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Thread: Starcruiser to Close in September

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    Starcruiser to Close in September

    "Disney Worlds Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a two-day hotel experience, is closing and will make its final voyage this September after being open for only more than a year."

    Click here for full article.

    Karin


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    Can anyone really be surprised about this?

    There are more than enough reviews out there that say how cool it is, but the bottom line is the vacationing public's bottom line. (There are only so many bloggers and YouTube content creators going multiple times to create content for their channels as a business expense ; ) )

    It was obviously way overpriced.

    I guess further announcements are possibly coming in the future as to what happens with it (or maybe not if they are just giving the concept up 100% right now and moth-balling or destroying the building). One would have thought that some sort of adjustment to the experience or cost might have made sense before just killing it entirely, but maybe Disney looks at any possible reduction in cost as an admission of error that they are not willing to make and would rather just write the whole thing off.

    I sort of wondered how it might do if they re-imagined it as a partial day tour sort of thing. This would entail removing the overnight aspect and turning it into something like a several hour to half day experience for a cost that is slightly above some of the more expensive tours they have now. As a solo traveler and big SW fan, I would have possibly considered such a thing if they offered it, depending on the price point.

    Of course that would not solve the problem of what to do with the actual hotel rooms, which of course would no longer serve a significant purpose. But it might have been a half decent intermediate step if they wanted to try it before deciding to just close the whole thing down and either re-purpose it as warehouse/offices/etc or even demolishing it.

    Hopefully the CMs working it will all have opportunities to transfer to positions somewhere else in the parks. Considering how the company publicly played up the process of CMs applying to be part of this experience, it would be a real kick in the pants to them if they now are out of a job after only about a year. With Disney's supposed continuing challenge of having enough staff, it would seem there is more than enough need that they can absorb these CMs into the rest of the parks somewhere.

    -Dave

  4. #3

    When this first opened, one of my friends said that she wanted to go before they reduced the price for the stay but make all of the "all-inclusive" items extra. I thought that she was probably right. Pricing this like a Disney Cruise to nowhere always struck me as an odd decision.

    It will be interesting to see what Disney does next.


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    Frankly I didnt think it was overpriced for what was being offered - a 100 room 2 day immersive with all of the food, entertainment, actor interaction, effects, etc. They needed to charge a lot because the occupancy was so low per "voyage". I think they totally miscalculated their market. I recall Chapek claiming he expected a 97% occupancy rate- all the time. Thats high even for a regular hotel. Its another sign they they are chasing the high-end guest with lots of money to burn - but that market is not very big. Now make it Star Wars and you've REALLY shrunk your available market. They either had to lower the price or close it. They chose the latter probably because they saw the operating costs would not be covered by the lower price and they dont want to lose money. Besides - since when has Disney drastically lowered prices.

    Time-locking the story to a certain part of Disney canon didnt help. Folks want to experience their star wars from their childhoods - original, prequel, or new.

    Now if they close it, retool it, and then reopen as something else, thats a usual formula (like retheming a ride or a restaurant). However, as another hotel I dont know. Only 100 rooms, and small rooms to boot since you were not expected to be there very long. They could make it into a standard hotel offering with a Star Wars theme - props, decorations, some themed food, etc and no characters - sort of like Marvel hotel in Paris (as provost park pass idealized) but again with only 100 very small rooms I doubt that would happen.

    Maybe a themed laundromat?

    "[Disneyland] has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement - I knew when I was a kid." - Walt Disney

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by olegc View Post
    Frankly I didnt think it was overpriced for what was being offered - a 100 room 2 day immersive with all of the food, entertainment, actor interaction, effects, etc. They needed to charge a lot because the occupancy was so low per "voyage". I think they totally miscalculated their market. I recall Chapek claiming he expected a 97% occupancy rate- all the time. Thats high even for a regular hotel. Its another sign they they are chasing the high-end guest with lots of money to burn - but that market is not very big. Now make it Star Wars and you've REALLY shrunk your available market. They either had to lower the price or close it. They chose the latter probably because they saw the operating costs would not be covered by the lower price and they dont want to lose money. Besides - since when has Disney drastically lowered prices.

    Time-locking the story to a certain part of Disney canon didnt help. Folks want to experience their star wars from their childhoods - original, prequel, or new.

    Now if they close it, retool it, and then reopen as something else, thats a usual formula (like retheming a ride or a restaurant). However, as another hotel I dont know. Only 100 rooms, and small rooms to boot since you were not expected to be there very long. They could make it into a standard hotel offering with a Star Wars theme - props, decorations, some themed food, etc and no characters - sort of like Marvel hotel in Paris (as provost park pass idealized) but again with only 100 very small rooms I doubt that would happen.

    Maybe a themed laundromat?
    Since I didn't actually go on one of these "voyages", I guess I'm a little under qualified to say if the time period represented was a huge part of the problem. Some people thought that might have been an issue when they made Galaxy's Edge itself focused on the most recent trilogy, but I think most Star Wars fans (and all Disney fans, actually, judging by how crowded the land/rides are) like GE as it came out. Being a kid when the first movies came out, I would probably have preferred something more focused on those characters, but I fully understand why they did not, and I like GE quite a bit. Of course the fact that the Falcon is a major attraction and that provides the bridge connecting the two eras (both in the movies and in GE) is a big help in that regard, I think.

