News Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Permanently Closed Fall 2023

flynnibus

Premium Member
It wasn’t a Star Wars experience… it felt nothing like the original trilogy. That’s what everyone wants.
You keep beating this horse...

Yet tons of content is wildly successful outside of the OT. Yes, much of the sequel stuff sucked, but get off the 'OT is what everyone wants' wagon already.

This isn't a 'because the sequels sucked, it must be OT' world... It's simply the sequels SUCKED! People flock to non-OT characters like Grogu like he's the new R2... people love shows like Bad Batch, or Clone Wars, or Ashoka, etc.

Disney was smart to move on from the Luke+Leia+Vader story... you gotta at some point. You can't be thinking you can de-age Mark and Han forever... and we already saw how Solo was poorly recieved. Origin stories only go so far. To keep the franchise humming you gotta expand.

That was the best thing about Lucus' world.... how he kept expanding and bringing us new things we had never seen before and we loved them. The issue isn't "lacking OT" -- The issue is "bad movies and characters". Where they've skipped those mistakes - people are loving it.
 

Tha Realest

Well-Known Member
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
I don’t view it that way.

Imagine if instead of pursuing this course of action, they just included the best parts of it - the vitality of the performers, a sit down dining experience, perhaps some exclusive Jedi training - and dropped it into SWGE as originally intended.

Had they done THAT, it would rival New Orleans Square and Cars Land as the best land Disney had to offer.
 

Disstevefan1

Well-Known Member
Years ago Iger stated that they will be making "Better bets" on theme park additions tying them to IP. Their very loose understanding of themed entertainment is that it's a vehicle to further leverage existing brands.

The Galactic Starcruiser would never have been built if Star Wars wasn't attached. While a completely different type of experience, I imagine that if Night Kingdom had a viable IP attached to it, it would have also happened. This is the type of risk they are now willing to take. I like that they're still willing to take risks, but these types of risks make less sense when each of the four parks needs more rides. They stepped away from their core business in an effort to move up market and it didn't work. I applaud them for recognizing it so quickly.

Galactic Starcruiser didn't fail because of a lack of quality. It failed because the price point made it a non-starter for too many people.
Totally agree. It was the price point. Folks who vacation at WDW are accustomed high prices for everything but when you price something so high it makes them pause, it's not going to work.
 

dreamfinder912

Well-Known Member
I think people understood from all the reviews that it wasn't a hotel, but a fully immersive Star Wars experience. And that it was a blast.

Honestly they could have themed it to anything else: Anything Marvel, other Star Wars lore, Pandora, something brand new, it still would have flopped.

I am glad you managed to go 3 times. Most people / families have a hard time, if possible, to save $5k - $6k for a couple days.
Over $15k - $18k for 6 days vacation it's just impossible for most.

At that price point, it's doomed to fail. You will get the really rich to go once, the super fans that will save to go once, the very few that might be both and will go a few times... But the pool will run dry. It's too small a group, you can't sell that expensive a product every couple of days and expect it to sell out forever. You don't see Ferrari trying to sell SF90 spiders at the same pace as Toyota sells Corollas and RAV4s. They would go under in no time.
I get it, the price was out of reach for a lot of people. We are lucky in the jobs we have, but mostly our lives lack the financial burdens a lot of people face. Us damnable childfree millennials and all that.

But I don't put all or most of the blame on price. There are people even in this thread that said oh we could afford it but it looked stupid. Most people who've been will sing it's praises. Marketing is the reason they missed a large chunk of fanbase. I don't think it could've continued forever without story updates, but it would've had a much larger base and more repeat travelers.
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
It wasn’t a Star Wars experience… it felt nothing like the original trilogy. That’s what everyone wants. Universal didn’t make the world of witchcraft and then kick out all original characters.
Screw Disney for destroying Star Wars. Last Jedi was such a joke, everything went downhill once that movie was released.
There’s no such thing as an “experience”…that term was created in a lab to disassociate the product Disney sells from an appropriate value structure so they can tinker with prices. Very blue ocean.

But I agree with what you’re saying. This is yet another example of how awful Disney is at Star Wars. It’s been a disaster on many levels
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
The root cause is anchoring Disney theme park Star Wars to an unnecessarily specific time and character set that is neither nostalgic nor particularly engaging.
As it was said long ago…the root causes are as follows:

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Trauma

Well-Known Member
$3K a night is nothing. One can lose that in a few minutes or a few hours at the tables .
I need to go gambling with you. My friends are scared to play $25 a pull slots, so I can’t even play in the high roller area unless I want to go solo.
 

MAGICFLOP

Well-Known Member
This project was not well thought out. This is a case of then what.

They needed to know how many die hard SW fans would have the 5k for 2 days and were willing spend the money, and that would probably be a year of bookings (based on what's happening).

Then what?
Would these people come back yearly? every 5 years? or was once enough? : Questioned answered on 5/18/23
 

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