Great video, watched it last night. My takeaway from this is the same way I've viewed Disney Parks stuff in the past years: unbelievably overpriced, cashing in on their brand to fleece customers...
Great video, watched it last night. My takeaway from this is the same way I've viewed Disney Parks stuff in the past years: unbelievably overpriced, cashing in on their brand to fleece customers for every penny they can.
What really hit the nail on the head for me was when they went into their hotel room and the TV only played trailers. If they wanted to watch anything from Disney+, they had to link an active paid Disney+ account. For a $6k/2night room. Do they need to give free D+ on that TV? No, absolutely not, if the rest of the hotel were worth it it'd just be a dumb quirk, but instead it's just fleecing to the highest order.
I hope Disney learns from these fumbles, though I'm not holding my breath.
yeah, that's super wild to me that they were so stingy that they wouldn't even have Disney+ in their own hotel rooms, I imagine it's probably the same in their normal hotels too? It's...
yeah, that's super wild to me that they were so stingy that they wouldn't even have Disney+ in their own hotel rooms, I imagine it's probably the same in their normal hotels too? It's microtransactions IRL lol.
Penny wise and pound foolish. Give people free Disney+, then give them a coupon code for one month free to their email already on file from booking the room. I bet you’d get a pretty good...
Penny wise and pound foolish. Give people free Disney+, then give them a coupon code for one month free to their email already on file from booking the room. I bet you’d get a pretty good conversion rate.
I would think people willing to shell out that money for the hotel experience are already paying for the access to the digital media the hotel celebrates.
I would think people willing to shell out that money for the hotel experience are already paying for the access to the digital media the hotel celebrates.
it was mentioned in the video too, but it would really naturally boost D+ numbers to investors too, I imagine. having x numbers of active users where x is every single room in every Disney hotel...
it was mentioned in the video too, but it would really naturally boost D+ numbers to investors too, I imagine. having x numbers of active users where x is every single room in every Disney hotel isn't nothing, right? seems kinda dumb that they don't.
Companies/branches inside a corporation have no common goal and fight for resources with each other. The hotels would need to pay for that Disney +, and if that helps streaming more than it helps...
Companies/branches inside a corporation have no common goal and fight for resources with each other. The hotels would need to pay for that Disney +, and if that helps streaming more than it helps the hotels, it would make them look bad when comparing performances.
Doing this in the most literal way was what tore apart Sears. CEO reorganized it so they (the national departments, not individual stores) literally had to compete for resources and literally had...
Doing this in the most literal way was what tore apart Sears.
CEO reorganized it so they (the national departments, not individual stores) literally had to compete for resources and literally had their own IT sections etc. Corporate infighting is bad for the corporation. The whole point is that the corporation should be cooperating on a goal, whether that's to make sprockets or media.
Everything in the video 'just' speaks of bad, soulless, shortsighted project management. "Of course the rooms should have TVs, don't allow anything but Disney on them." and move on without thinking any further. The 'finance guys' at one of the largest, most well known companies in the world weren't willing to allocate enough money to 'do the thing "right"'. So they got a cobbled together mess with capacity for expansion that worked okay until it just fell apart.
I'm deeply confused by the cost structure implied by the failure. Per her calculations at the beginning, at something close to the 'base' rate she was paying $120 per hour of scheduled time....
unbelievably overpriced, cashing in on their brand to fleece customers for every penny they can.
I'm deeply confused by the cost structure implied by the failure.
Per her calculations at the beginning, at something close to the 'base' rate she was paying $120 per hour of scheduled time. Suppose a full two-thirds of that goes towards both the "cruise" or "resort"-style experience plus the additional depreciation from the effects-heavy environment. That would leave $40/hr as the experience premium.
That rate should have allowed Disney to hire at least one staff member per party to monitor/assist nearly full-time! How could the operation have thus been blind to any guest (like Nicholson) struggling to engage with the experience? Since the hotel's conceit is that it's a cruise liner, there would even be an in-setting justification for heavy concierge service.
Yet the hotel failed, so badly that Disney outright pulled the plug rather than let it fade away. Something about it must have cost much more than predicted, but I can't understand where the money went.
Disney demanded too high of a profit margin on this high cost experience, I suspect. Whether that was a desire to pay off the high up-front costs (construction, app dev, creative dev, training,...
Disney demanded too high of a profit margin on this high cost experience, I suspect. Whether that was a desire to pay off the high up-front costs (construction, app dev, creative dev, training, etc) as quickly as possible, or just pure greed, I don't know.
