May 19, 2023 • 25 mins
On this weeks episode of The Theme Park Podcast the guys talk about the massive news that got announced this week, the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is being closed permanently and Disney abandons plans to build a headquarters in Lake Nona. Then in big Universal Studios news Minions Land gets unveiled, along with the full menu for the upcoming Minons Cafe.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
From the theme park capital of theworld, Orlando, Florida. Is the
Theme Park Podcast. Wait podcast,listen radios? Why does everything got to
be so messy on this station?Anyway? Here's your host, Dickerman,
Jimmy d and Scott Harris, andwelcome to the Theme Park Podcast. I'm
(00:23):
gonna be honest, Spells, Idon't even know if we have time for
intros today because there is so muchnews in the world of theme parks.
Yeah, let's let's just jump rightin. Scott Harris has been working frantically
all afternoon at the news desk.It's just a sea of madness right there.
Papers are flying, That's just it'scraziness. Well, first of all,
(00:45):
I just want to quickly say HappyShrek Day to everyone that celebrates today's
Shrek Day. It's the anniversary ofwhen Shrek came out twenty two years ago.
Well, then we closed your reclosedyour ride, so deal with it.
I actually played all Shrek music onthe show today. Well that's that's
nice. Big news Star Wars GalacticStar Cruiser Hotel closing permanently. Can someone
(01:10):
help me begin to understand this?Scott, You've got your finger on the
pulse of all things happening in theworld, have you seen speculation? Has
there been talk? This thing hasbarely been opened a year. It was
five minutes ago it opened. Wehad not even gotten on a tour of
it yet. That is correct.It is actually currently on pause right now
(01:32):
for a little bit of time.Yes, it's final voyage will take place
September twenty eighth through the thirtieth,so we'll be closing on October first,
twenty twenty three. As they saidin their statement, it is one of
our most creative projects ever. Ithas been praised by our guests and recognized
for setting a new bar in innovationimmersive entertainment. This premium experience gave us
(01:55):
the opportunity to try new things ona smaller scale of one hundred rooms,
and we'll take what we've learned greatfuture experiences that can reach far more of
our guests and fans. What welearned was ninety five percent of the population
and couldn't afford to go to thisthing at the price point we said it
at. So everyone on everyone insocial medias like, well, can't you
(02:16):
just lower the price? That wasmy very first thought. My guess is,
and I've seen other people speculate thisbecause of the amount of actors that
you have inside of this experience,there's a break even point and you can't
cut it down too much without youjust bleeding money. Do we not have
(02:38):
as many actors? I mean,well, then then you guys not just
want to go stay there and justbe able to have it like a normal
resort experience, Like Okay, there'ssomebody at the front, they check you
in. You can go to thebar, see a bartender. I don't
know if there's restaurants in there,you can go see there's there's one restaurant,
and it's it's not like, yes, it's a cruise, but it's
not like there's just a buffet thatalways exists, Like there are times for
(03:01):
dinner, there's times for shows.Everything is regimented on a schedule in there,
like you'd have to completely overhaul itto make it just a regular hotel.
Yeah. I mean, I justonly I don't understand the thought here,
like we're just gonna cut bait andwe're done because we were losing too
much money. I mean, it'sit seems like e commomist could come in
(03:23):
here and figure this out and figureout how to make this thing at least
profitable. Someone can make a canI make a mean joke? And Jimmy,
this is no offense to you.It's being sold. It's going to
become the Star Trek, Galactic Starkersor hotel. Yeah, it will be
a Spirit Halloween store. That's actuallyeven better. I just I just I
(03:46):
can't wrap my head around it.And then the question lies, did they
do no research before they, youknow, plan this thing. It's just
Disney, right, you don't buildsomething without understanding what your your market might
look like for it. Did theyhave no idea that the price point would
be unsustainable? Well, here's thething. Remember when this first got announced
and they released the prices, andyes, it was exorbitant, but it
(04:12):
wasn't what when it eventually opened,it was like three hundred dollars more like
it was. My guess is itwas just an unfortunate bit of timing that
inflation really hit everything that they hadto start charging more. I mean,
the actors within this experience are equityactors, and because of the things that
(04:34):
are being asked of them, wherethey're having to be on for longer periods
of time, you have to paythose actors, even more money than the
ones that are traditionally in the parks. So there's just so much involved in
this monetarily. Can we twitter thisdeal? Can we just twitter the deal
and fire like eighty seven percent ofthe staff? Then then you're just staying
(04:57):
at a hotel that's got Star Warslogos on it with no with no windows.
That's not gay. That's not whatthey wanted. That's not what this
is supposed to be. Well,I get what they wanted, but here's
what they can do. Here's what'shere's what's uh So do we just is
this river country now or just closethe doors and walk away up see you
(05:17):
later. So I hear they're goingto turn it into resorts for divorce dead
So I was like, hey,I wonder if you could somehow tie this.
Originally, when Galaxy's Edge was announced, it was supposed to have a
dinner show, Yes, and theytook the dinner show and brought it to
the Glacken Star Cruiser, and Iwas like, I wonder if they could
(05:39):
expand Galaxy's Edge and habit reach.There's like a like a waterway in between
these two things, and I know, I know, unlike Dickerman, Me
and Jimmy know that you can easilymove water around. They could easily somehow
make this work. But it's likethis almost looks a little two out of
reach. We might need to geta bunch of straws to get that water
(06:01):
out of the way. Well,even if you just like build a build
a river or not a build likeroads on top of it. Um,
I mean, it could be doable. I mean Disney has done immense things.
