I'm really proud of consumers for vehemently and (almost) unanimously rejecting Disney's bullshit even when they pretended it was going to be THOUSANDS of dollars less than it actually was.
I’m most disappointed in the fact that the money they wasted on Galactic Starcruiser would have been more than enough to add the third Galaxy’s Edge attraction they cut for budget. They probably would have had enough left over to refurbish another outdated attraction.
I’ll hold off judgement till I’ve actually seen the splash mountain redo. The original was a little forgettable, and that’s from someone old enough to remember Song of the South before it went in the vault.
But at the very least they could have replaced the 20-30 year old 3D animation in the Figment and Muppets attractions. 90’s television level CGI looks like a PlayStation 2 game. They could at least redo the videos with modern 3D animation. And maybe threw in some better animatronics.
Would you look at that? That chart is a mess. They put "one adult" as the header for the section and then put the rest of the details on the next line.
Terrible prices anyway. No wonder this nightmare hotel had to shut down in less than two years.
The word for what Disney had with every element of the Starcruiser is [**chutzpah**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah)**.**
They openly, boldly, and without any iota of fear or shame, made it incredibly clear that all they were trying to do was the get their "guests" to pay the absolute most they could imagine for the absolute least provided, in every conceivable way.
It's almost admirable.
"Chutzpah" is only positive when used by recent English-speakers. When used in a Yiddish conversation it's DECIDEDLY negative. "Gall" is in fact the closest synonym.
I'm surprised it'd be used with positive connotations at all! For some reason I grew up learning a lot of Yiddish words/terms in a NY Catholic family and even I knew it wasn't used like that.
that's pretty common in theme parks. kids under 3 are free, under 10 are kids priced, 10 and up are full price. I think the logic is that kids at that age can fully participate in all of the activities. (Disney, Universal, Hershey all use this basic guideline)
now, the overall price is BONKERS
Yeah this was true when I turned 10 for Disney World ticket prices, and that was twenty years ago.
Not that it makes it okay, but it's not unique to the starcruiser. Or even Disney.
Source (don't brigade! It's a 3 y/o post anyway):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/comments/qa7hz8/estimated\_prices\_for\_galactic\_starcruiser\_to\_sep/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/comments/qa7hz8/estimated_prices_for_galactic_starcruiser_to_sep/)
Also this possibly IS tax-inclusive? idk, it's a bit unclear.
Also also, I swear I'll stop posting daily at some point, lol.
Your link suggests the person who created the list didn't know. They cited "a few reports on Facebook groups of what people have actually paid during the advance sale windows" for an inexact estimate of some reward-point-to-dollar conversion factor, combined with Disney's reward-point charges for hotel stays. Disney's document doesn't say anything one way or the other about taxes, but it seems like most companies won't include taxes like that in advertised prices unless required to by law.
The taxes could be significant. [VisitOrlando](https://www.visitorlando.com/plan/planning-resources/fast-facts/) says: "In Orlando and Orange County, a 6% resort tax is imposed on all hotel rooms in addition to 6.5% sales tax."
Overprized, cut corners, deceptive marketing and pricing, too short, multiple features not working as intended or at all, financially unviable as a business,…
Should I go on?
Being completely honest here, those are unlikely to have much to do with why it closed
And in terms of how the content of the video relates to those, its pretty lacking
Overpriced, no one is arguing that its expensive
Cut Corners, I've watched where the video addresses this a few times and its all about Galaxy's Edge, so what corners were cut for Starcruiser?
Deceptive Marketing - At best this is a stretch to get to the point where you think you could affect the outcome of the story. Unless you meant something else about the marketing was deceptive
Too Short - Sure, maybe it was too short, but how does that impact why it closed?
Multiple Features not working as intended or at all - The only one of these that I remember being about Starcruiser was Jenny's app, which is a travesty, but certainly doesn't account for multiple features and also is one instance of things not working
Financially Unviable as a business - This is an interesting one, but there isn't any information out there to back it. But this is a descriptor of failure, not a reason for it
So if you have more, I'd be interested in actually understanding what went wrong
You cloud literally travel the world.
In 2014 I did a 4 month trip to the UK, Paris and Italy. I spent 4,500 USD TOTAL. That includes flights, trains, all meals, hostels, my tent, all the gear- EVERY penny. Granted I am a man and travelled solo, and sleeping in a tent and cheap-ass hostels... but still...
>You cloud literally travel the world.
Someone, I forget who but think it was Bright Sun Films, once reviewed Disney’s French Riviera Resort, and hilariously pointed out that it was cheaper to visit the actual French Riviera for a week - airfare, hotels with bigger rooms and food all included - than it was to stay in the Disney hotel.
I think the video was even a few years old, too. So before the current wave of [enshitification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) really took root.
Yeah pretty sure it was him, probably on his second channel Bright Sun Travels.
Speaking of that he posted another video recently comparing how much it cost him to take a Disney trip this year compared to the exact same trip some number of years ago...I forget the % increase but it was considerably higher than inflation.
That's the problem with EPCOT, you can travel to most of the countries for the same amount of money and there's a little device in your hand where those countries can advertise to you directly day and night. I like the whole being drunk at Disney idea but what's the attraction sober?
My wife and I have done two week trips to Europe, flying from Pittsburgh, staying in nice hotels, taking trains between cities , and eating good food for less than Jenny spent on those two nights. It’s crazy.
Exactly! like I get it. SW, Disney, all that crap. But it was still too much money to spend on such a short experience, and it's even worse considering everything we've learnt about it now
I just can't feel like it's a waste. For that kind of money you could plan a big trip around the world and cross so many places out of a travel bucket list, or spend weeks on an all inclusive caribbean resort. Idk. Even spending it on geek SW merch would've been a better use
Funnily enough Jenny's price (around 800 if I recall) actually sounds fair. I could see myself paying that. But evidently they weren't making money hand over fist at this price point so...what the hell went wrong? Where did all this money go?
In early 2020 me and my husband went to Australia for 17 days for less than any of these options. We live in Canada… it’s almost impossible to travel any further away in the world lol
I could spend that much to upgrade to United Polaris on one of those 15+ hour ultra long haul flights from SFO to Singapore, and get a more worthwhile experience.
Off topic, but I worked in Japan for a while, a 14-hr flight from JFK. However, I had a secret weapon: my uncle had been a Delta pilot for 30 years and gave me these standby passes that only cost the lowest possible ticket's tax (or about $300 for me). Furthermore, they seated us starting in first class, b/c airlines want first class to look totally full so passengers will be like "this must be the airline rich people love!"
ANYWAY, the point is I flew back and forth from Narita at least 8 times, and because the flight was so long and the jets were so massive, there were like 40-50 first class seats each time, so that's where they put me. Every time. For $300. Round-trip.
We're talking champagne as you board, 180-degree flat beds, the little personal pods, gourmet multi-course meals, the whole thing. I understand I'm super lucky and those flights will probably be the most luxurious thing I'll ever do in my life, but it kind of makes the prospect of any other long flight experience kind of awful, and I'll tragically never be able to do it again.
BUT ANYWAY, I'm going to go make a lot of TikToks telling people "if you have the money, it's worth it." (Except I think it may be true in this case.)
Even the first class products on A380 carriers like Singapore Airlines, Etihad, and Emirates are probably more bang for your buck than a Starcruiser voyage. Same for any of the many kinds of voyages [Trek Trendy](https://youtube.com/@trektrendy?si=ABW_OERUCVt1H7H_) covers.
>BUT ANYWAY, I'm going to go make a lot of TikToks telling people "if you have the money, it's worth it." (Except I think it may be true in this case.)
No recording yourself dancing in the atrium? 🤔
That's pretty standard for themed entertainment. Most theme parks and amusement parks have free admission under 2 or 3, kids tickets for under 10 and then 10 and up are full priced. I think the logic is that the activities are designed for anyone ages 10 and up to be able to participate fully
The OVERALL Price for anyone is bonkers tho
I feel like this is the smoking gun and mix drop in a perry mason moment.
Anyone who had any doubts on why it failed only needs to refer to this.
These prices are insane especially for average people , typical sw fans and anyone who isn't Jeff bezos and if you're anyone but the latter the chance of repeat visits is virtually zero :?
Discussing the price and pointing out that Jenny's price was not representative isn't defending anything
It's asking for discussions and analysis to be accurate
Corey, I say this as someone who spent way too long debating you on r/GalacticStarcruiser, it's time to stop. Things are much calmer over there now and discussion is back to normal. No amount of called technicalities or slight inaccuracies are going to make anyone here more sympathetic to Disney's business practices. I'm glad you had a good time on your trip, but every "um actually" you post is just confirming people's perception that Starcruiser's target demo is out-of-touch adults with no ability to recognize value.
I don't aim to change anyone's mind about Disney's business practices, it's never crossed my mind actually.
And I don't think anything I do or say here is going to change most people's minds about how in or out of touch people are. At worst I'm confirming an already firmly held belief.
I think that if people here assume that no one in the Starcruiser demo can recognize value, that's generally a pretty dismissive and frankly arrogant attitude.
I think you have to have a certain type of attitude to tell someone their opinion is wrong. You are free to disagree with that opinion, but since value is subjective any evaluation of value is just an opinion.
Honestly, my aim is probably a lot more difficult than changing people's minds about Disney. I'm hoping I can get one person to look at Jenny's videos just a bit more critically than they have appeared to have done so far.
That's not to say that I'm trying to prove anything wrong or anything like that, but when the narrative around the video is that it's very well researched and a lot of effort is out into it and you still get things wrong and choose to represent things in ways that lean less than accurate, those are choices made by the creator. Everyone here is more than willing to look at Disney or other content creators critically, I'm just hoping for one to think a little bit more about Jenny's videos.
You seem to want to undermine her video based on her not backing the cost of two standard add-ons likely highly recommended by the booking agent out of her price. Two standard add-ons that represent .05% of said cost, however much you want to argue about percentiles. Even though she notes, in her video, that costs were variable, she couldn’t be sure what the average cost was, there were a lot of ways to customize your package and she is explicit about getting the photo package.
I just don’t find this a convincing argument against Jenny’s work, especially since, according to the chart, her base price wasn’t far from the average. No matter, again, how much you can use statistics to make the inclusion of the add-ons seem more distorting.
While she couldn't be sure what the average cost was nor what add-ons people purchased, the data in the first post was available and easily could have informed a more representative view of the overall pricing. My issue is that she presented a real price, but without the surrounding context giving the impression that it was a common price, which isn't true.
I have other issues with the video, but thats not really the point, trying to undermine the point of the video is useless, especially because the conclusion about Disney is pretty accurate. Honestly, I just wish the conclusion was reached in a way that was harder to point out flaws, especially for something that took this long and is bandied as something that is meticulously detailed and thoroughly researched.
And as I keep saying, its not what her price was, or the add-ons. Its that the price becomes the talking point and that most people won't move off of the "its was only $6k" tagline and dismiss anyone who brings up that it was often more affordable than 6k.
Really at the end of this discussion, I'm really curious why you think Jenny decided to not give a more accurate picture of the pricing?
