Disney! Wheeee!

[tifosi77]

Do you plan to rope drop any days? That can save you some $$ on special passes.

[meow]

First time at the Contemporary? It’s stupid convenient to MK

[nocera]

Do you plan to rope drop any days? That can save you some $$ on special passes.

I have a feeling this will be a much slower paced trip than usual since we'll have my folks along with us. I'm not worried about money, though. We tend to spare no expense when we're at a Disney park. So if I can pay to ride the big ones and not worry about getting up super early to get in a virtual queue or making a mad dash at rope drop I'm happy to do that.

We're considering an After Hours night at Hollywood Studios but since we've already experience Rise at DLR, we probably will just go to extended magic hours at MK that night. Shame we won't be there for the After Hours at Epcot, though. And for whatever reason they're not doing any After Hours at MK. After Hours is definitely worth the money. We had a blast at MK After Hours in 2018. The only ride that had ANY line was 7 Dwarfs mine train and even that was only a 10 minute wait.

[nocera]

First time at the Contemporary? It’s stupid convenient to MK

Yep first time at any monorail resort. I'm hoping it makes WDW feel more like DLR or DLP. Walking from your hotel to a park is the best.

[tifosi77]

We have stayed exactly one (1) night at a Disney hotel, but it was literally connected to DCA. So that was pretty rad.

[meow]

Nice. I’d recommend doing rope drop AND LL something. You can get two rides in like 20 minutes

[nocera]

We have stayed exactly one (1) night at a Disney hotel, but it was literally connected to DCA. So that was pretty rad.

Grand Californian? That's where we stayed on our honeymoon. It needs some TLC, but the entrance into DCA is great.

[tifosi77]

We have actually included the bathrooms from our room at GC on our 'inspo board' for when we do our bathroom reno. Not looking to do a 1:1 copy or anything, but the Cali Craftsman look was really nice.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Disney not taking all Ws this week:


I'm not surprised by this in the least. Not a great market for this especially at those price points, and didn't include park time.

[CBear3]

Did include a day in Studios to disembark. The problem was always the price.

[tifosi77]

I'm honestly still not really sure what "Starcruiser" even was.

But on the good news front: They've eliminated reservations for date-based tickets at the Florida properties. I'm sure California will follow soon.

[nocera]

Disney not taking all Ws this week:


I'm not surprised by this in the least. Not a great market for this especially at those price points, and didn't include park time.

I’m incredibly surprised by this. Just two weeks ago they invited a bunch of Disney vloggers to stay and blog their visit. They obviously invested a lot into this so to pull the plug so quickly is surprising. I wonder if they’ll reinvent it as just a standard hotel rather than the “cruise?” No way they just abandon it completely. The problem was cost. The cruise way way too expensive for what it was. They priced out families. Now if they change it to a moderate resort, with moderate resort prices and none of the forced activities, I can see it succeeding.

[nocera]

You know what, it doesn’t even have a pool and only has about 100 rooms. It’s probably better to eat the cost and tear it to the ground. If they wanted to convert it to a standard hotel, they’d have to put a ton of money into it. What a failure.

[DigitalGypsy66]

When the reviews came out and listed the price, I knew it was doomed to fail. Just way too niche and expensive. I consider myself a big Star Wars nerd, but even if we had the money for it, I'm not sure I'd be into that.

Was it a repurposed building, or new construction? It's one thing if it's an old converted warehouse or something, but if that was new construction...yikes what a waste.

[nocera]

I believe it was all new construction. And because the show building and hotel exterior were never meant to be seen by guests, it looks pretty…industrial.

[tifosi77]

It's actually newly built thing that's part of Galaxy's Edge in Florida (well, technically across the parking lot). Guests take a shuttle from the Starcruiser directly into the park at GE. I'm sure it will be repurposed, but the idea was flawed from the off imo. It turns out that there is, in fact, such a thing as 'too much Star Wars', especially if you're charging over a thousand bucks a head for it.

[LITT]

I work with a guy who did the star crusier last winter. He said it was cool and a unique experience but for the price it cost compared to the review it seemed off.