But yeah, I mean it's it'svery curious just to what's going to
happen to this place. How muchmoney, Like say, you never put
a single person in there, right, how much money did they dump into
(06:23):
building? This thing probably begins witha bee if I had to, yessah,
it's gotta be in there, It'sgotta be in the ms. But
I don't know, no, Imean when well, I mean, it's
gonna be quantified as a part ofa big expansion. If you say eight
figures, I'd be okay with that. Probably yeah, well, well no,
remember but remember the economy shut down, inflation began, supply chains happened,
(06:46):
so that probably jacked up the priceon this. It's one of the
same reasons why it took so longfor tron Lifecycle run to open material Let's
just started becoming too expensive and theyhad to wait a little bit. All
right, bear with me here,all right, say we say we take
the staff and put the mailswhere.Okay, let's airbnb this thing. Airbnb
it to the max. You know, you got places out by Disney.
(07:09):
They're out Disney. Fine Airbnb andthey charge a lot of money for houses
they've converted to Disney theme. Weairbnb the Galactic Star Cruiser. They're gonna
make a mint. I just wantto know when can we go to Cast
Connections start buying some outfits and stufffrom this experience. I mean they've got
a lightsaber that extends, that's true, they got the prototype lightsaber. I
(07:31):
forgot about that. I can't believethey're quitting on this already. Can we
get a tour? No tours?Let me ask you, this is this
something you think I should go tothe wife with my hat in my hand
and say, I've got to dothis experience. We've got to go.
We're on a tight time crunch.If you want to go do that.
(07:53):
Yeah, they're gonna sell out nowwhatever those dates remaining are they're gonna sell
them out. What if they didthe old switchero they sell all these out
and come September a kid, andwe're gonna keep it open. We found
out we can actually sustain this thing. So I have a I have a
guess I was thinking about this earlier, is if it stops becoming an experience
in what if they piggybacking a littlebit off of what you said, dickerment
(08:13):
of like you just turn into aregular hotel, you just you just expand
it, you just build onto itso it's more than one hundred rooms,
okay, and then you expand it, you make it so there's a gift
shop, there's restaurants, there's quickserve, so you make it you I
mean, they could they could obviouslyrenovate it to make it an actual hotel
(08:37):
and not a ship that doesn't goanywhere. Maybe the rooms they have,
they make those the ultra premium rooms, like you pay like a thousand bucks
a night for over it like contemporary. Yeah, it's like the it's like
the cabanas at Polynesian. Actually,I'm reading a rumor that they're going to
turn it into a Guardians of theGalaxy kilm prison experience, and you still
(08:58):
have to stay there for two days, but it's just that whole beginning prison
scene and Guardians of the Galaxy.I wouldn't mind them actually doing a real
Disney prison. We always talk aboutDisney jail. Just turn it into an
actual Disney jail. No making atexperience. They bring you in, they
spray you down with that orange stuff, give you your bedroll, you go
(09:20):
out into the center part. Peoplethrow cans at your head. It will
be great, sounds awesome. Iimagine in the days ahead we'll get some
sort of explanation. I mean theyput I told you they put a statement
out. That's not enough of astatement. I need to know more.
They Hey, we tried it out. We spent eighty billion dollars. You're
(09:43):
not didn't work out. It's cool. The big deal. We'll learn for
next time. We'll figure it out. It's cool. Well, speaking of
things that we announced and spent moneyon, and we're not gonna do it,
Disney has abandoned plans to build aTheme Parks Division headquarters in Lake Adona.
Yeah, this one, this onewent back and forth. I feel
(10:03):
like a few times, and nowwas the time with everything going on,
They're like, you know what,if we're going to cancel it, now,
it's a pretty good time to doit. But the thing got canceled
once already, right, they alreadypost well, they definitely postpony positive talk
of cats. There was talk ofcancelation for a while. Then they pushed
it back to twenty twenty six becauseeverybody they wanted to move here from California
(10:26):
was up in arms saying, whatdo you mean I gotta moved to Florida.
I don't want to move to Florida, Florida sticks. Why are you
gonna make me move to Florida?And well, now they don't have to.
Yeah, the original it was originallysupposed to open in twenty twenty three,
and then the move in date wasmoved all the way back to twenty
twenty six. Yeah, but dozens, dozens of not hundreds of imagineers left
(10:48):
the company joined other companies because theydidn't want to move. And now there's
a bunch on social media saying Iquit my dream job for nothing. Now
yeah, I mean this is thatit's not a good look for anybody in
this particular situation. And there arepeople that that did move here, and
maybe they didn't want to, butit was their dream jobs. They said,
all right, you know what,this is where I want to be,
this is what I want to do. If I have to move to
(11:09):
Lake Nona, Florida, wherever theheck that is, I'm gonna go ahead
and do it. Then they movedhere, and now they're like, what
do I do now? Yes?Stay? Do I go? Do I
go back to California? I soldmy house in California. I gotta buy
a new house in California or realestates up and I don't know who knows
they'll make it work. Meanwhile,Disney is also announced they'll make it work.
(11:33):
It's fine. But like, Idon't know that any Imagineers have actually
had to relocate yet. Some peoplehave, yeah, somebody, yeah,
yeah, And I imagine that numberis pretty small. And if you're gonna
make if you're gonna make a commitmentto your you know, to your company
that way, and then you goahead and make that step. I can't
(11:54):
imagine that Disney's not going to makeit right for them. I just try.
They probably the real estate, youknow, who knows what they sold
if they had a house, sothey had house and they sold their house
for one price and real estate's goneup. Maybe it's gone down. I
don't know, but you know itjust it's a challenge. And you're moving
across the country too, so there'sa lot goes into that. I mean,
(12:15):
it's it's not an easy thing topack up your life and move.