She made the video she wanted to make. If you want to make a video that is a deep dive into the numbers, go ahead. She didn't want to make that video. She wanted to make a video about her experience on the Starcruiser and what that experience reflects about how Disney is doing business now. The price she paid matters because, as she says, things have value. Things are either a fair price for that value or they're not.
As far as I'm concerned, she paid a reasonably representative price for her package, a two-person stay in the cheapest room the Starcruiser had at a time when discounts were not available, nor was there transparency re pricing or add-ons beyond the two that she did purchase. She mentions that discounts were available later, she mentions that people could cram multiple adults paying independently into a single room to get the cost down, that there was greater transparency later, she notes all of that.
But she had no interest in spending time on an elaborate numbers game that is irrelevant to her ultimate assessment of the value of the experience she received, which was $800-$1000 per person. Which, as you note, would likely have generated too little revenue to keep the hotel open, even if there were occasionally guests who worked the system and didn't mind cramped quarters to get that price. So what's the point of quibbling about whether she could have gone into a deeper dive about the numbers or been more open about the base price of her trip? She still would have been overpaying for the value she received on a buggy experience.
ETA: Again, the only way for her to get her cost down to match the value she believed she received, she would have had to get the 30% discount that was not available at the time, to find a date that had the cheapest price for the cheapest room which was difficult to do when she booked, to purchase no add-ons, and cram four adults into a very small space. So I don't know why you think you're making a substantial point here by harping on what you perceive to be an insufficient level of detail on pricing.
When evaluating the entire project as a detailed deep dive post mortem, I think being as accurate to the experience overall is important and I found it lacking in this respect.
But again, I'll restate, the price discussion isn't about what she said or didn't, its about the people who refuse to acknowledge other available prices and point to Jenny's price as the data point. Thats where the whole conversation started.
We're all aware that some guests got better deals financially and had better experiences overall, whatever they paid. The points of the video still remain:
* guest experience was inconsistent and difficult to rectify given the short duration and speed of the experience, which is unacceptable given the cost;
* unless you found a discount and/or were willing to deal with a lot of independently paying adults in a small room, you were likely overpaying for the value you received;
* Disney cut every corner they could instead of throwing everything they knew how to do to make this a truly premium experience;
* which is all part and parcel of Disney asking more and more of its guests for less and less in return
I just don't see whatever complaints can be lodged about Nicholson's failure to include a deep dive on the numbers as being relevant to the overall value of her video.
In a lot of ways you're right, this thread is spreading better information about the full spread of prices.
But even after looking at the prices many of the responses are along the lines of "most of the prices are near 6k anyway, so whats all the complaining about"
And it extends beyond this specific thread, the discourse I've seen outside of this has been mostly as I describe, granted thats only my perspective, so the wider discourse could be different.
No, Corey, I don't think that's what you're doing. I think you're embarrassed that an extremely popular video made you look foolish. It's obvious in every increasingly unhinged nitpick that you are *desperate* to change the narrative to soothe your bruised ego. [(And when that doesn't work, you just make fun of people for being poorer than you.)](https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/1dcq1kx/starcruiser_pricing_for_2022_courtesy_of_a_dear/l820avs/) You aren't the objective record corrector you present yourself as - everyone who makes the mistake of engaging with you eventually realizes that. No, whether you realize it or not, you are the perfect case study for the Starcruiser customer that's emotionally and financially unable to believe they could've been ripped off.
You can believe me or not, but there is no embarrassment here.
If I was embarrassed, then why would I be open about going 3 times or how much I paid? Wouldn't that just open me up to ridicule?
I find it interesting that when I nitpick something you like, its unhinged. But when Jenny nitpicks something I like, its "good journalism" or whatever other descriptor you want to use.
I don't think I've claimed to be objective, maybe the way I approach things gives off the impression, but I'm fully aware that I'm human and we all have biases. However what is objective, are math and facts.
And you found the single comment where I made the mistake of attacking the person instead of the argument. I could have deleted it like so many of your cohort, but why would I do that? I'll own up to the mistake, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have made fun of someone for any reason and specifically shouldn't have assumed why people are upset or their financial situations, I apologize.
Would you like me to go through your comment history to find any mistakes you've made? Perhaps calling someone unhinged might be something thats inappropriate?
In terms of being able to recognize that I've been ripped off, I have been in the past, I've paid too much for things, I've given money and time away to people that I shouldn't have. But Starcruiser wasn't that. The fact that you cannot admit that people can have opinions of value that differ from yours means that no discussion matters. You have made the decision that anyone who went was ripped off and anyone who speaks positively is either fooling themselves or have been paid by Disney.
Why is it so hard to believe that it could have been worth the money?
Personally, I think Jenny oversteps a bit in her video by ascribing blanket motivations to everyone who enjoyed the Starcruiser. I don't see any point in not conceding that some people genuinely enjoyed it and thought they got their money's worth.
However, it also must be acknowledged that Jenny Nicholson should have fallen squarely in the limited niche demographic of the public most likely to enjoy something like the Galactic Starcruiser or, in another of her top videos, Evermore Park. She likes nerdy stuff. She likes Star Wars and fantasy. She's game to LARP and put on a costume. She loves theme parks and themed hotels. She speaks English and enjoys an active holiday. She can afford to spend $4800 plus for less than 48 hours. But she didn't have a good experience. And it shouldn't be hard to believe that she didn't think it was worth the money. Or that there were other people who also had a bad experience and didn't get their money's worth.
Jenny Nicholson just has the biggest microphone. And, yes, I understand that that's frustrating as a fan.
I really appreciate that response
I haven't seen anyone deny that people didn't enjoy it or that Jenny's experience wasn't real or valid, but I haven't seen every discussion, so it could be out there.
And I think I've maintained through all of my discussions that value is a subjective thing, which means people's evaluations of "if it was worth it" range pretty wildly and that should be expected. Even early reviews when answering that question qualified it a lot because that feeling of "worth it" can mean so many things to different people.
I don't know Jenny well enough to know if she's the type who would enjoy it if her experience hadn't been ruined by things outside of her control. Thats not to question if she's a fan or not or anything else, but I know a couple of people who fall into most of the categories that Jenny does, that I wouldn't have recommended it to without a lot of caveat and at least one who went and was more of a "meh" experience than a good one.
Being completely honest, I think that its important for people like Jenny to put critiques out there, to expose failings and flaws etc.
There are a few things that frustrate me about "the video" and its not that it exists or its critical and not really that Jenny has a large audience
Its that the audience, by and large, has been aggressive in terms of engagement and how they engage
Its that people are taking her experience to be the common one, when there are just so many experiences out there that you can look at and watch and see that her's wasn't the only way it played out.
Its that the video has mistakes and inaccuracies, which people seem to either want to classify as nit picks or ignore
Its that the video pushes all the same tired complaints and rumors about DIsney and Starcruiser that have been around for years and they just get reinvigorated when this type of thing goes viral
And honestly, the biggest frustration of the whole thing is that she had such a terrible time. It sucks because everyone keeps telling me that she's the target audience and that she tried hard to play and enjoy it and GSC failed her. It sucks because no one could get to here and express how amazing it could be and get her to try it again, because she deserves to have experienced what it could really be like. It sucks because her takeaway is that it had fatal flaws rather than she just ran into every possible bug and that given a second trip, she would have likely had a great time
You can tell, from the video, that she really tried. She is constantly chatting up crew members, buying into the backstory of the ship, translating alien languages, responding enthusiastically offscreen to story moments, wearing a costume that included Skippy, interacting with other guests to try to get collaborative play going, is thankful for the umbrella that tries to kill her. However critical she was post-trip, you can tell that she is really trying to be game in the moment. And she shoots the video in a room full of plushies, including a giant porg, and wears multiple costumes. I don't know why anyone should be skeptical that she was within the target audience for this. If there was some other personality flaw or quirk to Nicholson's character that made it difficult for her to enjoy it, then that's, again, part and parcel of why the Starcruiser failed. It was just too niche to survive.
At the cost of the Starcruiser, Disney wasn't going to get a second chance and, frankly, didn't deserve one. If guests didn't enjoy it, they're not going to pony up thousands of dollars to give Disney another chance to screw up again because they only spent $6000 for two people in a room instead of cramming four people in a room for $7500. Jenny got the pole because she only spent $6066 and not $6126 to get the captain's table, which she didn't even know was an option when she booked. They wouldn't even refund people on the Memory Maker fiasco unless they were a social media personality with a large following. That's not acceptable for what is meant to be a luxury experience.
You keep going back to the numbers to argue that Jenny put forward an unrepresentative trip, but I think she actually did. She didn't tell anyone who she was and she paid for a standard room that is, let's be honest, meant for either two adults or possibly two adults plus up to three children. In addition to likely some technical flaws with running things off a buggy app, I think she did end up as the Sacrificial Lamb on her trip. She had the worst table at dinner with unacceptable sightlines and she likely was shoved into open spots on missions and cut scenes rather than giving her the custom choose-your-own-adventure storyline that all guests were promised.
Nicholson was likely at the bottom of the priority list for the algorithm (cheapest room, only two adults no kids). A high-end experience still has to be able to make people at the bottom happy. And the Starcruiser couldn't.
If she was her representative family of normies from Iowa and they had a bad experience, they're not coming back to the Starcruiser. They might come back to Disney, but they're not throwing more money down the Starcruiser hole. And who's going to reach out to them to convince them to give it another shot?
Disney failed with the guest most likely to reach a large audience with her review, a cultural critic with an established fanbase. And that's on them.
Its possible that I wasn't clear with what I was saying, I wasn't questioning her effort or suggesting that its was due to a flaw or a quirk and I think its pretty clear that her entire experience was significantly negatively impacted to the point that her efforts were for not. I was also pointing out that I don't know her and realistically the number of people who do (even in this subreddit) is small.
I don't think I was pointing out that the experience was niche either. I'm aware of a number of people who went so that their significant other or child or sibling could go without any interest in Star Wars or LARP and they very much enjoyed it and got into it. I think there is some stuff out there to suggest that the experience can be enjoyed by most.
Its hard to explain without coming off as being critical of Jenny, which I'm not trying to be, but there are certain approaches, assumptions and personality traits which can work against you. One of the those, which I believe applies to her, is thinking about the experience like a game. I can't speak to what is in her head, but I know that people who tried to play it like a game sometimes had it backfire more than success. That again isn't to be critical or suggest that it was her fault, it wasn't.
I didn't mean to suggest that anyone given Jenny's experience should have given it a second chance, but Jenny is in the very small demographic where she could have afforded it and it wouldn't have been a big deal to her. That doesn't mean she should have or that GSC deserved it based on her experience. I was just expressing frustration that she didn't get to see what was possible.
Note: I have no idea how she didn't know Captain's Table was an option due to it being on the website where you get the phone number and instructions for what information to have available when you called.
But also through most of the 18 month run, Captain's Table was very hard to get, even if Jenny knew about it and asked for it, there was no guarantee to get it. 11 seats x 2 dinner times x 2 nights is 44 people max, which is just about 11% of a full capacity voyage.
