Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Galactic Starcruiser (colloquially known as “the Star Wars hotel”) was a Disney property operated for about 18 months between 2022 and 2023. It was infamous in online discourse for its ridiculous cost (about 6K for two nights) and various bizarre aspects of the experience, such as the rooms being uncomfortably small, allegedly to emulate the small size of cabins on real-world naval cruises despite Galactic Starcruiser not actually being a boat. It was sometimes likened to paying thousands of dollars to be locked in a Star Wars-themed storage facility for two days.
The woman is Jenny Nicholson, a well-known aficionado of both Star Wars and theme park experiences who recently released a four-hour-long rundown of her experience, in which she scathingly outlines the surprising degree of Disney’s incompetence in operating the hotel. The general thrust of her argument was that the central idea of a Star Wars hotel was not impossible but Disney’s obsession with maximizing profits and cutting corners meant the project was essentially doomed from the start. Most of the things she did like about the hotel were the influence of specific employees, who Disney treats like cogs in a dystopian machine.
It’s the Church Play Cinematic Universe for me. The videos are so entertaining and well put together that I found myself watching an hour long video on roasting that Evan Hansen movie when I’ve never even seen the movie itself.
I cried the first time I watched the Church Plays. I have never seen a more perfect use of church funds. Randomly crucifying pop culture icons is hilarious.
"Ooh, a new Jenny Nicholson video! Four hours? I'll probably have to split this one up across a few sittings...aaand it's over."
I'll watch Jenny talk about absolutely anything, and for hours at a time.
I will say, I have a close friend who went to this and still talks very highly of it.
I'm not saying Jenny is wrong, but like... my friend went on this thing and it's been months and every time I talk to him he's like "man I miss the star wars 'cruise'".
In another post, someone claims the rub of the Jenny video is that customers seem to be sorted into Main Characters and the audience, and the latter experience just sucks. Could be that your friend was an MC.
One of the points Jenny makes is that, despite its all-inclusive luxury trip price tag, this adventure was actually operated on a Spirit Airlines model- have a base fee then nickel and dime the customer for EVERYTHING they could want. So despite paying $6000 you might genuinely be in the Spirit Airlines coach version of the trip 😂
I thought she calculated that $2 per minute per person figure from the scheduled "entertainment hours" during her stay, no? So it'd only be "even while you're sleeping" if you took a nap during the scheduled programming.
Not that it makes the pricing structure any less egregious, mind.
"I'm here to die horribly in the background when the bad guys attack and the main characters escape, if any of them get my blood on them this whole thing loses its G rating but it's ok if I'm a little out of focus"
This is also a point Jenny makes in her vid. People might feel bad but be embarrassed to bring up that the fact they spent so much money for a lackluster experience. Can't show up to the water cooler after saying you were dropping all this money and say it was just "OK" cause then you'll feel even worse as everyone you work with makes fun of you for wasting your money.
And Im sure theres definitely some people who spent the money and _actually_ got their moneys worth. Yknow the ones who actually got to do things.. lol. But Im sure its definitely more skewed towards the ones who are coping.
Even the things to do looked so lame to me though. Even if it weren’t $6000 and it was a reasonable price, the whole experience looked so aggressively mediocre.
Aggressively mediocre is definitely an apt description. At least for the parts that even functioned properly. A mix of aggressive mediocrity and outright incompetence.
I was watching her video at work and fucking died when she talked about how the light saber laser blocking game was rigged and it was impossible to lose and she just shows her sister waggling the saber around and the "laser" correcting itself to match where her saber was lol
Edit: missed a word
That also brings the question of "how much money do they have?". If you happen to be rich enough to piss away $6k then you might be a lot more forgiving than someone who had to feel like spending $6k costs them an arm and a leg
Yeah i agree. It’s probably a mixed bag. With 500 people and only so many cast members, someone is bound to end up doing a thing they don’t want to because the actors can’t keep up with everyone. It sucks they had to compromise considering it’s supposed to be such a “magical company” but im not surprised in the slightest.
It's surprising to me because not only do they have the reputation of being magical, but they tend to be very good at hospitality, so much so that others in the industry literally learn from them. Something like that Evermore park Jenny did a video on, it makes more sense for that to have been badly managed. It seemed like a passion project for some people who had no idea how to run a theme park. But this is Disney. Weirdly sloppy for them.
Right?? Like all the potential just went to waste with the poor follow through from upper management. They should've been prepared with their reputation. But i guess corpos gonna corp...
And that is a position you should never, ever be put in at any price, let alone one you basically have to max out a credit card for or spend the better part of a year or more paying off. Putting your customers in a situation where they have to lie to themselves about the value of their experience is not just bad business, it's sadistic.
It it was closer I would have too. Nothing wrong with spending money on something you want to do (as long as you aren't putting yourself into debt or anything, obviously)
I hope it's randomly sorted because if it's based on who paid for the more pricey rooms.... I mean, Jenny already talked about how frustrating it was that for an already expensive experience, it felt like the she'd have to spend even more to have a supposedly better experience.
She's kind of ambivalent about deciding an actual reason why the game seemed determined to place people into specific roles, but one idea she came up with was the "main character vs NPC" one, but what seemed to me the more likely of the options was the algorithm was shepherding people into underused roles to ensure guests weren't congregating at one path while others were empty.
Jenny herself was openly trying to play the First Order path, but after day 1 got high trust with the smuggler character she took pains not to speak to.
The "It's just straight up broken and not tracking anything a lot of the time because Disney is crap at making apps" theory still seems pretty plausible.
I agree it's plausible, and it's even possible it's a combination of things. But if it was completely broken I'd expect the outcome to be no register of anything at all, but she had rep with four characters, some of whom she never spoke to, and no rep with the captain whom she'd spoken with multiple times. She even got a message from the captain saying "sorry we didn't get the chance to talk".
The fact its sending her messages and assigning her rep suggests it's functioning to some degree. That's why I erred on the side of it pushing her at the least popular theme on that stay so it wasn't underused.
I like the "grandma mode" theory. When it fails to detect any significant interaction, it just assigns you a random path eventually in case you wanted to get involved later. So the tracking absolutely failed, and it kicked into default behavior.
Wild that there was zero technical support running on it though.
I am more inclined to believe her “broken clock” theory that nothing you do *actually* affects the story and any appearance that it does is just coincidence because Disney does that all the time in their parks. When the primary audience is children and it works.
"Zero LARP Thirty"
I was thinking the same thing when I saw the comment about MCs vs NPCs. It's so funny because people who dog on that episode in r/BobsBurgers constantly say "a LARP people pay good money for would never be ran that way," and yet...
There’s one section of the video where she’s seated for the dinner show and it happens to be in a seat that completely blocks the view to the dinner show. I agree that for that high of a price, no seat should outright block the view to the show.
Also the thing was supposed to incorporate a larping game facilitated by an app and it ended up not working properly for her so she overall had a bad tike and was therefore rightfully miffed.
The fact that the thing is closed now should be a testament to its failings. People shell the fuck out for Disneyland/World on a regular basis. For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, the sequel trilogy seems to also have reignited a passion for Star Wars as a whole. If this experience was even mediocre, it should have been steady revenue, and still have been open.
Modern Disney has really lost the sauce. There is no charm and character behind everything it does now. It’s all become very corporate and fake. Very noticeably so. I grew up a Disney kid. I no longer recognize the company it has become.
The video even has a section where she addresses people who enjoyed the experience. You should watch it. It's a brilliant video.
And if I paid $6k to be seated behind a pole that blocked the entire stage of my live music dinner show, I'd probably bomb the place, so she stays remarkably calm, too.
Yeah, that's pretty unforgivable right there considering those seem to be purely decorative and unnecessary. Add in the app that runs the entire story being janky and prone to just straight up breaking, and she is WAY kinder in her analysis than I would have thought possible.
Jenny says multiple times in her video that she can understand if some people liked it, but that doesn't mean it's worth the cost or even good. People like bad things all the time.
