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S01E14: Sterilize the Starcruiser, Part 2
42 Plays11 months ago
We welcome back David Chestnut and Ben Dyer to continue our thoughts on the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser. What did we like about it, what made it work, and what do we think will come next? Join us and find out!
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Transcript
Introduction and Immersive Experiences
00:00:00
Speaker
We're back with more on the Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser. Grab your droids and brooms, it's a Star Wars cleaning crew.
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome back to the cleaning crew. And we're going to jump right back into our conversation with Ben Dyer and David chestnut about the star Wars, galactic star cruiser. And fair warning. This one goes a little bit long. We, I just couldn't edit out as much fun as we had on the conversation. So get ready to clean your kitchen, maybe a little deeper. We'll probably go a little over 20 minutes today. Meanwhile, let's jump back in. We were just talking about, can you do deep immersion at a theme park? You know, to your earlier question, Ben, if you take the spectrum of immersion being, you know, on the light end of just being like in an environment that looks stylistically like speaking of Harry Potter, like walking through Diagon Alley at Universal Studios, right? But you're not trying to role play, you're not trying to be a character, but you get that level of immersion. Let's call that the low end.
00:00:55
Speaker
And then you've got the very high end, which is full on LARPing, right? Live action role play. You go away with the weekend, you are committed to the character 100%. I feel like what Disney realized in their early testing and concepting is that most people are probably want to be on the lighter end of that, but that there is a certain audience that wants to be on the higher end. And the higher end was the people that the Star Cruiser was created for.
Target Audience for Star Cruiser
00:01:24
Speaker
Right. And I think that, yeah, there definitely is more of an appetite for people to do that type of thing. But I think you can pull that off in a theme park environment because I've seen Knott's Berry Farm do it with Ghost Town Alive, which is just an amazing experience and they make it work. And it's been very successful for them for the last few years.
00:01:48
Speaker
Is Halloween Horror Nights a kind of thing like that? I mean, I've never done the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal, but I know that there's a lot of like, all right, once you cross this line, you're in horror town. Once you come back out, you're not. And I almost feel like that's sort of like well-marked zones. It's safe to play here. It's safe to just be a guy drinking a soda here. like I like that sort of demilitarized zone or that line of demarcation between, you know the the fun starts here, now be worried. you know But I don't think that's so much about like in character or out of character as it is, we will not jump at you and scare you versus,
00:02:26
Speaker
But the concept applies across, right? Yeah, right, right, right.
Character Creations and Personalization
00:02:31
Speaker
So, hey, let's talk a little bit about the characters that we created when we went on the Star Cruiser, because, you know, this, my second time around, I really had a vision for the type of character I wanted to be. It was Gerbo Slosh, the Ronto Rap King of Niamos. I kind of based him on ah Dick Portillo who founded Portillo's hot dog chain in Chicago. ah But also I wanted him to be a character who kind of came in as a cynical businessman and ah learned the ways of the force. That was my the journey that I wanted to tell. ah What did you guys pick? Ben, you you were a droid mechanic as I recall.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, I was playing a guy named Hub Rexley and he was the kind of guy who i I envisioned being played by like Tom Arnold in the sort of like in the true lies era, right? He was just this kind of, you know, enthusiastic personality. And he worked over in the warranty department at Blastech. You remember Blastech? They make all those E11 blaster rifles at the stormtroopers camp. shoot straight with wait a minute so they've all been through the warranty department then I can't shoot straight okay well you know what he got fired from the warranty department at blast tech and but he did get a job over at signer systems where they they make those TIE fighters right and and the TIE fight well the TIE fighters they don't seem to hold up for real well when they get shot a little bit they don't have shields there's kind of maybe some issues with their electrical system well
00:03:54
Speaker
I think you can kind of get the vibe of what it is, how Brexley is all about. But ah yeah,
Interactive Roleplay and Engagement
00:03:58
Speaker
that was kind of his thing. So I got, essentially, it was a kind of a black fishing vest, it had all these pockets and things on it. yeah And it was, I bought all kinds of extra chachkas and little things that you could kind of hang off it. And I even went as far as to get little ah you you like ultraviolet ink and little ultraviolet lights that you could create. I got some notes and I actually started passing those to the crew and the cast and stuff like that with like little hidden rebel messages. I don't think they'd ever had anybody do that for them because I kind of slipped one to the captain and
00:04:30
Speaker
You know, she kind of, huh, and I didn't hear about it until like, I think the latter part of the next day. And it was like, okay, yeah, cool. And she responded and said something about them i don't think i knew that that's amazing. it was It was a lot of fun. Now, again, most of that is just kind of for me. And I think if I wanted to, I could have spent a lot more time kind of tricking out the costume, but This is kind of my light cosplay experience. A fishing vest, cargo shorts that are kind of Star Wars-y, had a good TIE fighter, sorry, like an X-wing shirt or something like that, an industrial automation shirt. So I was a droid mechanic maybe. So there's all that kind of stuff you could easily take off. And i I do recommend that kind of thing. If you're somebody who wants to go play in that environment, make it easy to dispose of if you're not planning to spend the whole day in that. David, how about you? You were kind of an intergalactic treasure hunter, as I recall.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, more of an opportunist. um I think I fancied myself a very well-to-do, but you could tell the clothes were pretty beat up. ah Maybe he was well-to-do once upon a time, but still likes to get put on airs of of doing okay. Drops names as if they were, you know, lose change, which he would bend over to then pick up. um ah Credits, I suppose, would be the more appropriate. But yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. I would say like dressing for a cosplay experience like this or dressing for like a roleplay experience like this is a lot like dressing for you know San Francisco in the summer, layers. You got to make sure that don't bring a lot of stuff to carry because everybody thinks props. you know If you've ever been a parent of a small child that dressed up at Halloween or been a small child at Halloween, you know they all the only thing they care about is the holy thing, the sword, the thing, the prop.
