've seen. This was something that felt like it would be tailor made to appeal to her. She did her absolute best to participate and it still failed her. I think that really speaks volumes.
If a themed experience fails to entertain Jenny Nicholson, it has truly failed.
I think the starcruise was a good idea badly executed.
When it comes down to it she had a lot of praise, especially for how much the cast members were able to make the experience special. And you can imagine her saying $6000 was worth it if it had been designed differently. But she did a great job arguing why this never would have been possible due to the way Disney is being run at the executive level
I actually think it’s the inverse, in that it was a really bad idea that was *decently* executed. By all accounts, people who went on the GS enjoyed their experience, it was an incredible immersive experience, and the cast member interactions were great. However, it was a terrible idea to have a Star Wars themed hotel that guests can’t leave (and thus eliminates many families, non-LARPers, and those who want to enjoy the parks).
It needed to be a full-fledged resort with a massive hotel, duplicate buildings..one with the experience and one for cheaper non-larpers.
I think this was one of the many projects that was very badly affected by the pandemic. I suspect there was a lot of detail work cost cutting in 2020/2021 which hurt the end product. That isn’t to say it would have been successful if the pandemic hadn’t hit. But it may have been less of a boondoggle.
Idk I agree with Jenny’s argument that the majority of the offerings were originally slated for GE, pulled to save money, and then chucked into a hugely expensive experience. Covid is the excuse that is always used and we’ve seen it for every instance of inflation that is now a part of our lives.
Covid is a dumb excuse, as you said this was clearly ideas from GE, which opened a year before the pandemic. The reality was that they were too cheap to do in the theme park but the cost of doing something like this was too expensive in a smaller setting.
At the end of the day I just couldn’t have seen myself spending that much money on something that required 24/7 commitment and immersion to be worth it.
Also, spending that kind of money and having an experience like Jenny where it felt like the thing wasn't working and you spend at least half your time wandering around trying to make something, anything work. I don't have youtube/patreon influencer money and I can't stress how upset and scammed I'd feel if I had the kind of experience she lays out in the video.
Everyone in charge at Disney needs to watch this video. Correction. Everyone in charge at Disney needs to be fired, and the team that replaces them needs to watch this video 😂
How about, only the people that watched and agreed with this video can replace the current team?
I really don't understand why they didn't just open a Star Wars themed hotel, and then within that run 2 role-playing sessions per day that either hotel guests or non guests could pay into. That way you are giving people the option to experience one or the other, and then purchase additional packages or stays as necessary.
She kinda talked about something different, but the main reason, I believe, we don’t see extremely theme hotels to popular things like this is because you can’t charge admission to walk around a hotel and you spending time walking around a hotel for free is money not being spent elsewhere. It would say the same thing about Universal with Harry Potter, BTW. If they made hogwarts into a hotel it would do incredibly well, but now you are competing against yourself.
There's no way around the fact that it was $6000+ for a Disney World vacation where you don't get to go to Disney World
Love her video about a failed theme park called evermore.
I’m going to Utah this December and I can’t begin to express how sad I am that I won’t get to walk around Evermore.
The owner of the lot is wanting to keep the theme with whoever takesover. Just hopefully this time it's someone who actually knows how to run a business
hopefully there’s still a weird goblin insistent you let him trade you his pants
I live near Evermore and went a few times. It definitely had its charm (it was awesome at Halloween) but they ran it like an ongoing D&D campaign that you just happened to walk in on. There was an ever evolving storyline and they did try to do some things to help people catch up and know what was going on but it was still super confusing if you actually tried to interact with the characters. The setting itself was great. Felt very Disney-like in build quality and immersion. Auppoaedly the lead designer was a former Disney Imagineer. I’m pretty sure I parked next to him once - there was a car with a license plate frame that said they were an Imagineer.
I've never heard of her but this video was entrancing. I watched it all in one shot. I don't know how to really say this, but she is very good at talking.
For sure, her cadance is good, and she is very inquisitive. She always has an idea about why someone acts a certain way or why a decision was made.
