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Star Wars Prequels Businesses

Disney World Is Shutting Down Its $2,500-a-Night Star Wars-Themed Hotel (npr.org) 330

Posted by msmash from the not-fit-for-this-world dept.
Thelasko writes: A Star Wars-themed hotel at Walt Disney World is being shut down about a year after opening, the company announced. The hotel, which is marketed as a two-night immersive experience, will take its last bookings Sep. 28 to 30. New bookings are being paused until May 26 to first accommodate those who made reservations after September. [...] The two-night packages start at about $4,800 for two people, and go up to $5,299 for two adults and one child and $5,999 for three adults and one child. Prices include lodging, meals and admission to Hollywood Studios. Upon arriving, guests enter a launch pod to board the Halcyon starcruiser, stay in a room with a space view and are able to interact with the franchise's characters throughout the ship.
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Disney World Is Shutting Down Its $2,500-a-Night Star Wars-Themed Hotel More

Disney World Is Shutting Down Its $2,500-a-Night Star Wars-Themed Hotel

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  • Why not just lower the price?

    • Re:Price (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @02:55PM (#63535589)

      There are a couple of possibilities.
      1. Cost of providing the service is actually closer to $2500 than people care to admit.
      2. Lowering price would reduce profits
      3. Current political climate reduces the desire to take such price cuts.
      4. They want to stem the bleeding while giving someone the blame.

      • Re:Price (Score:5, Funny)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @03:50PM (#63535749)
        A $2,500 hotel room can only cater to the most bourgeois customers on the planet. Those people exist, but they're not the kind of people that give two fucks about a sci-fi movie from 40 years ago. If you as an average schlub wants a better Star Wars experience you can probably split an $80 hotel room at a convention with a bunch of nerds who'll dress in costume and role play because they all want to.

        For $2,500 I could get pegged in the ass by a top shelf Leia Organa impersonator while being spoon fed yogurt by someone in an equally impressive Jabba costume and still have enough money leftover for a small cocaine party for everyone involved and sufficient liquor to never have to remember any of it. I don't know if the Disney experience could quite live up.
        • There are a lot of wealthy nerds who could afford that. So the market is there - but there is a LOT of competition for fun things to do at that price point (helicopter skiing, race car driving courses, flying jet aircraft, etc).
          I can imagine getting it right, but its a lot easier to get it wrong. For many fans the later star wars movies were considered to be pretty poor - which shows its possible to spend hundreds of millions of $ and not make something that a lot of die hard fans want.

          An immersive

          • "There are a lot of wealthy nerds"

              Great. A very select few frolic around in Playland while most are busting their asses off trying to stay above water. And a lot of them are nerds.

            People who won life's lottery and was born with a silver spoon in their mouth do not intetest me much. In fact, I find them quite revolting.

        • May I have the phone number for that party group please?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bigbutt ( 65939 )

      It wasn't just a hotel, it was an immersive experience, 24/7. So there wasn't a 'night crew'. I'd say from the article I read that it was closer to a 24/7 park ride than just a Star Wars themed hotel.

      [John]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      I was wondering the same thing. The cost of building it is a sunk cost and irrelevant now, so what matters is the operational margin. If they could keep it full, what is the minimum price where they break even? Would lowering the price to something above that result in keeping it full? If so, then that's a pretty simple solution.

      However, there's also the opportunity cost if they have some alternate plan for the site. What if they drop the cruise/LARP aspect and just treat it as a high-end Star Wars the

    • Re: Price (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nebulouslife ( 2699415 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @04:04PM (#63535783)
      The reality of it is the experience simply isn't good enough. This was billed as the next step in vacation experiences, but in typical Disney fashion it ended up being stripped down by the time guests got to pay for it. The best way to look at the star crusier is like an actual aquatic cruise. It's almost all inclusive, themed, has activities and limited space. The difference was supposed to be in the level of interactivity and story brought to the entire experience. From what I've read and been told it fell short on every level. The stories were forced and felt bland, the food was unmemorable, the rooms were more trimmed down then a typical cruise ship, and some areas almost felt more like star trek. I think the one of the best examples of how imagineering just really missed the mark, is that there are only three pazak tables in the whole "ship" which meant there was basically a line to play cards all the time. All of this combined also meant that repeat guests couldn't be counted on, at least until they advertised a new story for your stay. The last thing, which is very edident with the Rise of the Resistance ride, is performance fatigue. Having, not quite actors, play the same stories out weekly is going to take it's toll and standads aren't going to hold up. Let's just say cast interactions (or even ride effects) are not the same on Rise now compared to when it opened. All in all it was an experiment that Disney just kinda half-assed especially when you compare it to what their own cruise line offers at a much lower price. Disclaimer: I worked within WDW entertainment when this was announced and no one at the time thought it would do well, I guess we were right. We all also thought Chapek should have been fired rather than be CEO, guess we were right there to.
    • Because filling it isn't the problem.
      When I went, my reservations were 7 months in the future.

