News Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Permanently Closed Fall 2023

[DCBaker]

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

Some attractions never accrue enough success to be shuttered. The Haunted Mansion is an example of this. However, the Galactic Starcruiser's success rate was so high, its already closed! Huzzah! Huzzah!

They are on a roll with stuff like this. Rivers of light, the alien invasion, taco ship, octopus arm lakeside spectacular. Success rate accrual is off the charts.

Shows, spectacles, micromanaged larping spectaculars. The brightest star burns for only ten million years or so, but that's on super long science time. Ten million years in this analogy is 18 months or whatever.

Chapek didn't do so well either.

 

[MaryJaneP]

Synergy - rooms for Anaheim WDI. Win-win

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

Mickey's Marijuana Adventure

I like it.

 

[J4546]

Maybe they can demo the residential wing and build a new one with regular rooms with windows and balconies, cut actors and the whole story line and just let guest explore the cool.stuff on their own and give shuttles to and from.DHS. for a much lower price of course. Also add a pool

 

[King Panda 77]

Mickey's Marijuana Adventure

I like it.

So long as there is a cupcake store inside.

 

[Lilofan]

Mickey's Marijuana Adventure

I like it.

One of the ways to eat the sometimes average to indelible food at Disney. Get the munchies !

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

One of the ways to eat the sometimes average to indelible food at Disney. Get the munchies !

Sell them the pot and then continue to mark up the food. And make portions smaller

 

[AEfx]

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.

Yes, but the "bright" side is - most other areas of the company (and those that make licensed Star Wars products) already ditched Sequel Trilogy stuff years ago. Completely aside from the discussion of the quality of the films, the fact is, it simply does not sell to the audiences that spend money regularly on Star Wars.

The parks division seems to be the last place that is getting on that train. I think they have known for awhile, but given the time-frames of theme park development, are only just now able to correct. In hindsight, aside from the fact of "Disney is going to go cheap on anything they can go cheap on", I have a feeling this may be why the experience was so lackluster to begin with.

After TLJ, vendors were already pulling back - RoS was barely supported by products to begin with, and after the bits they did for that, the Sequel Trilogy has all but disappeared in terms of Star Wars merchandising since the turn of the decade.

The biggest evidence of this (aside from theme parks) is just looking at the obvious - the toys and collectable market (which is what drives the whole franchise financially). Star Wars "toys", merchandising, and high-end collectables (the things that people who spend many hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year on Star Wars products purchase) are doing better than ever. I put "toys" in quotes because there really isn't much of a market for children's toys period these days, and when I say toys I am referring to Hasbro and their lines, which are all aimed at adult collectors.

There are new product announcements every other week about all the various action figure series (modern "vintage collection" themed packaging, retro figure reproductions, the hugely successful 6" Black Series line), new high end HotToys 12" scale stuff (which start at like $230++ these days), Premium Statues ($500+) and so on...and almost none of it has been Sequel Trilogy. There are occasional Kylo or Rey items, but they are few and far between and mostly on the high-end market where lead times on products are years, and even those few items are finally selling out after years of being on sale and don't seem to be replaced by anything. Contrast this to, say, Darth Vader and Luke - which there are multiple new versions every year and they all sell out like hotcakes in a blizzard, and appear across all the various lines.

These companies produce things based on what sells. Which is basically everything to do with the Original Trilogy (this year most of the hottest, most in-demand items are ROTJ related due to the 40th anniversary). Then the Clone Wars/Prequel Era stuff, and of course, Mandalorian/Baby Yoda. I would absolutely make the bet that just Baby Yoda merchandise alone has sold more than everything they did make for the entire Sequel Trilogy combined.

In any case, back to the "bright" side - I hope their willingness to jettison this endeavor also means that they will do what needs to be done with Galaxies Edge. RoR was clearly designed in such a way that the entire thing could be rethemed in short order. Swap out the Stormtrooper helmets, redress the Kylo AA's with Vader, replace Hux's AA head with Tarkin, and switch the Rey hologram with Leia (as was originally intended anyway before Fisher passed, now that they have the tech to recreate her and her voice properly, like they have for Luke in the TV shows).

A fan can dream...

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

A 3000 room moderate with a Star Wars bar and stormtroopers around the pool would have been FAR more lucrative and successful. So would more/better rides in the land…but I digress

Disney doesn't build moderate hotels anymore, just DVC units.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Disney doesn't build moderate hotels anymore, just DVC units.

They actually build moderate and sell them as dvc…


…just too easy, Chuck

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I wonder how much money they lost on this thing (cost vs profit from guests)


It’s probably about as painful as harmonious

I am sure it underperformed expectations BUT it did still bring in direct money and even if not as many people were paying $3k/night, there were still a lot, plus all the merch, but the drinks including that one that cost thousands of dollars, etc

As for Harmonius, much harder to track how much $ it brought in (especially as would need to compare to how much $ would have come in anyway if they didn't make a new show) ... But I would be surprised if that incremental additional $ was all that much - especially since that central building didn't get built that was to host corporate events in the top floor

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I had a boss once like that who would reject and even shut down profitable projects because the operating ratio wasn't high enough.