It's inherently a low (for Disney) revenue venture. You only have so many beds to fill. I think it either shouldn't have been attempted or they should have ran it at cost while utilizing the...
It's inherently a low (for Disney) revenue venture. You only have so many beds to fill. I think it either shouldn't have been attempted or they should have ran it at cost while utilizing the positive externalities:
Good PR. If the customers love the experience they'll get more people to visit the parks that can handle variable capacity.
Good for employee morale. Properly executed this could have been a world-class experience. And the roles here are much more interesting than the ones in the parks. That gives employees elsewhere a very desirable career path to hope for.
This is what I suspect as well. I can't imagine a pressing need to make up their upfront costs so quickly. Like, what, did they put it all on their credit card with a 49% interest rate?
This is what I suspect as well. I can't imagine a pressing need to make up their upfront costs so quickly. Like, what, did they put it all on their credit card with a 49% interest rate?
I mean, isn't this the end game when your only concern is maximizing profits for shareholders? I feel like we're living in an age where we're experiencing the tipping point of this strategy.
I mean, isn't this the end game when your only concern is maximizing profits for shareholders? I feel like we're living in an age where we're experiencing the tipping point of this strategy.
Just watched the whole thing! I guess the TL;DW summary (mainly pulled from her concluding statement) is that the hotel wasn't great because it was created out of greed, not a desire to make a...
Just watched the whole thing! I guess the TL;DW summary (mainly pulled from her concluding statement) is that the hotel wasn't great because it was created out of greed, not a desire to make a wonderful experience. Disney cut a lot of magical bits from the Star Wars park area and threw those things together into the hotel. Any extra bespoke bits for the hotel were cut back to save on costs. The actors were great but could only do so much to redeem the experience. The food and drinks were excellent.
I get the impression that the cost really would have been justified if the goal was something other than making the most amount of money within the timeframe the executives care about. In the end they used it as a $300 million tax write-off.
I liked her conclusion the most, because you can really see it in all of Disney's parks and she calls it out. I know "enshittification" is an overused and kinda tired term at this point, but it's...
I liked her conclusion the most, because you can really see it in all of Disney's parks and she calls it out. I know "enshittification" is an overused and kinda tired term at this point, but it's basically what she's describing and it's fun cuz it's not in tech!
Did you watch the video? One of her points is that she is surprised that Disney did so little to try to salvage it. It was only running for 18 months before they decided to scuttle it. They may...
Did you watch the video? One of her points is that she is surprised that Disney did so little to try to salvage it. It was only running for 18 months before they decided to scuttle it. They may not have planned it as a tax write-off from the beginning, but it seems very believable that it was the thing that made them decide to close it.
In addition to what @Noox mentioned, just wanted to point out that all tiers of her Patreon get the exact same monthly video, and they're all in the same style! Would recommend, I'm only a casual...
In addition to what @Noox mentioned, just wanted to point out that all tiers of her Patreon get the exact same monthly video, and they're all in the same style! Would recommend, I'm only a casual fan but figured it's worth the $2 a month.
Despite the dumpster fire it turned out to be, there are nuggets of clever ideas in this that give me hope someone else could put together a good experience along the same lines. The "final...
Despite the dumpster fire it turned out to be, there are nuggets of clever ideas in this that give me hope someone else could put together a good experience along the same lines. The "final battle" set piece is a good example of how chaining together some good practical illusions can create a very fun immersive experience for kids. Hopefully another company learns from this and executes a similar idea with more love and care than Disney did.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about this video was the idea that this experience was an exercise in gatekeeping the full experience from the park proper. I am not a fan of Star Wars...
I think the thing that bothers me the most about this video was the idea that this experience was an exercise in gatekeeping the full experience from the park proper. I am not a fan of Star Wars but I got in on a preview of Star Wars Land when it came to Disneyland. It really felt exciting because it looked like it was going to be full of all kinds of interactive experiences. It was full of all kinds of interesting and fun details, and it really made you feel like you've traveled to an alien planet. There were stormtroopers and First Order officers walking around who would talk to you and get you into it. I thought to myself, wow, this is going to be great when it's complete.
But the problem is that it basically already was complete, sans one ride. And on subsequent visits, the characters walking around seem to have been seriously pared down, because I didn't run into any since. The app Jenny talks about is actually anti-fun; it's basically just you going around doing chores for no particular reason. The story prompts in them that you get from time to time aren't even particularly interesting. They couldn't even bother to make it trigger something happening in the real life outside of an annoying sound.