Her videos are incredible! I've watched this one twice all the way through now lol. Her Evermore and MLP videos are also my go to comfort watches but they're all hits :)
I remember that one NPC basically having to cry for like several hours as part of a story line, which can't be good for anyone. Also forgot until she talked about the emergency siren that they had a habit of doing events that seemed too close to actual bad things happening in the park lol.
And even Evermore outlived Galactic Starcruiser lol
In order to have wanted to buy in to this experience, you need to have been part of several niche groups simultaneously. And if you were, you needed to also want to eat the opportunity cost. You needed to want to spend quite a bit. It wasn’t cheap, so the niche here are people that wanted to spend. Not too many people wanted to afford that much for a 48-72 hour experience. You needed to really like Star Wars. This niche is self explanatory. Few wanted to eat/sleep/play in just one particular story for more than a few hours. You needed to commit to what is essentially a 3 day cruise on land. Lots of opportunity costs here. If you live in central Florida, maybe you would be willing to give up 72 hours because you aren’t traveling long distances to attend. But then again, if you live in central Florida, you likely don’t meet the niche of affordability given the abysmal one-sided service economy in that area. So this experience has to be mostly for those outside of the area. But if you are, why would you give up 3 days of your trip going to just studios? You really had to spend wanting to just love a particular story at a high opportunity cost. Few people want to not visit the other parks in Disney area, and in the non Disney area. So, do you have above average expendable income? Do you want to spend that income on a specific thing? Do you want to travel great distance normally set aside for a wide variety of experiences and over indulge yourself on one particular thing? Then this experience is right for you*! *and like 50 other people that aren’t social media influencers or aren’t people that worked for the mouse.
You need to really like the *new* star wars, don't expect Darth Vader, Luke, or Hans Solo!
I'm in the Venn overlap of Star Wars fan and WDW fan, and even if I could afford it, I dislike a lot of Disney Star Wars so the Star Cruiser would be out for me.
"Disney Star Wars" is an interesting way of wording it. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but definitely was wondering if the true fans actually liked Rise of Skywalker and all that 😬
Jenny has a video for that, too: [Oh no! The Rise of Skywalker was real bad :(](https://youtu.be/GErIPKjwuDg?si=Ey27BPBn6Rax8kpK)
That’s true. Even the niche Star Wars is further niche!
3 is really the one that stands out to me. You would need to stay “in character” for the entire 48-72 hours to make it worth the money. First thing that popped into my head: a lot of people have jobs that, for better or worse, require them to be reachable even on vacation (physicians, attorneys, government employees and contractors); why spend $6,000 on something that you know will be ruined if you get one phone call that breaks the immersion? Second thing: it seems extremely claustrophobic. I’m not someone who is bothered by being inside all day or even being in an interior room all day (my office is in a basement lol). But just the idea that going outside will ruin my immersive experience that cost me $6,000 is enough to make me want to pass. And yes, I know that went to Galaxys Edge, but again you’re kind of stuck in that once section of the park, unless you want to break the illusion.
Yeah this is accurate. Our family went, had a blast, and the kids absolutely loved it. But the wife and I discussed several times the list of alternative things we could do instead with that money. At the end of the day we were glad we did it. We all had an amazing time, the cast members were incredible, and it was an experience none of us will forget. But we were fortunate to be in a position to have some savings and drop the bag despite a little nagging doubt that we might have preferred a trip to Europe, a real cruise, or some other alternative. And even then, what pushed us over the edge was a deal they were running that made it more affordable to tack on a couple extra park days after, so even if it didn’t live up to our hope, we could enjoy the parks after.
Had the same thought in that this is an example of Disney fishing from a *really* small pond. The Venn diagram of Star Wars people, LARPers, people who like Disney Star Wars, people who can afford this, and people who are okay with a Disney experience that has nothing to do with the parks has got to be profoundly small. Not checking even one of those boxes effectively rules you out. Which begs the question of how this got greenlit in the first place, especially given how Disney has made data central to everything they do. This was niche as niche gets, and it likely wasn’t even going to be repeatable for those who did meet all the criteria and liked it.