Like 10% as opposed to the 30% profit the division threw off in normal years. I found out later the division heads had specific bonus goals tied to keeping the margin in a certain numerical range.

Plus they are going to look at trends .... Even if the Starcruiser made a 30% margin over the past year if the summer months and into the fall were projecting a loss, then that will drive the decision

 

[ToTBellHop]

Build a cool indoor space pool…

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Not too surprised this happened. They should have seen the numbers weren’t producing profitability fairly quickly and made adjustments to try making it work without so much expense. The bad thing I see is that many had speculated that if it was successful then the next builds might be a HM or ToT themed stay. Now they will be very hesitant to try something similar. Maybe to recoup the cost they can run some kind of guest experience that’s not going to take up so much park time and expense.
Probably though will be another empty building and ripped out material sent to a landfill.

I definitely think they are very unlikely to build something if this scale again, which is a bummer, but I think they could take what parts people resonated the most with and what challenges it had and play that forward

Like maybe they learned people would much prefer a highly themed dining event (like for HM or ToT) vs a multi night stay

Or maybe they do build a S.E.A. themed hotel but with only moderat immersion and drop the explicit storyline

 

[JIMINYCR]

I’d be interested to see what you thought about this about 10-14 months ago?

Back then I had high hopes that it would draw more SW fans and would be a bigger draw. I did have qualms that taking away days from a week or two week planned trip would hurt attracting out of area guests. The price IMHO was too high and wouldn’t be sustained by the mid income guests. Dis still should have done some tweaking of the program to help it live. Cost was a major factor but not entirely the fault for its demise.
There were many SW fans who raved about the experience and those who said it fell flat for them.

 

[James Alucobond]

I definitely think they are very unlikely to build something if this scale again, which is a bummer, but I think they could take what parts people resonated the most with and what challenges it had and play that forward

I don’t really think it’s a bummer at all. Hopefully they just pivot. I honestly can’t imagine paying to go to WDW without having the freedom to actually explore WDW. No single thing at the parks should be designed to sequester you for multiple days; it takes away virtually everything that makes the WDW environs unique and enjoyable.

 

[TP2000]

The thing looks lame compared to the concept art, value engineered I guess. It looks small and unimpressive. Especially the windows in the rooms.

If there's any casual takeaway from this failure (because I'm not at all convinced anyone in WDI or Burbank has learned their lesson yet), I would hope that Disney could at least stop releasing concept art to the public that is wildly inconsistent with the reality they end up building.

For example, what they announced in the first WDI concept art released for the Starcruiser made it look impressive, with a big scale and huge windows out into space, droids roaming the lobby, a robot bartender, an interior that actually reflected the exterior shape of the ship etc.,...

But the actual reality was a mostly windowless room with a value engineered aesthetic and no continuity to the rest of the "ship"...

After I found out a lot of this could have been a table service restaurant in GE that they canceled in favor of locking it behind this ridiculously priced paywall I felt somewhat bitter about it.

Agreed. But if it's any consolation, even the table service dinner show they once announced for GE ended up being small and lame on the Starcruiser. So at least you weren't missing some grand dinner show if you didn't want to pay $5,000 for the Starcruiser.

What they announced would be in Galaxy's Edge as the table-service dinner show...

But the actual reality of what they put behind a $5,000 paywall on the Starcruiser was just SciFi theme night in a church basement...

So the good news for Star Wars fans who couldn't stomach the huge price tag for the Starcruiser... at least you didn't miss much!

But seriously, Disney's marketing team and WDI team need to stop releasing concept art on future projects that is wildly inconsistent with the actual product they are going to offer to customers. It's not a good business practice in the Internet age, and it makes people not trust you.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Back then I had high hopes that it would draw more SW fans and would be a bigger draw. I did have qualms that taking away days from a week or two week planned trip would hurt attracting out of area guests. The price IMHO was too high and wouldn’t be sustained by the mid income guests. Dis still should have done some tweaking of the program to help it live. Cost was a major factor but not entirely the fault for its demise.
There were many SW fans who raved about the experience and those who said it fell flat for them.

Well we know there weren’t that many at all…

And I would argue (and I would be right) that those were Disney fans and the blogosphere…

Which is a huge example of why iger’s echo chamber leads to bigger problems.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

I don’t really think it’s a bummer at all. Hopefully they just pivot. I honestly can’t imagine paying to go to WDW without having the freedom to actually explore WDW. No single thing at the parks should be designed to sequester you for multiple days; it takes away virtually everything that makes the WDW environs unique and enjoyable.

Well, you can't, but I know many people who did the Starcruiser and loved and and went back for multiple visits

And I like that Disney did something bold and took a chance. If the performance of it makes Disney be even more conservative going forward all we will get is predicable rides and restaurants and hotels using predictable IP ... So I wish their risk paid off a bit more to encourage them to take more chances, try other different things