Star Wars: Galactic Starship (resort experience) News

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I disagree with the bolded point. With the occupancy rates at Disney, if it doesn't work, you reno the hotel and you'll have a deluxe resort, with the best access of any resort to a park, sitting right there. No other resort will be as close to any park, and no other resort will be that convenient to DHS. If you like DHS and want a deluxe, this will be a prime spot. Sure they'll be on the hook for the reno costs, but they'll get it back and then some if the other deluxe hotels are anything to go by. To me, this is a low risk proposition. If the role playing concept doesn't work out, just turn it into a real deluxe boutique. Money will come and you can kick the extraneous costs of the extra CMs and whatever else you are incorporating to make this immersive.

you could also just tweak the model and keep it as a Star Wars themed hotel but only do the full immersion part of the time. Then it would just be the cost of a regular deluxe hotel, say, 75% of the time and then at certain times/special events they do the full immersion

And if even that doesn't work, if the rooms are largely screen based you could change it to be a variety of themes where your screens overlook the setting you are in - could have Zootopia themed rooms, Big Hero 6 themed rooms, etc.

Guess I am just saying there are other things they could pivot to without having to full on reno the entire place
 
@TheMaxRebo has it right. Should the full imersion story mode hotel model fail, they will just limit it to 2 days or something a week and then just be a normal hotel with top tier delux rates, or do away with the story mode completely.
 
I wasn't suggesting the model will fail - I'm only suggesting it has to be a thought in someone's mind when doing something like this. In the end, Disney is the king, and Universal is the upstart Prince. Universal has more to lose if it tries something like this and fails. I think like much of what Universal has tried, they are going to wait and follow Disney's lead.

Personally, I think Disney's biggest risk is if there is a economic downturn between when they start building the resort and when it opens. (Disney in general I feel is taking a bit of a risk with their business model on that type of situation...they have priced out a lot of the population in the past decade, and the next downturn could hit them very hard.
 
Len Testa posted on WDWmagic on how the Star Wars hotel gameplay might work. “I have a small bit of information on how the hotel's game play may work.

Disney's writing a handful of stories that guests will play in. Each story will contain many steps. (As an example from the movies, one story is Episode IV is "Escape from the Death Star", and one step in that story is "Disable the Tractor Beam.")

It would be bad to have families waiting in line to disable the tractor beam - you lose the feeling of being in the story. So you only want one family at a time anywhere near the tractor beam.

The problem is that you can't predict exactly how long it's going to take each family to finish the steps *before* they get to the Tractor Beam. That's because for good game play, you want to give them the freedom to take 5, 10, or 15 minutes to complete those steps - you don't want every step to take a specific, set time.

So you know that X families will need to visit the one Tractor Beam room. You don't know exactly when any of them is going to arrive. But you need to schedule them precisely and without conflicts.

It looks like Disney is going to solve this with two things:

1) You're going to have a "guide" who tells you the next step of the game, why it's important, and what you have to do. (It's your Dungeon Master - let's call it what it is.)

2) In addition to the regular steps in every story, the DM will be able to send you on any number of side quests that take a variable amount of time. These side quests will enable the DM to "buy time" before sending you on the next, formal step of the story.

For example, if your next step is to visit the tractor beam, but another family just went into the tractor beam step and it takes 20 minutes to complete that task, the DM will send you to find someone at a bar and ask them a question, and tell you to come back within 20 minutes so you can relay it via satellite to someone else.

This is a fairly complicated scheduling problem (it's NP-hard, fam) and requires custom software to be written. Because of that, WDI isn't working on this part - it's straight from the PhDs at Disney Research.”
 


All indications and rumors seem to be that they are responding by building an actual third gate. We will see.

Yep but they still have transportation issues to work out to do that.

I do agree though that Universal will answer back with something big. Not sure if there is anything else out of harry potter they could easily do though but the ninento stuff offers possibilities but not sure there a "wow" factor like SW or HP. Now if they could get the rights to something like LOTR that could be big. I'd like to see Universal do something with star wars. They used to have a cool thing there where you could star in your own star trek episode which was lots of fun. Something off Jurassic World could be something that could be a real possibility though that would be odd - in a theme park put a recration of a fictitious theme park. lol
 
Yep but they still have transportation issues to work out to do that.

I do agree though that Universal will answer back with something big. Not sure if there is anything else out of harry potter they could easily do though but the ninento stuff offers possibilities but not sure there a "wow" factor like SW or HP. Now if they could get the rights to something like LOTR that could be big. I'd like to see Universal do something with star wars. They used to have a cool thing there where you could star in your own star trek episode which was lots of fun. Something off Jurassic World could be something that could be a real possibility though that would be odd - in a theme park put a recration of a fictitious theme park. lol
And they are looking deeply into those transportation concerns. Universal is not going to rush into any third gate plans.

Universal already has a Jurassic Park themed area so they've done the fictitious park inside a park already.
 
And they are looking deeply into those transportation concerns. Universal is not going to rush into any third gate plans.

Universal already has a Jurassic Park themed area so they've done the fictitious park inside a park already.

Been a while since I have been and had forgotten they had the jurassic park stuff already. Looking at the big film franchises universal owns there are not a lot of others that would make real big theme park areas so they'd likely have to do like they did with potter and license something. It works for HP so doesn't make it a bad route to go. When disney has most of the top grossing movies currently it does make it a little harder.
 


@TheMaxRebo has it right. Should the full imersion story mode hotel model fail, they will just limit it to 2 days or something a week and then just be a normal hotel with top tier delux rates, or do away with the story mode completely.