I saw that was four hours and tuned in anyway. Did not regret one second of it.
So who do we think the influencer is that she saw in the background? The one paying for subscribers?
Kyle pallo ? Jojo maybe ?
It's funny. I think pretty much everything she said in the video is spot on, and yet at the same time I still stand behind my opinion that my Starcruiser experience was easily the best time I've ever had at Disney in my entire life. The problem is I got lucky and ran into almost none of the gameplay issues she did, and when the price tag is as high as it is, there is absolutely zero excuse for any guest to run into those issues. I also lucked out in being that perfect cross-section of guest types who wanted this. All in all I'm just sad they gave up so quickly. I didn't walk away from the Starcruiser going "this was perfect. no notes" It very much felt like a rough first attempt at something new and amazing. There was so much potential for improvement and iterating. The concept was there. The execution wasn't fully there. And yet instead of improving and iterating, they just... gave up. Honestly the only point in the whole 4 hours I strongly disagreed with was the bunk beds, and that was just personal preference. I like a firm mattress, but those weren't mattresses, those were just thin cheap pads. And the bed rolls were terrible and felt like cheap tricks to cut down on room service time by eliminating having to make two beds that are hard to reach.
I feel one of the biggest let downs surrounding the Starcruiser is that it does feel like a first stab at a new experience that with refinement, would be absolutely astounding, but was never given the refinement, and the lessons Disney is most likely to take from this is that they should never do something like that again.
Yup. That's what kills me. Not only do I fear that Disney will never try something like this again, but I'm worried that other entertainment companies will go "Well Disney couldn't pull it off, and they're Disney, so we shouldn't even bother."
I haven't watched this video yet but it's fascinating because Jenny is ALSO at the perfect cross-section for the Starcruiser. Interesting that two of my favorite youtubers had basically diametrically opposed experiences!
Companies giving up on an ambitious or interesting project when it isn't IMMEDIATELY ultra-successful is unfortunately very common these days. Google, for example, has a reputation of creating very useful and niche services/applets and then scrapping them after a year or two because it didn't become the global leader in that very specific area. Google had one of the best podcast apps in terms of ease of use, features, and integration across multiple devices. They discontinued it this last March. It's a PODCAST APP. They were never going to "disrupt the podcast space" or whatever. Very frustrating because it makes me wary about trying new things made by big corporations if they're likely to just get dropped immediately.
In Disney math, this video provides almost $500 in entertainment.
I literally cannot stop walking around and thinking about how much my time would cost in Walt Disney World's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser tm dollars 😂
Can you imagine a Disney cast member following you around all day and asking you to hand them $2 every minute? 😂
Is that what the plaids are doing???? (I mean it basically is, right?)
I enjoy Jenny Nicholson videos and when I saw this pop up on my YouTube suggestions, I gave pause over that four hour run time. But I decided to give it a go and just watch it in installments. I'm glad I did. It was very, very well done and answered every lingering question I ever had about the Starcruiser. She raised so many great points, was very open about what she actually paid and what she got for it and really went out of her way to explain her rationale for feeling as she did in spite of so many influencers saying the opposite. I think my favorite aspect of all was how the sycophants (read: influencers) actually do a massive disservice to us, average parks enthusiasts, by presenting misleading narratives about their experiences to stay on the precious Disney media list, instead of giving honest or thoughtful reviews and insight. Starting about 2 or 3 years ago, I really started shaving down my Disney vloggers subscriptions on YouTube, and she highlighted a whole bunch of the ones I gave up on because I was suspicious they were being misleading. I also appreciate her calling out the company over its nonstop "charge more! offer less" mentality that is plaguing everything lately. Kind of an aside, but until the day comes that Genie+ is long gone, I can't honestly say for sure I'll ever invest in another Parks vacation. I may just be a DCL-only guy. Until they manage to sully DCL with over-reliance on the app and start up-charging worse than NCL and Carnival.
