Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser Hotel To Close

[beastfan11]

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/05/18/disney-worlds-star-wars-galactic-starcruiser-to-shutter.html
 

I’m a huge Star Wars and Disney Parks fan, but I never understood the appeal. $5-6k for a two night stay in a windowless bunker just isn’t it…

[Captain Nemo]

The execution was full of poor decisions but I still find the concept can work.

But I'm not surprised, I gave it a year.

[TombRaiderFTW]

Yeah... That was an inspired attempt to one-up the WWoHP-style immersion that seems to be the name of the game in Florida right now, but I think Disney really overestimated how much anyone wants to pay $5,000 to LARP at a hotel for two days.

I think a better use of the space would be to operate it as almost a rideless extension of Galaxy's Edge--have in-character staff, entertainment, and food, but make it an attraction to be seen and enjoyed in moderation one afternoon during your Disney trip. A plus over the average Disney hotel experience, but at its core still a Disney hotel.

[johnjniehaus]

I agree that the price was just ridiculous and really hurt the attendance. I'm sure the amount of money it takes to run the star cruiser is substantial but "average" people can't drop 5-6k for two nights. Even some of what I would consider wealthy people I know would say that's ridiculous because some wealthy people are actually pretty frugal in my opinion. Sure they splurge here and there but they are also money smart and worked their way up to where they are now financially. Throwing down that much on the star cruiser isn't very money smart when you can get so much more time at Disney for less money by staying somewhere else. So if the target audience was the middle class they failed and even not everyone in the upper class is willing to spend that much when there's better options to be had. 

[BeeastFarmer]

Shhhh...but I heard that Disney has bought the Star Trek franchise from Paramount and they are going to convert the hotel into a Star Trek Experience. Darth Vader is actually the great grandpa of the Borg Queen, he met her great grandma at an Ikea in Sweden. That's the story line they are using for this project. 

[flightoffear1996]

From the things I am seeing the price increases for pretty much anything anymore is really starting to hurt the Disney and Universal Parks.  They are both running some pretty good promotions now.  Seems the COVID travel surge is about over.

[Rifleman]

I knew this concept was doomed from the start.

I am 100% the target demographic for the galactic star cruiser. I hit literally every checkbox.

1. I love theme parks, and travel frequently to visit them. According to coaster count, I have visited 46 different theme parks.

2. I have children (2 girls, 9 and 11) that both love theme parks, all things Disney, and especially and star wars.

3. I LOVE star wars. I traveled to Chicago to addend Celebration, I have Star Wars memorabilia all over my man cave, I have seen every movie that has been released since I was born at the midnight showing opening day, and I am a member of the 501st legion and cosplay Darth Vader

4. I am at a point in my career where if I really wanted to, I could afford the asking price for the galactic starcruiser.

 

With all those points being taken into account, I never even considered going. The price was simply way to high, and the entire experience honestly sounds overly structured and stressful. If it was $2000 for the experience we likely would have given it try already, but at $6,000 before any travel expenses, it was never even on our radar as a vacation option. If I, will the 4 points listed above, am not willing to visit the galactic starcruiser, virtually nobody would be willing to do so. I am honesty surprised it stayed open as long as it did.

[SonofBaconator]

1 hour ago, Rifleman said:

I knew this concept was doomed from the start.

I am 100% the target demographic for the galactic star cruiser. I hit literally every checkbox.

1. I love theme parks, and travel frequently to visit them. According to coaster count, I have visited 46 different theme parks.

2. I have children (2 girls, 9 and 11) that both love theme parks, all things Disney, and especially and star wars.

3. I LOVE star wars. I traveled to Chicago to addend Celebration, I have Star Wars memorabilia all over my man cave, I have seen every movie that has been released since I was born at the midnight showing opening day, and I am a member of the 501st legion and cosplay Darth Vader

4. I am at a point in my career where if I really wanted to, I could afford the asking price for the galactic starcruiser.

 

With all those points being taken into account, I never even considered going. The price was simply way to high, and the entire experience honestly sounds overly structured and stressful. If it was $2000 for the experience we likely would have given it try already, but at $6,000 before any travel expenses, it was never even on our radar as a vacation option. If I, will the 4 points listed above, am not willing to visit the galactic starcruiser, virtually nobody would be willing to do so. I am honesty surprised it stayed open as long as it did.