Well, I mean hopefully they getjobs or they just move them to divisions
that are within Walt disney World proper, I don't know. Yeah. Well,
meanwhile, Disney has announced v IPassholder Days. What's this? So
for a limited time in June,there's VIP experiences in benefits for passholders.
(12:41):
So, uh, decremend you willget four times the amount of benefits since
you have two incredib passes and twopirate passes. I didn't I didn't mind
any of those things. Six he'sgot six. Oh that's right. You
have Sorry, you have sex,you will get six times. Um new
passholder magnet And there's rumors that itcould be a certain dragon. Okay,
(13:05):
the tongue in cheek thing that theyput out makes me say, yes,
it's going to be that dragon.I might actually have to go get one.
I've never done this before. Passolderswill have a limited time exclusive space
to rest and cool off dedicated seatingin places around the park. You can
get increased discounts on select merchandise indining locations including the Flower and Garden outdoor
(13:31):
kitchens, cool pass older exclusive treats, and passolders will also get a chance
to capture memories of their park visitwith two limited time photo ops. Okay,
all right, well, you know, I mean, for what these
passes cost, they might as wellgive them a little something, right,
(13:52):
you know, you specifically know howmuch these things cost. I don't know.
It's on y'all's credit cards. Idon't know anything about it. Yeah,
we're still waiting on that money.So we have an attorney that's going
to be contacting you soon. Youguys don't have an attorney. We have
several. We have several attorneys.Three of us have worked in radio for
almost twenty years each. We knowevery attorney in this city. Yeah,
(14:16):
exactly, okay, ma right speak, every single one of them. Final
story from Disney is they have announcedthat Disney plus data in intellectual properties will
help drive future theme park investments.So basically, whatever you're watching a lot
(14:37):
of on Disney Plus and is anintellectual property. Will you'll start seeing inside
the parks? Okay, well,I mean data is king hopefully it's correct.
You know, it's funny because somany of these entertainment properties based their
world around what people tweet often,which is not a real sense of reality.
(14:58):
So hopefully they get some real dataout of this as opposed to you
know, what you might get offof social media. It does make me
wonder what would happen if Netflix openedup a theme park and decided to build
things based on the top ten mostwatch list at That would be curious and
there'd just be a lot of canceledrides they were just exactly. It would
(15:18):
just be. It would be ablank sign outside because it would change every
week. They'd get halfway built,a ride halfway built, and they just
stop and be like, no,we're not going to finish this ride.
Sorry, did you like it thefirst half up? Sorry, we're not
gonna give you the thick an half. Well, I'm just streaming all likely
Mac and Me remember that movie Macand Me. I'm gonna stream that non
stop on Disney Plus. I wantthe ride. Well, Disney's actually about
(15:43):
to start selling off a lot ofor selling off a lot of things that
are on Disney Plus. Are wegetting rid of? What are we unloading?
Willow is one of them? HuWillow is one of them. The
John SteamOS Basketball Show is one ofthem. Turner and Hooch show the World
according to Jeff Goldbloom, so they'rejust starting a way that junk nobody wants.
(16:07):
The Goldbloom Shows is really good though. Yeah, but like Turner and
Hooch, like nobody watched that.Well, the thing is gonna pay for
that. It was. I watchedthe first episode because I was like super
interested in this because I love thatshow. That movie is a kid and
it was really hard to watch.Yeah, well, what they're gonna do
is they'll sell it to some streamingservice like a two by Pluto free V.
(16:29):
Somebody will buy it because you needthe content. I don't understand this
guy's business plan. I don't understandhow TWOB does it. How is to
be just be free? They haveads, That's how it works. It's
it's called fast free ad support ofTelevision and it's like six ads and they're
all the same. Like these advertiserscan't have much money. But Hulu barely
has advertisers. But when you don'tspend money on when all you do is
(16:51):
spend money on acquiring things in notcreating things. I mean no, no,
two be does have some original stuff. That's how you're able to sustain
itself. And they're all all funneledby other companies to Bees funneled by Fox,
Pluto is funneled by um Paramount.Which one's Sony is Sony Crackle?
Sony is Crackle, but Sony isinteresting. Sony does not have their own
(17:12):
streaming service at all. They lacensso much of their stuff to Netflix or
Stars. They're the weird like outlierin all of this. Something that did
get announced over at Universal Studios isMinions Land. Yeah. Universal, I
(17:32):
feel like is sitting pretty right nowlike this. He's got all this like
chaos going on. Universe is like, Hey, what's up, guys,
how y'all doing? I want tocome check out our parks, guests,
we'll be able to eat, laughand cause mischief with illuminations. Minions,
what are we gonna what are wegonna see this? What's this gonna happen?
