I think the thing that saddens me most is Jenny put herself out there to try and enjoy the experience despite all the 'Hotel's' failings and was repeatedly let down.
For a theme park, you really cannot ask for a better guest than Jenny. She really does her best to try to get into the spirit of whatever is being presented, even when there isn't much for her to work with.
Requiring A Phone to do almost anything feels really lazy with amount it costs too with the cost they could give you a device that only works there to make it more immersive. The malls there just replaced all their Decicated Toy shops with a target practise game thats just ai looking scifi art on its walls and the only place that ever seems to be crowded is the store selling old Disney Park Merch. Every time we revisted The parks and Area things seem to slightly worse.
On the gameplay, I would even have people pick their faction before receiving their M bands, so that they get color coordinated magic bands related to what faction they chose. Simple enough for the actors to recognize and respond to.
Yeah; I've done things like LARP hotels (and similar) before and nearly every one of them if they had storylines anyway; had you select a storyline preference when you booked.
First - Jenny's criticisms are really spot on in this video. It isn't uninformed hate. Its not bashing on Disney. Its a pretty decent analysis of where a premium experience fell short - and a bit on how that's emblematic of where Disney is as a whole. So where I might quibble with her analysis here and there... its absolutely not any attempt to disagree with her criticisms or invalidate her experiences. My bias - we spent a chunk of change to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that's what we got. We had an awesome (albeit not without issue) experience. Don't regret doing it. Would do it again (assuming it was available and I had that kind of money for another trip). We showed up dressed up with a backstory. The characters and castmembers took in everything and ran with it. It was great. Couple quick observations... Jenny mentioned this but didn't go in to detail. When you check in, you get an "M-Band" - a special designed Magic Band. Its used to unlock your room. Buy things, etc. (i.e. everything a Magic Band does). But its also part of the game. You have to unlock access to doors which you then use your m-band to access. And I suspect the characters are pinging the m-bands when you interact with them. I had one character actually ask me to step away and scan in to a terminal - it had an air like he wasn't getting a reading on my band and needed to record my ID to link to our interaction and/or unlock events. The datapad phone app is probably a bigger deal than Jenny suspected. She showed all the QR code scanning and dismissed it as busy work for kids. But I was hacking in to devices (in the park as well as on the ship) as well as running missions for faction points. It worked pretty solid for us (albeit not perfectly - valid criticisms by Jenny again apply). And we had a lot of fun with them. But then - we used to play Ingress. We're conditioned. You mentioned "talking" to characters via the room terminal. That was going on with the datapad app. We unlocked missions by dismissing or warming up to character datapad messages. And I suspect our face-to-face interactions were unlocking some of those interactions which in turn prompted further face-to-face interactions and event invites. Could be wrong as to how deep that is. Again - Jenny critique of corner cutting could mean this seemed deeper than it really was. Especially given Jenny's personal experience. Finally - no, shill-baiters... I'm not justifying the premium fee I paid. If the Starcruiser was still in operation and you, random stranger, were to ask me whether its worth it... I'd say that asking that question probably means it isn't. For you. We had no regrets. But I'm not about to try and talk someone in to buying that ticket for themselves.
my favorite immersive experience will always be meow wolf locations -- they are sorta like an adult playground/art installation that tells a story (sometimes a choose your own adventure story, you get a little rfid card with your faction in some of them to trigger diff cut scenes) and has a lot to do with minimal/no cast interaction. and it costs 50$. one of the reasons they needed to keep things to 2-3 days is cast downtime. but also guests needed to be "on" for like 16 hour days, too. i think a solution to both these problems would have been to have interactive story installations -- more "climate simulator spaces", escape hatches you crawl into to discover cargo holds, cabinets to open with curios and maps, escape room style puzzles that spit out easter eggs, mini movies, etc. That way the guests have more to explore and do, and you don't need to schedule them so tightly. I also think you could do an escape room puzzle for guests, and easily eat up a two hour block of people's time, with only a couple of cast members behind the scenes for hints and troubleshooting, and randomly assign these to people interested throughout one of the days. you have 5 rooms, and 10 blocks of time to run them (and that is max, maybe less people want to do them, if there are very little kids or people who hate puzzles). Or you could do something like Boda Borg, where there are a lot of puzzle/activity rooms that dont require cast to reset anything, but you can try them over and over.
