The vast majority of summer days for 2022 are still available if someone is interested in booking a trip aboard the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser. For Disney, this is one of those previously rare PR blunders where people can now see there’s a real problem. I say “previously” because you may have noticed Disney making significant missteps in the last couple of weeks.
There are a few things to note here. Yes, it would seem that Disney has sold out all dates in April, May, and June. I’ve always said that was sort of a given, but I’m also now not so sure they’re doing so. Ask yourself, is it in Disney’s interest to have open dates close to the present tense, or would they be better served closing the month out as we get too close? I honestly think they’d sacrifice thousands of dollars to prevent a negative round of press that could lead the average person to think this thing is a failure. Do I have any proof that they’re “closing” reservations with empty rooms or by filling those rooms with cast members or charitable organization families? No, not yet. But that is definitely something we’re looking at.
The fact that the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser continues to have most of the summer dates open for reservations is, frankly, quite shocking. We’re not moving towards the middle of April and July, August, September… they’re all fully available. At this point, you’d think that people would also be getting their winter reservations in so they don’t lose out on a premium Christmas gift for a Star Wars fanatic. Yeah, not so much:
So what’s going on here? Well, it has to be making the Disney+ folks sweat about how well Kenobi is going to do. And for reasons that are not so obvious, they really want Kenobi to win.
So let’s go over some of the variables that are likely stalling out reservations for this experience:
- Videos are out there and there are plenty of people who have seen those videos without being very impressed.
- The food has received mediocre and mixed reviews. Paying even more on top of the gargantuan base fee for specialty drinks probably isn’t going over all that well either.
- Star Wars may be on a downward popularity trend. The Book of Boba Fett was roundly defeated in ratings by various Netflix series with far lower budgets.
- The cost is just too high, period.
- The number of people who would be interested in a role-playing, escape room, video game, sequel trilogy mashup for two-days straight… that number has to be pretty low.
- Conservatives seem to be unhappy with Disney’s current direction.
- Moderates seem to want Disney to stop being on any political direction.
- Liberals seem unhappy with Disney’s prior direction and doubt their sincerity.
- On top of that, those that are strongly on the left side of politics also are now not so eager to go to Florida.
Again, as I’ve said a thousand times, I’m not interested in being political, but there are political angles to customers going to Disney World now that Disney has become strongly political. I spoke with a very sincere and honorable man today who told me he had waited years to take his grandchildren to Disney World when they were old enough; now he is staunchly opposed to doing so. I really think we’ve moved into a phase now where Disney has messed up badly enough that there could be a real effect on their bottom line. Remember, they had a stagnant increase in Disney+ subscription growth for half a year after the Gina Carano flub.
One of the things to watch is whether or not Disney shuts the Starcruiser down for a “refurbishment” in early 2023. I just don’t see how they can keep this thing up and running if they’re already struggling to fill reservations. It’s the opening year for crying out loud! And before you think I’m just being negative about the Starcruiser for the sake of being negative, I’ve already done an article where I go over how this can be fixed. It’s definitely fixable. That fix may come sooner rather than later if Disney can’t convince people to fill the hotel even in its first summer.
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