Are looking at summer this summer?This summer? Oh my god,
(17:53):
dude, the pictures of this areridiculous, ridiculous. So it's like we're
gonna have when you walk in thepark, on the left, you've got
the Minion Mayhem, on the right, you've got the Minion Blast experience,
and then a little bit down theroad is the Minion Minions Cafe. Yeah,
I saw, I saw a mockup for the cafe. I mean
(18:15):
it all looks great and universal.Uh. They build incredible lands like this
is basically a Minions Land at thispoint when it's complete, and they've done
such a great job with the Simpsonsarea. Of course, Harry Potter was
the one that started at all it'sgonna be it's gonna be top nots,
you know that. And yeah,but I feel like they're screwing up already
(18:37):
though there's only like, of allthe menu items and Nathan Wolf pointed to
the sound to me, there's onlyone mention of bananas anywhere instead of Popcorn
stand and Minion Land. How doyou not have like an entire menu dedicated
to bananas. They're gonna have morebananas, but bananas are super perishable,
so imagine you gotta have fake bananaflavorank a lot of things. Well,
(18:57):
some of the US Spica bowls thatthey'll have is Auto's noodabol Agnes's a Honeymoon
Soup, and Carl's Crispy Cauliflower Okay. Then there's the steak and Cheese ray
Sandwich and dessert items like Bob's TeddyBear Chocolate cream puff. And then there's
(19:19):
also the Mini Bosses Mega Melt MiniBosses Mega Melt Okay, Girl Cheese Sandwich.
Oh okay, And there's going tobe a guest can cool off with
a visit to freeze ray pops which, how is my next thought? Let's
freeze right, I popped in myhead as you were saying the one prior
colorful popsicles inspired by grew the Minionsin Vector along with beverages. Very cool.
(19:45):
Then there's going to be the IlluminationTheater, which will feature a twenty
two Minion Marquee and sing characters.Okay, So is that that's going to
be indoors? Yeah, that's nice, a little break from the little break
from the heat in there. Yeah. So, I know we were talking
at the start of the show abouthow they're going to be Oh, they're
(20:07):
doing away with a bunch of Ijoke about Shrek Day. They're going to
be doing more with dream Works.They're going they're building an entire land dedicated
to how to Train your Dragon,a dream Works property. They're about a
secret life of pets. We're gonnawork them in somewhere. Everyone speculates that
that could be what the place ofthe old Tribute Store location at Universal will
(20:32):
go. Okay, speaking of theTribute Store, James story, I've been
waiting on. I've been seeing thisone everywhere. How how is your credit
card looking? It is looking extremelyempty, and I am going to I'm
(20:52):
going to bury it in the backyardbecause I do not want to go anywhere
near Universal Studios with that Jurassic ParkTribute Store, the thirtieth anniversary Tribute Store
to Jurassic Park, the marquee onthe outside. This is the making of
Jurassic Park. Yes, which tellsme that it's gonna be something special and
I'm gonna want it all Sky.I know you will, I know you.
(21:19):
I know this speaking of Universal Newsand this isn't Universal here news.
But I don't know if you guyssaw this. So Universal Studio is Japan.
They have a spider Man ride justlike we have one here. Sure,
I don't know if you guys sawthis. That ride's gonna be closing
soon. Really, why the speculationsright there? Nope, not a rights
(21:40):
thing. Speculation is it's a popularitything. Oh, they don't like Spider
Man in Japan, not as much, not as much compared to a Nintendo
property. And the speculation is Pokemon. I could see that. Yeah,
that makes sense. I mean,Nintendo is just massive there. You know,
you can't argue the popularity Nintendo,and it's in its homeland of Japan.
Yeah, and I don't know thatSpider Man's really as big anywhere else
(22:03):
as it is in the US.They did have a they did have a
Japanese Spider Man television show. There'sa really good documentary on Disney Plus about
the making of it. It's actuallypretty cool. I believe that this that
iteration of Spider Man is going tobe in Spider Man Across the Spider Verse,
which comes out in two weeks,So we might see that Spider Man
(22:26):
in there. I don't know ifit's a speaking character, but people have
speculated they've seen him on the posterand in some of the background images and
the trailers. So I mean,yeah, but Nintendo's hot right now.
I mean, there's a Zelda gamethat has taken over the world on the
Switch, the Super Mario Brothers movie, I think is now up to twelve
(22:47):
trillion dollars made this week yep,yep, just this week. And Pokemon
has been hot for twenty years.Yeah. Yeah, people aren't playing that
game anymore, but it's still it'sstill a big thing. Every time a
new game comes out, it's it'sthe talk of everything, the zeit guy
stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, real quick, can I
bounce back to the Tribute store.Did we have an opening date for that?
(23:10):
Not yet? My guess is probablysometime after the holiday, or it
could be right before the holiday ifyou want to capitalize on it. Okay,
all right. Yeah. The crazything is those things get done fast
because of like because we can't seewhat's going on on the inside, so
they can just go crazy and justlike hammer stuff up super quick, exactly,
And they could be close to openingnow that there's stuff on the outside
(23:32):
that with the facade being done.Yeah, I want to say Jurassic Park
came out in June of nineteen ninetythree. That makes sense, But I
can't for sure, so I wonderif that's why, like Scots looking it
up right now? Aren't you justgood? Of course I am. He's
trying to I'm trying to remember whatthe poster that, like, I had
the Jurassic Park poster on my wall. June ninth was the premiere. In
(23:57):
June eleventh was the US Police.There's a good speculative dates then, yes,
thirtieth anniversary, it's the making ofJurassic Park. Yeah, I bet
you. June one is when thatstore opens. Ye. All right,
Well, boys, I feel likeas we head into the weekend, there's
only gonna be more news that's goingto pop out over the next couple of
(24:18):
days. So Scott, if peoplewant to follow us on social media to
get the latest breaking news, becausethere's more coming as they go, you'd
follow us on Twitter at theme ParkShow, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
at the Theme Park Podcast. Youcould watch at the theme Park YouTube dot
com and the show comes to youlive traditionally from the Lauren Campbell Reeltro dot
com, Tibo Gazebo studios. ForScott Harris, for Jimmy d I am
(24:40):
Dickerman until next week We will seeyou out at the parks. This has
been the theme Park Podcast. Followthe show on Facebook and Instagram at the
theme park Podcast. To catch upon previous episodes, check out the theme
park podcast dot com, the iHeartRadioapp, or Apple Podcasts.
