Jenny Nicholson just posted a 1.5-hour long vlog of her first day experience on the Starcruiser. Not going to link to it directly because Patreon access is $2 (less than half a cup of fancy coffee) and for that amount you really should pay, but the rundown, with my commentary:
Pros
- The food looks good! They are definitely not serving you slop!
- The ship itself looks fun enough. Very colorful and with a few nice touches (although, as Nicholson notes, there are no animatronics). It may not look exactly like Star Wars but it's not totally unthemed and dull like we haters thought it would be
- The crew of the ship are enthusiastic. This isn't Broadway level acting, but they're engaging and if you're in the mood to play along (and for $6k you better be), they're all ready to interact. Nicholson was able to interact with lots of the characters and they all seemed on point.
Cons
- The experience seems highly app-reliant. Which means that if you don't like interacting with your phone on vacation or if the app is buggy, you're out of luck. Nicholson was trying to do the experience like an escape room (looking around the room for clues to a puzzle) and was confused. In addition, if you aren't looking at your phone to catch up with the storyline, parts of the ship seem to randomly open for you without you putting in any input, or you might see another attendee's solution to a puzzle, etc. Nicholson was trying to do a baddie storyline but was given random clues. She said that it felt like her choices weren't really affecting the story that she saw.
- You are not going to get the same experience with the story moments that the press testers did. With 100 adults, each person felt that they were really participating in the story. With a full 300-person crew, this is going to be more like immersive theater, where you stumble upon certain events and watch from the crowd. This is also an all-ages experience, which means that either you let kids go to the front like a normal human being or go full Comic Book Man and shove a six-year-old out of the way to get your money's worth of talking with the stormtroopers (have seen this noted as a problem in other reviews--perhaps a teens and up cruise would be appropriate, or on the other hand a stern talking to about growing up and isn't it time to spend this money on watching Shakespeare or Mamet or at least Tony and Tina's Wedding?)
- The lightsaber training isn't exactly going to make you feel like a Jedi master. There are forms. If you do not want to do karate-style lightsaber forms, go elsewhere.