00:06:07
Speaker
And immediately, you just want to set that down because your hands are going to be busy drinking drinks and eating the amazing food and interacting with characters and touching data pads. And so, yeah, I would recommend less holding stuff, more wearing stuff. But yeah, it was ah it was a lot of fun. That's just ah another vote for pockets. Again, highly endorse the concept of pockets. Pockets are good.
Accommodating Different Fan Levels
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, it's funny on my on our first trip, my wife Sherry came with me and she was concerned going into the whole experience because she is she enjoys Star Wars, but she's not like the world's biggest fan. She doesn't know the lore at all.
00:06:41
Speaker
And she was so nervous. And I think that there were a lot of people going into this who it kind of scared them off. They felt like they needed to know the lore in order to have a good time. So she was a little bit anxious about this. So my son Harrison and I invented a backstory for her. We created the planet Sequestra. And she was from the planet Sequestra, which has completely locked itself off from the galaxy. But she was on a rum spring, up you know, to get out and see the galaxy before she commits to her life. And so she stowed away on the halcyon and I found her and and let her crash in my in my cabin. That was the story that we were going with.
00:07:20
Speaker
Again, the thing the thing that wound up was nobody comes up to you and like grills you on your story or quizzes you or anything like that. The actors who played the characters were so good at meeting you at the level that you wanted to interact, which was amazing. And the woman who played the captain on our cruise, she knew her Star Wars. She really did. And so you could you could engage with her on the geekiest of levels and she would know it. It was amazing. But she also never made you feel like you needed to know it, which played well for a for a star liner captain. I mean, this person seen every corner of the galaxy 100 times. But I will say that the most I was ever grilled is what planet are you from?
00:08:05
Speaker
That was it. And I think it was great because most of them I think engaged with that as an initial. And some people would be like, uh, earth. And they would be like, got it. I know what level of interaction I want to bring you to. and then people would drop out things like Niamos and go, I've never heard of that. No one did, but Niamos is, I wouldn't call bright, bright, bright center of the galaxy. It was very funny because ah there there were many members, ah not not of the cast, not of the actors, but the the cast who were cast in Disney terms, you know who were were helping with the hotel and you know the bartenders and waiters and stuff like that. And they would ask what planet I was from. I would say Niamos. They'd say, oh, I'd never heard of Niamos.
00:08:46
Speaker
I kind of wanted to be like, did you not watch Andor? It was the beach planet of Andor. It's like Star Wars Miami. But, you know, I couldn't say that. I had to just describe it. I don't think anybody ever got it. It's the sepia planet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. ah From the weather where they filmed it. Hey, have you either of you guys watched Jenny Nicholson's four hour video on the Star Cruiser? I've seen two hours of it and I, I felt like after two hours I caught the theme. ya yeahy Yeah. Well, here's the reason why I want to bring it up. I think Jenny and her experience had a lot of bad luck.
