Four-Hour Long Viral Video Exposes the Colossal, Cheap-Out Failure of Disney's $3,000+ Per Night Star Wars Hotel

One of Bob Iger's biggest failures -- the list is crowded -- is getting fresh attention thanks to a four hour long deep dive viral video.

Disney's Star Wars hotel, a half-billion dollar failure written off completely for a $300 million tax break in 2023 after operating for a little over a year, is back on everyone's radar again.

The video by snarky nerd Jenny Nicholson has gotten over five million views. She was one of the few people who actually went to the $6,000+ for one room for two nights boondoggle, and describes it as a cashgrabby-yet-cheapskate failure in almost every single vector.

She's a big fan of expensive theme hotels but says this piece of crap was worth no more than 40% of what Disney was charging, at most.

Her latest video, her first in a year, is a four-hour achingly precise dissection of Star Wars Galactic Cruiser, an immersive role-playing experience that was nicknamed the Star Wars hotel. Galactic Starcruiser was a two-night event where guests paid a high four figures to board a fake spaceship and live as though they were part of a story set in the Star Wars galaxy. It opened on March 1, 2022, and closed on September 30, 2023, which should give you an indication of how popular it was. Eight months after its closure, Nicholson detailed her experience visiting the resort. She paid over $6,000 for her two-night stay and broke down with laser-like focus why her experience was so underwhelming. It's a great piece of work and a curiously tragic video, one where an enthusiast who was the target demographic for this ultimately niche attraction found herself left underwhelmed by a poorly executed corporate folly. It's 100% worth four hours of your time.

The internet agreed, and as of the writing of this piece, Nicholson's video has earned over 5 million views in one week. It's gone wildly viral beyond Nicholson's own niche, where she's already a big deal.

The Disney shills, including Screen Rant, are out with their typical Disney-approved talking points.

But it's hard to argue with Nicholson -- not only did Disney itself determine the $500 million hotel was a total loss, but they pulled the plug on it after a year. They didn't even try to save it -- they knew it was doomed.

But the Disney shills in the media say it was totally awesome.

The unexpected side of this is how it seems to have made a lot of people freak out.

Screen Rant, a content mill I used to write for, published a curiously defensive piece on the attraction, written by a former employee who seemed aggrieved with points that Nicholson never actually made in her video. While it doesn't name Nicholson or directly reference her video, it's obvious that the piece is a response to her work. Largely, it's SEO bait from a site that is ruthlessly efficient at creating it. They saw Nicholson's video doing well, wanted to cash in on it, but also wanted to stay on the good side of Disney.

The defensiveness over an attraction that, may I remind you, has shuttered is curious, to say the least. It's also evident that neither the writer nor their editors watched Nicholson's video (or at least the entire thing) because Nicholson rails against the ways that the attraction was dominated by corporate marketing lingo that depersonalized the experience, and the article is full of the exact same rhetoric. It reads like a press release hyping up something that no longer exists, damage control to poorly balance out the sheer number of mainstream media headlines Nicholson got for her video going viral. Nobody bought it.

It wasn't just them, though. Many Disney fans and content creators seemed truly furious with Nicholson for vlogging about her visit to an attraction she paid real money to attend. They mocked her for taking the attraction too seriously despite the fact that it was sold as an immersive experience where people were encouraged to roleplay.

The "immersive experience" cost $6,000 to $12,000 for a single room for two days.

Was she supposed to treat it as a blow-off?

Screen Rant's Disney Corporate Client Service article is here.

Nichoslon roasted the Disfluencers in her video, pointing out that many of the "influencers" pushing the hotel from the start were compensated and given free passes to the "experience."

Sort of. They were given a free four-our mini-"experience" and told what would be happening during the other 20 hours of the "experience." But many of them lied and just said they saw the entire two-day "show."

She was accused of somehow being both anti-Disney and a corporate shill. They said she was overtly critical and trying to take down the good people at the House of Mouse.

As she herself is, she's is the perfect target audience for this sort of thing. She did a two hour (positive) deep dive on Disney's Avatar attraction. And she's a huge Disney and Star Wars fan and a progressive.

Viewers of the video might wonder why she keeps calling an R2-D2-like droid "them;" I assume it's because she doesn't know the droid's chosen pronouns. (Or Disney specified that it was a they/them in marketing material -- I wouldn't put it past them.)

