News Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Permanently Closed Fall 2023

999th Happy Haunt

Well-Known Member
It seems like this thing received positive reviews from the people who WANTED an immersive and secluded 2 day role-play experience going into it. The problem is that most people do not want that for their WDW vacation, they want to go see all 4 parks. I think even if the price was lower this would still have issues with low occupancy. There was always going to be a lack of demand after the superfans and “bloggers” all did it once, then the outrageous price was just a complete insult.
 

Incomudro

Well-Known Member
I've been all over the place with this Starcruiser.
In the beginning, most everything they leaked looked pretty weak and terrible.
But I don't like to be the kind of guy who completely condemns something before I really see it.
Then, when the first cruises were reviewed, I concluded that despite the bad choice in source material - the show, the acting made it look like a lot of fun.
A very enjoyable experience - yet prohibitively expensive for most.
Well...
Now that this thing is being shuttered so soon, I am of the conclusion that those in charge at Disney have an uncanny and deliberate ability to drive what should be the most lucrative and easy to handle IP they have - right into the reef.
They are so completely boneheaded.
So stubbornly set on reimagining Star Wars for an audience that doesn't exist.
 

Drdcm

Well-Known Member
I always thought they should create something that can easily adapt. Like a temporary themed hotel. Something they can switch out relatively easily. Star Wars/Marvel/Princess/Haunted Mansion/Pandora. Something different on a rotating schedule
 

Tha Realest

Well-Known Member
Speaking of sunk costs, it was also made known today they are dropping the entirety of the season (series?) of ECHO all at once, something no D+ series has done to date from my knowledge. Smacks of confidence.

With SWGS, Lake Nona, and now this, feels like a lot of deck clearing.
 

twilight mitsuk

Well-Known Member
or ya know.. could simply be that not only was the price almost entirely out of reach to the typical family but guests at a Star Wars hotel expect to see the most famous characters they’d grown to love for 40+ years. The non-ip vs ip argument doesn’t work here because clearly, it’s specifically supposed to be themed around the Star Wars IP and fails to do it properly. It’s not rocket science.

Original content truly only works best for an original, new concept. Not to say you can’t do sequels or extensions tastefully, but you have to do it in a way that respects the core foundations of said franchise (see Star Tours). Disney hasn’t been very good at this as of late, with the exception of basically the first couple seasons of Mandolorian and the like. You don’t go on a Mickey Mouse ride and then you’re presented with an alternate universe of said franchise where Mickey and the Gang, familiar landscapes, etc. aren’t core characters or parts in little to no capacity. That’s just stupid. You keep the core foundations, locations, etc. folks love from the movie and simply continue and add more parts to the story, development, etc. from there. It’s not that hard.
Like forbbiden journey
 

erasure fan1

Well-Known Member
And people really enjoyed JarJar?
He's no worse than Holdo or rose. I'd take Maul, young obiwan, quigon, jango, dooku, grievous... Over most all of the sequel characters. The prequels had their issues, but from a trilogy standpoint, they were light-years ahead of the sequels. Kennedy is just about as clueless of a president as could be. She has just been terrible for the brand in my opinion.
 

MagicRat

Well-Known Member
He's no worse than Holdo or rose. I'd take Maul, young obiwan, quigon, jango, dooku, grievous... Over most all of the sequel characters. The prequels had their issues, but from a trilogy standpoint, they were light-years ahead of the sequels. Kennedy is just about as clueless of a president as could be. She has just been terrible for the brand in my opinion.
And people really enjoyed JarJar?
 

RobWDW1971

Well-Known Member
It seems like this thing received positive reviews from the people who WANTED an immersive and secluded 2 day role-play experience going into it. The problem is that most people do not want that for their WDW vacation, they want to go see all 4 parks. I think even if the price was lower this would still have issues with low occupancy. There was always going to be a lack of demand after the superfans and “bloggers” all did it once, then the outrageous price was just a complete insult.

Exactly. They grossly overestimated how many adults wanted to play dress up surrounded by other adults playing dress up in a hotel for two straight days, it was a failed concept from the jump.

Just because a fan goes to a Star Wars convention for an afternoon dressed as Princess Leia for fun that does not mean that same person wants to go on vacation together and be locked into a small hotel with adults playing dress up with "backstories" for two days and nights.

When I was a child, I dressed up as Frankenstein for Halloween for two hours and scored some great candy. That doesn't mean I have interest in booking a stay in a Transylvania themed hotel with adults dressed up like Dracula, the Werewolf, and the Mummy for two days and three nights hearing about their made up backstories about their creators or the mystic spells that transformed them.

This is an embarrassing failure only exceeded by the pathetic Disney Defenders that have endlessly tried to pump this up for the past year when it was an obvious disaster from the start.
 

Skibum1970

Well-Known Member
Of all the boondoggles in Disney history - and there certainly have been more than a few - nothing has been such a spectacular, utterly confounding, dumpster fire of an abject failure as this was.

How in the H-E-you-know-what they screwed this up will a tale told for generations...what should have been the most in-demand boutique hotel on the planet, and they barely could keep it open for a year.

Funny thing is, even with the cheap, generic sets that looked out of "Random 90's Sci-fi show", or the lack of things to do besides chasing things with your phone and playing card games, they still could have done so much better if they had just gone with Darth Vader instead of Kylo Ren...hopefully, just as all other areas of Star Wars merchandising, products, etc. have done, they finally realize once and for all that the people that have this kind of money to spend on Star Wars don't spend their money on Sequel Trilogy anything.

As a number of us said from the beginning, this was a product that was really only aimed at people who spend too much money at WDW and want social media cred for doing the biggest, latest, most expensive thing - and apparently they ran out of those people more quickly than any of us even expected.

I would throw this out there. The SW Cruise and Harmonious have both been significant flops. Galaxy's Edge has underperformed and they still appear to not have learned anything. I have assumed that it was arrogance/hubris in that they felt that they could dictate what people would like as opposed to understanding what their guests actually want. I'm not sure if this falls on Chapek, Iger, or a whole group of leaders in the company.
 

WDWTrojan

Well-Known Member
I still find it interesting that they didn't choose to discount harder. Makes me wonder what the operational costs are and the margin needed for it to be worthwhile. Priced at around $2000, I think it would probably work.

It’s just there so, so few rooms. So the labor alone makes it tough to justify.
 

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