I have a great deal of respect for Disney's Imagineers. Saying they make magic is an understatement. The stuff they make is basically the only reason why Disney's theme parks have any appeal to me at all at this point. I don't understand why the static features have no expenses barred, yet the little things that would give you an unforgettable experience do not? Are they really that expensive to build and maintain?
After seeing this video I fully believe you. The idea of having the laser track the lightsaber at the end of that game, so it seems like the player is predicting the laser? That's some special,...
Saying they make magic is an understatement
After seeing this video I fully believe you. The idea of having the laser track the lightsaber at the end of that game, so it seems like the player is predicting the laser? That's some special, "bring joy to the heart of a child" genius.
Secret Cinema are the absolute masters of this IMO, although primarily aimed at adults rather than kids - they even managed to license The Empire Strikes Back for one of their early productions...
Secret Cinema are the absolute masters of this IMO, although primarily aimed at adults rather than kids - they even managed to license The Empire Strikes Back for one of their early productions back in 2015, pre-Disney buyout. They’ve actually worked with Disney since (they did Guardians of the Galaxy), so I guess anything’s still on the table - my only concern would be that Secret Cinema themselves were hit very hard by the pandemic and then bought out in 2022, so perhaps they’re on that inevitable slow decline in quality for short term profit too nowadays.
The “we were robbed” bit in the video hit me surprisingly hard. Like @phoenixrises said further up, enshittification is a tired term, but holy crap is it apt for the situation. It feels like everything is going that way, and for some reason seeing it in an ultra-premium offering from a brand built on “magic” brings an even sharper focus to the million more mundane ways it’s happening that we can’t escape so easily.
[Edit] And I just watched another little clip of old Secret Cinema and realised that show was at Printworks. Which we’ve also lost entirely. Sigh.
"Hey kids, we're going to Disney World! Don't get too excited now: we're going to stay inside a dark warehouse with no sunlight, and you can't actually leave to actually explore the rest of Disney...
"Hey kids, we're going to Disney World! Don't get too excited now: we're going to stay inside a dark warehouse with no sunlight, and you can't actually leave to actually explore the rest of Disney World."
...
I mean, what were the execs thinking?
The concept was fundamentally flawed from the get-go. They were asking people to spend $6k and their weekend sleeping in essentially sci-fi-y college dorm rooms inside a dark warehouse with a small curation experiences that can't stand up to the massive universe of entertainment outside that is Disney World.
Here's what I would have built for $350 million: a rip-off of Zaha Hadid's freaky fluid-shaped luxury apartment tower in NYC in the middle of an artificial lake filled with thousands of floating but anchored light orbs so that at night it looks like a field of stars.
Guests can enjoy full-sized luxury rooms befitting of ambassadors on Coruscant and natural sunlight during the day when they wake up and want to go enjoy the park.
Connect the hotel to the Star Wars attraction area with a dedicated tram that has virtual windows that show video of space being travelled through at warp speed. Have the tram enter the hotel lobby directly. Call the tram the "ship-to-planet shuttle" or something.
I'm half way through the video and I am getting frustrated and exasperated with her. The "themed immersive experience" is a space in entertainment that seems extremely under-served and wide open...
I'm half way through the video and I am getting frustrated and exasperated with her. The "themed immersive experience" is a space in entertainment that seems extremely under-served and wide open for innovation, and you would think that if ANY one would do it right it would be Disney. But they just had to be so damned greedy about it. I get where a lot of things that they did would have high development and operating costs that they would need to cover but many of those things (lightsaber training for instance) didn't deliver and just reek of mismanagement.
Ugh. I hope that this won't be used as an example of "why these things don't work". I share Jenny's frustration at this whole thing. Whatever happened to trying to create a "magical experience" for everyone?
Honestly the use of "with" in that phrase seems almost designed to trip up non-native English speakers. Preposition usage imo is one of the most insidious sources of difficulty in a lot of...
Honestly the use of "with" in that phrase seems almost designed to trip up non-native English speakers. Preposition usage imo is one of the most insidious sources of difficulty in a lot of languages. idk if Nefara is a non-native speaker but even learning another Germanic language what preposition to use with verbs like this constantly trips me up -- not to even mention the difficulty Germanic languages like English cause with phrasal verbs/verbal particles like "to trip up"!
Right. I just agree with her, because it's hard to believe they whiffed it so badly with such a well established franchise with such good bones and seemingly infinite money. I just wonder if...
Right. I just agree with her, because it's hard to believe they whiffed it so badly with such a well established franchise with such good bones and seemingly infinite money. I just wonder if something like it, but done right with the user experience in mind could work without an attached IP? After the breakdown of the Evermore mess it's incredibly frustrating to see how bad management can ruin years of work, creativity and effort. Rather than shut down the hotel, they should have fired the execs and get some people in who knew how to make use of the resources at hand.
