News Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - Historical Construction/Impressions

[mickEblu]

You could be right. Between $150 and $300 could be the range.

$200 and they ll sell like hot cakes

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Except Solo wasn't bad.

It was at least 40 to 50 percent bad and the rest was nothing remarkable.

 

[Professortango1]

Except Solo wasn't bad.

Wasn't terrible, but wasn't good either. Cringey fan service, weak writing, and characters without charisma or arcs. It was fluff. Nothing offensive, but clearly thrown together fluff.

 

[SuddenStorm]

I don't know about you but I use that time to ride other rides in the vicinity. I can tell you for certain that I would never ride Pooh or the Canoes if it weren't for Splash Mountain FP. I can't be the only visitor who does this. I can also tell you that I never buy anything at Disneyland other than food at meal time.

This!

I do a very similar system- I Fastpass every ride that lets me, and only standby lines without Fastpass. Pretty easy to get a decent ride count in when you're not waiting standby for everything, or only relying on Fastpass.

 

[Disney Irish]

$200 and they ll sell like hot cakes

Agreed.

 

[SuddenStorm]

Yes that's the real problem with it. Its competent but not a must see. I never thought in my life time I would see a SW movie bomb.

I think there are a few execs over at Lucasfilm and Disney thinking the same thing.

I have to wonder how Solo's performance, and The Last Jedi's divisiveness will impact Kennedy's plans for the franchise? With merchandise sales dropping for each and every film, even more money is being left on the table.

Even worse, Disney just built a land that is focused almost exclusively on their version of Star Wars. It's not the Empire, it's the First Order. No Luke, Leia, Han- but Rey, Finn, and Kylo. And unless these characters have an amazing third act, I don't see any of them becoming iconic.

 

[dweezil78]

Yes, which is why a lower price point would have been something more would have been interested in. Which again is why I pose the question, more rhetorical, will they pull the SW:GE preview cost back to something like $150. I think the answer is obviously yes at this point.

No chance— because unlike Pixar Pier, paying that to see SW:GE early and with guarantees to see the new stuff will actually be worth $300 to a lot of people.

 

[FerretAfros]

Never, I'd imagine. They'll never make their way to Paris or Tokyo or Hong Kong or Shanghai either. There simply isn't enough Disney-owned hotel rooms to get them to pencil out anywhere else. And from what we've learned over the last few years, it never really penciled out at WDW either and led to the sudden demise of several top Disney execs who approved it all and thought it would work great, namely Jay Rasulo and Tom Staggs.

Disneyland is doing all it needs to do for tourists and locals alike with the Disneyland App on everyone's phones.

If MagicBands and FP+ had worked and done what it was supposed to at WDW, it would have shown up four years ago in Anaheim and Paris and Hong Kong, and would have been designed into the park from day one for Shanghai.

MagicBands are a WDW one-off, and it will be interesting to see if they even exist at WDW 7 or 8 years from now. My bet would be that they go away by 2025, and WDW moves to an App-based system like everyone else.

In the most literal sense, Magic Bands won't be adopted by any of the other parks worldwide. None of them have the proportion of on-site guests to justify the cost of the wearable ticket media or relative expense of RFID cards.

In a recent corporate update (in summer/fall 2017?) Disney admitted that the technology behind the Magic Bands is already out of date and there's essentially no way the devices can be modified to keep pace with the industry. However, most of that same functionality can be found in most contemporary smartphones, opening the door for a new way for the system to connect to its users. To what degree Disney wants to work with this technology, and try to tackle the inevitable challenges of multiple ways for guests to access their system, remains to be seen.

That said, the concept and user interface behind the My Disney Experience approach to vacation planning is already creeping into many of the other resorts. Dining reservations and FPs can be booked online. All aspects of your vacation are linked together in a single account. Your park entry media is scanned to verify your FP time at the entrance to each attraction. Utility infrastructure for this functionality has been included in all major construction projects from Carsland to Shanghai.

While the physical Magic Bands may not make an appearance elsewhere, it seems that the MyMagic+ approach to vacation micromanaging is here to stay

I never understood how Magic Bands were ever approved. Complete waste of money on Disney's part.

From my understanding WDW's entire tech infrastructure was painfully obsolete and needed to be updated. This meant that everything from hotel reservation servers to turnstiles had to be replaced. The MyMagic+ system allowed them to do these resort-wide changes as part of a single initiative, and the Magic Band interface gave them a way to make it marketable.