      The problem, is that at the current price, it's not enough for them to hit their profitability target.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Vrallis ( 33290 )

      It's not just the price (which is outrageous). It's not even Star Wars themed. It's Disney Star Wars themed. Nobody gives a shit about the Disney trilogy.

  • Can't staff the Cantina (Score:3, Insightful)

    by meandmatt ( 2741421 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @02:42PM (#63535551)
    I heard that they can't staff the Cantina since the empire started giving away credits causing an initial high demand for spice followed by galactic inflation.

  • Should have done it as part of Disney Cruise Lines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @02:46PM (#63535565) Journal

    Something tells me that had they done this with one of their cruise ships, rather than a hotel, it would have been far more popular and no one would have blinked at the cost.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      That's a great idea. Especially if they dedicated just a few decks or only used internal rooms (which normally are the cheapest).

    • There are a lot of ins and outs and whathaveyous. In Florida, you don't have cast members taking up prime real estate while they sleep. But in international waters, you don't need to give them a break at all!

      I bet the experience wears thin quickly, and the cruise would turn into a special sort of hell.

      • There are a lot of ins and outs and whathaveyous. In Florida, you don't have cast members taking up prime real estate while they sleep. But in international waters, you don't need to give them a break at all!

        I bet the experience wears thin quickly, and the cruise would turn into a special sort of hell.

        You could certainly make non-star warsy sections of the cruise ship.

        But I think the OP has a good idea. Generally speaking, you stay at a hotel to experience the community, not to stay in the hotel. There's a social expectation that's hard to get over. I mean you want to go to Disney World Resort and then stay in the hotel the whole time?

        The exact same thing on a cruise ship sounds adventurous, even if the daily itinerary is exactly the same, and the fact that you are actually at sea would make it way more

    • These are voyages of the cruise ship Enterprise... our 5 day mission: to seek out new night life and port civilizations!!
  • I'm sure not crying in my beer at a $2500/nite hotel closing. But I can think of quite a few OTHER things at Disney that need closing.

  • Probably Exactly The Right Move. (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @03:33PM (#63535697)

    They avoid the sunk cost fallacy. If it doesn't appear to become profitable at some identifiable point, cut it loose. Doesn't matter how much you spent.

    Good for them.

    • They avoid the sunk cost fallacy. If it doesn't appear to become profitable at some identifiable point, cut it loose. Doesn't matter how much you spent.

      Good for them.

      I'm sure it will be re-themed as a regular resort. It's only a sunk cost if they bring in the bulldozers and turn it back over to the alligators.

  • When they first announced this thing I thought that it sounded amazing, but the price was insane. How many people are there out there that are willing to drop that kind of cash on a Star Wars themed 'experience'? Sure you have your well to do nerds that will jump at the chance and maybe some rich parents with Star Wars nostalgia that they're trying to impart on their kids, but those run out after a while. I wondered, how long can this thing last at those prices? A year apparently. I'm a huge old school

  • Well (Score:2, Troll)

    by LeeLynx ( 6219816 )
    This post got real ugly real quick. There are an alarming number of people supportive of a governor explicitly targeting a business over political speech. I'm curious how many of these folks would be supportive if, say, Tim Walz decided to target MyPillow with state sanctions for its political leanings.

  • look fellas, no need to be hasty, it's a good idea, just needs a bit of re-jiggering...

    let's go with only 2 characters from the IP... slave-outfit Leia and post-scratch Padme... and honestly that's all you need, everything else nobody will notice

    then we narrow our target demographic to /. types, then...

    enough profit to buy the world!

    • then we narrow our target demographic to /. types, then...

      Oh, no. The grits-cleanup budget alone makes this plan unworkable.

  • Most of the time you're going to be a passive observer or it's going to feel incredibly forced. Or worse, the same 'interactivity' is going to be severely scripted and available to the first person to walk into the trigger area at the hourly repetition. I'm confident enough in that to write about it without having gone on this Disney vacation.

    But build it into a more passive experience where you're on a fake cruise ship and 'things happen' like a big 24/7 dinner theatre? And maybe design it on the premis

  • better nuke the site from orbit to be sure,

  • Mainly to sleep in. It's hard to have the "Star Wars Experience" when most of the time you are sleeping.

    Also, most people can't afford what amounts to monthy apartment rent pr. night.

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