From the theme park capital of theworld, Orlando, Florida. Is the
Theme Park Podcast. Wait podcast,listen radios? Why does everything got to
be so messy on this station?Anyway? Here's your host, Dickerman,
Jimmy d and Scott Harris, andwelcome to the Theme Park Podcast. I'm
(00:23):
gonna be honest, Spells, Idon't even know if we have time for
intros today because there is so muchnews in the world of theme parks.
Yeah, let's let's just jump rightin. Scott Harris has been working frantically
all afternoon at the news desk.It's just a sea of madness right there.
Papers are flying, That's just it'scraziness. Well, first of all,
(00:45):
I just want to quickly say HappyShrek Day to everyone that celebrates today's
Shrek Day. It's the anniversary ofwhen Shrek came out twenty two years ago.
Well, then we closed your reclosedyour ride, so deal with it.
I actually played all Shrek music onthe show today. Well that's that's
nice. Big news Star Wars GalacticStar Cruiser Hotel closing permanently. Can someone
(01:10):
help me begin to understand this?Scott, You've got your finger on the
pulse of all things happening in theworld, have you seen speculation? Has
there been talk? This thing hasbarely been opened a year. It was
five minutes ago it opened. Wehad not even gotten on a tour of
it yet. That is correct.It is actually currently on pause right now
(01:32):
for a little bit of time.Yes, it's final voyage will take place
September twenty eighth through the thirtieth,so we'll be closing on October first,
twenty twenty three. As they saidin their statement, it is one of
our most creative projects ever. Ithas been praised by our guests and recognized
for setting a new bar in innovationimmersive entertainment. This premium experience gave us
(01:55):
the opportunity to try new things ona smaller scale of one hundred rooms,
and we'll take what we've learned greatfuture experiences that can reach far more of
our guests and fans. What welearned was ninety five percent of the population
and couldn't afford to go to thisthing at the price point we said it
at. So everyone on everyone insocial medias like, well, can't you
(02:16):
just lower the price? That wasmy very first thought. My guess is,
and I've seen other people speculate thisbecause of the amount of actors that
you have inside of this experience,there's a break even point and you can't
cut it down too much without youjust bleeding money. Do we not have
(02:38):
as many actors? I mean,well, then then you guys not just
want to go stay there and justbe able to have it like a normal
resort experience, Like Okay, there'ssomebody at the front, they check you
in. You can go to thebar, see a bartender. I don't
know if there's restaurants in there,you can go see there's there's one restaurant,
and it's it's not like, yes, it's a cruise, but it's
not like there's just a buffet thatalways exists, Like there are times for
(03:01):
dinner, there's times for shows.Everything is regimented on a schedule in there,
like you'd have to completely overhaul itto make it just a regular hotel.
Yeah. I mean, I justonly I don't understand the thought here,
like we're just gonna cut bait andwe're done because we were losing too
much money. I mean, it'sit seems like e commomist could come in
(03:23):
here and figure this out and figureout how to make this thing at least
profitable. Someone can make a canI make a mean joke? And Jimmy,
this is no offense to you.It's being sold. It's going to
become the Star Trek, Galactic Starkersor hotel. Yeah, it will be
a Spirit Halloween store. That's actuallyeven better. I just I just I
(03:46):
can't wrap my head around it.And then the question lies, did they
do no research before they, youknow, plan this thing. It's just
Disney, right, you don't buildsomething without understanding what your your market might
look like for it. Did theyhave no idea that the price point would
be unsustainable? Well, here's thething. Remember when this first got announced
and they released the prices, andyes, it was exorbitant, but it
(04:12):
wasn't what when it eventually opened,it was like three hundred dollars more like
it was. My guess is itwas just an unfortunate bit of timing that
inflation really hit everything that they hadto start charging more. I mean,
the actors within this experience are equityactors, and because of the things that
(04:34):
are being asked of them, wherethey're having to be on for longer periods
of time, you have to paythose actors, even more money than the
ones that are traditionally in the parks. So there's just so much involved in
this monetarily. Can we twitter thisdeal? Can we just twitter the deal
and fire like eighty seven percent ofthe staff? Then then you're just staying
(04:57):
at a hotel that's got Star Warslogos on it with no with no windows.
That's not gay. That's not whatthey wanted. That's not what this
is supposed to be. Well,I get what they wanted, but here's
what they can do. Here's what'shere's what's uh So do we just is
this river country now or just closethe doors and walk away up see you
(05:17):
later. So I hear they're goingto turn it into resorts for divorce dead
So I was like, hey,I wonder if you could somehow tie this.
Originally, when Galaxy's Edge was announced, it was supposed to have a
dinner show, Yes, and theytook the dinner show and brought it to
the Glacken Star Cruiser, and Iwas like, I wonder if they could
(05:39):
expand Galaxy's Edge and habit reach.There's like a like a waterway in between
these two things, and I know, I know, unlike Dickerman, Me
and Jimmy know that you can easilymove water around. They could easily somehow
make this work. But it's likethis almost looks a little two out of
reach. We might need to geta bunch of straws to get that water
(06:01):
out of the way. Well,even if you just like build a build
a river or not a build likeroads on top of it. Um,
I mean, it could be doable. I mean Disney has done immense things.