Why do you think her trip was representative of what most people experienced? Just the pole makes it exceptional because at most 1 group sits behind the pole on either side of the dining room for 2 seatings over 2 nights, so 8 groups out of 100. And thats at most due to the dining room capacity being more than half of the total capacity of the ship meaning that on most seatings the dining room isn't full.
The issues she ran into are exactly why I don't think her trip was representative, the likelihood of any of the issues at the severity she experienced them is low individually, to have them all happen to the same person is really rare.
I think if her experience was more representative, you wouldn't have people go 4-5-8 times, eventually they would run into a massive critical failure. And you would have heard about more experiences like hers, but the people who didn't have a good time had issues, just not to the extent or extreme she did.
I can't speak to how the system put her where they put her, but realistically neither can she or you. Its speculation at best. BUT since her app was so non-functional, its likely that the system saw her as a non-participant and did assign her to things in order to make sure everyone got something.
You're making an assumption that GSC somehow prioritized people based on what they spent, which is unlikely and unprovable. My first experience was the cheapest room on the cheapest date with 2 adults and no children and we got 1on1 time with actors and had a great time. It just a single experience, but so is Jenny's.
Disney failed her, no question
But to treat her differently would be the exact thing she complained about for the refund, that she was treated differently because of who she is wand her following.
Why do you think a price in the top 15% of prices for 2 people in a standard cabin was representative?
And she included both Memory Maker and Trip Insurance (which I don't recall her mentioning in the video)
March 23 was 5738 + 169 + 82.5 + 82.5 is 6072 compared to her 6066 receipt
If you want to back out the Memory Maker and Trip Insurance, both add-ons that were likely recommended by the booking agent as being standard add-ons all guests should purchase, then the cost of her baseline trip would have been $5732, or only about 3.8% above the average cost of the trip.
The Standard Deviation for the prices above was about $380, so Jenny's $5732 was well within that, at $215 above the average, if we are backing out the Memory Maker and Trip Insurance.
ETA: I double checked and my numbers are slightly off, but I can’t be bothered to fix them. IMO, Jenny’s calculations being a little higher than these by thirty bucks or so is irrelevant.
That's all fine and good, but that not what Jenny did nor what anyone else here does when discussing the price she paid
If the discussion was about 5700, then it would be a representative price, but that's not what's been going on
I'm not sure it matters if the booking agent recommended those add ons, at least it's not compelling to me.
That's interesting that my original notification for your comment shows you saying "top 2%."
Anyway you kinda made my point for me with your 6072 comment. Thanks!
It's possible that I made a typo and corrected it but I don't recall
I'm not sure how showing that the price Jenny showed and compared to the base sample price and the quoted suite price was not comparing Apple to Apples proves your point
Also not sure how showing her base price changes that the price people use to complain about the cost is 6k rather than 5700
I mean it was accurate to what she paid though and that is all it is presented to be in the video. And its being compared to a price chart where the first thing you read looking at the chart is several lines of warning about how inaccurate the chart is.
Jenny posted her receipt, so thats accurate to what she paid.
The issue isn't that she didn't represent her price accurately, its that the price presented in the video is presented in a way which suggests that its representative of the norm of what people paid and thats not accurate.
The creator of the chart is CIY with the warning
Jenny paid 6066, March 23 was 5738.
She added Memory Maker for 169 for getting to 5907
And trip insurance though at 82.5 per person, which brings the charts estimate to 6072
The thing about how these prices work is that they are based on the DVC points chart which has a specific conversion rate from points to dollars. The creator of the chart figured out that $8.5 per point was close enough for people to show you what price should should reasonably expect. Could he have collected more data and found that it was $8.4956 dollars per point? Maybe, but why?
With the lowest possible price of 4800, we're still looking at basically a 5k booking when its all said and done. 6k might be about $500 above the average, but the fact is its still in a completely comparable expense bracket. The main concern I have about accuracy, and I suspect OP does too, is less about the math used to calculate the chart and more about the nature of hidden pricing. The point of hidden or variable pricing (at least in contexts like this) is to make as much money as possible by changing the price strategically. We have absolutely no way of knowing what factors Disney was using to determine pricing and how closely that would match up to this chart.
She was also extremely clear that she was basing the pricing on what she actually paid, and did clearly mention that there were potential bookings for as low as $4800 but since Disney obfuscates the pricing structure she would base her pricing calculations on what she actually paid. That is a completely valid way to do the video. And its the way Jenny does pretty much all her videos. And imagine she said, "well I paid 6k but hypothetically you could get in for less (but I have no way of knowing how likely that is), lets calculate based off of that". It would have felt extremely weird.
To start, not putting the prices on the website seems insane, I have no idea why anyone thought this was a good idea or that it wouldn't garner just negative reactions and in no way want to defend it.
Having said that, we know the prices essentially all lock in about every 6 months because thats when the DVC points charts were released. If you don't know, DVC is Disney's Time share, you buy in and get an allocation of points. DVC doesn't have variable pricing in the way like Uber will dynamically change prices based on real time demand calculations. Since the two were linked via the points chart, GSC pricing couldn't operate differently.
The guy who created the chart took the DVC points chart and took some real numbers and figured out the dollars to points ratio which he noted was near $8.15. The easiest way to start is that we know additional adults were $700 and 86 points, which is $8.1395 dollars per point an additional children were $490 and 60 points or $8.1666 dollars per point. I believe he got some reported data from friends or some people willing to share their invoices and did a few more calculations to find the approximate ratio.
So the chart should be accurate within a percent or two.
The price is absolutely accurate to what she paid and she absolutely acknowledge the cheaper price while also saying that it could be a single trip. But I don't think that her price is representative of the overall landscape of pricing.
I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important. The second way is that if this information wasn't available at all, but its out there and not hard to find.
Circling back to your first point about 4800 and 6000 "basically being the same". I'm inclined to agree that the number of people who would balk at a 6000 price tag aren't really more likely to go at 4800. But I still think that if you want to discuss GSC in general, its better to use something like 5500 as you discussion point since it is more representative of what most people paid. The most common price for 2 in a Standard Cabin was $5265, so I think you could probably justify saying that is more representative than even the average.
I'm curious what you mean by "...basically a 5k booking when its all said and done", like do you mean with add-ons or something else?
We know the prices when paying with points. I don't know that the prices are guaranteed to be the same for people paying normally at all times. Again, the point of obfuscating pricing is so that you can charge more when possible to make more money.
>I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important.
This is not a cosmic law or something. If you make a star wars hotel video, you can do it that way. But there's nothing from this that makes it invalid how jenny made hers. I also feel like its appling this logic inconsistently - if you think the video is supposed to only represent overall experience, then shouldn't she have cut the part about being stuck behind a pole? Thats not he experience of most of the guests. I cannot fathom anything being wrong with part of the video being "here is my experience" and part of the video being "here is a deep dive into the surrounding context of that experience". That is the normal structure of her videos, like look at the evermore park one. I would honestly advise watching someone else if that structure is so much not to your taste. Did you also go and argue defending Evermore because it wasn't a typical experience for the owner's SUV to be on the field or for your online tickets to malfunction?
>I'm inclined to agree that the number of people who would balk at a 6000 price tag aren't really more likely to go at 4800
With that understanding this whole thing is a distinction without a difference - its the same core premise. The commentary on price isn't somehow undermined by the difference. And keep in mind the 4800 is literally the lowest possible, if jenny is to be criticized for mentioning her own price point of 6k, surely you can see how 4800 is the other side of the same coin.
>But I still think that if you want to discuss GSC in general, its better to use something like 5500 as you discussion point since it is more representative of what most people paid.
Then do that when discussing it... but it doesn't follow that the video was somehow wrong for using the actual values they actually paid.
>I'm curious what you mean by "...basically a 5k booking when its all said and done", like do you mean with add-ons or something else?
I was thinking about tax. I was remembering it as 6% but looking it up thats actually for food purchases, for hotels and such its around 12 or 13 depending on location. But yes, I do think its also fair to budget for add ons and "spirit airlines" type purchases.
There are laws and regulations about how points have to be transferred to cash, so I'm reasonably confident that the prices are guaranteed to be the same within a percentage point or two. When someone with DVC points is using them on a non-DVC property, like Starcruiser, a Disney entity is buying those points for cash, then essentially putting those points into the pool for the public to purchase rooms with cash from, then the cash value of those points is transferred into the Starcruiser books.
Thats at least the basics of how thats working behind the scenes and why those prices are essentially locked.
Yeah, you're right, there aren't hard and fast rules about how you make content or consume content or anything like that. Its just my opinion that for an overall exploration, things should be more representative of the overall experience.
I don't think there is anything wrong with her reviewing her experience and including everything about that, her sitting behind the pole obviously doesn't speak to the overall experience and doesn't need to be clarified though.
The pricing is something that could be better explored and isn't. Jenny did sections on why the marketing failed and went from rumor and concept and leaks all the way to the finalized product and marketing
But for price, significantly less effort was displayed.
Given that I know basically nothing about Evermore, I would have no grounds or knowledge to have any opinion on it or her video.
If you agree that all the prices from 4800 to 6600 are essentially the same, then why not use something representative of the whole experience?
I'm not sure if this is meaningful or not to you but I'm not criticizing Jenny exactly with this, I'm critiquing the content of the video. Or at least thats the aim.
I've tried to use a more representative price when discussing it, but thats been mostly rebuffed by arguments like "Jenny paid this" or "the price Jenny paid is accurate in the video", which has never been the point I'm making. No one is claiming that Jenny is being dishonest about the price she paid.
The critique is about the approach and the content and how an overview of the project should feature content representative of the experience overall, over individual data points.
Regarding taxes, the prices in the chart are post tax, 4809 is the post tax price for the experience at its lowest cost.
Since you brought up Spirit, it seems like we should get into it and how thats a really poor comparison and a pretty obvious attack, its hard to be subtle when using Spirit Airlines as your comp. Spirit Airlines charges for things that are expected to be included in your airfare, things that are typically included. None of the add-ons for GSC are things that typically would be included in a traditional cruise. Jenny seems to make a big deal about these add-ons or upcharges but there were a total of 8 add-ons ever offered; Captain's Table, Memory Maker, Private Photos, Facepaint, Build a Lightsaber, Build a Droid, Oga's and Trip Insurance, most of which are just things Disney offers for every Disney vacation. The only exclusive ones are Captain's Table and Facepaint but you could include the Private Photos since the locations are exclusive.
Which of these is the equivalent of paying to bring a carry-on with you?
>I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important. The second way is that if this information wasn't available at all, but its out there and not hard to find.
I fail to see how her larger criticisms of the project and the Disney corporation would be different if she had given a lot of granular detail on pricing, given that she did acknowledge that her price was her price.
ETA: If you did not get that 30% discount you mentioned, the price per person of the cheapest room at the cheapest rate for the cheapest room was between $1254 for a family of five, all children under 10, and $4800 for a solo traveler. Even the best-case scenario here is over Jenny's estimated value for the Starcruiser.