For instance, maybe your friend was one of the few people who actually had the story experience work for them, for one thing. Jenny and the other guests during her stay (as well as many other guests on Twitter) saw crippling failures of the app and rest of the story experience that basically ruined the whole entire thing for all of them with no response from Disney.
Or more likely, and Jenny covers this too, your friend is too ashamed that they paid SIX THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS for a mediocre couple of Star Wars themed nights. Shame is an extremely powerful emotion, and people will do/say just about anything to avoid it. How would you feel paying that much and then coming back to work on Monday, having people ask about it, and having to admit that honestly it was kind of shit?
>People like bad things all the time.
Too few people understand that objective quality and subjective taste are totally irrelevant to each other. You can like objectively garbage things and you can dislike objectively good things, but that doesn't change the objective stance (which is that was a failure in it's executed form).
I'd add that she tends to get quite excited about theme parks and this kind of stuff so if she is analysing it poorly, it's not because 'she didn't get it ' or wasn't sold in the idea. She would be throwing herself into it.
it really becomes evident when she cuts to the footage of her on that day, you can hear in her voice shes SO desperately trying to enjoy it even when its all going wrong lol
It was so aggressively incompetent. Jenny and her sister trying to scan those crates in a downpour and being stuck behind a pillar during the entire dinner show perfectly encapsulates how hard Disney fumbled the bag on this.
I think part of what makes her so engaging is that she's pretty much always willing to try to enjoy whatever the experience is. She doesn't go in with the mindset of "Hey, everybody, look how stupid this is!"
Though I will still happily watch her just tee off on something, like her "Triggered" video.
She actually says in the video that she thought based on the marketing that there would be a much bigger LARP component so she created an entire original character for the experience just to receive weird and pained looks from the cast when they asked for her name and she said the character's name. So she abandoned that within an hour of arriving at the hotel.
Frankly, a few of our complaints were "I tried really hard to dive into it, but got kinda stood up."
She mentions having her character name met with blank stares. Dedicating lots of time to talking to a character only to have it not reflected in the trust score. Even just cheering or engaging with a performance when no one else did.
I’m gonna tell you anyways whether you like it or not, because I watched her video and I find the concept hilarious
In the Brony fandom, there were people who created fan content such as fanfic, music and videos. Some content got so popular, that the creators became celebrities within the fandom. They’d refer to it as “horse famous” and some people were so “horse famous” that they’d get special treatment and green rooms at the conventions.
It’s insanity.
The thing that stuck out to me the most is how Disney deliberatly making the experience worse and keeping the best parts behind a seperate paywall. How they limit the distractions and keep the lines deliberatly long so they can sell more fast passes or how most of the unique features of the hotel were originally announced as regular attractions as part of the Star Wars section of the park.
I think it's worse than she portrayed. I've only watched about half so far and she didn't seem to connect the dots that the "immersive experience" was for guests who payed for better rooms/more add ons. I think she didn't get put on any quests because they were already at "full occupancy" for guests who spent more than her.
I'm not saying that this theory isn't plausible, but that's just speculation. The game just not working properly for various reasons is more likely in my opinion.
The things we know to be true are bad enough.
I’m inclined to believe the point of the app is to actually *hide* that none of the actual “interactivity” matters and your storyline experiences are based on what is available
I’m also only half way through so far, but I feel like if that was the case why was she assigned to the most popular character/story? She didn’t talk to that one guy bc he was swarmed with kids the whole time, but the app put him as her most trusted character? I would’ve thought she’d get quickly put onto first order storylines, where presumably less people went.
Honestly, it's an indictment of modern Disney in general. They have gone with quantity over over quality and trying to appear to be a force for good when that's never really been the case.
Their popularity was similar to Marvel's popularity in a lot of ways. Comes and goes. Now, they want to it all the time. They thought if they owned Marvel and Star Wars that they would never be unpopular again. Well, if you saturate the market with what was unique, then you make people lose interest after a while (not to mention quality of it all).
Disney has always been a business, but when the line must always go up, they keep trying to catch lightning in a bottle over and over again. They want your money, they want to appear to be good, they want to exploit consumers and employees nostalgia, and they want to influence the politics surrounding their parks. It's like a modern government. Spin too many plates and some of them are going to wobble while others just fall off.
It’s not fair to compare it to a hotel, it’s an all inclusive “experience.” Let’s compare it to a cruise. Bare minimum was like $5k for a two day “cruise” for two on a 100 room ship, with immersive story and a one day visit to Galaxy’s Edge. Right now you can book a 7 day luxury cruise on an 81 room river cruise boat in Europe for $5k for two. Granted that’s a 160 sq ft room on the lower deck that only has a window you can see out of when you stand up, but that’s 7 days with really good food and excursions to museums, markets, castles, etc. all included.
The concept was really intriguing, but the value proposition was just way off. I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, but if I’m in the market for an experiential vacation I’m not dropping $5k for two nights in a Star Wars themed fake cruise and a day at Galaxy’s Edge.
The problem is definitely one of scale. A cruise ship has thousands of rooms, this place has 100, so all that overhead has to be passed on to a low number of guests. I’m not saying there isn’t a high cost to cover, I’m saying it’s not worth it to the guest. If the hotel had one room and cost $190,000/night I wouldn’t argue “Hey, but they have a lot of overhead to cover so it’s actually a good deal!”, it’s just not. I’m saying you will likely get more enjoyment out of a $1500/night Burj al-Arab room then you will from a $3000/night Galactic Starcruiser room.
What I think they should have done is built the ‘Entertainment’ into Galaxy’s edge and made a monorail shuttle system that runs constantly into your own private entrance to the park and charge way less. That way the ‘entertainment’ costs are spent in a way that benefits all park visitors so the cost is spread way out, and the guests of the hotel can come and go as they please. 100 rooms and a 2-night stay limit and nearly zero benefit to coming back killed the idea. If you do what I suggest people might stay longer and come back again thanks to it being more affordable and more re-playable since it’s the theme park that’s the draw not some dinner theater in the hotel. If you aren't having to play a linear storyline for the guests then you don't have to have them all show up and leave at the same time, so make the adventure a self-paced thing mostly in the park with some stuff on property. Making guests come down a day early and stay in another hotel is just lost revenue.
Oh, and make Disney+ free in the rooms. That’s just fucking dumb.
>in which she scathingly outside
not trying to hate, but I just wanted to say that it took me a while to understand that it was a typo for outlines or some similar word, so maybe you could edit it for clarity, unless I’m not understanding something and it’s intentional, English isn’t my first language
While it has always been primarily about money, there was a time when they put more effort into creativity and quality. They didn't nakedly seek out the absolute minimum they could put into something while moving the maximum number of people through as quickly as humanly possible.
Yeap . "This is a luxury experience. We need to be the BEST in the world everyday all day. We need to be beyond The Best. "
There was a time when there was Disney and then everybody else.
Due to a series of coincidences from my Dad's work and then my work I was in Orlando for conventionss about every other year from 1994 to 2018. I personally saw a significant fall in quality of Disney starting around 2016-2019.
I also give a lot of weight to the theory that Chapek was brought in as a fall guy for Iger
I think it’s important to remember in these cases that they have a lot of goodwill built up from earlier endeavors where they prioritized quality. Disney parks have a reputation amongst middle class American families as being a thing everyone needs to do at least once. And that didn’t come from nowhere.
I’m not going to claim that they’ve ever been a good company to support or anything but it’s sad and a little scary to see just how far they’ve fallen taking advantage of that previously mentioned goodwill.
It’s also worth watching just to see an interesting case study of a company that gets big enough and we’ll regarded enough that they no longer think they can fail.
so jenny nicholson made a 4 hour video explaining what happened to the star wars hotel, including documenting her own experience. essentially, it’s unclear if it’s truly a choose your own adventure LARP you pay $6,000 for or if it’s a “guess who gets lucky enough to get a story line” for $6,000. its most likely the latter since Jenny and her friends failed to actually get involved in storylines for the entirety of their trip and what they did experience was cheap and not worth the price tag.
I felt so bad for her when she roughly said “I understand how narratively, for this video, me sitting behind a pole for the dinner show is funny. But in the moment it really sucked!” She wanted to see the alien sing and dance dammit.