As someone who's never seen one of Jenny's videos and isn't usually drawn to video easays, I have to say that was a very compelling watch. If anyone has more recommendations from her, I'd love to...
As someone who's never seen one of Jenny's videos and isn't usually drawn to video easays, I have to say that was a very compelling watch. If anyone has more recommendations from her, I'd love to hear them!
There is one point in her video that I'd like to expand on. Jenny mentions throughout the essay that the app failed to work properly for her and several other guests, effectively ruining her experience. She also expressed disappointment that her actions in the app has virtually no influence on her physical surroundings.
But I feel like Jenny failed to extend her critique of the app to its natural conclusion: there never should have been an app for the Star Wars experience in the first place.
Star Wars fans traveled across the country and spent thousands of dollars with the intention of immersing themselves in the Star Wars universe. They didn't travel across the country intending to stare at their phone all day long. I could get the same level of immersion by bringing my Steam Deck to Disneyland and breaking out Knights of the Old Republic. But you'd be crazy to travel to Disneyland just to play video games on your own electronic device. And yet that's exactly what Disney expected people to do for this $3000/person vacation.
Some people have dubbed this the enshitification of Disney, but I honestly think this is something different. Usually enshitification is just shorthand for monopolistic practices using venture capital money, with companies operating at a loss until their competition is dead. But Disney has all the money in the world -- they could afford to splurge and still be profitable!
Instead, I think the Star Wars hotel (and the app specifically) exemplify a modern business philosophy that's poisoning companies everywhere. And the idea is this: only that which can be quantified can be valued.
No doubt some imagineer had considered every improvement Jenny suggested. Of course you should be able to interact with the set pieces -- that's the entire reason for being in the hotel instead of just watching the movies! Yet some number cruncher probably thought, "Well, we could upgrade the exhibits so that guests could interact with them, or we could save $X/yr if we just used the app instead!" To which some Imagineer probably retorted: "But that would be so much less fun!" To which the number crunchy probably responded: "But how much less fun? I have cold, hard numbers right here!"
And that's the problem with numbers. Sometimes you can't quantify how much something sucks. And when your entire business revolves around a concept inherently unquantifiable -- fun -- numbers cannot be your guiding light.
So let's try to salvage this project. As I've already explained, the app is anti-fun, so just ditch it and track everything with the wristband. Now give guests the opportunity to interact with exhibits and complete quests in-person by interacting with the actors, and instead of giving them useless virtual gizmos, give them cheap but well-made physical gizmos like that cantina coaster. I mean, that coaster must've cost almost nothing to manufacture, but I still want one -- it just looks cool! That would've been a great memento.
Or maybe the app could've been used exclusively for time management. Imagine having a calendar that updated in real time depending on whom you spent time with. But critically, the calendar would not lock you out of any experience -- it would only recommend certain ones to you, and you'd still be able to experience other events so long as you happened to be in the right place at the right time. Now nobody would feel cheated from their $3000/person vacation by a misbehaving app -- everyone would have equal agency to choose their own adventure.
Jenny Nicholson is amazing! I highly suggest all her other videos too, I think she has a great way of taking things that I don't care too much about and making it super interesting.
Jenny Nicholson is amazing! I highly suggest all her other videos too, I think she has a great way of taking things that I don't care too much about and making it super interesting.
Just to reiterate this point - I think the first video I watched of hers was "Escape from Tomorrow is a dumb exercise in misery" because I had just watched the film and was curious about people's...
Just to reiterate this point - I think the first video I watched of hers was "Escape from Tomorrow is a dumb exercise in misery" because I had just watched the film and was curious about people's takes on it. I loved her way of communicating ideas and the humor clicked with me in such a way I immediately devoured the majority of her videos on youtube. I find her hilarious and insightful, and am waffling on whether or not I should subscribe to her patreon.
I like Jenny Nicholson a lot, and I want to like her videos more, but I disagree a little with some of the commenters. I think her videos are too long. There are other video essayists (Hbomberguy,...
I like Jenny Nicholson a lot, and I want to like her videos more, but I disagree a little with some of the commenters. I think her videos are too long. There are other video essayists (Hbomberguy, Folding Ideas, Defunctland) who I won't hesitate to watch an multi-hour long video, but those are usually tightly scripted and edited. Again, I really like Jenny Nicholson's stuff, but I struggle to pay attention on some of her longer videos. I did really like her video on crazy church Easter pageants, though.
