mikejs78
Premium Member
My hunch? It's a combination of several factors; focusing on the wrong Star Wars characters, Mr. Chapek cutting out all the entertainment and interactive stuff that would have made Star Wars Land unique, not opening with the WOW! E Ticket that the Resistance ride promises to be, having the Falcon ride being slightly underwhelming from a rider experience, and then throw in a messy marketing message for both coasts and a big hurricane scare for opening weekend in Orlando.
First, can we keep this thread to a DHS discussion? What's going on in DL is interesting but there's a whole separate thread to that.
I can't quibble with anything on your list, other than maybe the "unfamiliar characters". As many have pointed out, Rex was not familiar, but that didn't stop Star Tours from being insanely popular.
I would add to that list the double digits annual price increases over the past few years may have finally caught up to Disney...
I still think the land will ultimately be a success, at least in DHS. Most of the reviews I've seen on the East coast have highly praised the land (with the valid criticisms that there needs to be more entertainment/etc.) Rise will be an interesting study. I remember early on here people saying (before opening) that Rise would be the much better ride, the tentpole of the land. Maybe the lesson here is that Disney got greedy and opened the land too early without the signature attraction, and that caused a lot of the buzz to be less than positive. We will see. Will be interesting to watch.