But yeah, I mean it's it'svery curious just to what's going to
happen to this place. How muchmoney, Like say, you never put
a single person in there, right, how much money did they dump into
(06:23):
building? This thing probably begins witha bee if I had to, yessah,
it's gotta be in there, It'sgotta be in the ms. But
I don't know, no, Imean when well, I mean, it's
gonna be quantified as a part ofa big expansion. If you say eight
figures, I'd be okay with that. Probably yeah, well, well no,
remember but remember the economy shut down, inflation began, supply chains happened,
(06:46):
so that probably jacked up the priceon this. It's one of the
same reasons why it took so longfor tron Lifecycle run to open material Let's
just started becoming too expensive and theyhad to wait a little bit. All
right, bear with me here,all right, say we say we take
the staff and put the mailswhere.Okay, let's airbnb this thing. Airbnb
it to the max. You know, you got places out by Disney.
(07:09):
They're out Disney. Fine Airbnb andthey charge a lot of money for houses
they've converted to Disney theme. Weairbnb the Galactic Star Cruiser. They're gonna
make a mint. I just wantto know when can we go to Cast
Connections start buying some outfits and stufffrom this experience. I mean they've got
a lightsaber that extends, that's true, they got the prototype lightsaber. I
(07:31):
forgot about that. I can't believethey're quitting on this already. Can we
get a tour? No tours?Let me ask you, this is this
something you think I should go tothe wife with my hat in my hand
and say, I've got to dothis experience. We've got to go.
We're on a tight time crunch.If you want to go do that.
(07:53):
Yeah, they're gonna sell out nowwhatever those dates remaining are they're gonna sell
them out. What if they didthe old switchero they sell all these out
and come September a kid, andwe're gonna keep it open. We found
out we can actually sustain this thing. So I have a I have a
guess I was thinking about this earlier, is if it stops becoming an experience
in what if they piggybacking a littlebit off of what you said, dickerment
(08:13):
of like you just turn into aregular hotel, you just you just expand
it, you just build onto itso it's more than one hundred rooms,
okay, and then you expand it, you make it so there's a gift
shop, there's restaurants, there's quickserve, so you make it you I
mean, they could they could obviouslyrenovate it to make it an actual hotel
(08:37):
and not a ship that doesn't goanywhere. Maybe the rooms they have,
they make those the ultra premium rooms, like you pay like a thousand bucks
a night for over it like contemporary. Yeah, it's like the it's like
the cabanas at Polynesian. Actually,I'm reading a rumor that they're going to
turn it into a Guardians of theGalaxy kilm prison experience, and you still
(08:58):
have to stay there for two days, but it's just that whole beginning prison
scene and Guardians of the Galaxy.I wouldn't mind them actually doing a real
Disney prison. We always talk aboutDisney jail. Just turn it into an
actual Disney jail. No making atexperience. They bring you in, they
spray you down with that orange stuff, give you your bedroll, you go
(09:20):
out into the center part. Peoplethrow cans at your head. It will
be great, sounds awesome. Iimagine in the days ahead we'll get some
sort of explanation. I mean theyput I told you they put a statement
out. That's not enough of astatement. I need to know more.
They Hey, we tried it out. We spent eighty billion dollars. You're
(09:43):
not didn't work out. It's cool. The big deal. We'll learn for
next time. We'll figure it out. It's cool. Well, speaking of
things that we announced and spent moneyon, and we're not gonna do it,
Disney has abandoned plans to build aTheme Parks Division headquarters in Lake Adona.
Yeah, this one, this onewent back and forth. I feel
(10:03):
like a few times, and nowwas the time with everything going on,
They're like, you know what,if we're going to cancel it, now,
it's a pretty good time to doit. But the thing got canceled
once already, right, they alreadypost well, they definitely postpony positive talk
of cats. There was talk ofcancelation for a while. Then they pushed
it back to twenty twenty six becauseeverybody they wanted to move here from California
(10:26):
was up in arms saying, whatdo you mean I gotta moved to Florida.
I don't want to move to Florida, Florida sticks. Why are you
gonna make me move to Florida?And well, now they don't have to.
Yeah, the original it was originallysupposed to open in twenty twenty three,
and then the move in date wasmoved all the way back to twenty
twenty six. Yeah, but dozens, dozens of not hundreds of imagineers left
(10:48):
the company joined other companies because theydidn't want to move. And now there's
a bunch on social media saying Iquit my dream job for nothing. Now
yeah, I mean this is thatit's not a good look for anybody in
this particular situation. And there arepeople that that did move here, and
maybe they didn't want to, butit was their dream jobs. They said,
all right, you know what,this is where I want to be,
this is what I want to do. If I have to move to
(11:09):
Lake Nona, Florida, wherever theheck that is, I'm gonna go ahead
and do it. Then they movedhere, and now they're like, what
do I do now? Yes?Stay? Do I go? Do I
go back to California? I soldmy house in California. I gotta buy
a new house in California or realestates up and I don't know who knows
they'll make it work. Meanwhile,Disney is also announced they'll make it work.
(11:33):
It's fine. But like, Idon't know that any Imagineers have actually
had to relocate yet. Some peoplehave, yeah, somebody, yeah,
yeah, And I imagine that numberis pretty small. And if you're gonna
make if you're gonna make a commitmentto your you know, to your company
that way, and then you goahead and make that step. I can't
(11:54):
imagine that Disney's not going to makeit right for them. I just try.
They probably the real estate, youknow, who knows what they sold
if they had a house, sothey had house and they sold their house
for one price and real estate's goneup. Maybe it's gone down. I
don't know, but you know itjust it's a challenge. And you're moving
across the country too, so there'sa lot goes into that. I mean,
(12:15):
it's it's not an easy thing topack up your life and move.