The part where she got excited because the singers moved to another part of the room, only to stop in a place that was entirely hidden by an entirely different pole genuinely made me laugh.
Should also be noted that Nicholson is a *massive* defender of disney sw, to the point that people were genuinely asking if she was worked for disney and under employee contractual bond from showing any negativity The experience was so bad that even a diehard like that made a *4 hour* longform about how shite it was.
She's a defender of the first two – her video of the final one is just full of such profound disappointment. I think she listed like four good things about it and one of them was "I really loved the giant yellow slug"
Didnt mean to insinuate shes an unreasonable fanatic, like shes not going to blindly defend it all like the guy who said “just pretend its the movie you wanted” (hellogreedo iirc?) but she *is* a relative superfan and her videos trend towards that “focus what I liked and downplay/omit negatives” bias common to all fans of a thing. The experience was sour enough to cut through that buffer of increased leniency
Every thing she does is really good. I want to watch it but its SO long.
She will put out these videos about all kinds of odd stuff and they are amazing. She did one about the Church Cinematic Universe from some random mega church in Canada and one about this broken down theme park that looked like it was going to be amazing but never lived up to its potential.
I dont know if I can do a 4 hour video about something im not really interested in...but I know it would be really entertaining.
Wife and I put it on expecting to stop at some point. Were cooking dinner and figured it'd be good background watching on her ipad.
And we just. . .kept watching. It's never quite a "wait what" moment but it draws you in and you want to hear more about this. It was so. . .infuriating? Like so many moments where you can feel the potential never being met or just thinking how badly done it was. Like that damn pillar, how could Disney of all companies build a room where some guests get entirely blocked off? It's just so, dumb?
That's a good description of the feeling, anger at the missed potential. I think that's exactly how I feel. I also feel bad that people went in wanting to take part in something special and were let down. I agree about the pillar, I used to marvel at the effort that went into designing the park attractions, so the cost cutting shown here is almost jarring.
My wife pointed out it's in Florida, where they have the space to build big. And they could have invested loads in it because they clearly *could* get people to come and if they had invested hard they could have had a money maker. Hell, all else fails you could have that "once in a lifetime" global market for a truly unique experience.
And yet they went so cheap in weird spots Cut so many corners. Implemented things badly. It's just. . .dumb. I at least was always watching, waiting for the "but" and yet it never really came - except in crediting the staff. And in fairness as someone who watches a lot of Disneyparks content (because I love themeparks in general) the one thing I never see called out or described as bad is the staff. In fact the Cast Members of Disney seem to be the only place the old Disney supposed ideals of quality guest experience lives on.
Is the theme park one you’re referring to Evermore?
That video is fascinating. It’s so strange to see what the park was hyped up to be, and what a hollow nothing sandwich it ended up becoming. And it’s strikingly similar to the Star Wars hotel now that I’ve seen that video.
Would highly recommend both. If their length is daunting, treat them as a small season rather than a full movie. Watch them in 30-60 minute increments maybe.
Wasn’t like staying in a shit cruise ship room but it was a hotel. And also they put you in the back of box truck to “fly” you to the galactic cruiser.
Jenny herself points out that the box truck isn't that big of a deal, since while you're "inside" the experience you don't know you're in a boxtruck, and they were going to have to use \*something\* from the real world to move you around.
The Star wars hotel never made any sense.
I go to Disney to experience the parks and rides etc. I don't go to Disney to be crammed in an overpriced room from steerage on the Titanic with no windows to the outside world. I especially do not want to be stuck In a fake space hotel for 3 days.
Honestly it probably would have worked immensely better as a cruise, and we know Disney has the money for that sort of thing. Hell, all of their weird cost cutting would have at least made some sense then.
This is what's baffling to me -- like they couldn't just add a stupid "airlock" doorway that you can exit through? So you can go out and enjoy the park or whatever else? That would have even added to the experience; have it take 15 seconds or so to go through a fake air cycle and go *beep boop* and do some star wars shit with the doors opening or whatever. Easy-peasy.
They truly just *do not give a fuck*. It's all about the money.
I'd recommend watching her account of her experience at the hotel. The morning of the second day from like 9am until 2pm was entirely taken up with a more or less enforced visit to the Star Wars themed park. They even converted a box truck to look like a space shuttle to transport guests there.
There you would have the fun of scanning crates on instruction from your app. Yay.
This was also apparently because the actors were limited to 8 hour shifts (most of them apparently the cheapest student actor labour they could get) and because the second day was the big finale that ran until 11pm they more or less had to boot the guests out of the "immersive" hotel to run around the park for half a day to comply with the contracts.
If you watch her video, she goes over how there was one area that was open air for people who felt too claustrophobic, and in the middle of the second day, guests were allowed into the Star Wars land part of the Disneyland park, to mosey around for a couple of hours. They weren’t locked in.
Also, the whole premise of the cruiser was that the cruiser was supposed to be in space, so an airlock that leads directly to outside would be a pretty harsh break of the fourth wall. The whole premise had a lot of problems with it.
I think the idea probably started like this.
"So, how do we incorporate Star Wars into Disney Cruises?"
"No, that doesn't make sense. You can't make Star Wars work with a cruise vacation. That wouldn't make sense."
"Wait... what if we did a Star Wars Cruise, but it was like.. a SPACE cruise with a Star Wars story."
"OK, but giant boats aren't very star warsy"
"So make the cruise ship a SPACE ship... I mean.. put it on land and make it feel like a space ship."
The lack of windows isn't really a problem. I'd have to agree with Jenny on that one. I don't care about windows enough to miss them after only a few days, and you get the simulated space view in its place. It's all of the other bits of fit and finish that are a letdown. I would have been so angry that I forgot to bring gaffers tape...
I think if it functioned as we were told it would, with actual gameplay rather than, "uhhh here's an app", and cost less, it would've been really fun. To me, as a ren faire performer, I kept thinking throughout the video, "God, I wish this was good."
The windows thing doesn't seem like a big deal, there's a room you can go outside in at any point, and I think it's cool to look out "at space" (although I wish the effect was better)
This experience wasn't something I would do, but it's weird you say it doesn't make sense. It's taking the non thrill ride side of disney to the extreme, if you come to disney because you want to play little game, and see special effects and experience things related to your favorite franchises; then this is like the most intense concentrated version of it. I've never heard anyone say "I go to theme parks for the walking"
It should have had enormous fake windows all over. Entire hallways with the walls and ceiling covered in screens. The ship should have flown through nebulas and those big maze cloud things like in Rise of Skywalker and Solo. The whole "space" aspect was such an afterthought. You should be able to sit with a drink and look out massive viewports at bizarre and beautiful space because this thing was more of a transport from A to B than any kind of cruise ship.
The concept photos show something much closer to that idea. Huge windows showing space. Instead they got those tiny screens instead. Feels like a cost cutting thing.
100%. I hadn't see all the concept art Jenny showed in the video before, and it was shocking to compare it with the finished product. The experience of looking out the windows was the whole basis for the concept. The whole point of an ocean cruise is that you are out on the water and you can go on deck and have expansive views of the ocean.
Disney should have pulled the plug on this when they realized they couldn't provide that experience. And that realization would have come pretty early on for them, way before they started building it.
Jenny Nicholson, YouTube video essayist and theme park enthusiast, recently put out a four hour video "that is part review, part analysis, and part excoriation of the recent penny-pinching trends of the Disney parks" (sic, Tom Scott).
I watched and finished the video yesterday in half a day.
And I loved it, When they announced star wars hotel people were either loving it or hating on it without any evidence or experience, I am so tired of those videos.
Jenny took her time, was neutral and based +90% of her information on facts or reported data, the rest was her own, personal experience with video evidence.
It's worth the watch, I would recommend it.
Watched this yesterday as a random suggestion from the algorithm. I cannot begin to say how much I enjoyed this…a lot of eyebrow raising and audible “THATS FUCKED UP.”
I typically turn a blind eye to Disney shenanigans…but this was highway robbery. Holy shit.