Meow Wolf is great! And because it’s not cost prohibitive, there’s no internalized pressure to get super involved with the story if you don’t want to. Lots of people take their time looking at/interacting with the art aspects, or lightly going along with whatever storyline they come across.
I remembered the spider, but I forgot about the hat. Guess I should watch that video again. Update: I saw the video and in my defense the cowboy hat thing is a footnote right at the end so it can be understood if not completely forgiven.
Assuming everyrhing worked, I would programed the reservations In a way you could locked a path in the larping, asigning an established amount of rebels, loyals or smugglers per event. It would still be confusing for performers, but you would not made people trying and failing to lock a path. And could lead entire groups of less confused people to the desired activities. And if the price went reasonable, people would have a good reason to book another time to choose a different path. I think that also would facilitate to assign reasonable time moments so people could roam or breath certain times and know where to go and when to continue their story without the feeling if they blink they lose money worrh
I've done weekend type LARP vacation things before and a lot of them ask you when you book what storyline preference you have, it's weird Disney didn't think of that. I mean sure also have an option of anything goes but still...
Naboo palace themed resort with a dinner show with the new queen of naboo. You could have tapestries and themed food that's based on a lot of fish recipes and European centered Resort styling. You could have mosaic tile work of scenes of Naboo in history. You could have a small Museum dedicated with props such as cap or a battle droid head and multiple ancient pieces of clothing or even the original Queen Amidala's headdress. It could be a nice luxurious and calm experience where you could enjoy the theming and feel like you're somewhere else entirely and pay for add-ons and LARP to your heart's content. I apologize if this is written weirdly I am speaking to my phone. It just seems bizarre to me that they would start out with the LARP hotel that relies too heavily on a phone app rather than give people something to build up towards.
I'm from another country. The last time I went to Disney World with my family was in 2011. We had that free magical express from the airport to our hotel, and I remember taking free fast pass from the main atractions cabins. We thought it was awesome compared with universal, where we had to buy fast pass. We even had fast pass as compensation for not going in atractions that closed because rain or maintaining
I feel like there's something conceptually wrong with the Star Cruiser being this pristine cruise ship-like environment. When I think of Star Wars, I think of *griminess* . I think of the sleazy Mos Eisley cantina which Ben Kenobi calls "a wretched hive of scum and villainy", or the rebels hunkered down in a freezing-cold base on Hoth that they probably dug out by hand. When there is a clean and pristine environment shown in the movies, it's typically associated with something bad. Like how the Death Star is this labyrinth of maintenance tunnels and steel, or how Coruscant has this beautiful exterior with the Jedi Temple and the Council, but it hides a dark underbelly miles below the surface. Disney has managed to entirely remove the "War" from Star Wars.
That's one of the first things she talked about in her video and I agree with her conclusion; the retro gritty look is Star Warsy but people aren't going to want to stay at a hotel that looks grimy and rundown. Also that look isn't the only Star Wars one; there's also things like Naboo and Alderaan which are very clean and beautiful.
from what I understand, the hotel was supposed to be an older luxury liner. so it should have shown wear and tear. Yes, it should have been clean, but it should have been a little bit shabby. patched painted areas, pads with worn buttons where hundreds of fingers have touched them before, etc. It was too pristine and too "new".
Sorta off topic. But any plans on doing a Lorcana 1 year later style video? Or would you wait for a 2 year update? I've seen people fight back at your initial takes and I wonder how you feel about changes like their reprint policy, changes to their ETB style boxes, the advancement of mechanics like removing players lore and other options like new card types.
I disagree greatly about this. It is true that it's smarter than them, sure, but the experience lacks intelligence completely. It needs to be actually smarter and more grandiose for that price to make sense. Or the price has to scale down considerably of course, but considering they never even tried that, it probably was never an option
Idk, both had some extremely questionable choices made in how they were managed… I think it’s to opposite, to be honest, with more people being into RP/LARP than ever before. From what I’ve seen anyhow
Cool video. This was my first time watching any of your stuff. I said it many times before, but Time after Time, it's just reinforcing my point that the fandom I think does a better job at this kind of stuff then the actual corporation itself. Which I think it's going to be the demise to a lot of these franchises. Unfortunately when I think of Disney, I think a cheap Chinese crap, and that's what they bring to the whole Star Wars universe I think. I can understand not bringing gun props to the event, but I have lightsabers and such that I see no issue with being brought to the park or added to the experience. My attitude is taking a lightsaber to something like this wouldn't be any different then going to a comic con. I think the reason why that they don't want you to use or bring a lightsaber is that they want you to buy THEIR cheap piece of crap. I've looked at what they produced, and it isn't anything that's special. If anything a downgrade to what you can buy for the same relative price somewhere else. Because most lightsaber blades are roughly an inch across, I could have easily seen using a lightsaber you already own or something you bought at the park as a gimmick to open things or as an interaction piece to something on the ship or Park itself. Like sticking it into something like a key, triggering something to happen. Opening a crate, unlocking a door, something. Just not very well thought out, and cheaply done in some respects.