Well, I mean hopefully they getjobs or they just move them to divisions
that are within Walt disney World proper, I don't know. Yeah. Well,
meanwhile, Disney has announced v IPassholder Days. What's this? So
for a limited time in June,there's VIP experiences in benefits for passholders.
(12:41):
So, uh, decremend you willget four times the amount of benefits since
you have two incredib passes and twopirate passes. I didn't I didn't mind
any of those things. Six he'sgot six. Oh that's right. You
have Sorry, you have sex,you will get six times. Um new
passholder magnet And there's rumors that itcould be a certain dragon. Okay,
(13:05):
the tongue in cheek thing that theyput out makes me say, yes,
it's going to be that dragon.I might actually have to go get one.
I've never done this before. Passolderswill have a limited time exclusive space
to rest and cool off dedicated seatingin places around the park. You can
get increased discounts on select merchandise indining locations including the Flower and Garden outdoor
(13:31):
kitchens, cool pass older exclusive treats, and passolders will also get a chance
to capture memories of their park visitwith two limited time photo ops. Okay,
all right, well, you know, I mean, for what these
passes cost, they might as wellgive them a little something, right,
(13:52):
you know, you specifically know howmuch these things cost. I don't know.
It's on y'all's credit cards. Idon't know anything about it. Yeah,
we're still waiting on that money.So we have an attorney that's going
to be contacting you soon. Youguys don't have an attorney. We have
several. We have several attorneys.Three of us have worked in radio for
almost twenty years each. We knowevery attorney in this city. Yeah,
(14:16):
exactly, okay, ma right speak, every single one of them. Final
story from Disney is they have announcedthat Disney plus data in intellectual properties will
help drive future theme park investments.So basically, whatever you're watching a lot
(14:37):
of on Disney Plus and is anintellectual property. Will you'll start seeing inside
the parks? Okay, well,I mean data is king hopefully it's correct.
You know, it's funny because somany of these entertainment properties based their
world around what people tweet often,which is not a real sense of reality.
(14:58):
So hopefully they get some real dataout of this as opposed to you
know, what you might get offof social media. It does make me
wonder what would happen if Netflix openedup a theme park and decided to build
things based on the top ten mostwatch list at That would be curious and
there'd just be a lot of canceledrides they were just exactly. It would
(15:18):
just be. It would be ablank sign outside because it would change every
week. They'd get halfway built,a ride halfway built, and they just
stop and be like, no,we're not going to finish this ride.
Sorry, did you like it thefirst half up? Sorry, we're not
gonna give you the thick an half. Well, I'm just streaming all likely
Mac and Me remember that movie Macand Me. I'm gonna stream that non
stop on Disney Plus. I wantthe ride. Well, Disney's actually about
(15:43):
to start selling off a lot ofor selling off a lot of things that
are on Disney Plus. Are wegetting rid of? What are we unloading?
Willow is one of them? HuWillow is one of them. The
John SteamOS Basketball Show is one ofthem. Turner and Hooch show the World
according to Jeff Goldbloom, so they'rejust starting a way that junk nobody wants.
(16:07):
The Goldbloom Shows is really good though. Yeah, but like Turner and
Hooch, like nobody watched that.Well, the thing is gonna pay for
that. It was. I watchedthe first episode because I was like super
interested in this because I love thatshow. That movie is a kid and
it was really hard to watch.Yeah, well, what they're gonna do
is they'll sell it to some streamingservice like a two by Pluto free V.
(16:29):
Somebody will buy it because you needthe content. I don't understand this
guy's business plan. I don't understandhow TWOB does it. How is to
be just be free? They haveads, That's how it works. It's
it's called fast free ad support ofTelevision and it's like six ads and they're
all the same. Like these advertiserscan't have much money. But Hulu barely
has advertisers. But when you don'tspend money on when all you do is
(16:51):
spend money on acquiring things in notcreating things. I mean no, no,
two be does have some original stuff. That's how you're able to sustain
itself. And they're all all funneledby other companies to Bees funneled by Fox,
Pluto is funneled by um Paramount.Which one's Sony is Sony Crackle?
Sony is Crackle, but Sony isinteresting. Sony does not have their own
(17:12):
streaming service at all. They lacensso much of their stuff to Netflix or
Stars. They're the weird like outlierin all of this. Something that did
get announced over at Universal Studios isMinions Land. Yeah. Universal, I
(17:32):
feel like is sitting pretty right nowlike this. He's got all this like
chaos going on. Universe is like, Hey, what's up, guys,
how y'all doing? I want tocome check out our parks, guests,
we'll be able to eat, laughand cause mischief with illuminations. Minions,
what are we gonna what are wegonna see this? What's this gonna happen?
Are looking at summer this summer?This summer? Oh my god,
(17:53):
dude, the pictures of this areridiculous, ridiculous. So it's like we're
gonna have when you walk in thepark, on the left, you've got
the Minion Mayhem, on the right, you've got the Minion Blast experience,
and then a little bit down theroad is the Minion Minions Cafe. Yeah,
I saw, I saw a mockup for the cafe. I mean
(18:15):
it all looks great and universal.Uh. They build incredible lands like this
is basically a Minions Land at thispoint when it's complete, and they've done
such a great job with the Simpsonsarea. Of course, Harry Potter was
the one that started at all it'sgonna be it's gonna be top nots,
you know that. And yeah,but I feel like they're screwing up already
(18:37):
though there's only like, of allthe menu items and Nathan Wolf pointed to
the sound to me, there's onlyone mention of bananas anywhere instead of Popcorn
stand and Minion Land. How doyou not have like an entire menu dedicated
to bananas. They're gonna have morebananas, but bananas are super perishable,
so imagine you gotta have fake bananaflavorank a lot of things. Well,
(18:57):
some of the US Spica bowls thatthey'll have is Auto's noodabol Agnes's a Honeymoon
Soup, and Carl's Crispy Cauliflower Okay. Then there's the steak and Cheese ray
Sandwich and dessert items like Bob's TeddyBear Chocolate cream puff. And then there's
(19:19):
also the Mini Bosses Mega Melt MiniBosses Mega Melt Okay, Girl Cheese Sandwich.