Hers are definitely a different type of long than your average tightly-edited HBomberguy video, but I find sometimes her more conversational style works well even over very long periods of time....
Hers are definitely a different type of long than your average tightly-edited HBomberguy video, but I find sometimes her more conversational style works well even over very long periods of time. Some videos work better for me on that front than others (and can't be predicted by the topic of the video). I also would usually recommend watching her videos while doing something else -- long videos like hers where you don't need to constantly look at the screen for fear of missing something are great for when I want to embroider or crochet.
Yeah, I have a hard time listening to unscripted or lightly scripted podcasts, too, so I think it's just a me thing. I struggle with that kind of long, rambling stuff in general.
Yeah, I have a hard time listening to unscripted or lightly scripted podcasts, too, so I think it's just a me thing. I struggle with that kind of long, rambling stuff in general.
I totally getcha. For me I have an adhd struggle where I can't focus on those types of videos or podcasts unless I'm doing something with my hands, but I also can't work on my handiworks without...
I totally getcha. For me I have an adhd struggle where I can't focus on those types of videos or podcasts unless I'm doing something with my hands, but I also can't work on my handiworks without something on in the backround so it ends up being a match made in heaven.
It ended up effectively being more like a retroactive vlog put into a narrative order instead of a chronological one. I think if she just wanted to convey a message she could have easily edited it...
It ended up effectively being more like a retroactive vlog put into a narrative order instead of a chronological one. I think if she just wanted to convey a message she could have easily edited it down to 30 minutes, but it's more like a play-by-play of the full 48 hours with additional context on the history of the hotel and surrounding shenanigans.
Generally I agree that videos that get this long, or really anything over 70 minutes, are just poorly edited. But this video is an exception.
No, I would think that her older, shorter videos would be better for a first watch. You don't have to invest as much time and you can figure out if you like her in small doses.
No, I would think that her older, shorter videos would be better for a first watch. You don't have to invest as much time and you can figure out if you like her in small doses.
Great video, watched it last night. My takeaway from this is the same way I've viewed Disney Parks stuff in the past years: unbelievably overpriced, cashing in on their brand to fleece customers for every penny they can.
What really hit the nail on the head for me was when they went into their hotel room and the TV only played trailers. If they wanted to watch anything from Disney+, they had to link an active paid Disney+ account. For a $6k/2night room. Do they need to give free D+ on that TV? No, absolutely not, if the rest of the hotel were worth it it'd just be a dumb quirk, but instead it's just fleecing to the highest order.
I hope Disney learns from these fumbles, though I'm not holding my breath.
yeah, that's super wild to me that they were so stingy that they wouldn't even have Disney+ in their own hotel rooms, I imagine it's probably the same in their normal hotels too? It's microtransactions IRL lol.
You'd think it would be an easy way to add value to the experience and show off Disney+ to potential customers, but I guess they thought otherwise.
Penny wise and pound foolish. Give people free Disney+, then give them a coupon code for one month free to their email already on file from booking the room. I bet you’d get a pretty good conversion rate.
I would think people willing to shell out that money for the hotel experience are already paying for the access to the digital media the hotel celebrates.
it was mentioned in the video too, but it would really naturally boost D+ numbers to investors too, I imagine. having x numbers of active users where x is every single room in every Disney hotel isn't nothing, right? seems kinda dumb that they don't.
Companies/branches inside a corporation have no common goal and fight for resources with each other. The hotels would need to pay for that Disney +, and if that helps streaming more than it helps the hotels, it would make them look bad when comparing performances.
Doing this in the most literal way was what tore apart Sears.
CEO reorganized it so they (the national departments, not individual stores) literally had to compete for resources and literally had their own IT sections etc. Corporate infighting is bad for the corporation. The whole point is that the corporation should be cooperating on a goal, whether that's to make sprockets or media.
Everything in the video 'just' speaks of bad, soulless, shortsighted project management. "Of course the rooms should have TVs, don't allow anything but Disney on them." and move on without thinking any further. The 'finance guys' at one of the largest, most well known companies in the world weren't willing to allocate enough money to 'do the thing "right"'. So they got a cobbled together mess with capacity for expansion that worked okay until it just fell apart.
I'm deeply confused by the cost structure implied by the failure.
Per her calculations at the beginning, at something close to the 'base' rate she was paying $120 per hour of scheduled time. Suppose a full two-thirds of that goes towards both the "cruise" or "resort"-style experience plus the additional depreciation from the effects-heavy environment. That would leave $40/hr as the experience premium.