It's funny to me. Jenny Nicholson hasn't put a video on UA-cam in over a year untill a few days ago. She does a overly long but thorough review of a hotel/experience albeit extremely overpriced, that closed forever 7 months ago. In nothing more than a ploy to make her money back and cash in while doing so. She's not helping anyone who could go there, because it's closed. In addition to the cash she will take in for said video, she only put Disney in the spotlight and how evil corporations like them only want your money and care nothing about quality and customer satisfaction. Which to those of us with functional brains has known for years. She's not fooling me and neither is Disney. They both can take a flying leap for all I care.
How dare people make entertaining reviews if they are not immediately useful to me. Pointing out the flaws in failed projects has never helped anyone critically think about other projects they might want to spend money on.
I think the thing that saddens me most is Jenny put herself out there to try and enjoy the experience despite all the 'Hotel's' failings and was repeatedly let down.
For a theme park, you really cannot ask for a better guest than Jenny. She really does her best to try to get into the spirit of whatever is being presented, even when there isn't much for her to work with.
You know what would fix this? A trip to Six Flags! Time to have fun on the Superman rollercoaster!
This is not a reaction video, this is a video essay.
Requiring A Phone to do almost anything feels really lazy with amount it costs too with the cost they could give you a device that only works there to make it more immersive. The malls there just replaced all their Decicated Toy shops with a target practise game thats just ai looking scifi art on its walls and the only place that ever seems to be crowded is the store selling old Disney Park Merch.
Every time we revisted The parks and Area things seem to slightly worse.
Love your commitment to the Jenny video framing bit 👏
On the gameplay, I would even have people pick their faction before receiving their M bands, so that they get color coordinated magic bands related to what faction they chose. Simple enough for the actors to recognize and respond to.
Yeah; I've done things like LARP hotels (and similar) before and nearly every one of them if they had storylines anyway; had you select a storyline preference when you booked.
There really is no excuse for the obstructed seats in the dining room at that price point.
First - Jenny's criticisms are really spot on in this video. It isn't uninformed hate. Its not bashing on Disney. Its a pretty decent analysis of where a premium experience fell short - and a bit on how that's emblematic of where Disney is as a whole. So where I might quibble with her analysis here and there... its absolutely not any attempt to disagree with her criticisms or invalidate her experiences.
My bias - we spent a chunk of change to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that's what we got. We had an awesome (albeit not without issue) experience. Don't regret doing it. Would do it again (assuming it was available and I had that kind of money for another trip). We showed up dressed up with a backstory. The characters and castmembers took in everything and ran with it. It was great.
Couple quick observations...
Jenny mentioned this but didn't go in to detail. When you check in, you get an "M-Band" - a special designed Magic Band. Its used to unlock your room. Buy things, etc. (i.e. everything a Magic Band does). But its also part of the game. You have to unlock access to doors which you then use your m-band to access. And I suspect the characters are pinging the m-bands when you interact with them. I had one character actually ask me to step away and scan in to a terminal - it had an air like he wasn't getting a reading on my band and needed to record my ID to link to our interaction and/or unlock events.
The datapad phone app is probably a bigger deal than Jenny suspected. She showed all the QR code scanning and dismissed it as busy work for kids. But I was hacking in to devices (in the park as well as on the ship) as well as running missions for faction points. It worked pretty solid for us (albeit not perfectly - valid criticisms by Jenny again apply). And we had a lot of fun with them. But then - we used to play Ingress. We're conditioned.
You mentioned "talking" to characters via the room terminal. That was going on with the datapad app. We unlocked missions by dismissing or warming up to character datapad messages. And I suspect our face-to-face interactions were unlocking some of those interactions which in turn prompted further face-to-face interactions and event invites. Could be wrong as to how deep that is. Again - Jenny critique of corner cutting could mean this seemed deeper than it really was. Especially given Jenny's personal experience.