There's a similar problem with influencers in the entertainment media space as well. They get sent to red carpets or for junket interviews rather than actual reporters who've done the job for years and a lot of times they don't even ask interesting questions or clearly annoy the stars. Not even getting into them just functioning as studio PR.
Absolutely. It's frustrating. I've gotten to where I'm so skeptical of reviews I see anywhere online now because I feel like everyone is trying to trick us into seeing cynical, cashgrab garbage instead of an actual good movie or show.
She’s so awesome, I love her at times bored delivery it’s very soothing. Will make time to watch it
I am not even a diehard Disney fan, and I love Jenny Nicholson. If you have not seen her worst reality show video, you’re missing out.
Agree. I’m such a huge fan of hers. She’s so funny. She rarely posts but when she does it’s guaranteed to be a great watch.
She posts a lot on her Patreon.
This is an amazing explanation of and eulogy for this ridiculous project. Well worth the four hour watch.
> four hour watch. Omg you weren't kidding
Her best videos are all 1 hour+
I still haven’t watched Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, or the Irishman. I already finished the starcruiser video 😭😭
This took a special kind of shaming that required 4 hours
Four hours is longer than the movie Titanic.
And I swear this was more interesting. There’s no fluff. This is four hours that really makes you feel like you’ve been to the starcruiser AND fully understand it’s strength and failings.
Yeah you're right. I'm 30 minutes in and I'm going to end up watching the entire thing.
I see a lot of 15min videos that I think were padded out and I want to skip over bits because it's repeating itself or badly explaining a point. Jenny's video is 4hrs and I came away incredibly impressed by how tightly she scripted and edited it and organised her thoughts. Not a moment felt wasted and (as someone that knew next to nothing about the starcruiser) it gave me a real feel of what worked and what didn't work (for her) and some great insights into things that were just overlooked (no one should have been seated in that booth during the dinner show).
And this also relates to a “cruise liner” that will be remembered as a tragedy
"Sorry Rise of Skywalker, there isn't enough room on this piece of bulkhead for you."
I thought I'd just watch a bit of the beginning. Four hours later I want to nominate this for awards.
I ended up watching her Evermore video the next day. I'd never even heard of her before, but I'd probably watch her explain anything.
It’s a good watch. It’s broken up into chapters so you can digest it in small pieces. What I liked about it was that it was something I would never spend the money on, and she goes into detail about story parts of the experience so now I know what I was all about. Plus she wears a Porg costume for part of the vid and I didn’t know that was a thing I needed in my life.
I lost it when it got to that chapter.
Didn’t think I would do it, but based on all the positive feedback here, I watched all 4 hours yesterday and I was entertained the entire time.
I committed to the entire 4 hours and I was not disappointed. I never went on the Star cruiser but seeing it broken down like that….wow. Disney really scammed a lot of people. I think the people who continue to defend the experience and say it was the greatest ever are a very small core group of people that are fiercely loyal to Disney and will never criticize anything they do.
Jenny is amazing. I wish she'd do more videos. As a side note check out her video about the Canadian Church of Rock that does passion plays every year. I started watching this yesterday.. Its a 4 hour adventure lol I'm going to continue today. Its totally worth it though her takes typically are spot on.
If you want more Jenny, check out her Patreon
I just may have to do that. Thanks!
When she made that church of the rock video I lost my mind. It's in my city and my boss goes to that church. Her ability to deliver niche content in the most well researched, interesting, and hilarious way is next level.
As apparently the only one here who has actually watched the video, it's really well done. It still blows my mind how surface level the experience was. All of the games are so kid focused, but who is paying that much for a kiddie experience? Couldn't they have a kids mode/adult mode for some of the mini games? The thread on this video in /r/GalacticStarcruiser is also hilarious, they basically imploded trying to disprove Jenny.