That rate should have allowed Disney to hire at least one staff member per party to monitor/assist nearly full-time! How could the operation have thus been blind to any guest (like Nicholson) struggling to engage with the experience? Since the hotel's conceit is that it's a cruise liner, there would even be an in-setting justification for heavy concierge service.
Yet the hotel failed, so badly that Disney outright pulled the plug rather than let it fade away. Something about it must have cost much more than predicted, but I can't understand where the money went.
Disney demanded too high of a profit margin on this high cost experience, I suspect. Whether that was a desire to pay off the high up-front costs (construction, app dev, creative dev, training, etc) as quickly as possible, or just pure greed, I don't know.
It's inherently a low (for Disney) revenue venture. You only have so many beds to fill. I think it either shouldn't have been attempted or they should have ran it at cost while utilizing the positive externalities:
This is what I suspect as well. I can't imagine a pressing need to make up their upfront costs so quickly. Like, what, did they put it all on their credit card with a 49% interest rate?
I mean, isn't this the end game when your only concern is maximizing profits for shareholders? I feel like we're living in an age where we're experiencing the tipping point of this strategy.
Just watched the whole thing! I guess the TL;DW summary (mainly pulled from her concluding statement) is that the hotel wasn't great because it was created out of greed, not a desire to make a wonderful experience. Disney cut a lot of magical bits from the Star Wars park area and threw those things together into the hotel. Any extra bespoke bits for the hotel were cut back to save on costs. The actors were great but could only do so much to redeem the experience. The food and drinks were excellent.
I get the impression that the cost really would have been justified if the goal was something other than making the most amount of money within the timeframe the executives care about. In the end they used it as a $300 million tax write-off.
I liked her conclusion the most, because you can really see it in all of Disney's parks and she calls it out. I know "enshittification" is an overused and kinda tired term at this point, but it's basically what she's describing and it's fun cuz it's not in tech!
Saying "they used it as a $30 million tax write-off" is such a backwards way of saying "they lost $24 million in total on it".
Did you watch the video? One of her points is that she is surprised that Disney did so little to try to salvage it. It was only running for 18 months before they decided to scuttle it. They may not have planned it as a tax write-off from the beginning, but it seems very believable that it was the thing that made them decide to close it.
It's been a while since Jenny Nicholson has posted and it's a big one!!! I'm... not done with it but figured I'd post it!
"A while", it's been 18 months since she's been active on anything! Glad to see her return.
She did say she posts a video once per month on her Patreon in the comments :) in case you wanted to see more!
In addition to what @Noox mentioned, just wanted to point out that all tiers of her Patreon get the exact same monthly video, and they're all in the same style! Would recommend, I'm only a casual fan but figured it's worth the $2 a month.
Aren't they essentially just her random ramblings with no editing?
She's making at least $30k a month on patreon, she doesn't need to post anywhere else.
Not a complaint, I say good for her.
Despite the dumpster fire it turned out to be, there are nuggets of clever ideas in this that give me hope someone else could put together a good experience along the same lines. The "final battle" set piece is a good example of how chaining together some good practical illusions can create a very fun immersive experience for kids. Hopefully another company learns from this and executes a similar idea with more love and care than Disney did.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about this video was the idea that this experience was an exercise in gatekeeping the full experience from the park proper. I am not a fan of Star Wars but I got in on a preview of Star Wars Land when it came to Disneyland. It really felt exciting because it looked like it was going to be full of all kinds of interactive experiences. It was full of all kinds of interesting and fun details, and it really made you feel like you've traveled to an alien planet. There were stormtroopers and First Order officers walking around who would talk to you and get you into it. I thought to myself, wow, this is going to be great when it's complete.
But the problem is that it basically already was complete, sans one ride. And on subsequent visits, the characters walking around seem to have been seriously pared down, because I didn't run into any since. The app Jenny talks about is actually anti-fun; it's basically just you going around doing chores for no particular reason. The story prompts in them that you get from time to time aren't even particularly interesting. They couldn't even bother to make it trigger something happening in the real life outside of an annoying sound.
I have a great deal of respect for Disney's Imagineers. Saying they make magic is an understatement. The stuff they make is basically the only reason why Disney's theme parks have any appeal to me at all at this point. I don't understand why the static features have no expenses barred, yet the little things that would give you an unforgettable experience do not? Are they really that expensive to build and maintain?
After seeing this video I fully believe you. The idea of having the laser track the lightsaber at the end of that game, so it seems like the player is predicting the laser? That's some special, "bring joy to the heart of a child" genius.
