Walt Disney World closing Galactic Star Cruiser in September

Welp

Type F in chat

I suppose we may have put that off too long.

I am still open to the idea of a two night cruise without the role play. :)

The Hard Rock Park of Disney?

I guess they ran out of Star Wars fans with that kind of money.

I liked the idea, but not the cost. If I'm going to blow that kind of money on something ridiculously stupid I'll do a zero-gravity flight.

Aside from the aforementioned lack of people who want a cosplay vacation, Orlando is already a multi-week trip if you want to do everything -- I just can't imagine getting a week off from work and the money to pay for a trip to the Mouse and then spending three days inside of a hotel. Three days would be much better spent at the parks IMO.

Im sure it will be re-imagined down to a single day and less immersive role play, and I am sure the menu will be gutted to crap as well. Then after the initial roleplay day it becomes your home base, so basically even more like the Star Trek Experience.

And those who went on the original will start holding it up to The Adventures Club.

I've seen a lot of "I can't believe they would rather shut it down than charge less" comments today. I think most of those are from people who can't grasp the idea that this thing was probably stupid expensive to operate.

I'm surprised that I seem to be the only one around here who not only thought it was cool, but intended to do it eventually. Per the article, they had some of their highest guest satisfaction rates for this. I think Galaxy's Edge is incredible to begin with. Make it more intimate and deeper? Yes, please.

I'm also not convinced that it's lack of interest that's the problem. As I said before, I heard that staffing was very challenging. The operating cost, that I could believe.

Well that’s too bad. I liked the idea and was hoping to do it someday.

whata huge bomb for Disney. Wonder what they do with the building? Must have been stupidly expensive to operate. So is it 24 hours? What I mean is, can you wake up at 2am and there be cosplay actors walking about? Or is it more on a schedule than that?

You know all those times that "They have all the numbers (info, demos, whichever), so they know way more than we do" has been written around here?

*shrug*

Crap. This means SFGAdv might need a hotel.

To be fair, the labor market changed radically from the time they planned it to the time it opened. There have been a number of new union contacts as well, including AEA if their character players are in that union.

I still think it was way more $$ and a significant time investment for the average guest. And even though they clearly aren't going for the average guest with this one, I think they went too high on the slider (callback) for both overall cost and the overall length of time you had to commit.

Make it a single day experience with tons of merch and my guess is they would see more success.

If this were somewhere else I might have considered it more strongly, but if I’m already in Orlando there are SOOO many other things I want to do that don’t cost that kind of money, not the least of which is Disney World itself.

Jeff:

I'm surprised that I seem to be the only one around here who not only thought it was cool, but intended to do it eventually.

You're not the only one, it was just on the back-burner of "maybe next time we get down to Disney" things. Which in our world would be next Spring at the earliest, but more likely 2025 (we have some things going on).

Alluding to what Brett mentioned above, I also assumed that by then the experience would have evolved into something other than the current/defunct package.

I also thought it was a cool concept; just wasn’t my particular cup of tea for the price point. I applaud Disney for taking a gamble and venturing off into uncharted territory to try something never done before, and taking a risk. That’s what good companies do.

Sometimes business initiatives need to fail at first in order to reinvent a concept to make it better and ultimately a success. Disney has mastered this over the years.

So, while this particular concept may have been a failure, Disney isn’t going to skip a beat in the theme park side of the business. I guarantee they learned some really good lessons and feedback that will result in something way better and ultimately a success.

Keep innovating and pushing the creative envelope Disney. Not every outside the box idea is going to be a home run.

I would have loved to do it but when balanced against a trip to Europe or a week of skiing out west there's just no way.