Finally - no, shill-baiters... I'm not justifying the premium fee I paid. If the Starcruiser was still in operation and you, random stranger, were to ask me whether its worth it... I'd say that asking that question probably means it isn't. For you. We had no regrets. But I'm not about to try and talk someone in to buying that ticket for themselves.
my favorite immersive experience will always be meow wolf locations -- they are sorta like an adult playground/art installation that tells a story (sometimes a choose your own adventure story, you get a little rfid card with your faction in some of them to trigger diff cut scenes) and has a lot to do with minimal/no cast interaction. and it costs 50$. one of the reasons they needed to keep things to 2-3 days is cast downtime. but also guests needed to be "on" for like 16 hour days, too. i think a solution to both these problems would have been to have interactive story installations -- more "climate simulator spaces", escape hatches you crawl into to discover cargo holds, cabinets to open with curios and maps, escape room style puzzles that spit out easter eggs, mini movies, etc. That way the guests have more to explore and do, and you don't need to schedule them so tightly.
I also think you could do an escape room puzzle for guests, and easily eat up a two hour block of people's time, with only a couple of cast members behind the scenes for hints and troubleshooting, and randomly assign these to people interested throughout one of the days. you have 5 rooms, and 10 blocks of time to run them (and that is max, maybe less people want to do them, if there are very little kids or people who hate puzzles). Or you could do something like Boda Borg, where there are a lot of puzzle/activity rooms that dont require cast to reset anything, but you can try them over and over.
Meow Wolf is great! And because it’s not cost prohibitive, there’s no internalized pressure to get super involved with the story if you don’t want to. Lots of people take their time looking at/interacting with the art aspects, or lightly going along with whatever storyline they come across.
Galactic Starcruiser failed because they had the kind of people that do VIP at Coachella try to design a LARP weekend for Star Wars geeks.
Love your internet friendly numbered list. Jenny would be proud!
I remembered the spider, but I forgot about the hat. Guess I should watch that video again.
Update: I saw the video and in my defense the cowboy hat thing is a footnote right at the end so it can be understood if not completely forgiven.
Assuming everyrhing worked, I would programed the reservations In a way you could locked a path in the larping, asigning an established amount of rebels, loyals or smugglers per event. It would still be confusing for performers, but you would not made people trying and failing to lock a path. And could lead entire groups of less confused people to the desired activities. And if the price went reasonable, people would have a good reason to book another time to choose a different path.
I think that also would facilitate to assign reasonable time moments so people could roam or breath certain times and know where to go and when to continue their story without the feeling if they blink they lose money worrh
I've done weekend type LARP vacation things before and a lot of them ask you when you book what storyline preference you have, it's weird Disney didn't think of that. I mean sure also have an option of anything goes but still...
Great setup! I smiled and said "Yes" out loud as soon as saw the thumbnail.
Is that a takodachi? Are you a takodachi? Do you have cookies?
Naboo palace themed resort with a dinner show with the new queen of naboo. You could have tapestries and themed food that's based on a lot of fish recipes and European centered Resort styling. You could have mosaic tile work of scenes of Naboo in history. You could have a small Museum dedicated with props such as cap or a battle droid head and multiple ancient pieces of clothing or even the original Queen Amidala's headdress. It could be a nice luxurious and calm experience where you could enjoy the theming and feel like you're somewhere else entirely and pay for add-ons and LARP to your heart's content. I apologize if this is written weirdly I am speaking to my phone. It just seems bizarre to me that they would start out with the LARP hotel that relies too heavily on a phone app rather than give people something to build up towards.
I'm from another country. The last time I went to Disney World with my family was in 2011. We had that free magical express from the airport to our hotel, and I remember taking free fast pass from the main atractions cabins. We thought it was awesome compared with universal, where we had to buy fast pass. We even had fast pass as compensation for not going in atractions that closed because rain or maintaining
The description got me sobbing 🙏🙏
I feel like there's something conceptually wrong with the Star Cruiser being this pristine cruise ship-like environment. When I think of Star Wars, I think of *griminess* . I think of the sleazy Mos Eisley cantina which Ben Kenobi calls "a wretched hive of scum and villainy", or the rebels hunkered down in a freezing-cold base on Hoth that they probably dug out by hand. When there is a clean and pristine environment shown in the movies, it's typically associated with something bad. Like how the Death Star is this labyrinth of maintenance tunnels and steel, or how Coruscant has this beautiful exterior with the Jedi Temple and the Council, but it hides a dark underbelly miles below the surface. Disney has managed to entirely remove the "War" from Star Wars.