Of course, the irony in this resort-wide tech upgrade is that it is all becoming obsolete again and will need to be replaced in the mid-term future. And since it was all installed at the same time, much of it will need to be replaced at the same time, making it difficult to distribute the cost evenly over a longer period

To what degree anybody at the corporate level actually believed that this would increase guest spending and satisfaction, I don't know. Anybody with half a clue would know that the early promises were either things that Disney should have already been doing (monitoring crowdflow patterns and improving queues) or were wildly unrealistic in a real-world environment (entertainment on-demand and truly personalized experiences). The unfortunate reality is that they spent more than enough to build an entire new park, but have very few guest improvements to show for it

 

[Old Mouseketeer]

Never, I'd imagine. They'll never make their way to Paris or Tokyo or Hong Kong or Shanghai either. There simply isn't enough Disney-owned hotel rooms to get them to pencil out anywhere else. And from what we've learned over the last few years, it never really penciled out at WDW either and led to the sudden demise of several top Disney execs who approved it all and thought it would work great, namely Jay Rasulo and Tom Staggs.

Disneyland is doing all it needs to do for tourists and locals alike with the Disneyland App on everyone's phones.

If MagicBands and FP+ had worked and done what it was supposed to at WDW, it would have shown up four years ago in Anaheim and Paris and Hong Kong, and would have been designed into the park from day one for Shanghai.

MagicBands are a WDW one-off, and it will be interesting to see if they even exist at WDW 7 or 8 years from now. My bet would be that they go away by 2025, and WDW moves to an App-based system like everyone else.

Interesting story on the MagicBands cost overruns: I have a friend who is an IT manager for a major US banking conglomerate. When I told them about what a boondoggle the MagicBands project had become, they matter-of-factly began ticking off all the steps in a major project like this that would inevitably (in their mind) lead to a billion-dollar cost overrun. This included mission creep, unforeseen incompatibility issues between systems, turf wars, oneupmanship between executives/departments, "while we're doing this, we might as well do that to save money in the long run", underestimating cost/complexity, etc.

I was dead impressed!

 

[Phroobar]

Interesting story on the MagicBands cost overruns: I have a friend who is an IT manager for a major US banking conglomerate. When I told them about what a boondoggle the MagicBands project had become, they matter-of-factly began ticking off all the steps in a major project like this that would inevitably (in their mind) lead to a billion-dollar cost overrun. This included mission creep, unforeseen incompatibility issues between systems, turf wars, oneupmanship between executives/departments, "while we're doing this, we might as well do that to save money in the long run", underestimating cost/complexity, etc.

I was dead impressed!

That's all stuff the average Disney forum poster never understands. Giant corporations are like government. Every department is out for their own self interests. Nothing is done for the good of the company or project. It takes a highly skilled manager to keep things under control. Most middle managers don't have that or are too buried that they can't make a positive change.

 

[BrianLo]

I think there are a few execs over at Lucasfilm and Disney thinking the same thing.

I have to wonder how Solo's performance, and The Last Jedi's divisiveness will impact Kennedy's plans for the franchise? With merchandise sales dropping for each and every film, even more money is being left on the table.

Even worse, Disney just built a land that is focused almost exclusively on their version of Star Wars. It's not the Empire, it's the First Order. No Luke, Leia, Han- but Rey, Finn, and Kylo. And unless these characters have an amazing third act, I don't see any of them becoming iconic.

For the record we don’t believe this land will feature Rey/Finn/Poe. It has Poe’s ship but that’s sort of non-specific. The only characters who will appear are the evergreen non-face character. Chewie, droids, masked characters like Kylo Ren.

Even still, the fan backlash matters zilch if Pandora has anything to say. I really worry that we are getting something somewhat original and people keep bringing up characters and movie locales as this lands ‘problem’.

 

[Disney Irish]

No chance— because unlike Pixar Pier, paying that to see SW:GE early and with guarantees to see the new stuff will actually be worth $300 to a lot of people.

You may think someone will pay that but it’s what does Disney think someone will pay that is important. Especially given the recent test apple of the Pixar Pier preview $300 price point that no really took a bite into. If $500 was their previous target for the SW:GE preview I think they drop it to between $150-$300. My point is no way they keep it at $500. There is an upper limit to this stuff, even I’m willing to admit that.

 

[dweezil78]

You may think someone will pay that but it’s what does Disney think someone will pay that is important. Especially given the recent test apple of the Pixar Pier preview $300 price point that no really took a bite into. If $500 was their previous target for the SW:GE preview I think they drop it to between $150-$300. My point is no way they keep it at $500. There is an upper limit to this stuff, even I’m willing to admit that.

If even 25 people paid $300 for Pixar Pier, Disney ain’t fretting getting that from a galactic battleship load more people for SWL.

 

[Phroobar]

For the record we don’t believe this land will feature Rey/Finn/Poe. It has Poe’s ship but that’s sort of non-specific. The only characters who will appear are the evergreen non-face character. Chewie, droids, masked characters like Kylo Ren.

Even still, the fan backlash matters zilch if Pandora has anything to say. I really worry that we are getting something somewhat original and people keep bringing up characters and movie locales as this lands ‘problem’.