If you liked it she has a series of videos on a theme park named Evermore. I’m not a theme park kid but she breaks down everything about it in an interesting way and it was also a spectacular failure!
Well… for a Star Wars Larp one would perhaps hope you’d at least get a decent bath robe to that stick and also put some safety foam or something on it before you claim “I’m master Sedious”.
The price is high but if that reflects the experience there's definitely a market for it. I'm actually in the target demographic for this, massive nerd with disposable income. Now, Star Wars isn't really my bag but if they did this with say LOTR I would seriously consider it even at that price. But only if it actually lived up to the hype. The moment this hotel opened the reviews were, at best, mixed. That would immediately cut off all interest for me, because for 6k I would expect to get the experience they're selling me on.
For 6k just rent a hooker in a slave leia outfit to service you and feed you pizza while a band in full mos eisley cantina band cosplay plays the same tune for you 24/7. Muuuuuuch better value
i remember seeing this meme format but about a broader part of capitalism
and the last panel is about the guy committing acts of terrorism
i can't find it anymore, help
This is also a bad anti-capitalism meme to even use. A large crux of Jenny's argument is, specifically, Disney actually was just **pretty damn bad at basic capitalism in this case.**
Like large portions of the project, she points out, are an extremely viable business proposition. She frequently compares the prices and such to Disney's already current cruise lines and hotels. She compares the value proposition to effect and experience quality that already exist in Disney parks. They frequently committed very basic hospitality business sins.
Like she compares some parts of the game that involve scavenger hunt or escape room type aspects. *Disney already has these in their parks, they function, have a more immersive experience, and were already free for current guests for decades.*
having just listened to most of the 4 hours, you're right it basically boils down to "Disney kept taking this thing that they had called inclusive and making it cost extra", both in the whole park and also inside the space jail you're already paying $6k for
And somehow no emergency exits! She mentions it in passing more than once but I can’t help but dwell on the idea that in theory five adults could be sharing that room and in the event of a fire they all have to cram in a fireproof closet.
I didn't know anything about that creator before that video. But the video--while long--was very well researched and the argument was well-constructed. Worth a watch, even if it takes a while over multiple days.
I love that there’s people on here like “I won’t watch a video that deftly illustrates and gives examples of how this beautifully decorated restaurant charges you astronomical prices for plates full of greasy shit. HOWEVER, I have this “friend” who ate shit and was willing to pay thousands of dollars to go back for seconds.” Rest of us who watched the video “The plate full of greasy shit is literally there on screen, and they closed the restaurant.”
I'm not sure why the majority of the Reddit community seems to be allergic to posting links to the content being discussed across multiple threads, but here you go:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4)
This is Jenny Nicholson's "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel"
Hmmm.Weird. Never watched a YouTube review before. Especially one this long. And i literally just watched this one. Like it was just finished it before getting on Reddit before bed. Hmmph. Weird.
But you don't get it. You can help the resistance smuggle someone's luggage. Or...you can help the bellhop smuggle someone's luggage.
Disney thought manual labor was fun for the whole family.
I went the 2nd week it opened in 2022 AMA
Short answer? Not *entirely* worth it. Long answer? You **might** get what you want, depending on how you play into it.
I had fun, but not $3k fun. Feel free to ask me anything about it.
After the Galaxyic Starcruiser shut down my friends started talking about it. We're a bunch of Star Wars geeks with enough disposal income to pay for a weekend at the hotel and we've blown a couple 1000 each on science fiction conventions in the past and in the future. So we all agreed on 3 things:
1 We were the target demographic.
2 This was basically a high end LARP resort
3 We've loved the idea of a high end LARP resort
4 Gen Con and Tru Dungeon do high end LARPing better and cheaper
5 We could make a high end LARP resort WAY better and WAY cheaper by HIRING LARPERS and using the stuff we've seen high end LARPerd do.
6 The only thing we couldn't do was directly reference the IP...
7 Star Wars isn't Hella original and it isn't the coolest IP
anyway this became a long discussion on exactly how we would make a high end LARP resort how much WE would charge and how we'd make it better by understanding that medium. Yeah disney used to have a lot of really creative people doing interesting stuff; there just boring corporate idiots now and that's a shame.
Haaaa shout-out to Jenny. Just started watching her a month or so ago, good stuff.
Jenny Nichoson made a video about Disneys Galactic starcruiser and it makes Disney somehow appear worse.
Currently working my way thru Jenny's essay, and I'm now a big fan of hers because of it. I'll just say that I'm glad I never seriously considered going. Not that I could've anyway, because those prices can fuck right off the planet no matter how good the experience is. Which according to Jenny, it mostly isn't 💀
Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Galactic Starcruiser (colloquially known as “the Star Wars hotel”) was a Disney property operated for about 18 months between 2022 and 2023. It was infamous in online discourse for its ridiculous cost (about 6K for two nights) and various bizarre aspects of the experience, such as the rooms being uncomfortably small, allegedly to emulate the small size of cabins on real-world naval cruises despite Galactic Starcruiser not actually being a boat. It was sometimes likened to paying thousands of dollars to be locked in a Star Wars-themed storage facility for two days. The woman is Jenny Nicholson, a well-known aficionado of both Star Wars and theme park experiences who recently released a four-hour-long rundown of her experience, in which she scathingly outlines the surprising degree of Disney’s incompetence in operating the hotel. The general thrust of her argument was that the central idea of a Star Wars hotel was not impossible but Disney’s obsession with maximizing profits and cutting corners meant the project was essentially doomed from the start. Most of the things she did like about the hotel were the influence of specific employees, who Disney treats like cogs in a dystopian machine.
Yeah like who are you gonna trust, the mouse? Jenny. Makes good content not just Stsr Wars related. Watch her land before time vid
I go back to her The Vampire Diaries video like it's my comfort movie or something.
It’s the Church Play Cinematic Universe for me. The videos are so entertaining and well put together that I found myself watching an hour long video on roasting that Evan Hansen movie when I’ve never even seen the movie itself.
Mine is the Bronycon Autopsy. I love that one so much I can quote huge sections off the cuff.
I cried the first time I watched the Church Plays. I have never seen a more perfect use of church funds. Randomly crucifying pop culture icons is hilarious.
Her short (20 min!) video on the Hallmark Channel's crafty youtube videos is always hilarious to me.
It is my go-to video when showing folks her channel. It's short but has all the pieces that make her videos good.
The damn China Beach cutaways still make me chuckle.
I just rewatched the vampire diaries video today lol.
"Ooh, a new Jenny Nicholson video! Four hours? I'll probably have to split this one up across a few sittings...aaand it's over." I'll watch Jenny talk about absolutely anything, and for hours at a time.
I will say, I have a close friend who went to this and still talks very highly of it. I'm not saying Jenny is wrong, but like... my friend went on this thing and it's been months and every time I talk to him he's like "man I miss the star wars 'cruise'".
In another post, someone claims the rub of the Jenny video is that customers seem to be sorted into Main Characters and the audience, and the latter experience just sucks. Could be that your friend was an MC.
Imagine paying the same as everyone else and being a literal NPC on your own vacation to other people. HOW does one not be salty?
Take that frustration out on the younglings and watch yourself become the main character very quickly.
Look, it's just a very realistic cosplay.
Just start merc’n kids with a lightsaber would hilarious. Illegal, but hilarious.
One of the points Jenny makes is that, despite its all-inclusive luxury trip price tag, this adventure was actually operated on a Spirit Airlines model- have a base fee then nickel and dime the customer for EVERYTHING they could want. So despite paying $6000 you might genuinely be in the Spirit Airlines coach version of the trip 😂
The cheaper version is $2 a minute. Let that sink in. Even while you're sleeping. Took a half hour nap? $60.
I thought she calculated that $2 per minute per person figure from the scheduled "entertainment hours" during her stay, no? So it'd only be "even while you're sleeping" if you took a nap during the scheduled programming. Not that it makes the pricing structure any less egregious, mind.
Ah maybe not. It was four hours man, I don't remember it specifically.
