News Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser coming to Walt Disney World 2021

[MickeyLuv'r]

I know many people here hate to accept the practical and operational realities of running a Theme Park, but that just does not seem practical. Keeping that whole land open for a couple hundred people (lots of whom would not go after park close anyway) every other night would be prohibitively expensive (regardless of what you're paying for the experience). Keeping the land open means way more than just the CM's you see visible in the park.

Really depends how long it is open to them, and how it was structured.

WDW already has a long history of doing this.

Many WDW rides do not open at rope drop/stay open until closing. The entire World Showcase, for example did not open until 11am, while most of Future World closed at 7pm. But now they open Frozen at park opening. They also have kept Test Track and Soarin' open until park close and even for EMH.

Even TSM, when it was the most popular ride in HS, often closed a little before the rest of the park. Maybe you never noticed.

Meanwhile, Universal has long kept BOTH parks open just for AP's in the summer every year. It is called AP Appreciation nights, and it isn't open to all AP, just the ones who are quick to sign up.

And then MK has the Early Mornings at MK.

In this case, another poster claimed it would only take a few minutes for all of them to ride Rise. If ILL passes for Rise didn't start until 15min after the park opened, nobody would notice. Either one, or even both is completely feasible.

 

[wdwmagic]

Interesting on Len's podcast hearing how the 10-15 superfans on a cruise are dominating all of the character appearances and story moments. I wondered if this would be a problem.

 

[mergatroid]

It will be interesting to see how Disney handles stuff like this. One thing for sure, something will happen, the incident captured on a device And uploaded to the internet for all to see.

Will we see drunk guests fighting on the Starcruiser? Fact is everyone on the ship are human, so time will tell.

It will but I'm not sure why this differs to the brawls caught on camera at TOT, SM, Mickey's Toon Town (?) or TSM? It's not affected peoples desire to go to these parks or do these rides so what's different. That poor child was eaten by an alligator a few years back and yet the GF didn't suffer, a guy threw himself on a balcony at the Contemporary a few years back and that's still seeing paying guests. Unless there's constant brawling at the 'Starcruise', why would it be any different to any other part of Disney?

 

[Texas84]

Just finished listening to the Disney Dish with Len Testa. I’ll be honest, it sounds exhausting! He had a great time but it seems that you have to be extremely committed to role playing to get the most out of this. Also seems like you miss out on some extremely cool major experiences if you don’t go above an beyond. I think that may be an issue in the future. I also honk the longer this goes the more “guides” there will be on how to game the system or make sure you get every experience you want. This may cause some issues because of most people want to see x y and z and few want to see a b and c it may overwhelm some of those major story experiences. I also found the idea of super fans hogging the interactions as off putting. The podcast was a good listen and made me feel much more happy that I don’t have any plans on going on this for at least a year or until they get the kinks out.

You are going to miss experiences depending on which path you choose.

We're watching videos from vloggers and social media types. Hopefully super fans won't be that bad with regular guests. But Disney has said if you don't like the way your story is going, let them know and they will try to make it better.

But I'm with you, I'll wait a while and see what changes. I really want to do this, but family and friends would rather get a DVC and hit Epcot Drunkytown.

 

[_caleb]

Fact is everyone on the ship are human, so time will tell.

Um, officially Gaya is Twi'lek, Ouannii is Rodian, Captain Kevin is Pantoran, Sandro is either a Togrutan or Miralian, Chewbacca is a Wookie, and of course, droids are not human...

 

[flynnibus]

About a year from now, they should announce that the story is changing in May 2023. Then, every year in May they should introduce story changes. Small stuff every year. Then, perhaps a month or two shutdown and larger changes every 5 years.

How often does Disney change other shows?

That's why your estimate is way off. Every year? With small capacity the # of people who get to experience it in a year is small.. so that will relieve pressure to refresh quickly. They probably want a cadence of 3-5 years I'd speculate.

 

[MickeyLuv'r]

From what I can gather the ride went down for 45 minutes and the LL had been waiting for that time. When it was ready to board again they rushed the cruiser guests through first which probably meant an extra 5 mins for the LL guests. Had the cruiser guests not been there then the fact the LL guests waited 45 minutes for the ride to come back online would have been the same (+5 mins extra).