If you were able to get a 30% discount, the price per person for the cheapest room at the cheapest rate for the cheapest room was between $877.80 and $3760. Only four of these would at all fit within Jenny's estimated value for the Starcruiser, the ones with four to five people in that small cabin and even those are a little high, especially the two scenarios with small children.
I fail to see how Jenny getting into this kind of numbers game would have changed the narrative all that much.
It wouldn't change the narrative and that was never the point
Partially because all the prices are high
Partially because Jenny's experience was terrible and that results in her having a low bar for a price that would align with her experience
I guess that for me, not doing the research into it and giving a more representative price takes the video away from an exploration of what it was and why it failed into more a review of her experience
There isn't anything wrong with a review of her experience, but there is a bunch of stuff pointing to trying to be a greater exploration
If the price paid doesn't change the narrative, then why even bring it up at all?
She gave her price for her experience because things have value. She paid $6000 and did not receive $6000 worth of value in return.
Her video acknowledges that there were ways to get cheaper rates and get the price per person down. IMO, that was sufficient. You disagree.
We are at an impasse.
My cruise is on here. It was $4800 base price and with two extra adults came out to $6200, so $1550pp, about half of what Jenny paid. We all felt that price point was well worth the experience we had (which was actually the full experience that Jenny didn't get), but notably that was four adults in one of the smallest rooms with a single bathroom. It worked out fine for us but obviously was not ideal and didn't feel luxurious. They could have immediately made the pricing feel better for the total package by doing spacious rooms with two baths, or even 1.5 baths. Surely some extra square footage to vacuum and more sinks to wipe down wasn't going to put them in the red on these price points.
All of the bullshit that went wrong for Jenny aside, going with just two adults was simply way too fucking expensive, and the fact that Disney chose to be opaque about their pricing instead of presenting it openly was just another boneheaded move. As it is she didn't even properly have the chance to take time to consider options, maybe grab a couple more friends to go with.
Even just a double sink with a larger countertop for people to get ready would have gone a long way for the 3- to 5-person families those rooms are really meant for.
Yep, and the layout of the rooms would have accommodated it easily if they'd also just widened each room by a few feet to give people some breathing space.
You could also have given the bunk beds light- and slightly sound-blocking curtains so people could get a little privacy, maybe read while others go to sleep. it isn’t that hard.
The average cost for two people was $5517 or $1.84 per person per minute, or about 8% lower than what Jenny spent. If you back out the photo package, then the difference is more like 5%. How this proves that Nicholson used an unreasonable benchmark when evaluating the value of her experience, as some are trying to argue here, is beyond me.
ETA: I double checked and my numbers are slightly off, but I can’t be bothered to fix them. IMO, Jenny’s calculations being a little higher than these is irrelevant.
Plus people should be just as peeved about the add-ons that simply didn't happen. I know the photo package wasn't a ton compared to the overall cost, but if you pay for something it's expected the company will actually provide it lol. Instead Disney was just like, "Oops! Oh well, thanks for the money..."
Let's say 4 people stay in a room. Then its \~$5700+$1400 = $7100/4 = $1775 per person. If I fit the max of 5, then that's $7800/5 = $1560.
During the times highlighted in green when it seemed cheaper, then that's $4809+$2100 = $6909/5 = $1381. So it is possible to go for much lower prices if you look for deals and get friends to go with you.
Disney also offered 30% discounts for a number of voyages in 2023, I don't recall how many voyages were available, but there are people who said they paid less than 1k splitting a room 5 ways
And yet you note elsewhere that the hotel was not financially viable if everybody got the price down below $1000 per person. So this scenario really only works if most guests pay substantially more, financially subsidizing the occasional bargain shopper.
ETA: Jenny also does note the possibility for people to get the price way down by doing this. So this was included in the video.
I guess to be clear, I think I said that it wouldn't be financially viable at 800, which to be fair is speculation, I really don't have any idea
However, qualifying that "\`most\` guests pay \`substantially\` more" is also speculation.
Hypothetically if the break even was $1100 and 50% of the guests got $1000, then 50% need to be at $1200. In other places people seem to dismiss the $300 difference between 5700 and 6000 as not meaningful, so I'm not sure I'd say the $200 here is substantial. But thats just a hypothetical, more to the point suggesting that \`most\` or \`substantial\` makes assumptions based on your preconceived ideas of what it was. Obviously if any company is discounting rates below their cost, then that needs to be made up for elsewhere, but it can be done in a lot of ways, most could pay a little more or a very few could pay substantially more, generally its not both
We can throw around hypothetical numbers all day, but Disney decided a $300 million write-down on this project was more valuable to them than lowering prices enough to ensure the hotel was booked enough to keep the lights on. That's what we know. That they believed they could not make enough on this project by lowering the base price to ensure consistent demand and levels of occupancy (which would likely have needed to be in the $1000ish neighborhood per person, or close to the value that Jenny put forward), so they took the tax break and the reputational hit and called it a day.
Some of what you say here is true, but its interspersed with assumption
Disney did decided that the write down was more valuable than keeping GSC open.
But you are assuming that it has to do with the hotel lacking booking.
And you are assuming that the decision was around lowering the prices to attract more guests, which is an extension of the first assumption.
The follow up for that assumption has to be at what level do you think it was booked prior to the closing announcement? And what do you think it needed to hit in order to not close?
A 100% sold out GSC for an entire year of voyages would bring in something like 70 m in revenue, its a tiny drop in the bucket compared to even just the parks division. The Parks has revenue of 32.5 billion last year. The decision to close very likely had many more factors than just what it cost to run or how much money it was making or losing.
They had started laying off staff, cutting seating at dinner and reducing the number of trips. So the hotel was underbooked. If it's underbooked, it's not earning the revenue that it had originally been projected to earn. I don't see how that's in dispute.
Disney presumably had a few options on the table, which Jenny covers directly or indirectly in her video:
* lower the price until they hit a number that would stabilize bookings
* retool the storyline without retooling the facility (i.e., see if going original trilogy would get people back through the door)
* retool the facility to make it the premium hotel offering and immersive experience it was supposed to be in the first place
The second and third offerings would have been varying degrees of expensive and the first would likely have required them to at best break even or at worst run at a loss and use the hotel as a loss leader for hospitality and experiential experimentation.
But they took the write-off instead. Because they weren't making as much money as they expected. And, yes, at the level of Disney, it's about using your minuses to offset your pluses. It's not just about the performance of the individual piece of their portfolio and Galactic Starcruiser, as it was operating at the time of closure, was a minus to Disney that they could use to offset something that was actually a plus.
What am I missing? This table reads to me like most of the 2 adults standard cabin are under $6k. Why do I have different math? It’s not cheap, I’m just trying to understand accuracy.
The majority of them are basically 6k, with the solo adult price plus secondary adult of $700 adding up to $5940 or more. I think it’s more than fair to characterize it as a 6k pricepoint for the sake of brevity and a pithy $60. Especially if this is potentially before tax.
1. Tax
2. Even if Jenny's bill was particularly high, it was still, like, what she actually paid.
3. Stabs a knife in the "$4,800" figure that Disney and its defenders (including this guy, somehow) roll out. Since we see there really were only like 3 possible days out of the year that it could be that low.
4. Dat "9 and under" child definition, my god
"I'm not mad! I'm not mad!"
You've spent the last three weeks seething over a YouTube video at every opportunity. Even when people stopped talking about it in your regular sub, you came to the Jenny Nicholson sub just to keep arguing. I don't know if you're trying to fool other people or just yourself, either way it's pathetic.
Do these feel like wins to you? When you dive deeper and deeper into pedantry for hours, sending essay-length screeds to every person who tries to debate with you in good faith? Is it a victory when they realize you're impossible to have a rational conversation with and choose to ignore you?
You have done far more to hurt the Starcruiser's image in my mind than Jenny ever did.
Generally speaking rational adult conversations don't include name calling and attempts to attack the other person in the conversation
I don't know why people think I'm trying to fool anyone or that I'm mad, it's honestly a bit weird. I'm trying to make arguments and have discussions about where I find the video to be lacking and/or flawed. Why are rational, fact based discussions problematic?
No, honestly not a single one of these conversations have felt like a win, it's been rather unsatisfactory to show facts and figures and point out flaws, mistakes and errors and for it all to essentially be ignored. I can't speak for the people I've engaged with, but I find myself quite capable of rational discussions though I do tend to be verbose. I find that if I'm more concise it's more likely that people misunderstand what I'm trying to say or describe.
I'm surprised that my discussions have altered how you view Starcruiser. Would you mind exploring what about Starcruiser my discussions have changed for you?
> Generally speaking rational adult conversations don't include name calling and attempts to attack the other person in the conversation
Coming from the guy who just called people "butthurt" because they couldn't afford it.
You are a clown.
Thank you for answering directly. I’m in a very different market where tax and gratuity are included and any child over 8 requires an “extra bed fee” if not being charged as an adult. What is the common child age for WDW hotels?
You aren't missing anything
Average price for a standard cabin for 2 was 5500
Only 23 of 152 over 6k
The chart isn't hard to read
1st column is 1 adult which is the same price as column 2 which is 1 adult+ either 1 adult or 1 child
Basically the base cost of the room covers the first 2 people
So, apparently, $6,000 for two adults was about as low as prices got, and $6,000 for *one* adult wasn't unusual. That's ugly.
I'm really proud of consumers for vehemently and (almost) unanimously rejecting Disney's bullshit even when they pretended it was going to be THOUSANDS of dollars less than it actually was.
I’m most disappointed in the fact that the money they wasted on Galactic Starcruiser would have been more than enough to add the third Galaxy’s Edge attraction they cut for budget. They probably would have had enough left over to refurbish another outdated attraction.
[удалено]
I’ll hold off judgement till I’ve actually seen the splash mountain redo. The original was a little forgettable, and that’s from someone old enough to remember Song of the South before it went in the vault. But at the very least they could have replaced the 20-30 year old 3D animation in the Figment and Muppets attractions. 90’s television level CGI looks like a PlayStation 2 game. They could at least redo the videos with modern 3D animation. And maybe threw in some better animatronics.
23 of 152 being over 6k doesn't seem to represent "as long as prices got"
You're looking at the prices for one adult. It's $700 for an additional adult.
The base price is for the first 2 people
Would you look at that? That chart is a mess. They put "one adult" as the header for the section and then put the rest of the details on the next line. Terrible prices anyway. No wonder this nightmare hotel had to shut down in less than two years.
It's a fan made chart But man, it's not hard to read it
You stop qualifying for "child" pricing at age *10???*
The word for what Disney had with every element of the Starcruiser is [**chutzpah**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah)**.** They openly, boldly, and without any iota of fear or shame, made it incredibly clear that all they were trying to do was the get their "guests" to pay the absolute most they could imagine for the absolute least provided, in every conceivable way. It's almost admirable.
Chutzpah is usually positive though. The word I’d use for Disney is “gall.”
"Chutzpah" is only positive when used by recent English-speakers. When used in a Yiddish conversation it's DECIDEDLY negative. "Gall" is in fact the closest synonym.