So she's no conservative. She's evaluating Disney objectively, and the shills will not have that.

The video is here. I hate to admit I watched the whole thing over Memorial Day weekend.

Is it worth it? Well I watched at 1.5x speed so it was "only" two and a half hours for me, and of course this subject is very interesting to me, so it was worth it for me. I think most of you may find this a little excessive.

It is very thorough, though. She points out how incredibly small the rooms at this "luxurious" hotel are. She also points out that on a real cruise ship, where space (and weight) are limited, the rooms are actually much bigger than at the landlocked fake "cruise" hotel that Disney tried to peddle for $6,000 to $12,000 per room for a two day "experience."

Why so small? You have all the space you want out in that Florida swamp.

Because Disney thinks it can constantly escalate its prices and parents will keep on coming to please their children, she concludes.

I think the tide is turning on that calculation.

Nicholson deploys an interesting comparison. She compares Spirit Airlines to luxury cruises. Now, Spirit Air offers you a rockbottom low price for a ticket -- but then they nickel-and-dime you and charge you for each bag you bring on board, including even a purse, and for every mini-can of Coke or bag of peanuts.

Luxury cruises, on the other hand, charge a huge upfront cost -- but then almost everything is free for the actual cruise.

Disney has created a hybrid model in its parks, she argues, not just with the Star Wars hotel but with all of its theme parks, in which they charge ludicrously high upfront costs -- but then also nickel-and-dime you for every possible incidental amenity.

The Spirit Air model works. The all-in all-inclusive luxury model works.

The Disney model which blends the worst aspects of both pricing models does not work.

There is evidence for that: Publicly-available information for wait times at Disney rides reveals that very few people were in the park on Memorial Day, one of the biggest amusement park days of the year. In this clip, they discuss rides that often have waits of an hour or more having barely any wait time at all -- sometimes no more than it physically takes to walk from an attraction's entrance to the actual attraction.

Beyond Disney's woes, Hollywood is experiencing a "full-scale depression." I mentioned this article before, but just to refresh your recollection:

Hollywood Contraction Hits Entertainment Executive Jobs: "This Is A Full-Scale Depression"

LinkedIn is usually used by professionals for networking with people in their field, posting updates when they get a new job or congratulating friends on their promotions.

These days, as one former industry type put it, "it's become a therapy site for unemployed entertainment executives" who share their frustrations over the lack of opportunities in Hollywood amid a major contraction.

"I've seen lots of downturns, lots of job losses but I've never seen anything like this," one veteran top TV executive said. "This is a full-scale depression for the entertainment industry."

Over the past year, there have been waves of layoffs at Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Amazon MGM Studios, Lionsgate (which acquired eOne), Netflix, Sony, Fifth Season and most talent agencies including CAA and UTA.

The dire situation, "bordering on worst-case scenario," the seasoned TV executive said, was created by a perfect storm of Covid, strikes and "poor management decisions coming home to roost" driven by short-sighted moves by media companies aimed at goosing their quarterly reports to appease Wall Street.

Those venting about their experiences on LinkedIn say that they have sent hundreds of job applications and never got a response to the majority of them, not even from HR. Some have been on the sidelines for more than a year while trying to pick up consulting and other part-time gigs to pay the bills.

The more senior executives turn to headhunters.

"I have certainly an influx of executives that reach out and say, they're looking for their next [job]," said top Hollywood executive recruiter Jamie Waldron, Senior Partner, Global Head of Sports, Media + Entertainment, at Modern Executive Solutions. His "conservative estimate" is that "a good 20%" of the VP-and-above executive workforce in media and entertainment is out of work from a year ago.

Based on his observations, legal and marketing executives have been heavily impacted, followed closely by development execs.

"There is no doubt a contraction," Waldron added. "It just makes it tough in the short term I feel like, with a lot of good executives. I can't meet everybody that wants to meet to talk about that they're about to be unemployed or this layoffs now happening."

For many newly unemployed execs it's been a major adjustment, losing a lofty salary with bonuses and stock but also perks such as company cars and expense accounts.

Most of those that have met with Waldron have put on a brave face, saying they feel great about taking a break and are happy to spend time with their kids. "And some are honest, 'No, I'm scared,' " he said.