Secret Cinema are the absolute masters of this IMO, although primarily aimed at adults rather than kids - they even managed to license The Empire Strikes Back for one of their early productions back in 2015, pre-Disney buyout. They’ve actually worked with Disney since (they did Guardians of the Galaxy), so I guess anything’s still on the table - my only concern would be that Secret Cinema themselves were hit very hard by the pandemic and then bought out in 2022, so perhaps they’re on that inevitable slow decline in quality for short term profit too nowadays.
The “we were robbed” bit in the video hit me surprisingly hard. Like @phoenixrises said further up, enshittification is a tired term, but holy crap is it apt for the situation. It feels like everything is going that way, and for some reason seeing it in an ultra-premium offering from a brand built on “magic” brings an even sharper focus to the million more mundane ways it’s happening that we can’t escape so easily.
[Edit] And I just watched another little clip of old Secret Cinema and realised that show was at Printworks. Which we’ve also lost entirely. Sigh.
"Hey kids, we're going to Disney World! Don't get too excited now: we're going to stay inside a dark warehouse with no sunlight, and you can't actually leave to actually explore the rest of Disney World."
...
I mean, what were the execs thinking?
The concept was fundamentally flawed from the get-go. They were asking people to spend $6k and their weekend sleeping in essentially sci-fi-y college dorm rooms inside a dark warehouse with a small curation experiences that can't stand up to the massive universe of entertainment outside that is Disney World.
Here's what I would have built for $350 million: a rip-off of Zaha Hadid's freaky fluid-shaped luxury apartment tower in NYC in the middle of an artificial lake filled with thousands of floating but anchored light orbs so that at night it looks like a field of stars.
Guests can enjoy full-sized luxury rooms befitting of ambassadors on Coruscant and natural sunlight during the day when they wake up and want to go enjoy the park.
Connect the hotel to the Star Wars attraction area with a dedicated tram that has virtual windows that show video of space being travelled through at warp speed. Have the tram enter the hotel lobby directly. Call the tram the "ship-to-planet shuttle" or something.
Voila.
I'm half way through the video and I am getting frustrated and exasperated with her. The "themed immersive experience" is a space in entertainment that seems extremely under-served and wide open for innovation, and you would think that if ANY one would do it right it would be Disney. But they just had to be so damned greedy about it. I get where a lot of things that they did would have high development and operating costs that they would need to cover but many of those things (lightsaber training for instance) didn't deliver and just reek of mismanagement.
Ugh. I hope that this won't be used as an example of "why these things don't work". I share Jenny's frustration at this whole thing. Whatever happened to trying to create a "magical experience" for everyone?
I think you mean to say that you are getting frustrated along with her? The way you have it written makes it sound like she frustrates you.
Honestly the use of "with" in that phrase seems almost designed to trip up non-native English speakers. Preposition usage imo is one of the most insidious sources of difficulty in a lot of languages. idk if Nefara is a non-native speaker but even learning another Germanic language what preposition to use with verbs like this constantly trips me up -- not to even mention the difficulty Germanic languages like English cause with phrasal verbs/verbal particles like "to trip up"!
I’m a native English speaker and a published author, and it tripped me up. I had to read the whole comment to pick up from context what they meant.
This is so true. I'm a C2 level and I still have a very hard time with prepositions.
highly suggest finishing the video! :)
Yeah, I am a fan of her work I just don't have four straight hours! Hoping I can watch some more tonight.
haha only reason i'm saying that is because
spoilers!
she addresses the points that you bring up!Right. I just agree with her, because it's hard to believe they whiffed it so badly with such a well established franchise with such good bones and seemingly infinite money. I just wonder if something like it, but done right with the user experience in mind could work without an attached IP? After the breakdown of the Evermore mess it's incredibly frustrating to see how bad management can ruin years of work, creativity and effort. Rather than shut down the hotel, they should have fired the execs and get some people in who knew how to make use of the resources at hand.
As someone who's never seen one of Jenny's videos and isn't usually drawn to video easays, I have to say that was a very compelling watch. If anyone has more recommendations from her, I'd love to hear them!
There is one point in her video that I'd like to expand on. Jenny mentions throughout the essay that the app failed to work properly for her and several other guests, effectively ruining her experience. She also expressed disappointment that her actions in the app has virtually no influence on her physical surroundings.
But I feel like Jenny failed to extend her critique of the app to its natural conclusion: there never should have been an app for the Star Wars experience in the first place.
Star Wars fans traveled across the country and spent thousands of dollars with the intention of immersing themselves in the Star Wars universe. They didn't travel across the country intending to stare at their phone all day long. I could get the same level of immersion by bringing my Steam Deck to Disneyland and breaking out Knights of the Old Republic. But you'd be crazy to travel to Disneyland just to play video games on your own electronic device. And yet that's exactly what Disney expected people to do for this $3000/person vacation.
