Disney spent a quarter billion dollars to build, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel, and it only remained open for a year and a half. This girl spent $6000 to be immersed in the experience. Fortunately, she’s cute and made an engaging 4-hour video about her Star Wars adventure that’s been viewed by 7 million people. She should recoup her expenses.
Disney is a big company, with a net profit of 1.7 billion dollars last year. They can’t keep making big mistakes like this. How did they screw this up so bad?
The Youtube video is cued up at the point where Disney Imagineers describe the attraction. Immediately, it looks like a table full of diversity hires. Wendy Anderson is the Executive Creative Director for Disney Live Entertainment. That is a very high level position, but she is doing a sell job that reality won’t possibly match. Anderson does not understand what she is promising. Everyone at that table is bullshitting. I wouldn’t buy into that sales pitch, but everyone at Disney did.
The video girl describes her two days at the resort. There are several operational glitches that irritate her because this is a premium entertainment resort, but it’s much more expensive and much less comfortable than a cruise. Video girl is optimistic about the immersive Star Wars activities, but never seemed likely to match expectations. She doesn’t enjoy it. Even if everything was best-case for her, it sounds miserable.
Star Wars: A New Hope was astounding in 1977. Almost 50 years later, it’s still a great adventure. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia were great characters played by the right actors following a good script. I am not one of those characters. Neither is Video Girl. That immersive experience was just a bad idea. What made light sabers special, was how special the light saber was to Luke, the first time he saw and held one. Hand me a light saber, and I’m still not Luke.
In college, a group of us went to Colonial Williamsburg.
Experience the largest outdoor educational living museum in the country, through immersive and authentic 18th-century programming for our guests.
I thought it sucked because you are experiencing a living museum, not life in the 18th century. Watching a guy making wooden buckets in an olde tyme way isn’t fun. I want to spend the day making a wooden bucket. I’d enjoy that.
A Star Wars immersive experience is worse because it’s a fantasy and science fiction universe, but we don’t have the magic or the technology. Attempts to mimic that magic and technology would look shoddy and disappointing. When a character actor comes up to engage me in a caper, I’d feel obligated to play along and feign enthusiasm because of the vicarious embarrassment I’d feel for them.
Interacting in an imaginary world will be unsatisfying until we have Westworld technology. That is a long way off. Until then, VR games can provide the look and sound of an imaginary world, but the physical sensations are missing. AI would be necessary to provide convincing characters and expand the choices of the player.
It is a shame that the Imagineers or Disney executives didn’t realize that. Currently, the price of Disney stock is 100 times larger than the earnings per share. That’s called the “Price to Earnings Ratio” or PE. It is loosely based on the reputation of the company and future prospects.
Disney’s PE of 100, is astoundingly high because the company was held in high regard. For Cedar Fair, the company that owns Cedar Point amusement park, the PE is 10. For Paramount Studios, it’s 11. Those are more typical. Disney’s stock price has dropped 50% in three years. If the company doesn’t get it’s shit straightened out, it will drop much more.