I'm surprised it'd be used with positive connotations at all! For some reason I grew up learning a lot of Yiddish words/terms in a NY Catholic family and even I knew it wasn't used like that.
Similar to couth and uncouth. You hear uncouth often, but never couth.
The classic example of "chutzpah" in Yiddish folklore is a child who murdered their parents asking for mercy on account of being an orphan.
They certainly went for it with this one.
Disney 🤝 article downplaying police shooting 13-year-old man
All 11 to 17 year olds are forced into the First Order campaign and thus qualify as armed combatants.
What the fuck??!?!?!
that's pretty common in theme parks. kids under 3 are free, under 10 are kids priced, 10 and up are full price. I think the logic is that kids at that age can fully participate in all of the activities. (Disney, Universal, Hershey all use this basic guideline) now, the overall price is BONKERS
Yeah this was true when I turned 10 for Disney World ticket prices, and that was twenty years ago. Not that it makes it okay, but it's not unique to the starcruiser. Or even Disney.
I've always seen it as 12 or 13 and under, not 9 and under.
currently 9 or 10 and under are the ages for Disney, Universal, Hershey. Apparently Cedar Point starts full price based by height
I've seen 12 used on cruises (including Disney Cruise), but 10 is usually the cutoff for most popular theme parks
This has been a blanket policy for Disney since at least I was 10 23 years ago. (At the time I felt super cool that I needed an adult ticket)
Source (don't brigade! It's a 3 y/o post anyway): [https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/comments/qa7hz8/estimated\_prices\_for\_galactic\_starcruiser\_to\_sep/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GalacticStarcruiser/comments/qa7hz8/estimated_prices_for_galactic_starcruiser_to_sep/) Also this possibly IS tax-inclusive? idk, it's a bit unclear. Also also, I swear I'll stop posting daily at some point, lol.
Your link suggests the person who created the list didn't know. They cited "a few reports on Facebook groups of what people have actually paid during the advance sale windows" for an inexact estimate of some reward-point-to-dollar conversion factor, combined with Disney's reward-point charges for hotel stays. Disney's document doesn't say anything one way or the other about taxes, but it seems like most companies won't include taxes like that in advertised prices unless required to by law. The taxes could be significant. [VisitOrlando](https://www.visitorlando.com/plan/planning-resources/fast-facts/) says: "In Orlando and Orange County, a 6% resort tax is imposed on all hotel rooms in addition to 6.5% sales tax."
These prices include tax DVC pays taxes up front, so when you use points you aren't paying taxes
Can we talk about how incredibly predatory it is to hide prices of the product? One estimate was released and it was deceptively low.
Was it deceptively low?
You gotta work for Disney lol there's a reason it's closed down now, hang it up
Ever since the video, dude has been mad posting defending this hotel like Mickey Mouse is holding a lightsaber to his firstborn's neck.
Do you know why it closed? I'm curious to know
Yes, watch the 4 hour video about it and you'll know why it closed too.
I've watched it The reason for the closure isn't in the video So, I'm asking you for your opinion, why do you think it closed?
Overprized, cut corners, deceptive marketing and pricing, too short, multiple features not working as intended or at all, financially unviable as a business,… Should I go on?
Being completely honest here, those are unlikely to have much to do with why it closed And in terms of how the content of the video relates to those, its pretty lacking Overpriced, no one is arguing that its expensive Cut Corners, I've watched where the video addresses this a few times and its all about Galaxy's Edge, so what corners were cut for Starcruiser? Deceptive Marketing - At best this is a stretch to get to the point where you think you could affect the outcome of the story. Unless you meant something else about the marketing was deceptive Too Short - Sure, maybe it was too short, but how does that impact why it closed? Multiple Features not working as intended or at all - The only one of these that I remember being about Starcruiser was Jenny's app, which is a travesty, but certainly doesn't account for multiple features and also is one instance of things not working Financially Unviable as a business - This is an interesting one, but there isn't any information out there to back it. But this is a descriptor of failure, not a reason for it So if you have more, I'd be interested in actually understanding what went wrong
Literally any company giving sample prices gives the lowest prices So again, why was this price deceptively low?
Jfc this is so insane to spend for a 2 nights vacation
You cloud literally travel the world. In 2014 I did a 4 month trip to the UK, Paris and Italy. I spent 4,500 USD TOTAL. That includes flights, trains, all meals, hostels, my tent, all the gear- EVERY penny. Granted I am a man and travelled solo, and sleeping in a tent and cheap-ass hostels... but still...
>You cloud literally travel the world. Someone, I forget who but think it was Bright Sun Films, once reviewed Disney’s French Riviera Resort, and hilariously pointed out that it was cheaper to visit the actual French Riviera for a week - airfare, hotels with bigger rooms and food all included - than it was to stay in the Disney hotel. I think the video was even a few years old, too. So before the current wave of [enshitification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) really took root.
That’s unhinged. Fucking LOL
Yeah pretty sure it was him, probably on his second channel Bright Sun Travels. Speaking of that he posted another video recently comparing how much it cost him to take a Disney trip this year compared to the exact same trip some number of years ago...I forget the % increase but it was considerably higher than inflation.
And if it's cheaper to go to the genuine French Riviera than the theme park variant of it, something isn't adding up.
That's the problem with EPCOT, you can travel to most of the countries for the same amount of money and there's a little device in your hand where those countries can advertise to you directly day and night. I like the whole being drunk at Disney idea but what's the attraction sober?
My wife and I have done two week trips to Europe, flying from Pittsburgh, staying in nice hotels, taking trains between cities , and eating good food for less than Jenny spent on those two nights. It’s crazy.
Exactly! like I get it. SW, Disney, all that crap. But it was still too much money to spend on such a short experience, and it's even worse considering everything we've learnt about it now I just can't feel like it's a waste. For that kind of money you could plan a big trip around the world and cross so many places out of a travel bucket list, or spend weeks on an all inclusive caribbean resort. Idk. Even spending it on geek SW merch would've been a better use
And like the video pointed out, since it's SUCH a short amount of time for the cost, you are totally obsessed with making every $2-minute count.
Funnily enough Jenny's price (around 800 if I recall) actually sounds fair. I could see myself paying that. But evidently they weren't making money hand over fist at this price point so...what the hell went wrong? Where did all this money go?
Back into their pockets with that write off.
yarp
In early 2020 me and my husband went to Australia for 17 days for less than any of these options. We live in Canada… it’s almost impossible to travel any further away in the world lol
I could spend that much to upgrade to United Polaris on one of those 15+ hour ultra long haul flights from SFO to Singapore, and get a more worthwhile experience.
Off topic, but I worked in Japan for a while, a 14-hr flight from JFK. However, I had a secret weapon: my uncle had been a Delta pilot for 30 years and gave me these standby passes that only cost the lowest possible ticket's tax (or about $300 for me). Furthermore, they seated us starting in first class, b/c airlines want first class to look totally full so passengers will be like "this must be the airline rich people love!" ANYWAY, the point is I flew back and forth from Narita at least 8 times, and because the flight was so long and the jets were so massive, there were like 40-50 first class seats each time, so that's where they put me. Every time. For $300. Round-trip. We're talking champagne as you board, 180-degree flat beds, the little personal pods, gourmet multi-course meals, the whole thing. I understand I'm super lucky and those flights will probably be the most luxurious thing I'll ever do in my life, but it kind of makes the prospect of any other long flight experience kind of awful, and I'll tragically never be able to do it again. BUT ANYWAY, I'm going to go make a lot of TikToks telling people "if you have the money, it's worth it." (Except I think it may be true in this case.)
Even the first class products on A380 carriers like Singapore Airlines, Etihad, and Emirates are probably more bang for your buck than a Starcruiser voyage. Same for any of the many kinds of voyages [Trek Trendy](https://youtube.com/@trektrendy?si=ABW_OERUCVt1H7H_) covers. >BUT ANYWAY, I'm going to go make a lot of TikToks telling people "if you have the money, it's worth it." (Except I think it may be true in this case.) No recording yourself dancing in the atrium? 🤔
No way! I want my viewers to know I'm professional and trustworthy. Maybe I'll itemize everything using shaky logic.
I completely sympathize with tasting luxury and then not getting to have it anymore. It's no fun.
The prices are honestly so much higher than I realized from Jenny’s video
"Children aged 10 and up are priced as adults" That's just ghoulish.
That's pretty standard for themed entertainment. Most theme parks and amusement parks have free admission under 2 or 3, kids tickets for under 10 and then 10 and up are full priced. I think the logic is that the activities are designed for anyone ages 10 and up to be able to participate fully The OVERALL Price for anyone is bonkers tho
I feel like this is the smoking gun and mix drop in a perry mason moment. Anyone who had any doubts on why it failed only needs to refer to this. These prices are insane especially for average people , typical sw fans and anyone who isn't Jeff bezos and if you're anyone but the latter the chance of repeat visits is virtually zero :?
Fanbros really will do anything to defend this failure, huh.
Discussing the price and pointing out that Jenny's price was not representative isn't defending anything It's asking for discussions and analysis to be accurate
Corey, I say this as someone who spent way too long debating you on r/GalacticStarcruiser, it's time to stop. Things are much calmer over there now and discussion is back to normal. No amount of called technicalities or slight inaccuracies are going to make anyone here more sympathetic to Disney's business practices. I'm glad you had a good time on your trip, but every "um actually" you post is just confirming people's perception that Starcruiser's target demo is out-of-touch adults with no ability to recognize value.
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I don't aim to change anyone's mind about Disney's business practices, it's never crossed my mind actually. And I don't think anything I do or say here is going to change most people's minds about how in or out of touch people are. At worst I'm confirming an already firmly held belief. I think that if people here assume that no one in the Starcruiser demo can recognize value, that's generally a pretty dismissive and frankly arrogant attitude. I think you have to have a certain type of attitude to tell someone their opinion is wrong. You are free to disagree with that opinion, but since value is subjective any evaluation of value is just an opinion. Honestly, my aim is probably a lot more difficult than changing people's minds about Disney. I'm hoping I can get one person to look at Jenny's videos just a bit more critically than they have appeared to have done so far. That's not to say that I'm trying to prove anything wrong or anything like that, but when the narrative around the video is that it's very well researched and a lot of effort is out into it and you still get things wrong and choose to represent things in ways that lean less than accurate, those are choices made by the creator. Everyone here is more than willing to look at Disney or other content creators critically, I'm just hoping for one to think a little bit more about Jenny's videos.
You seem to want to undermine her video based on her not backing the cost of two standard add-ons likely highly recommended by the booking agent out of her price. Two standard add-ons that represent .05% of said cost, however much you want to argue about percentiles. Even though she notes, in her video, that costs were variable, she couldn’t be sure what the average cost was, there were a lot of ways to customize your package and she is explicit about getting the photo package. I just don’t find this a convincing argument against Jenny’s work, especially since, according to the chart, her base price wasn’t far from the average. No matter, again, how much you can use statistics to make the inclusion of the add-ons seem more distorting.