Not going to fail, at least not for a while. Fan bois be lining up to spend all the money they have been saving by living in their mom's basement for the last 40 years on living in this hotel for as long as possible.
 
Especially if you can "level up" or collect "experience points"..... or unlock new weapons you can use when flying the falcon....

I like this and could see an incentive based system that rewards future missions/visits that could extend beyond a single stay at the hotel. Once you get the recurring "hooks" in place, it becomes easier to monetize the product.
 
I like this and could see an incentive based system that rewards future missions/visits that could extend beyond a single stay at the hotel. Once you get the recurring "hooks" in place, it becomes easier to monetize the product.

Imagine working your way up character ranks and such. First time in you are just a force natural by the 10th stay you are sitting on the jedi council.
 
Imagine working your way up character ranks and such. First time in you are just a force natural by the 10th stay you are sitting on the jedi council.

Exactly! You earn, call them, Jedi experience points (or whatever) that is gained with each adventure. Now, suppose you create unique areas of the ship...err.....hotel, in which access to those areas are tiered based on those points. I'm not sure if this leads into guest class segregation, but offer additional perks for recurring guests.
 
Anyone who has seen pictures of a Comic-Con or watched "the big bang theory" can see how much interest there is for cosplay. This concept basically takes cosplay and adds rpg to it. If disney does it right, and with theming and immersion they usually do(see pandora), they will have no issue booking this experience and charging obscene amounts of money.

Further, if Disney does indeed have leveling up/jedi experience points and those points give you something meaningful to the experience they will essentially create 2 types of customers. The first will be like me...frequent wdw visitor that will try out sw hotel once and may try it again 5 or 7 years later, and the second that will be clamoring for more content and planning multiple trips back.

Disney's problem will not be selling the product, but creating enough of It. The biggest challenge video game designers have these days is developing enough good content to keep fan bases happy. The problem is the fan bases devour the content faster than it can be developed and clamor for more.
 
Anyone who has seen pictures of a Comic-Con or watched "the big bang theory" can see how much interest there is for cosplay. This concept basically takes cosplay and adds rpg to it. If disney does it right, and with theming and immersion they usually do(see pandora), they will have no issue booking this experience and charging obscene amounts of money.

Further, if Disney does indeed have leveling up/jedi experience points and those points give you something meaningful to the experience they will essentially create 2 types of customers. The first will be like me...frequent wdw visitor that will try out sw hotel once and may try it again 5 or 7 years later, and the second that will be clamoring for more content and planning multiple trips back.

Disney's problem will not be selling the product, but creating enough of It. The biggest challenge video game designers have these days is developing enough good content to keep fan bases happy. The problem is the fan bases devour the content faster than it can be developed and clamor for more.

As a gamer and a techie / sci-fi guy, yup, you nailed it. That being said, if they do this well, having points / experience / ranks. There should be enough "replayability" for people do devour repeatedly without adding content for a couple years I'd imagine. Unlike most games / experiences, its not like the millions of fans can all play through this 4 of 5 times in a matter of weeks or months, there are only so many spaces for people to book into the hotel.

I think it will actually be quite easy for Disney to keep up with the demand and add enough content for the frequent users because of the medium.
 
Been a while since I have been and had forgotten they had the jurassic park stuff already. Looking at the big film franchises universal owns there are not a lot of others that would make real big theme park areas so they'd likely have to do like they did with potter and license something. It works for HP so doesn't make it a bad route to go. When disney has most of the top grossing movies currently it does make it a little harder.

Who owns the "Twilight" franchise? I'm thinking that would be wildly popular.
 
Who owns the "Twilight" franchise? I'm thinking that would be wildly popular.
The problem with Twilight is that it’s fantasy set in the real world. There’s nothing remotely exotic about the settings. However, Universal also has a relationship now with Nintendo. So....maybe you can sleep in Hyrule castle or stay in an Animal Crossing village cottage or Luigi’s haunted mansion or something like that.
 
I am not suggesting that the resort won't be desirable by lots of people - but it will depend on the price point. If it's $1000 per person for 2 nights, I would likely do it once but never again. There's a lot of fans that will be priced out even at that point. If it's $2000 per person for 2 nights - that will price out even more. If Disney determines that to make the experience they want to give fans profitable they have to charge $3000, $4000, $5000 per person - at what point do you not have enough people to fill the resorts. That to me is the risk. Certainly if you do it cheap enough they will have no problem filling it.

I wonder if they will take another piece from the cruise model. From what I know of cruises, rooms on cruises get more and more expensive as the ship gets filled up. (Sort of like airlines too I guess.) I suppose they could do the same thing with this, price starts out more reasonable but as room fills price goes up.
 
I am not suggesting that the resort won't be desirable by lots of people - but it will depend on the price point. If it's $1000 per person for 2 nights, I would likely do it once but never again. There's a lot of fans that will be priced out even at that point. If it's $2000 per person for 2 nights - that will price out even more. If Disney determines that to make the experience they want to give fans profitable they have to charge $3000, $4000, $5000 per person - at what point do you not have enough people to fill the resorts. That to me is the risk. Certainly if you do it cheap enough they will have no problem filling it.

I wonder if they will take another piece from the cruise model. From what I know of cruises, rooms on cruises get more and more expensive as the ship gets filled up. (Sort of like airlines too I guess.) I suppose they could do the same thing with this, price starts out more reasonable but as room fills price goes up.

Usually as the cheaper cabins become full.....But as you get closer to the cruise date, they become way cheaper.... to fill the last spaces....
 
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