For what it's worth I hate Genie+ and ILL and will avoid it next week when I visit. The people who were in the ILL queue waiting had paid more money to go ahead of others so they probably understand that those who've paid about 300 times as much as they have to beat the queue (and do other stuff) might get even more preferential treatment than themselves. It's similar to private VIP tours who never wait in queues. Again from investigating the story the ride was down for 45 mins not working, they didn't switch it back on for the 'Starcruiser guests' who in effect had to wait the 45 mins to ride too or would have, had they turned up 45 mins earlier.

I got all that.
I don't think that is 100% correct: VIP tours use the ILL queues (formerly FP+).
Only on top of that, the VIP tour guides also take care of things like stroller parking and ordering/picking up QS meals.

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More than once, I've been in line next to/near VIP groups on multiple attractions.

In this case though, I dunno, it just seems little weak. Like the logistics of how this would all work wasn't thought out very well.

 

[DCBaker]

John Snoddy, Doug Fidelio and Leslie Evans talk about D3-09 on the Starcruiser -

 

[ChrisFL]

I wonder if they could sort story missions based on families with older children/adult couples vs. families with younger children...that might help out as well, but really depends on the mixture of who's on board

 

[WDWJoeG]

It will but I'm not sure why this differs to the brawls caught on camera at TOT, SM, Mickey's Toon Town (?) or TSM? It's not affected peoples desire to go to these parks or do these rides so what's different. That poor child was eaten by an alligator a few years back and yet the GF didn't suffer, a guy threw himself on a balcony at the Contemporary a few years back and that's still seeing paying guests. Unless there's constant brawling at the 'Starcruise', why would it be any different to any other part of Disney?

All I ask is all drunken brawls are in costume and in full character.

 

[Skywise]

All I ask is all drunken brawls are in costume and in full character.

Waiting for the wookiee to rip a droid's arms out of its sockets...

Or maybe a light saber strike "I have the death sentence in 12 systems!"

 

[mmascari]

That's why your estimate is way off. Every year? With small capacity the # of people who get to experience it in a year is small.. so that will relieve pressure to refresh quickly. They probably want a cadence of 3-5 years I'd speculate.

Small stuff on the yearly. If there's 150 activities. Say, 50 of them are relatively big or infrastructure intensive. All the main events we see, the locations of the large set pieces. That stuff would have the longest time between changes. Easily 5 years, and even then probably not all at once.

That would still leave 100 smaller things. They could easily change 10% of them every year. Some of them are really small anyway.

The only 2 ways to drive repeat visitor is to have more stuff than they can do in one visit (looks like this exists today) and to change something, so there's new stuff to do. Doesn't have to be much. Even 10% (or really 5%-7%) new activities would be enough to get some people back every year. For others, a build up of 2 or 3 years and that's a 15%-20% change in the little things to repeat again.

Obviously they're not going to change core elements every year. And many will never change. But, maybe in year 2 a new minor character shows up. In year 3, some other character is dropped. In year 5, the main entertainment changes. Probably take 10+ before you get a new captain or a new finale. Probably take another trilogy of movies before they replace Rey and Kylo.

The 100 and 150 are obviously made up numbers. The reports sound like it's a large number of little story beats and games though. Certainly it's not just 10 missions rattling around in between 5 major set pieces.

 

[Skywise]

Interesting on Len's podcast hearing how the 10-15 superfans on a cruise are dominating all of the character appearances and story moments. I wondered if this would be a problem.

Is it "superfans" or "extroverts"? That's a typical problem in RPG scenarios which you can moderate (aham, DM properly) in smaller groups but gets unwieldy in larger ones.

 

[durangojim]

Did he say whether people were using their cell phones? Because if so people are going to try to TikTok with the characters...

You can use your phone but Dinsey gave everyone an iPhone to use for the app specifically. Len said the software isn’t ready to be used on the general Publix’s phones yet.

Are you familiar with the video game industry? I guarantee this is the model Disney is following with the Starcruiser.

Yes, there will be spoilers. This is nothing new to Disney. And there will be an entire industry around how to “beat,” “win,” or “hack” the game. The value isn’t in knowing the story, it’s in the experience.

And, like Fortnite, minor changes to the story and setting can keep players coming back for more—even if the game stays basically the same.

