A new ad for 'Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser' suggests we need to do a lot of homework to enjoy this expensive vacation

From the website (because I was trying to figure this thing out): " Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is a revolutionary new 2-night experience …" plus a bunch of technobabble about the adventure. Including a “planet excursion to Baatu”. So…like a cruise, you can’t otherwise leave the ship…er…hotel??

Oh, I get it now. It’s like a 2-night Star-Wars-themed Covid quarantine.

And those two guys are not selling for me. :sleeping:

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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. :wink:

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… not to mention extremely low levels of enthusiasm (or maybe they were just on “Take 22” :clapper:)

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I think Disney fundamentally misunderstood their Star Wars property when they designed this “experience.”

Disney does actual cruises, and evidently does them well. My boss is a Disney super fan and took a cruise pre-COVID that she had an absolute blast on. They even had a financing option that allowed her to make monthly payments in advance to pay for it. And by her account it was mostly Mickey & Friends and Princesses. There was a little Star Wars tacked on, but it wasn’t the main draw.

Star Wars is at its heart a war story. Luxury pleasure cruises aren’t really a part of that story. Did they exist? Sure, just as some people were able to take vacations during WW2, there are people having fun in a galaxy far far away. But that isn’t the story anyone is interested in, and not the one fans want to experience. As others have already mentioned, they want to be a rebel, imperial, smuggler, or some other interesting character. They want to fight pirates, fend off a boarding party, get into a firefight with storm troopers, have a lightsaber duel with a Sith Lord. All really hard to replicate experiences, especially over 2 days. Lot of down time to fill, lot of actors to pay.

And the port of call. Baatu? Seriously? “Almost Tatooine”? That’s like taking a luxury cruise to Duluth. “Hey, guys! I’m paying $1000 per night to go watch taconite get loaded onto barges. Woo hoo!” Baatu’s more a smuggler’s run on the Falcon experience, not a luxury cruise experience. I can’t imagine the sleeping quarters on the Falcon rate the prices the Halcyon is charging.

But how fun would it be to smuggle weapons to a rebel cell on Baatu, getting into a firefight with pirates along the way, boarded for inspection by imperials (while hiding in the smuggler’s compartments), maybe blasting a double crossing buyer at the end in a seedy Cantina? It doesn’t provide much opportunity for merchandizing and additional sales (after all, I don’t think Han and Chewie were sightseeing or buying souvenirs), but it would be more faithful to the Star Wars franchise.

Unfortunately for the prices they’re charging, this isn’t very compelling to me.

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Hotels are for sleeping in before going out to do more interesting stuff. I could see maybe an extremely popular attraction having a hotel eventually added on, if it were done carefully… but everything I’ve seen about this makes it look like it’s a hotel first and foremost, and the Star Wars stuff has to fit into that limited mold.

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This guy!

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Maybe what Disney’s Star Wars-themed resorts need is a callback to the original. Why not turn the swimming pool into a facsimile of the garbage masher #3263827?

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I do my very best not to ever patronize a Disney-land-world.

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Good call on the costume designers for changing those weird hoof hands into furry wolfman gloves for the final shoot. How was he supposed to hold a blaster? For that matter how did he even dress himself? Those things don’t look like they’d even fit down his sleeves, let alone work the little snaps on his jacket.

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…unless there are small very dexterous appendages under the “hands” much like the underside of a horseshoe crab.

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Disgusted Steve Carell GIF

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Or do his drafting work as an architect?

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I think the Empire Strikes Back showed us that it’s the white humans who tend to get the breaks – i.e. a new robotic hand. :man_shrugging:

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I never knew before now how badly I need to see a prosthetic-armed walrus-man to make a cameo in a future Mandalorian episode. The show runners can right this historic wrong!

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Hey, at least some of the kids on Tatooine can afford their own mods! :wink:

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apocalypse now is a war story. star wars is a family drama.

All non-Jedi families are alike; each Jedi family is unhappy in its own way

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And Obi Wan, Yoda, Vader, Luke and Leia had at least survival cameos as force ghosts.

How many guests are going to do this together?

Building a whole ship and hiring dozens of actors to amuse one family at a time seems like an inefficient way to generate profits

I could see doing something using the techniques that are used for ARGs and LARPing. You do a combination of actor stuff, scheduled location based group activities, online puzzle stuff that uses a “datapad” provided for each room along with some kind of game where you are doing “missions” that improve the standing of your faction or damage that of other factions. You could keep the need for actor interaction at a minimum

Keep all the competition stuff online though so you don’t have assholes fighting over physical macguffins

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