Out of curiosity- as you are fan of the franchise, did the price they were asking surprise you or come off as insulting? (I can’t think of a better term so please forgive me.) 

I ask because while companies have to make a profit to stay in business, I think what they want people to fork over be outright insulting at times. I argue it can even turn people away from their fandom because it they care more about the $$$ then providing an experience.

[DoomPlague]

3 hours ago, SonofBaconator said:

Out of curiosity- as you are fan of the franchise, did the price they were asking surprise you or come off as insulting? (I can’t think of a better term so please forgive me.) 

I ask because while companies have to make a profit to stay in business, I think what they want people to fork over be outright insulting at times. I argue it can even turn people away from their fandom because it they care more about the $$$ then providing an experience.

I don't get the "insulting" part personally. If anything I would be insulted if they offered something dirt cheap like "Hey Star Wars fan. Since you're probably a loser with low income, here's a $50 pod to sleep in"

Granted, I would probably also accept unlike the 6k experience they offered.

[SonofBaconator]

34 minutes ago, DoomPlague said:

I don't get the "insulting" part personally. If anything I would be insulted if they offered something dirt cheap like "Hey Star Wars fan. Since you're probably a loser with low income, here's a $50 pod to sleep in"

Granted, I would probably also accept unlike the 6k experience they offered.

Like I said, “insulting” might not have been the best choice of words. I think there can be a happy medium between what they were charging guests and the bare minimum. I follow Star Wars but I’m not big enough of a fan to spend 6K, but I know there are some people who are and more power to them. 

[KIBeast]

Let's be realistic for a moment, if you will. This was not going to work from the get go. I understand that there are a lot of Star Wars fans. I am one of them. This experience would be cool, but the cost is way out of my range. My thoughts on this are these: How many Star Wars fans are there? How many actually would want to LARP? And how many of those have that kind of disposable income? 

[Rifleman]

On 5/22/2023 at 2:34 PM, SonofBaconator said:

Out of curiosity- as you are fan of the franchise, did the price they were asking surprise you or come off as insulting? (I can’t think of a better term so please forgive me.) 

I ask because while companies have to make a profit to stay in business, I think what they want people to fork over be outright insulting at times. I argue it can even turn people away from their fandom because it they care more about the $$$ then providing an experience.

Insulting would not be the right word, but I think a lot of life long star wars fans were turned off by it, feeling as if disney was just trying to take advantage of them. There is already a view within the star wars fandom that disney does not care about the franchise or the fans, and they are just using it to squeeze as much money  out of people as quickly as possible, with no regard for the long term damage that is done by doing so. Many star wars fans feel that disney would rather make 500 million off star wars this year, and then never make another cent on it again, as opposed to the option of making 200 million a year on star wars for now until eternity.

[SonofBaconator]

They must’ve had the lawyer from Jurassic Park create their business plan:

[Kenban]

If management wanted to make this work I think they could have tried a lot harder.  But this feels like a project from previous management that the current leadership just wants to die.  I do wonder just how expensive are the operating costs?  How low could Disney go before it’s not worth running?  The employee discount is 50%, which frankly makes it cheap enough I would have done it, and still might talk to some friends who work for Disney, but is it profitable at that price point?

The Starcruiser is mostly going to be worthless for anything dealing with the general public.  It’s directly behind the star wars land, but across an employee parking lot so even having “excursions” to the ship would require Disney run shuttles.  Unless you’re entering from the current hotel check in, which is also a problem, it was valet parking only for a reason, there is no regular guest parking lot and no where to put one.  It’s only 100 small and currently windowless hotel rooms, there is a window but it’s not very wide and is hidden behind panels in the room for emergency use only.  The restaurant was designed for a pretty small number of guests, when occupancy was higher it had to run two services.

It was very purpose built for a single use.  I suspect it’s going to be torn down or just sit abandoned.  Even turning it into offices feels like too much work.

[shark6495]

The Jim Hill podcasts really broke down the cost and the issues with this hotel recently. Basically too expensive for die hard Star Wars fans to do twice and not luxuries enough for the rich to do twice.  Which then meant a lot of folks never wanted to repeat the adventure. 
 

the hotel was small (100 rooms) and the staff/story was huge. This means the cost was going to be very high. 
 

with the 300 million tax cut they’re going to get for depreciation this year, I don’t expect anything to come if it for a few years 

 

-shark is not a tax lawyer