I’m not worried about spoilers, just rather if everyone wants to chose the Jedi party because they feel they’ll get to experience cooler things because of what they’ve seen on YouTube. Also people being upset because they saw something online but then didn’t get to experience it will definitely be a thing.

Interesting on Len's podcast hearing how the 10-15 superfans on a cruise are dominating all of the character appearances and story moments. I wondered if this would be a problem.

Yeah, not sure how they prevent this.

You are going to miss experiences depending on which path you choose.

We're watching videos from vloggers and social media types. Hopefully super fans won't be that bad with regular guests. But Disney has said if you don't like the way your story is going, let them know and they will try to make it better.

But I'm with you, I'll wait a while and see what changes. I really want to do this, but family and friends would rather get a DVC and hit Epcot Drunkytown.

I wonder how that works with changing your story. Maybe as easy as saying, “I’d really like to make sure I experience…” to a CM?

Is it "superfans" or "extroverts"? That's a typical problem in RPG scenarios which you can moderate (aham, DM properly) in smaller groups but gets unwieldy in larger ones.

According to the podcasts it’s “super fans”, the ones who push and shove in front of everyone. These seem to be the same people you see in the parks doing the same thing.

 

[flynnibus]

The only 2 ways to drive repeat visitor is to have more stuff than they can do in one visit (looks like this exists today) and to change something, so there's new stuff to do. Doesn't have to be much. Even 10% (or really 5%-7%) new activities would be enough to get some people back every year. For others, a build up of 2 or 3 years and that's a 15%-20% change in the little things to repeat again.

But that was my headlineing point. With such small capacity and large audience... they don't need repeats with that low of frequency.

The majority of Disney doesn't have people returning every year... they certainly don't need that when their capacity is a tiny thing. As long as there is strong demand, the need for luring repeats is diminished.

They should have plenty of demand to keep it busy for a long time.. during that time repeats are a luxury, not a need for Disney. Thus spending a lot of energy on changing content would just be wasteful.

 

[MisterPenguin]

No. It was included with the price of every ticket.

You are saying waiting nearly an hour in line= Rapid access?
We have vast different definitions of what = a short wait.

You're completely taking what I said out of context so you can rebut it. So, we're done. Have a good day.

 

[MisterPenguin]

This couple really hate Disney. All sort of digs at Disney "We rang Disney about the Star Wars hotel and was on hold for 36 minutes, it could have been because they were answering all the calls cancelling"? Now they're complaining about a rumour that there's a $20,000 'Starcruiser suite' (as if Disney started it to make $4,800 seem cheap) when if fact there's a $10,000 suite that holds 8 people.

The woman goes on a hilarious backtracking rant because somebody using a Starcruiser avatar (she's convinced it's the actor who works there) asked her if she's been as she's spent months saying how terrible it will be and how she can't wait to see the negative reviews from paying guests to drop. As a caveat she never said the first paying guests shouldn't be believed so she has zero credibility changing the goalposts. She gets mega upset at the question and cries "Disney would't invite me because they only picked the people who would kiss their a##". She's practically crying at this point.

Her logic is how dare he ask if she's been to judge it, as her opinion is just as good as those who've paid and experienced it. This is really strange logic as last week she was saying "I'll only judge paying guests", now she doesn't like paying guest reviews and suddenly doesn't want to use that as the barometer. The backpedaling is so funny and they're resorting to criticising the look of the food now saying it looks too similar to GE and Pandora and crying that the merchandise (which she says she doesn't want) isn't available to her unless she pays $6,000 on the experience. Such a bitter couple

Typical Clownfish. They're on the bandwagon for every false "leak" that comes out about Disney or SW. They've really been hyping CRINGE!!!! even after it turns out that #cringegate didn't sink the cruiser.

 

[Cesar R M]

think that if you wait either the price will go up, they'll start stripping out features, or it just may up and close if they don't like the margins and you'll never get to experience it.

or Both.

 

[KBLovedDisney]

I vote Disney bring this guy for a meet-and-greet in the Starcruiser:

 

[Minthorne]

Interesting on Len's podcast hearing how the 10-15 superfans on a cruise are dominating all of the character appearances and story moments. I wondered if this would be a problem.

I’m sure this is an upcharge opportunity somehow!