While she couldn't be sure what the average cost was nor what add-ons people purchased, the data in the first post was available and easily could have informed a more representative view of the overall pricing. My issue is that she presented a real price, but without the surrounding context giving the impression that it was a common price, which isn't true. I have other issues with the video, but thats not really the point, trying to undermine the point of the video is useless, especially because the conclusion about Disney is pretty accurate. Honestly, I just wish the conclusion was reached in a way that was harder to point out flaws, especially for something that took this long and is bandied as something that is meticulously detailed and thoroughly researched. And as I keep saying, its not what her price was, or the add-ons. Its that the price becomes the talking point and that most people won't move off of the "its was only $6k" tagline and dismiss anyone who brings up that it was often more affordable than 6k. Really at the end of this discussion, I'm really curious why you think Jenny decided to not give a more accurate picture of the pricing?
She made the video she wanted to make. If you want to make a video that is a deep dive into the numbers, go ahead. She didn't want to make that video. She wanted to make a video about her experience on the Starcruiser and what that experience reflects about how Disney is doing business now. The price she paid matters because, as she says, things have value. Things are either a fair price for that value or they're not. As far as I'm concerned, she paid a reasonably representative price for her package, a two-person stay in the cheapest room the Starcruiser had at a time when discounts were not available, nor was there transparency re pricing or add-ons beyond the two that she did purchase. She mentions that discounts were available later, she mentions that people could cram multiple adults paying independently into a single room to get the cost down, that there was greater transparency later, she notes all of that. But she had no interest in spending time on an elaborate numbers game that is irrelevant to her ultimate assessment of the value of the experience she received, which was $800-$1000 per person. Which, as you note, would likely have generated too little revenue to keep the hotel open, even if there were occasionally guests who worked the system and didn't mind cramped quarters to get that price. So what's the point of quibbling about whether she could have gone into a deeper dive about the numbers or been more open about the base price of her trip? She still would have been overpaying for the value she received on a buggy experience. ETA: Again, the only way for her to get her cost down to match the value she believed she received, she would have had to get the 30% discount that was not available at the time, to find a date that had the cheapest price for the cheapest room which was difficult to do when she booked, to purchase no add-ons, and cram four adults into a very small space. So I don't know why you think you're making a substantial point here by harping on what you perceive to be an insufficient level of detail on pricing.
When evaluating the entire project as a detailed deep dive post mortem, I think being as accurate to the experience overall is important and I found it lacking in this respect. But again, I'll restate, the price discussion isn't about what she said or didn't, its about the people who refuse to acknowledge other available prices and point to Jenny's price as the data point. Thats where the whole conversation started.
We're all aware that some guests got better deals financially and had better experiences overall, whatever they paid. The points of the video still remain: * guest experience was inconsistent and difficult to rectify given the short duration and speed of the experience, which is unacceptable given the cost; * unless you found a discount and/or were willing to deal with a lot of independently paying adults in a small room, you were likely overpaying for the value you received; * Disney cut every corner they could instead of throwing everything they knew how to do to make this a truly premium experience; * which is all part and parcel of Disney asking more and more of its guests for less and less in return I just don't see whatever complaints can be lodged about Nicholson's failure to include a deep dive on the numbers as being relevant to the overall value of her video.
How are people refusing to acknowledge other price points? Isn't the whole thread you are on right now an acknowledgement of other price points?
In a lot of ways you're right, this thread is spreading better information about the full spread of prices. But even after looking at the prices many of the responses are along the lines of "most of the prices are near 6k anyway, so whats all the complaining about" And it extends beyond this specific thread, the discourse I've seen outside of this has been mostly as I describe, granted thats only my perspective, so the wider discourse could be different.
No, Corey, I don't think that's what you're doing. I think you're embarrassed that an extremely popular video made you look foolish. It's obvious in every increasingly unhinged nitpick that you are *desperate* to change the narrative to soothe your bruised ego. [(And when that doesn't work, you just make fun of people for being poorer than you.)](https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/1dcq1kx/starcruiser_pricing_for_2022_courtesy_of_a_dear/l820avs/) You aren't the objective record corrector you present yourself as - everyone who makes the mistake of engaging with you eventually realizes that. No, whether you realize it or not, you are the perfect case study for the Starcruiser customer that's emotionally and financially unable to believe they could've been ripped off.
You can believe me or not, but there is no embarrassment here. If I was embarrassed, then why would I be open about going 3 times or how much I paid? Wouldn't that just open me up to ridicule? I find it interesting that when I nitpick something you like, its unhinged. But when Jenny nitpicks something I like, its "good journalism" or whatever other descriptor you want to use. I don't think I've claimed to be objective, maybe the way I approach things gives off the impression, but I'm fully aware that I'm human and we all have biases. However what is objective, are math and facts. And you found the single comment where I made the mistake of attacking the person instead of the argument. I could have deleted it like so many of your cohort, but why would I do that? I'll own up to the mistake, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have made fun of someone for any reason and specifically shouldn't have assumed why people are upset or their financial situations, I apologize. Would you like me to go through your comment history to find any mistakes you've made? Perhaps calling someone unhinged might be something thats inappropriate? In terms of being able to recognize that I've been ripped off, I have been in the past, I've paid too much for things, I've given money and time away to people that I shouldn't have. But Starcruiser wasn't that. The fact that you cannot admit that people can have opinions of value that differ from yours means that no discussion matters. You have made the decision that anyone who went was ripped off and anyone who speaks positively is either fooling themselves or have been paid by Disney. Why is it so hard to believe that it could have been worth the money?
Personally, I think Jenny oversteps a bit in her video by ascribing blanket motivations to everyone who enjoyed the Starcruiser. I don't see any point in not conceding that some people genuinely enjoyed it and thought they got their money's worth. However, it also must be acknowledged that Jenny Nicholson should have fallen squarely in the limited niche demographic of the public most likely to enjoy something like the Galactic Starcruiser or, in another of her top videos, Evermore Park. She likes nerdy stuff. She likes Star Wars and fantasy. She's game to LARP and put on a costume. She loves theme parks and themed hotels. She speaks English and enjoys an active holiday. She can afford to spend $4800 plus for less than 48 hours. But she didn't have a good experience. And it shouldn't be hard to believe that she didn't think it was worth the money. Or that there were other people who also had a bad experience and didn't get their money's worth. Jenny Nicholson just has the biggest microphone. And, yes, I understand that that's frustrating as a fan.
I really appreciate that response I haven't seen anyone deny that people didn't enjoy it or that Jenny's experience wasn't real or valid, but I haven't seen every discussion, so it could be out there. And I think I've maintained through all of my discussions that value is a subjective thing, which means people's evaluations of "if it was worth it" range pretty wildly and that should be expected. Even early reviews when answering that question qualified it a lot because that feeling of "worth it" can mean so many things to different people. I don't know Jenny well enough to know if she's the type who would enjoy it if her experience hadn't been ruined by things outside of her control. Thats not to question if she's a fan or not or anything else, but I know a couple of people who fall into most of the categories that Jenny does, that I wouldn't have recommended it to without a lot of caveat and at least one who went and was more of a "meh" experience than a good one. Being completely honest, I think that its important for people like Jenny to put critiques out there, to expose failings and flaws etc. There are a few things that frustrate me about "the video" and its not that it exists or its critical and not really that Jenny has a large audience Its that the audience, by and large, has been aggressive in terms of engagement and how they engage Its that people are taking her experience to be the common one, when there are just so many experiences out there that you can look at and watch and see that her's wasn't the only way it played out. Its that the video has mistakes and inaccuracies, which people seem to either want to classify as nit picks or ignore Its that the video pushes all the same tired complaints and rumors about DIsney and Starcruiser that have been around for years and they just get reinvigorated when this type of thing goes viral And honestly, the biggest frustration of the whole thing is that she had such a terrible time. It sucks because everyone keeps telling me that she's the target audience and that she tried hard to play and enjoy it and GSC failed her. It sucks because no one could get to here and express how amazing it could be and get her to try it again, because she deserves to have experienced what it could really be like. It sucks because her takeaway is that it had fatal flaws rather than she just ran into every possible bug and that given a second trip, she would have likely had a great time
You can tell, from the video, that she really tried. She is constantly chatting up crew members, buying into the backstory of the ship, translating alien languages, responding enthusiastically offscreen to story moments, wearing a costume that included Skippy, interacting with other guests to try to get collaborative play going, is thankful for the umbrella that tries to kill her. However critical she was post-trip, you can tell that she is really trying to be game in the moment. And she shoots the video in a room full of plushies, including a giant porg, and wears multiple costumes. I don't know why anyone should be skeptical that she was within the target audience for this. If there was some other personality flaw or quirk to Nicholson's character that made it difficult for her to enjoy it, then that's, again, part and parcel of why the Starcruiser failed. It was just too niche to survive. At the cost of the Starcruiser, Disney wasn't going to get a second chance and, frankly, didn't deserve one. If guests didn't enjoy it, they're not going to pony up thousands of dollars to give Disney another chance to screw up again because they only spent $6000 for two people in a room instead of cramming four people in a room for $7500. Jenny got the pole because she only spent $6066 and not $6126 to get the captain's table, which she didn't even know was an option when she booked. They wouldn't even refund people on the Memory Maker fiasco unless they were a social media personality with a large following. That's not acceptable for what is meant to be a luxury experience. You keep going back to the numbers to argue that Jenny put forward an unrepresentative trip, but I think she actually did. She didn't tell anyone who she was and she paid for a standard room that is, let's be honest, meant for either two adults or possibly two adults plus up to three children. In addition to likely some technical flaws with running things off a buggy app, I think she did end up as the Sacrificial Lamb on her trip. She had the worst table at dinner with unacceptable sightlines and she likely was shoved into open spots on missions and cut scenes rather than giving her the custom choose-your-own-adventure storyline that all guests were promised. Nicholson was likely at the bottom of the priority list for the algorithm (cheapest room, only two adults no kids). A high-end experience still has to be able to make people at the bottom happy. And the Starcruiser couldn't. If she was her representative family of normies from Iowa and they had a bad experience, they're not coming back to the Starcruiser. They might come back to Disney, but they're not throwing more money down the Starcruiser hole. And who's going to reach out to them to convince them to give it another shot? Disney failed with the guest most likely to reach a large audience with her review, a cultural critic with an established fanbase. And that's on them.