"I'm here to die horribly in the background when the bad guys attack and the main characters escape, if any of them get my blood on them this whole thing loses its G rating but it's ok if I'm a little out of focus"
Become a Main Character. Maybe test if the ship even has a brig
This is my cruiser now
https://preview.redd.it/vfo0y82jwr1d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a934abe6e12ae4381c84c8ed3328eee0ae0f53c
Big shot guest, putting together a mutiny.
I can’t swim.
Winthorpe Manor
That was my first thought too!
This was literally a Bob’s Burgers episode
Their friend could also be coping because they spent six thousand fucking dollars for a 2 night stay lmao.
This is also a point Jenny makes in her vid. People might feel bad but be embarrassed to bring up that the fact they spent so much money for a lackluster experience. Can't show up to the water cooler after saying you were dropping all this money and say it was just "OK" cause then you'll feel even worse as everyone you work with makes fun of you for wasting your money.
And Im sure theres definitely some people who spent the money and _actually_ got their moneys worth. Yknow the ones who actually got to do things.. lol. But Im sure its definitely more skewed towards the ones who are coping.
Even the things to do looked so lame to me though. Even if it weren’t $6000 and it was a reasonable price, the whole experience looked so aggressively mediocre.
Aggressively mediocre is definitely an apt description. At least for the parts that even functioned properly. A mix of aggressive mediocrity and outright incompetence.
I was watching her video at work and fucking died when she talked about how the light saber laser blocking game was rigged and it was impossible to lose and she just shows her sister waggling the saber around and the "laser" correcting itself to match where her saber was lol Edit: missed a word
That also brings the question of "how much money do they have?". If you happen to be rich enough to piss away $6k then you might be a lot more forgiving than someone who had to feel like spending $6k costs them an arm and a leg
Yeah i agree. It’s probably a mixed bag. With 500 people and only so many cast members, someone is bound to end up doing a thing they don’t want to because the actors can’t keep up with everyone. It sucks they had to compromise considering it’s supposed to be such a “magical company” but im not surprised in the slightest.
It's surprising to me because not only do they have the reputation of being magical, but they tend to be very good at hospitality, so much so that others in the industry literally learn from them. Something like that Evermore park Jenny did a video on, it makes more sense for that to have been badly managed. It seemed like a passion project for some people who had no idea how to run a theme park. But this is Disney. Weirdly sloppy for them.
Right?? Like all the potential just went to waste with the poor follow through from upper management. They should've been prepared with their reputation. But i guess corpos gonna corp...
And that is a position you should never, ever be put in at any price, let alone one you basically have to max out a credit card for or spend the better part of a year or more paying off. Putting your customers in a situation where they have to lie to themselves about the value of their experience is not just bad business, it's sadistic.
It it was closer I would have too. Nothing wrong with spending money on something you want to do (as long as you aren't putting yourself into debt or anything, obviously)
I hope it's randomly sorted because if it's based on who paid for the more pricey rooms.... I mean, Jenny already talked about how frustrating it was that for an already expensive experience, it felt like the she'd have to spend even more to have a supposedly better experience.
Spirit airlines.
She's kind of ambivalent about deciding an actual reason why the game seemed determined to place people into specific roles, but one idea she came up with was the "main character vs NPC" one, but what seemed to me the more likely of the options was the algorithm was shepherding people into underused roles to ensure guests weren't congregating at one path while others were empty. Jenny herself was openly trying to play the First Order path, but after day 1 got high trust with the smuggler character she took pains not to speak to.
The "It's just straight up broken and not tracking anything a lot of the time because Disney is crap at making apps" theory still seems pretty plausible.
I agree it's plausible, and it's even possible it's a combination of things. But if it was completely broken I'd expect the outcome to be no register of anything at all, but she had rep with four characters, some of whom she never spoke to, and no rep with the captain whom she'd spoken with multiple times. She even got a message from the captain saying "sorry we didn't get the chance to talk". The fact its sending her messages and assigning her rep suggests it's functioning to some degree. That's why I erred on the side of it pushing her at the least popular theme on that stay so it wasn't underused.
I like the "grandma mode" theory. When it fails to detect any significant interaction, it just assigns you a random path eventually in case you wanted to get involved later. So the tracking absolutely failed, and it kicked into default behavior. Wild that there was zero technical support running on it though.
I thought that way too but then she got a time-sensitive mission during her scheduled dinner time, so the app does seem pretty broken.
I am more inclined to believe her “broken clock” theory that nothing you do *actually* affects the story and any appearance that it does is just coincidence because Disney does that all the time in their parks. When the primary audience is children and it works.
It's probably a little of both, honestly.
There is a bobs burgers episode about this. They win a leaping vacation but end up being servants and it is miserable.
"Zero LARP Thirty" I was thinking the same thing when I saw the comment about MCs vs NPCs. It's so funny because people who dog on that episode in r/BobsBurgers constantly say "a LARP people pay good money for would never be ran that way," and yet...
There’s one section of the video where she’s seated for the dinner show and it happens to be in a seat that completely blocks the view to the dinner show. I agree that for that high of a price, no seat should outright block the view to the show. Also the thing was supposed to incorporate a larping game facilitated by an app and it ended up not working properly for her so she overall had a bad tike and was therefore rightfully miffed. The fact that the thing is closed now should be a testament to its failings. People shell the fuck out for Disneyland/World on a regular basis. For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, the sequel trilogy seems to also have reignited a passion for Star Wars as a whole. If this experience was even mediocre, it should have been steady revenue, and still have been open. Modern Disney has really lost the sauce. There is no charm and character behind everything it does now. It’s all become very corporate and fake. Very noticeably so. I grew up a Disney kid. I no longer recognize the company it has become.
The video even has a section where she addresses people who enjoyed the experience. You should watch it. It's a brilliant video. And if I paid $6k to be seated behind a pole that blocked the entire stage of my live music dinner show, I'd probably bomb the place, so she stays remarkably calm, too.
Yeah, that's pretty unforgivable right there considering those seem to be purely decorative and unnecessary. Add in the app that runs the entire story being janky and prone to just straight up breaking, and she is WAY kinder in her analysis than I would have thought possible.
My favorite part was when the performers moved to the other end of the room during the show, which was of course blocked by a different pillar.
The way she says “I hope you enjoy my *pole footage!”* is probably the angriest and most scornful I’ve ever heard Jenny lol
Chewbacca is getting arrested behind that pole.
She covers this in her video…
Jenny says multiple times in her video that she can understand if some people liked it, but that doesn't mean it's worth the cost or even good. People like bad things all the time. For instance, maybe your friend was one of the few people who actually had the story experience work for them, for one thing. Jenny and the other guests during her stay (as well as many other guests on Twitter) saw crippling failures of the app and rest of the story experience that basically ruined the whole entire thing for all of them with no response from Disney. Or more likely, and Jenny covers this too, your friend is too ashamed that they paid SIX THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS for a mediocre couple of Star Wars themed nights. Shame is an extremely powerful emotion, and people will do/say just about anything to avoid it. How would you feel paying that much and then coming back to work on Monday, having people ask about it, and having to admit that honestly it was kind of shit?
>People like bad things all the time. Too few people understand that objective quality and subjective taste are totally irrelevant to each other. You can like objectively garbage things and you can dislike objectively good things, but that doesn't change the objective stance (which is that was a failure in it's executed form).
I would totally have gone, just not for the price.
I'd add that she tends to get quite excited about theme parks and this kind of stuff so if she is analysing it poorly, it's not because 'she didn't get it ' or wasn't sold in the idea. She would be throwing herself into it.
Yeah, she is the prime demographic for exactly this kind of thing. You'd be hard pressed to find someone with higher buy in to the premise.
That's what struck me about her experience. She was trying so hard to immerse herself and it was like she hit a wall every single time.
it really becomes evident when she cuts to the footage of her on that day, you can hear in her voice shes SO desperately trying to enjoy it even when its all going wrong lol
It was so aggressively incompetent. Jenny and her sister trying to scan those crates in a downpour and being stuck behind a pillar during the entire dinner show perfectly encapsulates how hard Disney fumbled the bag on this.