That's one of the first things she talked about in her video and I agree with her conclusion; the retro gritty look is Star Warsy but people aren't going to want to stay at a hotel that looks grimy and rundown. Also that look isn't the only Star Wars one; there's also things like Naboo and Alderaan which are very clean and beautiful.
from what I understand, the hotel was supposed to be an older luxury liner. so it should have shown wear and tear. Yes, it should have been clean, but it should have been a little bit shabby. patched painted areas, pads with worn buttons where hundreds of fingers have touched them before, etc. It was too pristine and too "new".
Sorta off topic. But any plans on doing a Lorcana 1 year later style video? Or would you wait for a 2 year update?
I've seen people fight back at your initial takes and I wonder how you feel about changes like their reprint policy, changes to their ETB style boxes, the advancement of mechanics like removing players lore and other options like new card types.
I disagree greatly about this. It is true that it's smarter than them, sure, but the experience lacks intelligence completely. It needs to be actually smarter and more grandiose for that price to make sense. Or the price has to scale down considerably of course, but considering they never even tried that, it probably was never an option
All the pixie dusters are so mad over her video 😅
So you agreed with Jenny’s analysis.
Where are the credits for the animation at the beginning?
ua-cam.com/video/9iBH2ScqgWI/v-deo.html&pp=ygUNa3JvbmlpIHNwaWRlcg%3D%3D
It’s true. Micro transactions are threatening the Disney experience.
i just found one of those quigon lightsabers u got behind you from 99
Evermore has gone under now too. I think people's appetite for this kind of thing does not meet the cost of operating it.
Idk, both had some extremely questionable choices made in how they were managed…
I think it’s to opposite, to be honest, with more people being into RP/LARP than ever before. From what I’ve seen anyhow
The chapter breakdowns give me serious redlettermedia vibes..
They did make too much spaghetti 🍝😊
Cool video. This was my first time watching any of your stuff. I said it many times before, but Time after Time, it's just reinforcing my point that the fandom I think does a better job at this kind of stuff then the actual corporation itself. Which I think it's going to be the demise to a lot of these franchises. Unfortunately when I think of Disney, I think a cheap Chinese crap, and that's what they bring to the whole Star Wars universe I think. I can understand not bringing gun props to the event, but I have lightsabers and such that I see no issue with being brought to the park or added to the experience. My attitude is taking a lightsaber to something like this wouldn't be any different then going to a comic con. I think the reason why that they don't want you to use or bring a lightsaber is that they want you to buy THEIR cheap piece of crap. I've looked at what they produced, and it isn't anything that's special. If anything a downgrade to what you can buy for the same relative price somewhere else. Because most lightsaber blades are roughly an inch across, I could have easily seen using a lightsaber you already own or something you bought at the park as a gimmick to open things or as an interaction piece to something on the ship or Park itself. Like sticking it into something like a key, triggering something to happen. Opening a crate, unlocking a door, something. Just not very well thought out, and cheaply done in some respects.
702’d!
You 6 foot 2? You look short, like 5 2
I am, indeed, 6'2". I'm just built like an ogre.
i understand, but also i don't feel any sympathy for people that has 6k to burn on larping at disney
I ask you to reconsider, because, as Jenny alludes, a lot of people made this their "Once-in-a-lifetime" Disney Trip and got terribly burned.
It's funny to me. Jenny Nicholson hasn't put a video on UA-cam in over a year untill a few days ago. She does a overly long but thorough review of a hotel/experience albeit extremely overpriced, that closed forever 7 months ago. In nothing more than a ploy to make her money back and cash in while doing so. She's not helping anyone who could go there, because it's closed. In addition to the cash she will take in for said video, she only put Disney in the spotlight and how evil corporations like them only want your money and care nothing about quality and customer satisfaction. Which to those of us with functional brains has known for years. She's not fooling me and neither is Disney. They both can take a flying leap for all I care.
What point did you think you were making with this deeply inane comment?
You find that funny?
Tell me you don't know about her patreon without admitting you don't know about her patreon
How dare people make entertaining reviews if they are not immediately useful to me. Pointing out the flaws in failed projects has never helped anyone critically think about other projects they might want to spend money on.
So no ones allowed to review there experience at places if they paid for it…? That makes no sense.