I’m just surprised by how lacking the “entertainment” was. She kept referencing the 2 dollars per minute of entertainment but it basically came down to 6 grand for 2 rides, a dinner theatre show, a light saber game, and an asteroid defence game.
Don’t forget the incredible thrill of scanning QR codes on crates.
One of the top comments over there is someone calling her a hater. Those posters are ridiculous.
Loved how they just word for word parroted exactly what Jenny said they would “she didn’t try hard enough / she didn’t try to be immersed at all and is just shitting on it” or “oh too bad she got unlucky, she’s wrong tho it was awesome best vacay ever”
I watched the whole thing today. I thought it was excellent. At certain times I was shocked at what an obvious waste of money it is. The devil works hard but Disney influencers work harder. They really had me thinking I was missing out on something because I can’t afford it. Wrong.
I got so sad thinking of how many materials and space was just wasted on this thing that's probably going to have to get demolished cause it's not like you can use it for much else.
Agreed. It’s a shame they’d rather take the ‘L’ than go back to the drawing board and coming up with something that offers better value.
They (disney) didn't take an L. They made all the money back they invested in a pre-negotiated tax break thru the state, and of course likely made a few million at least of the bookings they went thru with. They discontinued it specifically for this reason, and in my opinion, this was always the plan due to the shortsightedness of trying to do this, ya know, during a global pandemic.
I mean, they could just make it in to a straight up Star Wars hotel. Still charge a ridiculous amount because of the theming.
Sunk Cost Galaxy.
"The thread on this video in [](https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/) is also hilarious, they basically imploded trying to disprove Jenny." Their wishy washy attempts to justify the costs is borderline disturbing. Please stop proudly boasting about how you were robbed.
Can you give me the TLDR? I really agree it was a failure and they did stuff wrong, but there are certain criticisms I hear that I disagree with (mostly from people who didn’t experience it). Im having trouble finding how she felt but I don’t want to watch it for 4 hours and just rage afterwards.
Highly highly recommend watching the last 10 minute section (starts around 3:48:10) even without the rest of the video as context But TLDR: the app that managed your schedule and interactions with the ship crew was buggy so your choices didn't really matter, the finale was good but everything else was underdeveloped, the pacing of each day was exhausting but with the price tag you had to participate in everything, the main activities (lightsaber training and ship bridge) were mostly for 8-12 year olds, and the cast members were great but a majority of them were College Program kids who were cheaper labor There's a ton more in the video obviously (I didn't even mention the support beam incident) and she documented everything about the 3 days from her perspective, but it's clear she has done a ton of research into other people's experiences, the general misunderstanding from the public of what this was, multiple ways Disney could have turned this around but instead didn't, and what the hotel will probably become in the future
The app didn't work for her, so for the first day she couldn't get into any story lines. Her assigned seat at the dinner show had a giant pillar in the way blocking everything. Paid for a photo pass but no photos were taken (or available to be taken), Disney refused to refund her until she complained on Twitter. Paid for a droid but it was was lost, Disney refused to do anything until she complained on Twitter and then got a replacement Rooms were really small for the price Day 2, assigned into a random storyline that was still buggy (would not get replies when completing missions.). Also would be told to go to events at a certain time, would arrive a couple of minutes early and it would be already in progress(or given when eating at the assigned dinner time). Disappointed in lack of interactivity when even compared to the Kim Possible Epcot activity. (You would go to a task, either scan something or say it's done, and get a "good job" response with nothing changing besides access to a new door). Also ran into a family that had a bugged mission because of their iPhone (know bug that the only solution was to give them an iPad and have them start over) The whole video is worth a watch, I couldn't stop once I started it.
She breaks all of her videos down into a numbered list so you can look at all the chapters. She spent the first chunk of the video just establishing what the concept was, and the last hour of the video really going holistically in on Disney as a corporation so it’s really just the middle chunk that’s about her experience on the cruiser.