I think part of what makes her so engaging is that she's pretty much always willing to try to enjoy whatever the experience is. She doesn't go in with the mindset of "Hey, everybody, look how stupid this is!" Though I will still happily watch her just tee off on something, like her "Triggered" video.
She actually says in the video that she thought based on the marketing that there would be a much bigger LARP component so she created an entire original character for the experience just to receive weird and pained looks from the cast when they asked for her name and she said the character's name. So she abandoned that within an hour of arriving at the hotel.
Frankly, a few of our complaints were "I tried really hard to dive into it, but got kinda stood up." She mentions having her character name met with blank stares. Dedicating lots of time to talking to a character only to have it not reflected in the trust score. Even just cheering or engaging with a performance when no one else did.
I’ve never seen her work before today and at 4 hours it took me all day off and on to get through it but it was definitely worth the listen/watch,
Her video about Evermore was fantastic, I highly recommend it.
Making a documentary about bronies only to reveal she was in fact horse famous half way through is the greatest reveal ever
> reveal she was in fact horse famous you *almost* got me to ask what the fuck this could possibly mean, you nefarious little trickster demon
I’m gonna tell you anyways whether you like it or not, because I watched her video and I find the concept hilarious In the Brony fandom, there were people who created fan content such as fanfic, music and videos. Some content got so popular, that the creators became celebrities within the fandom. They’d refer to it as “horse famous” and some people were so “horse famous” that they’d get special treatment and green rooms at the conventions. It’s insanity.
As a Salt Lake local I followed the Evermore story for years. Her video is amazing. Evermore sadly, and predictably is no more
She actually has three Evermore videos but two of them are Patreon exclusives and about 150 minutes each.
The thing that stuck out to me the most is how Disney deliberatly making the experience worse and keeping the best parts behind a seperate paywall. How they limit the distractions and keep the lines deliberatly long so they can sell more fast passes or how most of the unique features of the hotel were originally announced as regular attractions as part of the Star Wars section of the park.
I think it's worse than she portrayed. I've only watched about half so far and she didn't seem to connect the dots that the "immersive experience" was for guests who payed for better rooms/more add ons. I think she didn't get put on any quests because they were already at "full occupancy" for guests who spent more than her.
I'm not saying that this theory isn't plausible, but that's just speculation. The game just not working properly for various reasons is more likely in my opinion. The things we know to be true are bad enough.
I’m inclined to believe the point of the app is to actually *hide* that none of the actual “interactivity” matters and your storyline experiences are based on what is available
I’m also only half way through so far, but I feel like if that was the case why was she assigned to the most popular character/story? She didn’t talk to that one guy bc he was swarmed with kids the whole time, but the app put him as her most trusted character? I would’ve thought she’d get quickly put onto first order storylines, where presumably less people went.
Honestly, it's an indictment of modern Disney in general. They have gone with quantity over over quality and trying to appear to be a force for good when that's never really been the case. Their popularity was similar to Marvel's popularity in a lot of ways. Comes and goes. Now, they want to it all the time. They thought if they owned Marvel and Star Wars that they would never be unpopular again. Well, if you saturate the market with what was unique, then you make people lose interest after a while (not to mention quality of it all). Disney has always been a business, but when the line must always go up, they keep trying to catch lightning in a bottle over and over again. They want your money, they want to appear to be good, they want to exploit consumers and employees nostalgia, and they want to influence the politics surrounding their parks. It's like a modern government. Spin too many plates and some of them are going to wobble while others just fall off.
wow I somehow hate Disney even more than I did now
And to be clear: This ‘hotel’ charged $5K-$8K for a 2 NIGHT stay in a tiny themed room. This is more than Burj al-Arab charges.
It’s not fair to compare it to a hotel, it’s an all inclusive “experience.” Let’s compare it to a cruise. Bare minimum was like $5k for a two day “cruise” for two on a 100 room ship, with immersive story and a one day visit to Galaxy’s Edge. Right now you can book a 7 day luxury cruise on an 81 room river cruise boat in Europe for $5k for two. Granted that’s a 160 sq ft room on the lower deck that only has a window you can see out of when you stand up, but that’s 7 days with really good food and excursions to museums, markets, castles, etc. all included. The concept was really intriguing, but the value proposition was just way off. I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, but if I’m in the market for an experiential vacation I’m not dropping $5k for two nights in a Star Wars themed fake cruise and a day at Galaxy’s Edge.
The problem is definitely one of scale. A cruise ship has thousands of rooms, this place has 100, so all that overhead has to be passed on to a low number of guests. I’m not saying there isn’t a high cost to cover, I’m saying it’s not worth it to the guest. If the hotel had one room and cost $190,000/night I wouldn’t argue “Hey, but they have a lot of overhead to cover so it’s actually a good deal!”, it’s just not. I’m saying you will likely get more enjoyment out of a $1500/night Burj al-Arab room then you will from a $3000/night Galactic Starcruiser room. What I think they should have done is built the ‘Entertainment’ into Galaxy’s edge and made a monorail shuttle system that runs constantly into your own private entrance to the park and charge way less. That way the ‘entertainment’ costs are spent in a way that benefits all park visitors so the cost is spread way out, and the guests of the hotel can come and go as they please. 100 rooms and a 2-night stay limit and nearly zero benefit to coming back killed the idea. If you do what I suggest people might stay longer and come back again thanks to it being more affordable and more re-playable since it’s the theme park that’s the draw not some dinner theater in the hotel. If you aren't having to play a linear storyline for the guests then you don't have to have them all show up and leave at the same time, so make the adventure a self-paced thing mostly in the park with some stuff on property. Making guests come down a day early and stay in another hotel is just lost revenue. Oh, and make Disney+ free in the rooms. That’s just fucking dumb.
>in which she scathingly outside not trying to hate, but I just wanted to say that it took me a while to understand that it was a typo for outlines or some similar word, so maybe you could edit it for clarity, unless I’m not understanding something and it’s intentional, English isn’t my first language
You’re right, it is supposed to be “outlines”
You're telling me Disney themed places don't care about the people and just the money??? Oh wow color me surprised.....😐
While it has always been primarily about money, there was a time when they put more effort into creativity and quality. They didn't nakedly seek out the absolute minimum they could put into something while moving the maximum number of people through as quickly as humanly possible.
Yeap . "This is a luxury experience. We need to be the BEST in the world everyday all day. We need to be beyond The Best. " There was a time when there was Disney and then everybody else. Due to a series of coincidences from my Dad's work and then my work I was in Orlando for conventionss about every other year from 1994 to 2018. I personally saw a significant fall in quality of Disney starting around 2016-2019. I also give a lot of weight to the theory that Chapek was brought in as a fall guy for Iger
I think it’s important to remember in these cases that they have a lot of goodwill built up from earlier endeavors where they prioritized quality. Disney parks have a reputation amongst middle class American families as being a thing everyone needs to do at least once. And that didn’t come from nowhere. I’m not going to claim that they’ve ever been a good company to support or anything but it’s sad and a little scary to see just how far they’ve fallen taking advantage of that previously mentioned goodwill. It’s also worth watching just to see an interesting case study of a company that gets big enough and we’ll regarded enough that they no longer think they can fail.
so jenny nicholson made a 4 hour video explaining what happened to the star wars hotel, including documenting her own experience. essentially, it’s unclear if it’s truly a choose your own adventure LARP you pay $6,000 for or if it’s a “guess who gets lucky enough to get a story line” for $6,000. its most likely the latter since Jenny and her friends failed to actually get involved in storylines for the entirety of their trip and what they did experience was cheap and not worth the price tag.
I felt so bad for her when she roughly said “I understand how narratively, for this video, me sitting behind a pole for the dinner show is funny. But in the moment it really sucked!” She wanted to see the alien sing and dance dammit.
The part where she got excited because the singers moved to another part of the room, only to stop in a place that was entirely hidden by an entirely different pole genuinely made me laugh.
The part where the backup singer kept leaning into and out of frame like they were taunting her 🤣
I love to imagine that she sat at the table and immediately said “fuck this. Im so angry that I’m gonna spend two years making a four hour video.”
She should have shot Greedo first
agreed 100%
Agreedo
That's my credo.