I thought the arrival seemed weird too - it’s a like a random
Back entrance off the road (at least that’s what it looked like when we were taking the Uber to pop century) I would have expected a Jurassic park like arrival experience

Getting ready for a short three day trip. Told Mrs litt we were staying at art of animation but really booked grand Floridian which has been a bucket list item for her so will be excited to see traction when we roll up

[DigitalGypsy66]

That's awesome @LITT. I've never stayed in a Disney property, but Grand Floridian would be right up there if I did.

[tifosi77]

Excellent, hope you have a fun time.

[skullman80]

I'm in the very early stages of trying to plan a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood in September ...specifically to go to Super Mario World. What's the recommended time to give yourself? A day for each park or area? I feel 4 full days should be plenty of time to do park stuff, plus other things around LA maybe? It's a bit overwhelming cause I know nothing about any of it....I just know we want to go to the Super Mario World thing (and harry potter).

[nocera]

I'm in the very early stages of trying to plan a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood in September ...specifically to go to Super Mario World. What's the recommended time to give yourself? A day for each park or area? I feel 4 full days should be plenty of time to do park stuff, plus other things around LA maybe? It's a bit overwhelming cause I know nothing about any of it....I just know we want to go to the Super Mario World thing (and harry potter).

1 or 2 days at Universal is plenty of time, especially if you get express passes (and you should). We went just before Nintendo world opened, got there at open, rode literally everything, and left a little after lunch time.

Definitely take some time to explore LA. Tif and I just went over a bunch of things to do there in the travel thread. Personally, I'd be sure to set aside 2 days at Disneyland.

[tifosi77]

Yeah, if you are a ride rider you'll definitely need a day each for Disneyland and California Adventure. And that's not even really considering things like just walking around and enjoying the environment. That would be simply going from attraction to attraction.

[skullman80]

Thanks guys....we may not go. We both want to, probably going to end up being too expensive after already doing Punta Cana this year, but gonna see if I can make it work.

[Stoosh]

Thoughts on the Galactic Starcruiser...

First, I feel horrible for the cast members that worked on this. One thing that echoed throughout videos & reviews of those who experienced this was that ALL the cast members were absolutely incredible, from the ones who played named roles in the story to those who filled the standard "guest service" roles. I hope they all get to move on to other roles in the park (I know some of them do; I saw the cast member who narrated our Savi's Workshop experience in Dec 2023 - who was absolutely awesome, by the way - as one of the named characters in a recent May the 4th Starcruiser experience).

When Starcruiser was revealed in 2017, my initial thought was, "Wow, that looks really awesome and I'll probably never be able to afford it." And this was wayyyyy before the two-night format & price points were actually announced. The price point had to have been such a big part of what sunk this whole thing and I'll use my own recent experiences.

Over the last couple of years, my wife and I were finally able to travel and we've made two recent trips to Disney World. Those were my first trips back in 30+ years; I've wanted to get back for much of the last twenty years, even moreso after Galaxy's Edge opened because we're both big Star Wars fans. We hit up Galaxy's Edge during both trips, did all the things, can't wait to see it all again, etc.

We just finalized a return trip for late Nov/early Dec 2023, and it NEVER really occurred to us to book the Starcruiser. We instead ended up booking an early December trip on the Disney Wish, preceded by a three-night stay at Pop Century with park hopper passes and Memory Maker. All of that was still less than what it would have cost for us to book the two-night Starcruiser voyage. I would imagine a lot of other Star Wars fans weighed options the same way.

The Starcruiser experience looks like it would have been amazing. I don't think enough can be said of the ambition & creativity that went into that project. I hope moving forward, Disney continues to create these immersive experiences with either new or existing propertied. For example, find ways to bring more life to Galaxy's Edge. Most importantly, make sure new experiences are more accessible to more people.

[tifosi77]

Yeah, there were seven or eight named characters in the story of a Starcruiser voyage, and they were same CMs for the whole thing. I can't even wrap my head around the HR issues that raises. lol I still maintain that too much of a good thing is, in fact, too much. But they will be able to leverage the experience and translate it into some things more widely accessible to Guests around the parks, not just for Star Wars.

I've only done Savi's once, but the CMs really did take from memorable to magical. And while I can't say so from direct experience, anecdotally I gather that's one of the main differentiators between Galaxy's Edge and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. There's just such a higher level of give-a-s**t from the staff putting on the show.