00:09:23
Speaker
Like a lot of just unfortunate things happened to her on her experience, which off put her, her experience. She, she didn't have as good of a time as she could just because of some, some bad luck things. And we had a little bit of bad luck on our
Handling Unlucky Experiences
00:09:38
Speaker
trip. Like, you know, Harrison, very similar to what Jenny had, uh, Harrison had a hard time getting on a, on a storyline. It was a technical problem and he had to. talked to the captain, Captain Kevin, and she yeah she took him over to the guest services and they sent him straight and then he was fine from then on out. But what I felt like was even though Jenny had bad luck at the amount of money that we're paying for this experience, you shouldn't have to worry about bad luck. So, you know, curious what you guys think about that. That sounds right to me. I think
00:10:14
Speaker
One of the interesting things for me was that because you had already been once, you already kind of knew what kinds of things to point to. And I think she didn't have the benefit of of that help. And frankly, I think more people were in her situation than were in mine. So I do think there's something about not expecting that the whole thing is going to wrap itself around you, that this is, at the end of the day, a hospitality experience. You do need to kind of look around and go, well, if i'm not but something's not working for me, I probably need to go talk to somebody. And that's what the staff are there for. And get reengaged and figure it out. And if you, you know, shit.
00:10:51
Speaker
She had this situation where she was sitting behind a pillar and could never see what was going on with the evening's entertainment at dinner. I'd have been asking somebody, I need to sit somewhere else. Like, I can't do this for two nights. So I don't know what kinds of things are possible to change, but I certainly think that if you complain at that point that, hey, it's breaking immersion for me to go talk to somebody about how my hotel experience is going, that's your part of spending your money wisely too. And now the last thing I need is for Jenny Nicholson to watch this and then say that we're victim blaming. So we're not victim blaming you, Jenny. We get it. Uh, you know, I still agree. David, what were you going to say? I was going to say hospitality. It's such a great word that you use because I think that's.
00:11:32
Speaker
That's sort of been always been Disney's sort of trade you know stock and trade, if you will. That's been their thing. That and stories. And I think storytelling and hospitality both require active participation from the person telling or the person giving and the person involved trying to receive. When you go out to dinner, do everything you can to be a great customer and you're going to have a better experience. I think bringing that mentality to an experience like this of, yeah, I paid a lot of money to be here, but guess what? Every one of these people is is working to make my day better. If I can make their life easier, they're gonna pay that back in full. Because nobody does that job, nobody becomes Captain Keven because they hate Star Wars or because they don't want people to have a good time.
00:12:16
Speaker
And I think that went all the way down the line. And I say down the line, like, no one reports to Captain Keevan in real life. But even still, the immersion is in my head. I'm thinking Captain Keevan runs the entire place. No, just an actor. But in my head, all of those people report to her. We've got to acknowledge how amazing the quote unquote regular cast were at the immersion and the storytelling. You know, I mean, they were just as into it and just as in character as a lot of the the paid actors, which really made it a wonderful experience. can Can we just take a minute and talk about how hard it would be to be Colonel Croix? Is it Major Croix?
00:12:56
Speaker
Lieutenant Croix. Lieutenant Croix, thank you. I've clearly promoted him in my head because he did such a great job. He got busted down. So, but imagine being the nominal bad guy of the piece, right? And you go into this experience, you know that most of the people are going to be there kind of booing and, you know, trying to find ways to undercut you. You're the heel if you like that kind of wrestling term. Yeah. And you've got to find a way to artfully pretend like, A, that doesn't bug you. B, you're still the guy with the power in the room. And C, you're not going to exercise it for these people who are giving you all this grief. And what a balancing act that is. And I think that was one of the examples of how they crafted a script for these actors and these performers.
00:13:45
Speaker
that really cut that middle line between telling that story, David, to your point, and giving you a hospitality experience that you could engage in as well. There was an amazing moment at the end of the entire experience when everything is resolved. And Captain Keaton basically says something like, whether you chose to side with the resistance or side with the first order. You know, the beautiful thing is that you stood up for what you believed in and we should all do that, which which is just a really nice way to make sure that the people who went dark side, you know, didn't feel like they got screwed at the end. But, you know, just a great storytelling to bring everybody together. Totally. Or maybe it's just a commentary on a post through society. I don't know.
Future of the Halcyon
00:14:30
Speaker
So, ah Josh Damaro, who's the head of Disney Experiences, he's the boss of the parks and everything, he has said they have plans for the Halcyon. What do you guys think would be a good pivot on it? I honestly think it should become an addition. I think it should become a hotel. I don't think you have to do all of the the pump, if you will, all of the the fun storytelling and immersion and all those things, because I think just that facility for a Star Wars fan is enough. and if they Even if it was a, you walk in from Galaxy's Edge, you can go up to the Halcyon. Hey, the Halcyon is showing up for the next four hours. Line up now to go tour the Halcyon. We'll take you to Coruscant and back through the miracle of the speed of plot.