    What happens to the building could be interesting, depending on how much they may have planned for potential alternate use when it was designed and built. Right now, with no windows in the rooms, it's a hard sell as any other sort of hotel, I think. It's sure not a Deluxe as any other sort of hotel in it's current form. If the design somehow allows for easy modification to add windows (and exterior decor, which I understand is standard warehouse gray concrete right now since no one ever sees the outside of the building), maybe it could work. I could see doing what you suggest, which would involve very little actual change to it, but they sort of need to "close" it in the mean time to allow it to rise from the ashes as something different than what is started as.

    I think you win MP today, if not the Internet for the Themed Laundromat comment!
    -Dave

  7. #6
    Fun is wherever you find it... olegc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave1313 View Post
    Since I didn't actually go on one of these "voyages", I guess I'm a little under qualified to say if the time period represented was a huge part of the problem. Some people thought that might have been an issue when they made Galaxy's Edge itself focused on the most recent trilogy, but I think most Star Wars fans (and all Disney fans, actually, judging by how crowded the land/rides are) like GE as it came out. Being a kid when the first movies came out, I would probably have preferred something more focused on those characters, but I fully understand why they did not, and I like GE quite a bit. Of course the fact that the Falcon is a major attraction and that provides the bridge connecting the two eras (both in the movies and in GE) is a big help in that regard, I think.

    I think you win MP today, if not the Internet for the Themed Laundromat comment!
    Good points - but I have heard many who initially like GE now say "I really like it - but I want more. I want original trilogy, I want prequels in GE". Star Wars Nites in Anaheim elevated that argument to have all of these characters everywhere. You even had Movies 2 and 3 Anakin in Fantasyland and Darth Vader in Tomorrowland. So people were very hyped to point out that SWGE is great, but..., they want more. and I guess there is some discussion around Smuggler's Run not being as big as it was thought originally. Its usually no more than a 45 min wait if that except on the most extreme busy days. So its up in the air.

    Thanks for the note on theme. STAR (laundromat) WARS... have R2D2 or the droid from Ronto's wash your clothes. No ironing allowed.
    "[Disneyland] has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement - I knew when I was a kid." - Walt Disney

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by olegc View Post
    Good points - but I have heard many who initially like GE now say "I really like it - but I want more. I want original trilogy, I want prequels in GE". Star Wars Nites in Anaheim elevated that argument to have all of these characters everywhere. You even had Movies 2 and 3 Anakin in Fantasyland and Darth Vader in Tomorrowland. So people were very hyped to point out that SWGE is great, but..., they want more. and I guess there is some discussion around Smuggler's Run not being as big as it was thought originally. Its usually no more than a 45 min wait if that except on the most extreme busy days. So its up in the air.

    Thanks for the note on theme. STAR (laundromat) WARS... have R2D2 or the droid from Ronto's wash your clothes. No ironing allowed.
    Your comment on those SW Nites Events (which sound like they were pretty neat) sort of reminds me of the Star Wars Weekends events that they had for maybe a couple of months over the summer at DHS until 2015. Those were always a lot of fun, but were of course before there was an actual land or attractions as a permanent SW presence in the park.

    While a lot of it was less formal fan or fan group based, there was a lot of great content across much of the 2 trilogies that existed at the time (and some from other former "extended universe" material to a lesser extent). One of my favorites was a discussion/demonstration/show that Ray Park did several times over the years. That was really good.

    Rumor (maybe fact, I've not read actual quotes from G Lucas if they exist) was that Lucas was not fond of those events and the crossing over of Disney characters into the SW roles that was promoted (such as logos and lots of action figures that were sold even outside of the events in the Star Tours gift shops). So eventually ending those events and those type of cross-over marketing products may have been part of the larger agreement when Disney bought Lucasfilm. And of course the costuming that was allowed for the invited fan groups that were art of the event (and also regular guests, IIRC) then for these events was OK at the time, since there were no Disney employees walking around as Star Wars characters, so the issue of confusing guests for CMs was not the problem that it would be today in that regard.

    I remember dreaming (maybe even in a thread here way back when ) of a Speeder Bike ride outside the current perimeter of DHS, right about where they ended up putting the hotel. So if they do demolish the hotel building, maybe we get lucky and they do maybe create something from the original trilogy. Of course, as all of you CA folks are well aware, they had to get pretty creative to build the DL GE where they did, so adding new stuff in the same general area there doesn't seem like an easy putt. Maybe something in that grand expansion plan over in the hotel area that has come up again recently could support some additional SW content.
    -Dave

  9. #8
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    watch them turn it into office space with a commissary and screening room. Or maybe it can be one of the prisons the governor wants to build. Just spitballing here...

    "[Disneyland] has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement - I knew when I was a kid." - Walt Disney

  10. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by olegc View Post
    watch them turn it into office space with a commissary and screening room. Or maybe it can be one of the prisons the governor wants to build. Just spitballing here...
    I have to assume that Disney owns the land the hotel is on ... the prison will have to go next door. May the prisoners can work furlough at the laundromat?

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    This is actually hilarious.


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