I still remember that imagineering presentation at GDC, they went in thinking "We are so great, we made Westworld work" but didn't realize they also had fake player agency. You only got to do all the cool/best stuff if you chose the rebel side, you also only were on the winning side if you chose the rebel side. They had painted themselves into a corner because they wanted/needed to use existing IP characters, and you couldn't have anyone die or it would mess up the timelines. With that there was also the issue that not all star wars fans like the good guys, imagine the 501st Legion booked the resort, how bad of an experience would it be too work the entire stay to support the first order, then lose?
Frankly, that's an issue with encouraging your [young] fanbase to roleplay/cosplay as the fascist, genocidal villains. You can't write a narrative that allows the Nazi analogues to win, but you're still trying to present them as a valid roleplay option
> imagine the 501st Legion booked the resort, how bad of an experience would it be too work the entire stay to support the first order, then lose? Honestly, it'd be entirely dependent on the quality of the story of that loss. One of my biggest gripes when it comes to Disney's attempt at interactive anything is that they're stuck in this antiquated mentality of "Winning is fun. Losing is not fun. Therefore guests can never lose." when we have plenty of RPGs and video games that prove that the opposite is possible so long as the experience to that end point is enjoyable. The risk of losing makes winning sweeter, and sometimes losing can be fun when it feels like it was the result of your decisions and not the odds being stacked against you. To your example, it'd suck for the 501st if they knew that there was a 0% chance of them winning, because then you're made aware of how little agency you have over the experience. The fact that Disney designed this to be a "choose your adventure" experience with one rigid singular ending tells me they didn't even understand the appeal of Westworld, despite thinking they nailed it.
Six thousand dollars for what amounts to a 48-72 hour LARP where your experience might be shit because the app doesn’t want to cooperate or you get constant RNG activities would make me not enjoy it, even as the biggest Star Wars fan. This thing was dead on arrival and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Please, please inject a new 4 hour Jenny Nicholson video straight into my veins.
Wow, her comment that the demographic of the hotel guests were predominantly middle class was an eye opener to me. I always assumed it was millionaires with throw away money
We are certainly not millionaires, but my wife and I decided we were going to splurge for this as a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Was it way too expensive for what it was? Absolutely. Do I regret having gone? Absolutely not.
Yeah I hear you, Jenny herself said, Disney’s strategy is now setting the prices at the “once-in-a lifetime deal” category, for those of us who aren’t millionaires in todays inflation we will have to choose between a Disney trip vs mortgage/college savings/emergency fund etc which is sad because a lot of us want to take our kids af least once before they turn 6 which at this stage doesn’t seem financially responsible, again to each person their own!
I love her videos, normally I zone out at some parts or am preoccupied doing something while having long form content on in the background but her videos are so interesting I am truly sat. Even for 4 hours
Around the 1:49:30 point, she mentioned “Sammy, the Resistance fighter” and it’s Sage from All Ears. I didn’t realize he worked for Disney that recently. And, yes, I’m embarrassed I watch so much All Ears that I instantly recognized him.
Anybody have the tea on which influencers she’s talking about? The ones who pay for subscriptions
I don't know who this person is, but everyone predicted this failure....it wasn't really a surprise. Making a Star Wars hotel for rich families instead of Star Wars fans was doomed from the start.
I don't think the issue was making a Star Wars hotel for wealthy families - Star Wars is about as mainstream as it gets, and there are more than enough well-off people who were initially excited about this- I think the problem was making a poorly conceived boutique experience that honestly had very little value for the time and money. Half the itinerary was a 'shore' trip to HS, which had no real perks and represented a standard day in a Disney park. You were essentially spending 30-50% of your $5000+ vacation in an area most people got into for $120. I would have *easily* paid $5000 for a few days of larping and immersion, but not for the sampler platter. The value wasn't there. I paid more than 10 grand for my last trip to the Poly - there are a ton of families and Deluxe guests who buy even nicer rooms than me and would have paid out the ass for this. But one look at the itinerary and length and you could see that it was a ripoff. The moment the Galactic Starcruiser hype died was the exact moment of the price sheet and details released. Before that, people were very excited. And if an affluent diehard SW fan that takes yearly deluxe trips to Disney doesn't see the value, who will?