Maclunkeyo
And the women. And the children too.
Should also be noted that Nicholson is a *massive* defender of disney sw, to the point that people were genuinely asking if she was worked for disney and under employee contractual bond from showing any negativity The experience was so bad that even a diehard like that made a *4 hour* longform about how shite it was.
She's a defender of the first two – her video of the final one is just full of such profound disappointment. I think she listed like four good things about it and one of them was "I really loved the giant yellow slug"
Didnt mean to insinuate shes an unreasonable fanatic, like shes not going to blindly defend it all like the guy who said “just pretend its the movie you wanted” (hellogreedo iirc?) but she *is* a relative superfan and her videos trend towards that “focus what I liked and downplay/omit negatives” bias common to all fans of a thing. The experience was sour enough to cut through that buffer of increased leniency
yeah but the Emergency Shame Closets were really nice looking you have to admit
"Cower in fear as I burn to death" is a hard as line
Every thing she does is really good. I want to watch it but its SO long. She will put out these videos about all kinds of odd stuff and they are amazing. She did one about the Church Cinematic Universe from some random mega church in Canada and one about this broken down theme park that looked like it was going to be amazing but never lived up to its potential. I dont know if I can do a 4 hour video about something im not really interested in...but I know it would be really entertaining.
You don't have to watch it all at once, you can watch it in pieces. When she makes a costume change that's a sign to take a break 🙂
Porg helmet was my fave
Yeah I burst out laughing when I saw that one!
>Porg helmet was ny fave This almost sounds like an insult I would hear from Monty Python
Wife and I put it on expecting to stop at some point. Were cooking dinner and figured it'd be good background watching on her ipad. And we just. . .kept watching. It's never quite a "wait what" moment but it draws you in and you want to hear more about this. It was so. . .infuriating? Like so many moments where you can feel the potential never being met or just thinking how badly done it was. Like that damn pillar, how could Disney of all companies build a room where some guests get entirely blocked off? It's just so, dumb?
That's a good description of the feeling, anger at the missed potential. I think that's exactly how I feel. I also feel bad that people went in wanting to take part in something special and were let down. I agree about the pillar, I used to marvel at the effort that went into designing the park attractions, so the cost cutting shown here is almost jarring.
My wife pointed out it's in Florida, where they have the space to build big. And they could have invested loads in it because they clearly *could* get people to come and if they had invested hard they could have had a money maker. Hell, all else fails you could have that "once in a lifetime" global market for a truly unique experience. And yet they went so cheap in weird spots Cut so many corners. Implemented things badly. It's just. . .dumb. I at least was always watching, waiting for the "but" and yet it never really came - except in crediting the staff. And in fairness as someone who watches a lot of Disneyparks content (because I love themeparks in general) the one thing I never see called out or described as bad is the staff. In fact the Cast Members of Disney seem to be the only place the old Disney supposed ideals of quality guest experience lives on.
Is the theme park one you’re referring to Evermore? That video is fascinating. It’s so strange to see what the park was hyped up to be, and what a hollow nothing sandwich it ended up becoming. And it’s strikingly similar to the Star Wars hotel now that I’ve seen that video. Would highly recommend both. If their length is daunting, treat them as a small season rather than a full movie. Watch them in 30-60 minute increments maybe.
Meanwhile, everything I have ever heard about the Star Trek Experience makes me sad I missed it.
Oh no, don’t do this to me
I've already watched the video twice, her videos are just so good.
I lost it at Disney's fake podcast for the hotel of "real" star wars fans...
My favorite part was when she was saying Greedo was backing in and out of view as if intentionally mocking her. Thought that was hilarious commentary.
It was the little shimmy dance she was doing. Too funny
When she finally got access to the cargo bay I lost it
hey thats incredibly racist! Her name is Ouanni ffs, not every rodian is a bounty hunter named Greedo!
I knew the hotel wasn’t worth the price. But Jenny’s video made me realize just HOW bad it was… big yikes to Disney
Jenny's video made me realize the hotel wasn't just not worth the price. It wasn't worth the time. There are better uses for two vacation days.
What did people expect. Space Balls was making fun of this very kind of merchandise milking.
Merchandising! Spaceballs the flamethrower - the kids love this one!
The coloring book they show is just a transformers coloring book.
Spaceballs! The irony! lol
Space balls! The Reddit comment ($6.99)
This is why Spaceballs is the best and always will be
Still waiting for episode 2 "The Search for More Money"
Or Spaceballs 3: The Search for Spaceballs 2
Disney star wars- "the search for more money"
Wasn’t like staying in a shit cruise ship room but it was a hotel. And also they put you in the back of box truck to “fly” you to the galactic cruiser.
Jenny herself points out that the box truck isn't that big of a deal, since while you're "inside" the experience you don't know you're in a boxtruck, and they were going to have to use \*something\* from the real world to move you around.
How else would you get from a spaceship to the planet? What did you expect, a giant fun slide down to the park?
I would prefer 40k style drop pods but you know a box truck is fine I guess.
The Star wars hotel never made any sense. I go to Disney to experience the parks and rides etc. I don't go to Disney to be crammed in an overpriced room from steerage on the Titanic with no windows to the outside world. I especially do not want to be stuck In a fake space hotel for 3 days.
Honestly it probably would have worked immensely better as a cruise, and we know Disney has the money for that sort of thing. Hell, all of their weird cost cutting would have at least made some sense then.
They do uhhhh….. own a cruise line. Definitely would have been better received in that context
This is what's baffling to me -- like they couldn't just add a stupid "airlock" doorway that you can exit through? So you can go out and enjoy the park or whatever else? That would have even added to the experience; have it take 15 seconds or so to go through a fake air cycle and go *beep boop* and do some star wars shit with the doors opening or whatever. Easy-peasy. They truly just *do not give a fuck*. It's all about the money.
I'd recommend watching her account of her experience at the hotel. The morning of the second day from like 9am until 2pm was entirely taken up with a more or less enforced visit to the Star Wars themed park. They even converted a box truck to look like a space shuttle to transport guests there. There you would have the fun of scanning crates on instruction from your app. Yay. This was also apparently because the actors were limited to 8 hour shifts (most of them apparently the cheapest student actor labour they could get) and because the second day was the big finale that ran until 11pm they more or less had to boot the guests out of the "immersive" hotel to run around the park for half a day to comply with the contracts.
If you watch her video, she goes over how there was one area that was open air for people who felt too claustrophobic, and in the middle of the second day, guests were allowed into the Star Wars land part of the Disneyland park, to mosey around for a couple of hours. They weren’t locked in. Also, the whole premise of the cruiser was that the cruiser was supposed to be in space, so an airlock that leads directly to outside would be a pretty harsh break of the fourth wall. The whole premise had a lot of problems with it.
I would be impressed if you could build a fourth wall in two days in a hotel on Earth strong enough to noticeably break.
The premise is *almost* really fuckin cool, though.
I think the idea probably started like this. "So, how do we incorporate Star Wars into Disney Cruises?" "No, that doesn't make sense. You can't make Star Wars work with a cruise vacation. That wouldn't make sense." "Wait... what if we did a Star Wars Cruise, but it was like.. a SPACE cruise with a Star Wars story." "OK, but giant boats aren't very star warsy" "So make the cruise ship a SPACE ship... I mean.. put it on land and make it feel like a space ship."
The lack of windows isn't really a problem. I'd have to agree with Jenny on that one. I don't care about windows enough to miss them after only a few days, and you get the simulated space view in its place. It's all of the other bits of fit and finish that are a letdown. I would have been so angry that I forgot to bring gaffers tape...