During the strikes, Waldron, whose father, 91, is a former writer and still a WGA member, said he was "looking at the fear and listening to all the stories of the writers and actors that are losing their houses."

"What was kind of lost in the story was executives were doing the same thing, executives that were laid off were losing their houses and the private school tuition for their kids, and those jobs didn't come back because either the contraction of the industry, or they're waiting for them to come back," he said.

Hollywood often turns to cheap low-budget, non-union reality TV when times are tough. (Or when strikes have delayed normal scripted shows.)

But now reality TV is in a recession, too.

Many veteran unscripted producers and sellers, who asked to remain anonymous in a bid to protect future sales, say the downturn is mirroring what's happening in the scripted TV space as budgets there, too, are being squeezed across the board, and especially on broadcast. Unscripted shows, which historically have been cheaper to make and faster to produce, are feeling the same fiscal pinch as their scripted counterparts as media companies right-size their slates and spending. "It's the same problem as scripted, and it's really depressing," says one veteran reality executive.

The overall contraction and M&A have also meant fewer buyers for unscripted fare. Max, for example, no longer has its own unscripted department after incorporating Discovery's vast portfolio of programming into the streamer. "At the legacy companies, you have massive fiscal pressure going on -- just look at the stock prices. Those are the traditional buyers. It's the same reasons you've seen in scripted, just leading to unscripted as well," says one longtime seller.

Budgets for the shows that are being greenlit, meanwhile, are getting slashed, which is trickling down to affect the salaries that are being offered, according to sources. Some particularly noteworthy examples have made the rounds in online reality communities: One longtime reality producer, who says seasoned story producers used to be able to make $2,800 a week, shares a job posting starting May 31 and offering $350 to $450 a day, which amounts to $1,750 to $2,250 a week; a story producer sends a screenshot of a job starting in January that offered $1,800 to $2,200 a week for the same role. "Unfortunately, there's a lot more supply than demand right now" when it comes to available workers, adds the veteran reality TV producer. As a result, "Everybody's Scrooge McDucking it."

Oh well!

This industry -- and many others -- has been at hostile, nasty hot war with half of its former customer base since 2015. (It was in a cold war with half the population before that.)

Did they think that would never cost them their jobs?

Related: California has a big problem with thieves stealing catalytic converters, for the precious metals it's made of. They have this problem because they don't punish thieves.

California Democrats, on the other hand, say that California has this problem because car manufacturers make it too easy to steal these parts. The part is underneath the car in about the center of the car's body and is welded to the frame. You know, easy-peasy to just take on an impulse.

Even Ana Kasparian has wised up to the lunacy of blaming car makers for car theft. California legislators say they don't want the "easy" solution of sending thieves to jail. They want to instead confront the "root causes" of the crime, which is that car makers are building cars with these devices. (Which the government mandates them to install, of course.)

Not only does Nitya Ramen not want to punish thieves -- she even voted against a provision that would require proof-of-lawful-purchase for anyone attempting to sell a used catalytic converter. She is affirmatively fighting to keep this crime viable.

Promoting thievery and criminality has consequences.

Over the weekend, an actor appearing on General Hospital saw some Gentle Giants Who Were Starting Their Rap Careers screwing with his car.

When he intervened, they murdered him.

A nationwide crime trend plaguing car owners has gained renewed focus amid the unsolved killing of "General Hospital" actor Johnny Wactor who was gunned down when he caught thieves in Los Angeles ripping off the catalytic converter of his Toyota Prius.

The automotive part meant to reduce smog caused by combustion engines has become a preferred target for criminals as the prices of the precious metals inside the component -- rhodium, platinum and palladium -- have skyrocketed in recent years.

Rhodium, for instance, currently goes for $4,750 a troy ounce, the measurement for precious metals, or about twice the cost of gold, according to Trading Economics, a website that tracks economic indicators. Platinum is currently priced at $1,046 per troy ounce, while palladium is going for $957.

According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, a stolen catalytic converter can fetch between $20 and $350 on the black market.

Jim McDonnell, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff, told ABC News the quick money thieves are getting on the black market for the part outweighs the risk of getting caught because penalties have been historically low and the priority law enforcement agencies place on such crimes takes a back seat to violent crime.

But let's get at the "root causes" of this murder -- a law-abiding citizen attempting to stop thieves from robbing him.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:26 PM

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