Some people have dubbed this the enshitification of Disney, but I honestly think this is something different. Usually enshitification is just shorthand for monopolistic practices using venture capital money, with companies operating at a loss until their competition is dead. But Disney has all the money in the world -- they could afford to splurge and still be profitable!
Instead, I think the Star Wars hotel (and the app specifically) exemplify a modern business philosophy that's poisoning companies everywhere. And the idea is this: only that which can be quantified can be valued.
No doubt some imagineer had considered every improvement Jenny suggested. Of course you should be able to interact with the set pieces -- that's the entire reason for being in the hotel instead of just watching the movies! Yet some number cruncher probably thought, "Well, we could upgrade the exhibits so that guests could interact with them, or we could save $X/yr if we just used the app instead!" To which some Imagineer probably retorted: "But that would be so much less fun!" To which the number crunchy probably responded: "But how much less fun? I have cold, hard numbers right here!"
And that's the problem with numbers. Sometimes you can't quantify how much something sucks. And when your entire business revolves around a concept inherently unquantifiable -- fun -- numbers cannot be your guiding light.
So let's try to salvage this project. As I've already explained, the app is anti-fun, so just ditch it and track everything with the wristband. Now give guests the opportunity to interact with exhibits and complete quests in-person by interacting with the actors, and instead of giving them useless virtual gizmos, give them cheap but well-made physical gizmos like that cantina coaster. I mean, that coaster must've cost almost nothing to manufacture, but I still want one -- it just looks cool! That would've been a great memento.
Or maybe the app could've been used exclusively for time management. Imagine having a calendar that updated in real time depending on whom you spent time with. But critically, the calendar would not lock you out of any experience -- it would only recommend certain ones to you, and you'd still be able to experience other events so long as you happened to be in the right place at the right time. Now nobody would feel cheated from their $3000/person vacation by a misbehaving app -- everyone would have equal agency to choose their own adventure.
Is that video.... FOUR hours long? I hope the presenter is amazingly entertaining.
She absolutely is - I literally went "YES" out loud when I saw how long the video was hah
Jenny Nicholson is amazing! I highly suggest all her other videos too, I think she has a great way of taking things that I don't care too much about and making it super interesting.
Just to reiterate this point - I think the first video I watched of hers was "Escape from Tomorrow is a dumb exercise in misery" because I had just watched the film and was curious about people's takes on it. I loved her way of communicating ideas and the humor clicked with me in such a way I immediately devoured the majority of her videos on youtube. I find her hilarious and insightful, and am waffling on whether or not I should subscribe to her patreon.
I like Jenny Nicholson a lot, and I want to like her videos more, but I disagree a little with some of the commenters. I think her videos are too long. There are other video essayists (Hbomberguy, Folding Ideas, Defunctland) who I won't hesitate to watch an multi-hour long video, but those are usually tightly scripted and edited. Again, I really like Jenny Nicholson's stuff, but I struggle to pay attention on some of her longer videos. I did really like her video on crazy church Easter pageants, though.
Hers are definitely a different type of long than your average tightly-edited HBomberguy video, but I find sometimes her more conversational style works well even over very long periods of time. Some videos work better for me on that front than others (and can't be predicted by the topic of the video). I also would usually recommend watching her videos while doing something else -- long videos like hers where you don't need to constantly look at the screen for fear of missing something are great for when I want to embroider or crochet.
Yeah, I have a hard time listening to unscripted or lightly scripted podcasts, too, so I think it's just a me thing. I struggle with that kind of long, rambling stuff in general.
I totally getcha. For me I have an adhd struggle where I can't focus on those types of videos or podcasts unless I'm doing something with my hands, but I also can't work on my handiworks without something on in the backround so it ends up being a match made in heaven.
It ended up effectively being more like a retroactive vlog put into a narrative order instead of a chronological one. I think if she just wanted to convey a message she could have easily edited it down to 30 minutes, but it's more like a play-by-play of the full 48 hours with additional context on the history of the hotel and surrounding shenanigans.
Generally I agree that videos that get this long, or really anything over 70 minutes, are just poorly edited. But this video is an exception.
Omg, thank you for mentioning the easter one, I hadn't watched it and it blew my mind.
She is 😊
My suggestion for the first thing to watch is her video about Land Before Time
No, I would think that her older, shorter videos would be better for a first watch. You don't have to invest as much time and you can figure out if you like her in small doses.