Still, what do you expect for the crazy anonymity one can expect on Empire/Alliance ships? A zillion bums, their muppets and droids, and still the thing where wifey (someone’s, ostensibly) orders Warp something and you can punch for it and feel like you did a thing.
Clearly, they’re gonna solve housing.
Since the Mouse owns both, the sign outside can easily be changed.
If this is marketed towards kids, then who cares what the style is. Flashing lights and things that go beep-bop-boop should be enough. Old Empire, New Empire… whatever. Make it look somewhat like the last movie, there ya go.
It’s a high-end version of a roadside mini-golf that has a fancy sign 2 miles down the road and you stop because your kids won’t shut up about it.
If this were Star Trek then they could have something fun on their hands. Each floor represents a different era & look. TOS bridge and sets would be popular… But the Discovery floor would be one massive Turboshaft and that is it.
Hello sailor. Two to beam up! 
Some people don’t seem to like any depictions of Star Wars locations that aren’t grungy and lived-in looking, but it’s a big galaxy and I think there’s room for different aesthetics. Plenty of precedent in the movies too. Cloud City and Naboo’s capital looked very different than Tatooine and Corellia. There’s no reason that a luxury cruise ship in that Galaxy shouldn’t look sleek and clean. Maybe the issue is the decision to make it a cruise ship at all rather than some kind of battleship, but then it’s harder to come up with a story as to why you’re taking your family there to relax.
Disney doesn’t own Paramount (a subsidiary of ViacomCBS) so they don’t own Star Trek yet. But of course the way things are going they’ll soon own just about all media.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing! 
He’s actually done a fair amount of VA work in star wars. He even did the mocap for the alien in the casino in TLJ (the one who thought bb8 was a slot machine)
Star Trek is owned by ViacomCBS, which is not (currently) owned by Disney; so they would have to license it.
looks begrudgingly at CedarFair WOULD BE REAL NICE IF PARAMOUNT OWNED A PARK NETWORK… lol
If you grabbed a starship actually out of the Star Wars universe, it would be mostly as described. But… there are very few people who want to play out the whole “moisture farmer goes on a cruise, sees the sites, nothing happens” fantasy. They want to be a Mandalorian Warrior or a Jedi Knight or a Princess. And Disney is all about making those fantasies happen.
And yeah, I really, really wish that it was a 100% cosplay required experience that extended into the parks. I would love it if they had some “child-free” weekends over the course of the year, so it was just adults in the hotel. (Not “adult”, just no kids.)
The thing is… for the ubergeek fandom, that’s a lot of money, but achievable. That’s about twice an out-of-town convention, or about how much a good set of white armor costs. That’s certainly within realm of how much a lot of people spend on their fandom. I’m not sure how many people who are not uber fans are going to pay $5K to get dragged along on this journey by their fan kids; when you could do a week-long Disney vacation for half as much right next door. And I very much doubt they will commit hard enough to this to make it work.
There are various fandoms who have made this work - the Wasteland Weekends, that D&D park, and in some ways Burning Man come to mind - but they all have the similarity of being pitched to uberfans who are willing to 100% commit to the experience.
The better version of all that is the Renaissance Festival. They remain affordable, family friendly, inclusive, and can even be risque or strange. They remain affordable with good food and drink. My local one: https://rennfest.com/
Of course, Disney isn’t collecting all the money.
The complaints weren’t so much about lack of grunge so much as the technology boards and dials and switches look nothing like the Star Wars '80s buttons, switches and levers aesthetic.
I dunno. Even assuming that Star Wars technology is supposed to remain stagnant across decades and be similar in a cruise ship to a battleship, this doesn’t look that far off to me.
Hey that is Jeremy Bulloch!
Yes, the pre-quels and sequels both had more modern/newer aesthetics for some of the tech.
The original Trilogy was supposed to look more “lived in”. Except for the Empire, which was mostly shiny and new… Thought buttons and such were definitely more minimalist.
The US Navy is to replace touchscreen controls on destroyers with physical systems in 2020 after a report into the fatal 2017 USS John S McCain collision branded the controls ‘unnecessarily complex’.
With a touchscreen interface, there’s always the temptation to add more options and more controls and more tabs and click-through screens and personalisation, and that means first you need to know which control you need, then you need to know how to find that control, then you need to know the conditions under which the control is visible, then you’ve already hit the reef.
When there’s a physical button on a panel, then it’s there, and you know where it is when you need it. When you need to have controls you can operate in an emergency, you want as much muscle memory and as little need for concentration as possible. You want the brain working on what has to happen, not trying to remember where to find the thing to make the thing that has to happen happen.
Exactly. We went through this ~20 years ago with digital cameras, we’re going through this right now with cars. (And other stuff.)
When an user interface has worked well for decades and is universally accepted (and expected) then the reasons for changing anything significant need to be a lot better than “new & shiny”.
Could it be that the successes of Star Wars are about characters and music and drama, and if you just plunk regular people down on the sets there is nothing inherently cool about any of it
That’s why Star Trek console wouldn’t have labels – if you didn’t know by heart what button you push, you have to stay off the bridge.
Star Trek consoles don’t have labels because none of the controls do anything - they are all fake, to make the crew think they are controlling the star ship, but it’s actually controlled by an AI that lets them think they are in charge.
Apparently at least a few people who made reservations are underwhelmed and backing out while they can still keep their deposit.
Of course this article might be making more of it than what’s really there. A certain amount of cancellations are probably inevitable no matter what, especially in times when a new variant is spreading.