I believe the fan backlash is from a very small group of people. Kids still love Star Wars. However, when it comes to toys, it has been totally mismanaged by Disney and Hasbro for the last few years. The quality is cheap and the distribution has been non existent. A lot of people have stopped collecting because its just too hard to find anything. Stores don't stock their shelves because no one buys it. We use to get 30-40 figures a year at $7.99 with 12 point articulation. Now we get 8 figures per movie with 5 points of articulation for $10. I believe this collecting frustration has contributed to a lot of anti-Disney feelings when it comes to Star Wars.

When it comes to the theme park, people will visit SWGE just as much as the rest of the park. When people visit the parks, they try to do all the rides regardless of how they feel about the property. Case in point, no one cares about Avatar but its packed because it has low capacity numbers. Also how many guests know who Mr Toad is?

 

[Disney Irish]

If even 25 people paid $300 for Pixar Pier, Disney ain’t fretting getting that from a galactic battleship load more people for SWL.

We'll see, but even me Mr. Disney Optimist, thinks Disney is rethinking this high preview cost. There is only so much someone is willing to pay for a preview open to the public a short period time later.

Anyways we'll see soon enough.

 

[flynnibus]

You may think someone will pay that but it’s what does Disney think someone will pay that is important. Especially given the recent test apple of the Pixar Pier preview $300 price point that no really took a bite into. If $500 was their previous target for the SW:GE preview I think they drop it to between $150-$300. My point is no way they keep it at $500. There is an upper limit to this stuff, even I’m willing to admit that.

People are paying $70 just to have early morning access to existing content.
Disney charged what...upwards of $200 for other limited early access parties?

I don’t think Pixar pier is comparable at all...given the fact it’s mostly a rehash. I also think they err’d on Trying to market it as a full Dca pass.

Sw:ge is multiple new rides, multiple experiences, and it’s Star Wars. I can a ticketed event at >$400-500 and aimed at a few thousand guests. For Cali I can see them offering a paid emh long term too. At wdw, I think they’ll do like they have with avatar. Just keep standing emh hours. But of course still sell a preview party

 

[flynnibus]

We'll see, but even me Mr. Disney Optimist, thinks Disney is rethinking this high preview cost. There is only so much someone is willing to pay for a preview open to the public a short period time later.

Anyways we'll see soon enough.

We are talking about people who will stand in line for 4+hrs just to say they were there on day one... when they can ride any other time with a fraction of the wait. They will pay... oh yes, the sick will pay...

 

[BrianLo]

I believe the fan backlash is from a very small group of people. Kids still love Star Wars. However, when it comes to toys, it has been totally mismanaged by Disney and Hasbro for the last few years. The quality is cheap and the distribution has been non existent. A lot of people have stopped collecting because its just too hard to find anything. Stores don't stock their shelves because no one buys it. We use to get 30-40 figures a year at $7.99 with 12 point articulation. Now we get 8 figures per movie with 5 points of articulation for $10. I believe this collecting frustration has contributed to a lot of anti-Disney feelings when it comes to Star Wars.

When it comes to the theme park, people will visit SWGE just as much as the rest of the park. When people visit the parks, they try to do all the rides regardless of how they feel about the property. Case in point, no one cares about Avatar but its packed because it has low capacity numbers. Also how many guests know who Mr Toad is?

Animal Kingdom attendance is up 2 million over a 9 month period on the back of Pandora. I know what you are saying, but there are additions that are low capacity and attractive within the context of a park without actually really bringing in all that many people through the physical gate. Frozen Ever After is more the example of that.

 

[dweezil78]

We'll see, but even me Mr. Disney Optimist, thinks Disney is rethinking this high preview cost. There is only so much someone is willing to pay for a preview open to the public a short period time later.

Anyways we'll see soon enough.

Yeah but the difference is no one will be able to get near SWL for quite some time after it opens — especially not in a way that allows them to see everything. Pixar Pier will die down quickly relatively speaking and also really doesn’t offer anything new that is worth paying for beyond normal admission. If you arrive for rope drop after the first weekend you probably won’t even have too hard a time getting on Incredicoaster. The fact that it’s a coaster with a loop means it already scares off 2/3 of all guests anyways!!

 

[Phroobar]

Yeah but the difference is no one will be able to get near SWL for quite some time after it opens — especially not in a way that allows them to see everything. Pixar Pier will die down quickly relatively speaking and also really doesn’t offer anything new that is worth paying for beyond normal admission. If you arrive for rope drop after the first weekend you probably won’t even have too hard a time getting on Incredicoaster. The fact that it’s a coaster with a loop means it already scares off 2/3 of all guests anyways!!

If it is common knowledge that SWL will be packed and people should stay away, will that make SWL a ghost town upon opening?