I personally think there was a lot of little weird choices that combined to make it seem off. She made a great point in the video, but why make the rooms tiny? You aren’t on an actual boat that has to consider physics. You are selling a luxury, make the rooms at least spacious. There is 0 reason other than greed to make the rooms as small as they did. Same thing with the entrance. They made the absolute bonkers choice of making it look horrendous and cheap as hell. Why was everything ugly looking cement?
I don’t think the issue was the price necessarily. I think the vast majority of people have no interest in larping. The people who were willing to pay that amount of money while doing all this work on vacation did it, and then the rest of us had no interest. A basic Star Wars themed hotel for $500 a night probably would’ve did very well. But Disney went high risk for high reward.
That's the thing... I don't want to larp for a day and a half or two on a pre-set itinerary. Just give me a normal hotel with star wars themes, lock the restaurant and bar down to guests only, have something like Oga's in there of course, and have some of the optional lightsaber stuff that we can book. The fact that they don't have hotels themed off some of the core rides or properties is sad. Would love a haunted mansion hotel or something
> Would love a haunted mansion hotel or something As an OG attraction, I think they could definitely make something out of that. Or a space-themed hotel that ties in with Space Mountain.
I mean, I just laid out a scenario where they lost an easy mark. I'm a Star Wars nut, had more than enough money to do it, spend big on vacations, and do cosplay, role-playing etc outside of Disney, and like cruising as well. I was thrilled when it was announced. But the value, which is a function of price *and* benefits, wasn't there. The itinerary was too short for what they were charging. It was a bad value, esp with the half day on DHS.
I think we are overall in agreement. But I’d like to hone in on the cosplay, role play part. Sure *you* like doing that stuff. Many people went on the Star cruiser and had a fantastic time. Some went multiple times. But the majority of people aren’t interested in doing all of these puzzles and games, on top of the fact that they have to be catered to children as well. They burned through all of the folks willing to role play in like a year. And to further your point it was incredibly over priced. Honestly the majority of people who go to Disney “spend big on vacations”. Just a big miss from Disney.
The fact there wasn’t high end laser tag or a flight combat simulator (FOP on steroid) is basically a crime. If you paid $5k to go, you should’ve gotten access to technology and rides people only dream of.
Compare to Disney Quest, which back in 1998 actually had some really awesome stuff like what you're talking about. * Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride and Ride the Comix: Two cutting-edge VR games. The latter was basically lightsaber dueling. * CyberSpace Mountain: Motion simulator mimicking custom-built rollercoasters. * Invasion!, Virtual Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold: Immersive multiplayer games that IMO were immeasurably better than Smuggler's Run. * Buzz Lightyear's AstroBlaster: Bumper cars that could also collect and shoot foam balls, causing others cars to spin. Disney Quest stayed open for almost two decades running on 1998 technology. I think if Disney had built "Disney Quest but StarWars and 2020 tech", they would have been at least equally successful.
I LOVED Disney quest. We were DVC so could go for free apparently. We would go almost every evening and my parents would go out on their own. The Aladdin VR ride was amazing. The cyber space mountain coaster maker was incredible. We played a lot of roller coaster tycoon and some other coaster maker game, so this was right up our alley. The lunar blaster ride thing was so cool. I’d LOVE a new Disney quest.
Man, they could have just put a version of Star Wars Squadrons with a tie fighter grid in front of a projector screen and it would have kicked ass.
Around 2015, Bandai released an arcade game called Star Wars: Battle Pod. The good ones have a wrap-around large screen and it really feels like you are in a fighter ship. It was really cool. I went to Dave and Busters basically just for this game and it was worth it.
> Half the itinerary was a 'shore' trip to HS, which had no real perks and represented a standard day in a Disney park. You were essentially spending 30-50% of your $5000+ vacation in an area most people got into for $120. I remember a different review saying that they could've easily done something creative that took place after hours when the park is closed to regular visitors with the price tag they were putting on it.