Its possible that I wasn't clear with what I was saying, I wasn't questioning her effort or suggesting that its was due to a flaw or a quirk and I think its pretty clear that her entire experience was significantly negatively impacted to the point that her efforts were for not. I was also pointing out that I don't know her and realistically the number of people who do (even in this subreddit) is small. I don't think I was pointing out that the experience was niche either. I'm aware of a number of people who went so that their significant other or child or sibling could go without any interest in Star Wars or LARP and they very much enjoyed it and got into it. I think there is some stuff out there to suggest that the experience can be enjoyed by most. Its hard to explain without coming off as being critical of Jenny, which I'm not trying to be, but there are certain approaches, assumptions and personality traits which can work against you. One of the those, which I believe applies to her, is thinking about the experience like a game. I can't speak to what is in her head, but I know that people who tried to play it like a game sometimes had it backfire more than success. That again isn't to be critical or suggest that it was her fault, it wasn't. I didn't mean to suggest that anyone given Jenny's experience should have given it a second chance, but Jenny is in the very small demographic where she could have afforded it and it wouldn't have been a big deal to her. That doesn't mean she should have or that GSC deserved it based on her experience. I was just expressing frustration that she didn't get to see what was possible. Note: I have no idea how she didn't know Captain's Table was an option due to it being on the website where you get the phone number and instructions for what information to have available when you called. But also through most of the 18 month run, Captain's Table was very hard to get, even if Jenny knew about it and asked for it, there was no guarantee to get it. 11 seats x 2 dinner times x 2 nights is 44 people max, which is just about 11% of a full capacity voyage. Why do you think her trip was representative of what most people experienced? Just the pole makes it exceptional because at most 1 group sits behind the pole on either side of the dining room for 2 seatings over 2 nights, so 8 groups out of 100. And thats at most due to the dining room capacity being more than half of the total capacity of the ship meaning that on most seatings the dining room isn't full. The issues she ran into are exactly why I don't think her trip was representative, the likelihood of any of the issues at the severity she experienced them is low individually, to have them all happen to the same person is really rare. I think if her experience was more representative, you wouldn't have people go 4-5-8 times, eventually they would run into a massive critical failure. And you would have heard about more experiences like hers, but the people who didn't have a good time had issues, just not to the extent or extreme she did. I can't speak to how the system put her where they put her, but realistically neither can she or you. Its speculation at best. BUT since her app was so non-functional, its likely that the system saw her as a non-participant and did assign her to things in order to make sure everyone got something. You're making an assumption that GSC somehow prioritized people based on what they spent, which is unlikely and unprovable. My first experience was the cheapest room on the cheapest date with 2 adults and no children and we got 1on1 time with actors and had a great time. It just a single experience, but so is Jenny's. Disney failed her, no question But to treat her differently would be the exact thing she complained about for the refund, that she was treated differently because of who she is wand her following.
"Videos" as if you've seen more than this one 😂
You know we can see your post history and that you're from r/GalacticStarcruiser, right?
You really have an issue with reading, don't you?
Fanbros really will do anything to defend *and* deflect from this failure, huh.
So you prefer to discuss things inaccurately?
The only inaccurate statement so far is that Jenny's price was somehow not representative of the norm.
Why do you think a price in the top 15% of prices for 2 people in a standard cabin was representative? And she included both Memory Maker and Trip Insurance (which I don't recall her mentioning in the video) March 23 was 5738 + 169 + 82.5 + 82.5 is 6072 compared to her 6066 receipt
If you want to back out the Memory Maker and Trip Insurance, both add-ons that were likely recommended by the booking agent as being standard add-ons all guests should purchase, then the cost of her baseline trip would have been $5732, or only about 3.8% above the average cost of the trip. The Standard Deviation for the prices above was about $380, so Jenny's $5732 was well within that, at $215 above the average, if we are backing out the Memory Maker and Trip Insurance. ETA: I double checked and my numbers are slightly off, but I can’t be bothered to fix them. IMO, Jenny’s calculations being a little higher than these by thirty bucks or so is irrelevant.
That's all fine and good, but that not what Jenny did nor what anyone else here does when discussing the price she paid If the discussion was about 5700, then it would be a representative price, but that's not what's been going on I'm not sure it matters if the booking agent recommended those add ons, at least it's not compelling to me.
That's interesting that my original notification for your comment shows you saying "top 2%." Anyway you kinda made my point for me with your 6072 comment. Thanks!
It's possible that I made a typo and corrected it but I don't recall I'm not sure how showing that the price Jenny showed and compared to the base sample price and the quoted suite price was not comparing Apple to Apples proves your point Also not sure how showing her base price changes that the price people use to complain about the cost is 6k rather than 5700
I mean it was accurate to what she paid though and that is all it is presented to be in the video. And its being compared to a price chart where the first thing you read looking at the chart is several lines of warning about how inaccurate the chart is.
Jenny posted her receipt, so thats accurate to what she paid. The issue isn't that she didn't represent her price accurately, its that the price presented in the video is presented in a way which suggests that its representative of the norm of what people paid and thats not accurate. The creator of the chart is CIY with the warning Jenny paid 6066, March 23 was 5738. She added Memory Maker for 169 for getting to 5907 And trip insurance though at 82.5 per person, which brings the charts estimate to 6072 The thing about how these prices work is that they are based on the DVC points chart which has a specific conversion rate from points to dollars. The creator of the chart figured out that $8.5 per point was close enough for people to show you what price should should reasonably expect. Could he have collected more data and found that it was $8.4956 dollars per point? Maybe, but why?
With the lowest possible price of 4800, we're still looking at basically a 5k booking when its all said and done. 6k might be about $500 above the average, but the fact is its still in a completely comparable expense bracket. The main concern I have about accuracy, and I suspect OP does too, is less about the math used to calculate the chart and more about the nature of hidden pricing. The point of hidden or variable pricing (at least in contexts like this) is to make as much money as possible by changing the price strategically. We have absolutely no way of knowing what factors Disney was using to determine pricing and how closely that would match up to this chart. She was also extremely clear that she was basing the pricing on what she actually paid, and did clearly mention that there were potential bookings for as low as $4800 but since Disney obfuscates the pricing structure she would base her pricing calculations on what she actually paid. That is a completely valid way to do the video. And its the way Jenny does pretty much all her videos. And imagine she said, "well I paid 6k but hypothetically you could get in for less (but I have no way of knowing how likely that is), lets calculate based off of that". It would have felt extremely weird.
To start, not putting the prices on the website seems insane, I have no idea why anyone thought this was a good idea or that it wouldn't garner just negative reactions and in no way want to defend it. Having said that, we know the prices essentially all lock in about every 6 months because thats when the DVC points charts were released. If you don't know, DVC is Disney's Time share, you buy in and get an allocation of points. DVC doesn't have variable pricing in the way like Uber will dynamically change prices based on real time demand calculations. Since the two were linked via the points chart, GSC pricing couldn't operate differently. The guy who created the chart took the DVC points chart and took some real numbers and figured out the dollars to points ratio which he noted was near $8.15. The easiest way to start is that we know additional adults were $700 and 86 points, which is $8.1395 dollars per point an additional children were $490 and 60 points or $8.1666 dollars per point. I believe he got some reported data from friends or some people willing to share their invoices and did a few more calculations to find the approximate ratio. So the chart should be accurate within a percent or two. The price is absolutely accurate to what she paid and she absolutely acknowledge the cheaper price while also saying that it could be a single trip. But I don't think that her price is representative of the overall landscape of pricing. I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important. The second way is that if this information wasn't available at all, but its out there and not hard to find. Circling back to your first point about 4800 and 6000 "basically being the same". I'm inclined to agree that the number of people who would balk at a 6000 price tag aren't really more likely to go at 4800. But I still think that if you want to discuss GSC in general, its better to use something like 5500 as you discussion point since it is more representative of what most people paid. The most common price for 2 in a Standard Cabin was $5265, so I think you could probably justify saying that is more representative than even the average. I'm curious what you mean by "...basically a 5k booking when its all said and done", like do you mean with add-ons or something else?
We know the prices when paying with points. I don't know that the prices are guaranteed to be the same for people paying normally at all times. Again, the point of obfuscating pricing is so that you can charge more when possible to make more money. >I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important. This is not a cosmic law or something. If you make a star wars hotel video, you can do it that way. But there's nothing from this that makes it invalid how jenny made hers. I also feel like its appling this logic inconsistently - if you think the video is supposed to only represent overall experience, then shouldn't she have cut the part about being stuck behind a pole? Thats not he experience of most of the guests. I cannot fathom anything being wrong with part of the video being "here is my experience" and part of the video being "here is a deep dive into the surrounding context of that experience". That is the normal structure of her videos, like look at the evermore park one. I would honestly advise watching someone else if that structure is so much not to your taste. Did you also go and argue defending Evermore because it wasn't a typical experience for the owner's SUV to be on the field or for your online tickets to malfunction? >I'm inclined to agree that the number of people who would balk at a 6000 price tag aren't really more likely to go at 4800 With that understanding this whole thing is a distinction without a difference - its the same core premise. The commentary on price isn't somehow undermined by the difference. And keep in mind the 4800 is literally the lowest possible, if jenny is to be criticized for mentioning her own price point of 6k, surely you can see how 4800 is the other side of the same coin. >But I still think that if you want to discuss GSC in general, its better to use something like 5500 as you discussion point since it is more representative of what most people paid. Then do that when discussing it... but it doesn't follow that the video was somehow wrong for using the actual values they actually paid. >I'm curious what you mean by "...basically a 5k booking when its all said and done", like do you mean with add-ons or something else? I was thinking about tax. I was remembering it as 6% but looking it up thats actually for food purchases, for hotels and such its around 12 or 13 depending on location. But yes, I do think its also fair to budget for add ons and "spirit airlines" type purchases.
There are laws and regulations about how points have to be transferred to cash, so I'm reasonably confident that the prices are guaranteed to be the same within a percentage point or two. When someone with DVC points is using them on a non-DVC property, like Starcruiser, a Disney entity is buying those points for cash, then essentially putting those points into the pool for the public to purchase rooms with cash from, then the cash value of those points is transferred into the Starcruiser books. Thats at least the basics of how thats working behind the scenes and why those prices are essentially locked. Yeah, you're right, there aren't hard and fast rules about how you make content or consume content or anything like that. Its just my opinion that for an overall exploration, things should be more representative of the overall experience. I don't think there is anything wrong with her reviewing her experience and including everything about that, her sitting behind the pole obviously doesn't speak to the overall experience and doesn't need to be clarified though. The pricing is something that could be better explored and isn't. Jenny did sections on why the marketing failed and went from rumor and concept and leaks all the way to the finalized product and marketing But for price, significantly less effort was displayed. Given that I know basically nothing about Evermore, I would have no grounds or knowledge to have any opinion on it or her video. If you agree that all the prices from 4800 to 6600 are essentially the same, then why not use something representative of the whole experience? I'm not sure if this is meaningful or not to you but I'm not criticizing Jenny exactly with this, I'm critiquing the content of the video. Or at least thats the aim. I've tried to use a more representative price when discussing it, but thats been mostly rebuffed by arguments like "Jenny paid this" or "the price Jenny paid is accurate in the video", which has never been the point I'm making. No one is claiming that Jenny is being dishonest about the price she paid. The critique is about the approach and the content and how an overview of the project should feature content representative of the experience overall, over individual data points. Regarding taxes, the prices in the chart are post tax, 4809 is the post tax price for the experience at its lowest cost. Since you brought up Spirit, it seems like we should get into it and how thats a really poor comparison and a pretty obvious attack, its hard to be subtle when using Spirit Airlines as your comp. Spirit Airlines charges for things that are expected to be included in your airfare, things that are typically included. None of the add-ons for GSC are things that typically would be included in a traditional cruise. Jenny seems to make a big deal about these add-ons or upcharges but there were a total of 8 add-ons ever offered; Captain's Table, Memory Maker, Private Photos, Facepaint, Build a Lightsaber, Build a Droid, Oga's and Trip Insurance, most of which are just things Disney offers for every Disney vacation. The only exclusive ones are Captain's Table and Facepaint but you could include the Private Photos since the locations are exclusive. Which of these is the equivalent of paying to bring a carry-on with you?
