So that part where you tried to pivot on what you meant by exclusive about Celebration by suggesting it wasn't a mainstream thing after I countered you with ticket pricing being cheap to changing it to be about optional add-ons to try staying consistent with your original statements - that was a mobile typing mistake?
If you say so.
DQ was like $30 when it first opened.
What is your threshold for "premium" here because there seems to be a pretty wide gap between $30 and $2,400+
I must be missing something you're not explaining.
My mass market point was that it seemed odd to me up to that point that they would take a mass market brand and roll a product out with it that would be ultra premium, ultra exclusive and offer little to no growth opportunity if the only point here was for them to be making money on Starcruiser.
They're taking something with potentially wide popular appeal at all income levels, dangling it in front of the masses and then basically saying "Most of you will never get to do this and for those of you who can afford to, it may be years before you'll even get your place in line to."
Why?
I'm of the opinion,that is intentional by design and that Disney may be willing to not make as much money as they could off of this to create an
intentional level of un-obtainability.
I think they want people to know it's there an I think they want people to know they can't have it and I think they're willing to sacrifice direct profit to do so in the name of making themselves look higher end and more exclusive than their competition.
They
could have done it differently but they didn't.
With the value of hindsight, we
all could do a lot different. Like I would never have bothered with my first post if I knew that four or five posts later I'd still be trying to deal with you misreading or misrepresenting what I wrote.
But here we are and I can only fantasize about the road less traveled, now.
What does any of that have to do with reality, though?
What Disney
could have done but chose not to really has no bearing on the discussion of what they
did do when it comes to trying to collectively guess their motives for getting things to where they are, does it?
How do you see them working this kind of concept with any of their other properties?
Do you think this would work with Frozen or Marvel?
Think they're planning a Toy Story LARPing experience?
As a complete thing, this feels very one-and-done (unless they clone it west coast) to me.
Sure, there are elements from the experience they could repurpose and I'm sure they'll learn plenty but there are always elements of things they reuse. If one of their goals is to gain operational experience for other low-capacity premium offerings, then that's a metric not tied to the financial success of this "experiment", right?
Again, my argument is that they can't be doing this just for the money they expect to make
directly from this.
Besides learning, using this as price anchoring would accomplish a few different things for them in one swipe, too.
It would give Disney the PREMIERE exclusive, premium experience in Central Florida done in a way that nobody else could seemingly match.
Universal can build their third park. They can add their Nintendo Land. Heck, they can add 3 theme parks - that'll never be a 1.5 day LARPINing experience with prices starting at $5k for two, though.
It'll never be exclusive. It'll never be premium because like you've said, this isn't a resort or a theme park. It's Pure Disney Magic™ as only Disney can provide, right?
They could
try to do something with Harry potter but they'll be at least a decade behind Disney if they decide to after they see how it works out for Disney.
Them attaching this to a mainstream mass property like Star Wars and having some harsh cut-offs in both pricing and capacity give them tons of free exposure - they are putting a spotlight on this in the public eye by the choices they made in a way that they never did with the apparently now defunct "
Crown Collection by Disney" plan, for instance - the link to that page from 2019 is now gone from the Disney site:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/crown-collection/
It's manipulative to their audience but it sure makes Disney in Florida seem more premium, doesn't it?
That's anchoring and there is a halo effect from that which makes their other offerings seem more premium, even if they do nothing else to them to make them so.
In addition, a $5k two day experience at WDW makes a $5k
week long experience at WDW look a lot more reasonable - that's
also how anchoring works. Notice how everywhere else on these forums, there are debates about the rising costs and lowering quality at resorts and parks at WDW.
Notice how none of that comes up in this thread? I think the comparisons made here to the Grand Floridian may be the first time I've ever heard anyone talking about that stay as being "cheaper" in a favorable way.
Yes, yes, we both know it's not the same thing but but it doesn't matter.
Centepedes and spiders aren't insects but most people still think they are.
Starcruiser is #NotAResort and #NotAThemePark the same way it is #NotACruiseShip but just like the resorts and just like the parks it also takes things like Disney cruises which tend to cost more than their piers and it moves the comparison from their competition to another more "premium" Disney offering the same way we say that a Disney cruise is a bargain compared to a stay at wdw, today.
We're not comparing it to other cruise ships - we're comparing it to other Disney vacations and trust me - they like it that way.
Do you see what I'm talking about?
It re-frames pricing in consumers minds - a practice that has been proven over and over again in real-world marketing scenarios as well as controlled research experiments.
Again, this isn't just some hair-brained idea of mine. Premium brands do it all the time intentionally.
That book I mentioned, Priceless, provides case studies involving brands like Prada, Ralp Lauren (and their $25k "Ricky 33" purse they don't actually care if anyone buys), Hermès and many others who routinely use this tactic to maintain their standing at the high-end of fashion retail. It's a fascinating read.
And Bob may not know how to
handle celebrities, he may not know
how to handle theme parks and he may not know how to avoid
looking like a super villain on stage at the launch of a new land in California Adventure, but he
does know how to squeeze dollars to bleed pennies when it comes to retail.
Again, I don't see how this specific "concept" as has been fully realized by them has much room for growth. Do you?
Maybe they started out thinking of it that way but what we have today sure doesn't feel like it.
DQ was supposed to have locations in major cities across the US and the cost of development and updates was supposed to be spread across of of those - that was their business plan on how to make that work.
Broadway, with a foot in the door makes them a player in an established market. Besides their IP and their push for surge-pricing to help squeeze more money out of people, what have they really brought to that market that's a new entertainment concept?
We'll have to agree to disagree here. I think it absolutely belongs in that conversation. Disney could have built it anywhere but they built it on a resort property. They could have built it without relying on a theme park but they chose to build it so it did.
I think a case can and should be made that it doesn't
have to be in a conversation about theme park or resort strategy and I'm sure it isn't the
only thing Disney's thinking about with it but because of the way they built this, by design, I don't think you can say it doesn't belong in any conversation just because you don't like it there.
Glad you were a little more clear on your points in this post. This feels, to me at least, like a more interesting and productive conversation now than how it started out.