00:15:16
Speaker
and you'll pull into Coruscant, I will tell you the most surreal moments for me was laying in my bunk, feeling the ship hearing it come out of light speed and the giant dazzling ball that is Coruscant's out my window. yeah And I for a minute thought, oh, we're here. No, we're always here. You're always here, right? Like we've never gone anywhere. But in my brain, I went, oh, we're at Coruscant. I bet we're picking up. Like, my brain knew what that meant. And I have seen Coruscant a thousand times as a Star Wars fan, but the thought of going like, oh my god, I'm here. Like, that moment was just and insane. But like, all of those things just were so fun.
00:16:00
Speaker
I think they've got real opportunities here because the the hardware, the software, the materials they've all got in the common areas of that space really support your ability to tell all kinds of different stories. So I think it could be really neat to do, hey, you're going to take a you know, an excursion up to orbit. You need to fix a thing on a ship or heaven knows what you want it to be, but you could have all kinds of different fun side trips, especially for small kids. That place is bulletproof. You know, it was intended to be for all ages. And if you're a parent and you're thinking to yourself, what am I going to do with my kid and in the Star Wars area, right? They're going to experience the thing with Chewbacca maybe or Rey. That'll be cute. They're going to see a lot of stuff. What are they going to do?
00:16:45
Speaker
are they gonna really get what rise the resistance is about that ride well they'll get parts of it will be fun to move through it but they're not gonna appreciate the way that we will ah being dressed down by an imperial officer that hustles you into a jail cell. What about smugglers run are they gonna appreciate the whole experience of running around in the millennium falcon i had this experience once a black sprout post where. there was a parent who put a kid that was too short in the pilot seat of this thing and whenever it was time for the light speed to kind of go the kid would just reach up like he literally could not reach the levers and stuff like that and so they had to just kind of automatically move him through it and I mean leaving aside any feelings anybody else had how disappointing would it be if you were that kid and you're just like I want to do my thing I want to punch it but I can't pull the levers Yeah, that's right. I think they could do some amazing stuff for all ages and you don't have to go into the hotel section. So I think you've got essentially two really interesting solutions for people that want to get further into the Star Wars stuff. I'm aligned with you guys. I keep thinking, you know, Disney has these signature experiences. I don't know how they brand them, but
00:17:48
Speaker
they have experiences where like you can go swimming in the tank at the living seas or the seas with Nemo as it's called now you can go scuba diving you know those little high price experiences like that if they said hey for 200 bucks 150 200 bucks You're gonna have an evening on the Halcyon. You're gonna leave from Hollywood Studios. You're gonna get on the shuttle. You're gonna go up to the ship. Go ahead and have two dinner services. You do the Gaia show at the dinner services. When you're not at dinner, you can play around with the ship, get a few missions, have a little bit of interaction, and then everybody comes back together at the end and you do the grand finale with the big lightsaber fight. Spoilers, sorry. I would be happy. If they said that they were offering that, I would sign up for a tomorrow.
00:18:36
Speaker
Wait, there was a lightsaber fight? Like where was I? I think I was in the bar. um No, I agree. I just saw it. That's keeping as much of it intact as possible. That's like no regrets. We just changed the pricing model, changed the staffing model, changed, that's it. Then there's the fun stuff of like re-skinning this to Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. Oh, yeah. You've just been detected to have a high, not, wait, M count, sorry. There's no such thing as a mutant M count, M count's the other, that's the Star Wars thing. But like, we've just, we've got, you've got mutant DNA, come and explore what it would be like, you know, as you wait for your powers to develop.
00:19:16
Speaker
and this is the danger room, and oh, Magneto's out. there It would be so easy to just reskin that building. Again, Star Trek, don't even, don't threaten me with a good time. I mean, I love Star Wars, but I think you all know. But like, that would be phenomenal. Can you imagine? That is Starfleet Academy, and you're on ah on ah on a ship. I mean, that would be just anything that's got that dormitory kind of feel with the slidey doors and the hotel. Amazing. Perfect. Welcome cadets. It's time for your graduation cruise. So thanks to David and Ben for some great thoughts. And as I said last week, we're going to do a little bit of a series and talk about the Disney theme park experience with Star Wars and all of the different factors. So come back next week. We'll dive back in for more. Also, if anything happened, interesting in the acolyte over the last two weeks,
00:20:03
Speaker
We're not talking about it because I had to record this in advance. I was out of town the week of July 1st and I got this one in the can a little bit early, but I promise we'll be back with more discussion of the acolyte when we come back. So in the meantime, keep your kitchens clean and may the force be with you. Bye.
00:20:28
Speaker
oh yeah