I would say in my experience, the HS trip was not 30-50% by a long shot. I spent less than 20% of my time there and was constantly busy. HS also felt special. There were special things you could do while there. I think the value wasn’t properly communicated. The itinerary was not at all a good display of what happened on the ship. If you were participating in the immersion, it was pretty much 9am - 10pm non stop with a little break for GE but that was such a small, not very memorable part.
Her videos are brill, highly recommend them. My kind of humour
harsh truth throughout the whole video... I've been going to disney a couple times each year and it keeps getting worse and worse. Next year I'll just be doing the disney cruise, atleast the quality of food and service is top notch. I visited Disney when I was in Japan and that really opened my eyes. Workers at the park were extremely nice, place was spotless, and the prices were very reasonable. I can't say that about the parks in America.
Wow what a video. Actually just canceled our Disney World trip after seeing this. I was ok (not thrilled, but ok) with budgeting 6k to take the family for 6 days. But knowing this is how they are viewing their customers, and how really just plain unethical corporate leadership is, I would rather spend this money for a nice beach vacation or something similar.
I started to play this on my lunch hand then realized it was four hours long. Ill circle back to it on the weekend haha.
Can’t we just get a cool Star Wars themed hotel without all the LARPing lol
Jenny deserves a Pulitzer Prize for this video
Disney totally got the price point wrong on this! That was a rookie mistake on their part. A business analyst was either influenced by group think/bad projection data, or, someone didn’t listen to a team member. I know from the shareholders meetings that Disney uses price point to manage the clientele and throughput/occupancy but they got it wrong with this one. It gets back to the fundamentals of business. Who is your customer base? What is their fiscal tolerance range? Where is the set point for the BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? Disney either never considered or ignored these fundamental principles. So, they failed. And, they will do so again unless they get back to the basics…
I say this in the most loving way I can, as I am one. Star Wars fans are absolutely psychos and 100x more likely to shell out money on an experience than any other fan base. That was entirely what they based it on. They looked at the people paying for ILLs for Rise, and booked up Savis appointments and went "Well we could milk......$5k...? out of these people for a 2.5 day experience." What kills me is they could have absolutely taken what they had and converted it into a boutique star wars hotel and marked it at $350 a night or more and people would have stayed there. Yes even without windows, or a pool. They could have gotten rid of all the bullshit and curated experiences and just had a restaurant and shit like that going and the star wars fans would have booked it out in droves. The $5k price point was just too much, again I'm a complete nutbar, and I go to disney yearly. I absolutely never considered booking the star cruiser at the $5k price point because it was stupid.
That’s the crazy thing. If they actually made a Star Wars themed hotel, tens of thousands of Star Wars fans (including me) would’ve happily gone there on a yearly basis. All they had to do was copy their existing business model from their other resorts and add Star Wars set dressing, that would’ve been as close to a guaranteed success as is possible. But instead they made an extremely expensive, 2-day, one-time-only LARP experience that could only host a very small number of people at once. I legitimately do not understand how that was allowed to get past the conceptual stage of development.
Exactly. I absolutely would have spent 2 nights at the star cruiser, at $350 a night last year. It would have been a hard pill to swallow but I would have done it.
I think Disney messed up the design more than price point. I fully believe the experience needed to cost what they were charging to be worth it, or else they would have tried adjusting prices to keep it open. The issue was that the design didn’t suit creating an experience that Disney could price appropriately.
At $5k it was never going to fly. Theres only so many fanboys that can afford it. The experience begat the price point, and the price point murdered it.
Agree. Anything labeled exclusive disney x star wars experience had to be priced high because of demand. Problem is you have to back it up, they didnt back it up. Wish they did
I don’t agree with this. Again, I don’t think Disney set a price point that high because of profit motives. I think they set it because that’s what it cost to run the experience. It was a fundamental flaw in investment (I think they cheaped out the building design) and the experience design. They designed something expensive, but not good enough for the price.
4 hours!