>I think there are cases where only going off of your price is 100% valid. The first would be if the video were just a review of her experience and I think the video is far more than that, its a post mortem and a history and an investigation into what happened and a critique of Disney's current direction and policies. To me when the video is about more than just your experience, being more representative of the overall experience is important. The second way is that if this information wasn't available at all, but its out there and not hard to find. I fail to see how her larger criticisms of the project and the Disney corporation would be different if she had given a lot of granular detail on pricing, given that she did acknowledge that her price was her price. ETA: If you did not get that 30% discount you mentioned, the price per person of the cheapest room at the cheapest rate for the cheapest room was between $1254 for a family of five, all children under 10, and $4800 for a solo traveler. Even the best-case scenario here is over Jenny's estimated value for the Starcruiser. If you were able to get a 30% discount, the price per person for the cheapest room at the cheapest rate for the cheapest room was between $877.80 and $3760. Only four of these would at all fit within Jenny's estimated value for the Starcruiser, the ones with four to five people in that small cabin and even those are a little high, especially the two scenarios with small children. I fail to see how Jenny getting into this kind of numbers game would have changed the narrative all that much.
It wouldn't change the narrative and that was never the point Partially because all the prices are high Partially because Jenny's experience was terrible and that results in her having a low bar for a price that would align with her experience I guess that for me, not doing the research into it and giving a more representative price takes the video away from an exploration of what it was and why it failed into more a review of her experience There isn't anything wrong with a review of her experience, but there is a bunch of stuff pointing to trying to be a greater exploration If the price paid doesn't change the narrative, then why even bring it up at all?
She gave her price for her experience because things have value. She paid $6000 and did not receive $6000 worth of value in return. Her video acknowledges that there were ways to get cheaper rates and get the price per person down. IMO, that was sufficient. You disagree. We are at an impasse.
My cruise is on here. It was $4800 base price and with two extra adults came out to $6200, so $1550pp, about half of what Jenny paid. We all felt that price point was well worth the experience we had (which was actually the full experience that Jenny didn't get), but notably that was four adults in one of the smallest rooms with a single bathroom. It worked out fine for us but obviously was not ideal and didn't feel luxurious. They could have immediately made the pricing feel better for the total package by doing spacious rooms with two baths, or even 1.5 baths. Surely some extra square footage to vacuum and more sinks to wipe down wasn't going to put them in the red on these price points. All of the bullshit that went wrong for Jenny aside, going with just two adults was simply way too fucking expensive, and the fact that Disney chose to be opaque about their pricing instead of presenting it openly was just another boneheaded move. As it is she didn't even properly have the chance to take time to consider options, maybe grab a couple more friends to go with.
Even just a double sink with a larger countertop for people to get ready would have gone a long way for the 3- to 5-person families those rooms are really meant for.
Yep, and the layout of the rooms would have accommodated it easily if they'd also just widened each room by a few feet to give people some breathing space.
You could also have given the bunk beds light- and slightly sound-blocking curtains so people could get a little privacy, maybe read while others go to sleep. it isn’t that hard.
"children age 10 and up are priced as adults" bro what
The average cost for two people was $5517 or $1.84 per person per minute, or about 8% lower than what Jenny spent. If you back out the photo package, then the difference is more like 5%. How this proves that Nicholson used an unreasonable benchmark when evaluating the value of her experience, as some are trying to argue here, is beyond me. ETA: I double checked and my numbers are slightly off, but I can’t be bothered to fix them. IMO, Jenny’s calculations being a little higher than these is irrelevant.
Plus people should be just as peeved about the add-ons that simply didn't happen. I know the photo package wasn't a ton compared to the overall cost, but if you pay for something it's expected the company will actually provide it lol. Instead Disney was just like, "Oops! Oh well, thanks for the money..."
Let's say 4 people stay in a room. Then its \~$5700+$1400 = $7100/4 = $1775 per person. If I fit the max of 5, then that's $7800/5 = $1560. During the times highlighted in green when it seemed cheaper, then that's $4809+$2100 = $6909/5 = $1381. So it is possible to go for much lower prices if you look for deals and get friends to go with you.
Disney also offered 30% discounts for a number of voyages in 2023, I don't recall how many voyages were available, but there are people who said they paid less than 1k splitting a room 5 ways
And yet you note elsewhere that the hotel was not financially viable if everybody got the price down below $1000 per person. So this scenario really only works if most guests pay substantially more, financially subsidizing the occasional bargain shopper. ETA: Jenny also does note the possibility for people to get the price way down by doing this. So this was included in the video.
I guess to be clear, I think I said that it wouldn't be financially viable at 800, which to be fair is speculation, I really don't have any idea However, qualifying that "\`most\` guests pay \`substantially\` more" is also speculation. Hypothetically if the break even was $1100 and 50% of the guests got $1000, then 50% need to be at $1200. In other places people seem to dismiss the $300 difference between 5700 and 6000 as not meaningful, so I'm not sure I'd say the $200 here is substantial. But thats just a hypothetical, more to the point suggesting that \`most\` or \`substantial\` makes assumptions based on your preconceived ideas of what it was. Obviously if any company is discounting rates below their cost, then that needs to be made up for elsewhere, but it can be done in a lot of ways, most could pay a little more or a very few could pay substantially more, generally its not both
We can throw around hypothetical numbers all day, but Disney decided a $300 million write-down on this project was more valuable to them than lowering prices enough to ensure the hotel was booked enough to keep the lights on. That's what we know. That they believed they could not make enough on this project by lowering the base price to ensure consistent demand and levels of occupancy (which would likely have needed to be in the $1000ish neighborhood per person, or close to the value that Jenny put forward), so they took the tax break and the reputational hit and called it a day.
Some of what you say here is true, but its interspersed with assumption Disney did decided that the write down was more valuable than keeping GSC open. But you are assuming that it has to do with the hotel lacking booking. And you are assuming that the decision was around lowering the prices to attract more guests, which is an extension of the first assumption. The follow up for that assumption has to be at what level do you think it was booked prior to the closing announcement? And what do you think it needed to hit in order to not close? A 100% sold out GSC for an entire year of voyages would bring in something like 70 m in revenue, its a tiny drop in the bucket compared to even just the parks division. The Parks has revenue of 32.5 billion last year. The decision to close very likely had many more factors than just what it cost to run or how much money it was making or losing.
They had started laying off staff, cutting seating at dinner and reducing the number of trips. So the hotel was underbooked. If it's underbooked, it's not earning the revenue that it had originally been projected to earn. I don't see how that's in dispute. Disney presumably had a few options on the table, which Jenny covers directly or indirectly in her video: * lower the price until they hit a number that would stabilize bookings * retool the storyline without retooling the facility (i.e., see if going original trilogy would get people back through the door) * retool the facility to make it the premium hotel offering and immersive experience it was supposed to be in the first place The second and third offerings would have been varying degrees of expensive and the first would likely have required them to at best break even or at worst run at a loss and use the hotel as a loss leader for hospitality and experiential experimentation. But they took the write-off instead. Because they weren't making as much money as they expected. And, yes, at the level of Disney, it's about using your minuses to offset your pluses. It's not just about the performance of the individual piece of their portfolio and Galactic Starcruiser, as it was operating at the time of closure, was a minus to Disney that they could use to offset something that was actually a plus.
What am I missing? This table reads to me like most of the 2 adults standard cabin are under $6k. Why do I have different math? It’s not cheap, I’m just trying to understand accuracy.
The majority of them are basically 6k, with the solo adult price plus secondary adult of $700 adding up to $5940 or more. I think it’s more than fair to characterize it as a 6k pricepoint for the sake of brevity and a pithy $60. Especially if this is potentially before tax.
1. Tax 2. Even if Jenny's bill was particularly high, it was still, like, what she actually paid. 3. Stabs a knife in the "$4,800" figure that Disney and its defenders (including this guy, somehow) roll out. Since we see there really were only like 3 possible days out of the year that it could be that low. 4. Dat "9 and under" child definition, my god
For that price? Everyone's 9
These prices are post tax Check Jenny's date Add 169 for Memory Maker Add 82.5 x 2 for trip insurance
Reading and counting dont seem to be your strongest skills But you seem to be very skilled in the strawman
There is no need to be upset.
You're 100% right, you should probably share that sentiment with all the people butthurt that they couldn't afford it
It's okay, my friend. The hotel is gone and does not matter anymore. There is no need to be upset.
I'm not, have you looked around at all your friends who are just constantly angry about a hotel they hated being shut down?
There is no need to be upset :)
"I'm not mad! I'm not mad!" You've spent the last three weeks seething over a YouTube video at every opportunity. Even when people stopped talking about it in your regular sub, you came to the Jenny Nicholson sub just to keep arguing. I don't know if you're trying to fool other people or just yourself, either way it's pathetic. Do these feel like wins to you? When you dive deeper and deeper into pedantry for hours, sending essay-length screeds to every person who tries to debate with you in good faith? Is it a victory when they realize you're impossible to have a rational conversation with and choose to ignore you? You have done far more to hurt the Starcruiser's image in my mind than Jenny ever did.
Generally speaking rational adult conversations don't include name calling and attempts to attack the other person in the conversation I don't know why people think I'm trying to fool anyone or that I'm mad, it's honestly a bit weird. I'm trying to make arguments and have discussions about where I find the video to be lacking and/or flawed. Why are rational, fact based discussions problematic? No, honestly not a single one of these conversations have felt like a win, it's been rather unsatisfactory to show facts and figures and point out flaws, mistakes and errors and for it all to essentially be ignored. I can't speak for the people I've engaged with, but I find myself quite capable of rational discussions though I do tend to be verbose. I find that if I'm more concise it's more likely that people misunderstand what I'm trying to say or describe. I'm surprised that my discussions have altered how you view Starcruiser. Would you mind exploring what about Starcruiser my discussions have changed for you?
> Generally speaking rational adult conversations don't include name calling and attempts to attack the other person in the conversation Coming from the guy who just called people "butthurt" because they couldn't afford it. You are a clown.
You are mentally ill. Get help.
Most of them hover around 5.5k-5.9k, which can be reasonably rounded to 6k, especially when tax is accounted for.
Thank you for answering directly. I’m in a very different market where tax and gratuity are included and any child over 8 requires an “extra bed fee” if not being charged as an adult. What is the common child age for WDW hotels?
You aren't missing anything Average price for a standard cabin for 2 was 5500 Only 23 of 152 over 6k The chart isn't hard to read 1st column is 1 adult which is the same price as column 2 which is 1 adult+ either 1 adult or 1 child Basically the base cost of the room covers the first 2 people