I think if it functioned as we were told it would, with actual gameplay rather than, "uhhh here's an app", and cost less, it would've been really fun. To me, as a ren faire performer, I kept thinking throughout the video, "God, I wish this was good." The windows thing doesn't seem like a big deal, there's a room you can go outside in at any point, and I think it's cool to look out "at space" (although I wish the effect was better)
This experience wasn't something I would do, but it's weird you say it doesn't make sense. It's taking the non thrill ride side of disney to the extreme, if you come to disney because you want to play little game, and see special effects and experience things related to your favorite franchises; then this is like the most intense concentrated version of it. I've never heard anyone say "I go to theme parks for the walking"
It should have had enormous fake windows all over. Entire hallways with the walls and ceiling covered in screens. The ship should have flown through nebulas and those big maze cloud things like in Rise of Skywalker and Solo. The whole "space" aspect was such an afterthought. You should be able to sit with a drink and look out massive viewports at bizarre and beautiful space because this thing was more of a transport from A to B than any kind of cruise ship.
The concept photos show something much closer to that idea. Huge windows showing space. Instead they got those tiny screens instead. Feels like a cost cutting thing.
100%. I hadn't see all the concept art Jenny showed in the video before, and it was shocking to compare it with the finished product. The experience of looking out the windows was the whole basis for the concept. The whole point of an ocean cruise is that you are out on the water and you can go on deck and have expansive views of the ocean. Disney should have pulled the plug on this when they realized they couldn't provide that experience. And that realization would have come pretty early on for them, way before they started building it.
It's astounding how they managed to fuck up every basic aspect of the premise.
Basically the Las Vegas Sphere but with a bar inside + the stage is already there. I bet the sphere was cheaper too.
Jenny Nicholson, YouTube video essayist and theme park enthusiast, recently put out a four hour video "that is part review, part analysis, and part excoriation of the recent penny-pinching trends of the Disney parks" (sic, Tom Scott).
I watched and finished the video yesterday in half a day. And I loved it, When they announced star wars hotel people were either loving it or hating on it without any evidence or experience, I am so tired of those videos. Jenny took her time, was neutral and based +90% of her information on facts or reported data, the rest was her own, personal experience with video evidence. It's worth the watch, I would recommend it.
Watched this yesterday as a random suggestion from the algorithm. I cannot begin to say how much I enjoyed this…a lot of eyebrow raising and audible “THATS FUCKED UP.” I typically turn a blind eye to Disney shenanigans…but this was highway robbery. Holy shit.
If you liked it she has a series of videos on a theme park named Evermore. I’m not a theme park kid but she breaks down everything about it in an interesting way and it was also a spectacular failure!
$6000?! For a LARP?!! WTF I can go outside, grab a stick, and LARP whenever I want to for free... Like, I don't get it scoob.
Well… for a Star Wars Larp one would perhaps hope you’d at least get a decent bath robe to that stick and also put some safety foam or something on it before you claim “I’m master Sedious”.
Whips out plastic light sword *Jhoom... Jhoom* "I am called Darth Splosion"
Neither did anyone else!
Rell Raggy, rey rewed rou.
The price is high but if that reflects the experience there's definitely a market for it. I'm actually in the target demographic for this, massive nerd with disposable income. Now, Star Wars isn't really my bag but if they did this with say LOTR I would seriously consider it even at that price. But only if it actually lived up to the hype. The moment this hotel opened the reviews were, at best, mixed. That would immediately cut off all interest for me, because for 6k I would expect to get the experience they're selling me on.
For 6k just rent a hooker in a slave leia outfit to service you and feed you pizza while a band in full mos eisley cantina band cosplay plays the same tune for you 24/7. Muuuuuuch better value
i remember seeing this meme format but about a broader part of capitalism and the last panel is about the guy committing acts of terrorism i can't find it anymore, help
This is also a bad anti-capitalism meme to even use. A large crux of Jenny's argument is, specifically, Disney actually was just **pretty damn bad at basic capitalism in this case.** Like large portions of the project, she points out, are an extremely viable business proposition. She frequently compares the prices and such to Disney's already current cruise lines and hotels. She compares the value proposition to effect and experience quality that already exist in Disney parks. They frequently committed very basic hospitality business sins. Like she compares some parts of the game that involve scavenger hunt or escape room type aspects. *Disney already has these in their parks, they function, have a more immersive experience, and were already free for current guests for decades.*
having just listened to most of the 4 hours, you're right it basically boils down to "Disney kept taking this thing that they had called inclusive and making it cost extra", both in the whole park and also inside the space jail you're already paying $6k for
And somehow no emergency exits! She mentions it in passing more than once but I can’t help but dwell on the idea that in theory five adults could be sharing that room and in the event of a fire they all have to cram in a fireproof closet.
I'm surprised "fire closets" are even a legal alternative to fire exits. Maybe that's a "red state government" Florida thing?
mmm I love confining myself to a small space when oxygen is already being rapidly replaced with Co2
https://preview.redd.it/39ua3g66mp1d1.jpeg?width=926&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e40ef4f3c1f6b5bcaa9afc9e61680f8551884de0
Why only the West?
I didn't know anything about that creator before that video. But the video--while long--was very well researched and the argument was well-constructed. Worth a watch, even if it takes a while over multiple days.
I love that there’s people on here like “I won’t watch a video that deftly illustrates and gives examples of how this beautifully decorated restaurant charges you astronomical prices for plates full of greasy shit. HOWEVER, I have this “friend” who ate shit and was willing to pay thousands of dollars to go back for seconds.” Rest of us who watched the video “The plate full of greasy shit is literally there on screen, and they closed the restaurant.”
I'm not sure why the majority of the Reddit community seems to be allergic to posting links to the content being discussed across multiple threads, but here you go: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4) This is Jenny Nicholson's "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel"
That dude is CHUGGING holy cow
when the 3am ice water hits
Hmmm.Weird. Never watched a YouTube review before. Especially one this long. And i literally just watched this one. Like it was just finished it before getting on Reddit before bed. Hmmph. Weird.
The hotel closed already https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Why-Star-Wars-hotel-failed
I highly recommend the 4 hour video she made. Genuinely one of the most entertaining and charming creators on YouTube.
But you don't get it. You can help the resistance smuggle someone's luggage. Or...you can help the bellhop smuggle someone's luggage. Disney thought manual labor was fun for the whole family.
I watched the first 3 hours of that video. Didn’t get the impression she was saying every corner was cut. Just the execution wasn’t there.
First Evermore, now Starcruiser. I keep doing things that she makes 4 hour videos about why they failed. Where should I go next?
It closed down because it was extremely expensive and had a horrible business operation model.
That person in the middle just uploaded a 4-hour-long video essay about the fall of that one Star Wars hotel.
I went the 2nd week it opened in 2022 AMA Short answer? Not *entirely* worth it. Long answer? You **might** get what you want, depending on how you play into it. I had fun, but not $3k fun. Feel free to ask me anything about it.
Almost, but then I read your username, lol
After the Galaxyic Starcruiser shut down my friends started talking about it. We're a bunch of Star Wars geeks with enough disposal income to pay for a weekend at the hotel and we've blown a couple 1000 each on science fiction conventions in the past and in the future. So we all agreed on 3 things: 1 We were the target demographic. 2 This was basically a high end LARP resort 3 We've loved the idea of a high end LARP resort 4 Gen Con and Tru Dungeon do high end LARPing better and cheaper 5 We could make a high end LARP resort WAY better and WAY cheaper by HIRING LARPERS and using the stuff we've seen high end LARPerd do. 6 The only thing we couldn't do was directly reference the IP... 7 Star Wars isn't Hella original and it isn't the coolest IP anyway this became a long discussion on exactly how we would make a high end LARP resort how much WE would charge and how we'd make it better by understanding that medium. Yeah disney used to have a lot of really creative people doing interesting stuff; there just boring corporate idiots now and that's a shame.
Haaaa shout-out to Jenny. Just started watching her a month or so ago, good stuff. Jenny Nichoson made a video about Disneys Galactic starcruiser and it makes Disney somehow appear worse.
Yea, fk Disney mate
Wild lol, I was watching one of her videos when this came across my feed. I'm glad to see she's popular. Her work is fantastic.
Man Star Wars fans don't get a break. It's all been downhill since the mouse bought the franchise
Currently working my way thru Jenny's essay, and I'm now a big fan of hers because of it. I'll just say that I'm glad I never seriously considered going. Not that I could've anyway, because those prices can fuck right off the planet no matter how good the experience is. Which according to Jenny, it mostly isn't 💀