Oh okay, And there's going tobe a guest can cool off with
a visit to freeze ray pops which, how is my next thought? Let's
freeze right, I popped in myhead as you were saying the one prior
colorful popsicles inspired by grew the Minionsin Vector along with beverages. Very cool.
(19:45):
Then there's going to be the IlluminationTheater, which will feature a twenty
two Minion Marquee and sing characters.Okay, So is that that's going to
be indoors? Yeah, that's nice, a little break from the little break
from the heat in there. Yeah. So, I know we were talking
at the start of the show abouthow they're going to be Oh, they're
(20:07):
doing away with a bunch of Ijoke about Shrek Day. They're going to
be doing more with dream Works.They're going they're building an entire land dedicated
to how to Train your Dragon,a dream Works property. They're about a
secret life of pets. We're gonnawork them in somewhere. Everyone speculates that
that could be what the place ofthe old Tribute Store location at Universal will
(20:32):
go. Okay, speaking of theTribute Store, James story, I've been
waiting on. I've been seeing thisone everywhere. How how is your credit
card looking? It is looking extremelyempty, and I am going to I'm
(20:52):
going to bury it in the backyardbecause I do not want to go anywhere
near Universal Studios with that Jurassic ParkTribute Store, the thirtieth anniversary Tribute Store
to Jurassic Park, the marquee onthe outside. This is the making of
Jurassic Park. Yes, which tellsme that it's gonna be something special and
I'm gonna want it all Sky.I know you will, I know you.
(21:19):
I know this speaking of Universal Newsand this isn't Universal here news.
But I don't know if you guyssaw this. So Universal Studio is Japan.
They have a spider Man ride justlike we have one here. Sure,
I don't know if you guys sawthis. That ride's gonna be closing
soon. Really, why the speculationsright there? Nope, not a rights
(21:40):
thing. Speculation is it's a popularitything. Oh, they don't like Spider
Man in Japan, not as much, not as much compared to a Nintendo
property. And the speculation is Pokemon. I could see that. Yeah,
that makes sense. I mean,Nintendo is just massive there. You know,
you can't argue the popularity Nintendo,and it's in its homeland of Japan.
Yeah, and I don't know thatSpider Man's really as big anywhere else
(22:03):
as it is in the US.They did have a they did have a
Japanese Spider Man television show. There'sa really good documentary on Disney Plus about
the making of it. It's actuallypretty cool. I believe that this that
iteration of Spider Man is going tobe in Spider Man Across the Spider Verse,
which comes out in two weeks,So we might see that Spider Man
(22:26):
in there. I don't know ifit's a speaking character, but people have
speculated they've seen him on the posterand in some of the background images and
the trailers. So I mean,yeah, but Nintendo's hot right now.
I mean, there's a Zelda gamethat has taken over the world on the
Switch, the Super Mario Brothers movie, I think is now up to twelve
(22:47):
trillion dollars made this week yep,yep, just this week. And Pokemon
has been hot for twenty years.Yeah. Yeah, people aren't playing that
game anymore, but it's still it'sstill a big thing. Every time a
new game comes out, it's it'sthe talk of everything, the zeit guy
stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, real quick, can I
bounce back to the Tribute store.Did we have an opening date for that?
(23:10):
Not yet? My guess is probablysometime after the holiday, or it
could be right before the holiday ifyou want to capitalize on it. Okay,
all right. Yeah. The crazything is those things get done fast
because of like because we can't seewhat's going on on the inside, so
they can just go crazy and justlike hammer stuff up super quick, exactly,
And they could be close to openingnow that there's stuff on the outside
(23:32):
that with the facade being done.Yeah, I want to say Jurassic Park
came out in June of nineteen ninetythree. That makes sense, But I
can't for sure, so I wonderif that's why, like Scots looking it
up right now? Aren't you justgood? Of course I am. He's
trying to I'm trying to remember whatthe poster that, like, I had
the Jurassic Park poster on my wall. June ninth was the premiere. In
(23:57):
June eleventh was the US Police.There's a good speculative dates then, yes,
thirtieth anniversary, it's the making ofJurassic Park. Yeah, I bet
you. June one is when thatstore opens. Ye. All right,
Well, boys, I feel likeas we head into the weekend, there's
only gonna be more news that's goingto pop out over the next couple of
(24:18):
days. So Scott, if peoplewant to follow us on social media to
get the latest breaking news, becausethere's more coming as they go, you'd
follow us on Twitter at theme ParkShow, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
at the Theme Park Podcast. Youcould watch at the theme Park YouTube dot
com and the show comes to youlive traditionally from the Lauren Campbell Reeltro dot
com, Tibo Gazebo studios. ForScott Harris, for Jimmy d I am
(24:40):
Dickerman until next week We will seeyou out at the parks. This has
been the theme Park Podcast. Followthe show on Facebook and Instagram at the
theme park Podcast. To catch upon previous episodes, check out the theme
park podcast dot com, the iHeartRadioapp, or Apple Podcasts.
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