September 12, 2024 • 49 mins
Imagine shelling out $1,500 for a two-night stay, only to be greeted by a room more cramped than a Motel 6 and a string of unresolved frustrations. Nate's experience at the Star Wars Hotel was far from the galactic adventure promised. From tiny bunks and an uncomfortable Murphy bed to a glaring LED space window and a disappointing low-end AI butler, the accommodations left much to be desired. Safety concerns also arose with a makeshift fireproof closet instead of a proper fire escape, casting a shadow on the lavish expenditure.
Navigating the Disney Plus app became a mission of its own, with technical glitches and confusing instructions overshadowing the immersive potential. Despite the promise of thrilling quests and interactions with beloved Star Wars characters, Nate's journey was repeatedly stymied by broken dialogue trees and unsolvable puzzles. The allure of joining factions and completing missions was dampened by these persistent technical issues, leaving Nate and his family more frustrated than entertained.
The broader Star Wars-themed section of the park didn't fare much better. High costs coupled with underwhelming activities and malfunctioning equipment turned excitement into disappointment. From overpriced lightsaber and droid-building experiences to missed events and flawed scheduling, Nate's high-priced vacation was marred by setbacks at every turn. Tune in to hear the full story of how a dream trip to a galaxy far, far away became an expensive lesson in unmet expectations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shaun (00:00):
Part 2 of Nate's Star Wars Hotel Experience.
On our last episode, natebought his family tickets for
the vacation of a lifetime atthe Star Wars Hotel.
However, things aren't off tosuch a good start, and they
don't get any better for themfrom here on out.
Finally, you arrive at yourroom and place to sleep for the
next two nights and, to yourhorror, you find out boy, it's
(00:21):
tiny, so very, very tiny, nate.
Two nights, yeah, they're twonights.
So very, very tiny.
Two nights, yeah, three days,two nights.
Nate (00:30):
Pay $1,500 for two nights.
Yes, two nights.
Shaun (00:32):
Three days, two nights, and remember the third day.
You're only there for an hourand a half.
It's basically just checkout.
Nate (00:36):
Yeah, that's bullshit.
I call shenanigans.
Let me speak to the manager, soyou?
Shaun (00:40):
get into your room and you have two bunk beds, or you
got some bunk beds and a murphybed is what's going on there?
You got, uh, two sets of bunkbeds and the odd man out gets a
murphy bed.
That's very uncomfortable andjust kind of swings down from
the wall.
In fact, it's a very small bedthat most people just use as a
shelf.
Uh, this room is actuallysmaller than your average motel
(01:00):
six room.
If you uh bring up that littleuh, those pictures I sent you.
Yeah, oh, hold on, I'll uploadthe picture of the uh room real
quick.
Doop boop, there we go okay, Iguess there is an actual bed, a
pull-out murphy bed and then aset of bunk beds, but the room
is incredibly tiny, yeah smalleryeah, smaller than your average
.
Nate (01:19):
Uh hotel six room yeah, I mean they had to know.
They had to know, like at thebeginning, their very beginning.
They're like yay dreams, butlike, as things were starting to
wrap up, they had to walkaround going, oh god, going on
here.
Shaun (01:32):
Yeah, those poor employees as they're uh looking
around be like, oh god, I'mgonna have deal with angry
customers over this.
Yeah, this is not good, there'sno jenny theorizes that the uh.
Jenny nicholson theorizes that,uh, this room is about half the
size of your average Motel 6room and, uh, she said that her
and her sister were cramped,being just two people in these
rooms, and this room wasdescribed as fitting up to five.
(01:52):
So this would be the room thatyou guys got as the cheapest
room available.
Ugh, yep, mattresses are firmbut not awful.
There's a nice comfy quilt onthe bed and you want to buy one
as a souvenir, but they don'tsell them at the gift shop.
This bums you out.
You later read online peoplejust stole them and let their
car be billed for it, and youwish you had thought of that.
There is a window in your roomshowing the vast openness of
(02:13):
space A quote-unquote window,you know monitor, again, with
ships flying by on occasion, andthis one is also synced up with
the windows.
So you know, if you watch a shippop in a window outside your
room, you can run inside yourroom and be like, oh, look,
there it goes, and also you'llget to see when the ship goes to
light speed.
However, apparently the screenquality in your room isn't that
good.
It looks like it has a glass,has like oil smeared all over it
(02:34):
.
So everything's kind of fuzzylooking and around this window
there's also, to help it likepop out from room there's a
really bright white LED striparound it.
So if you try to sleep withyour window quote unquote open,
it's bright enough to keep youup at night.
In fact, apparently people theywanted to keep the window open
so they could see, like thespace at night as they laid to
bed, but the lights were toobright so people would actually
(02:54):
take like gaffer tape andcovering up the tape around the
window because it's so bright.
Nate (02:58):
Oh well, I mean it sucks to them also.
I mean, that makes sense, whynot?
Shaun (03:03):
so then you get also finally get to experience your
robotic butler or your roboticroom droid.
Remember they talked aboutrobotic butlers and stuff like
that in the hype?
Yes, so your robotic butler is,um, basically, it's this tiny
little tablet mounted to thewall.
That's more or less an AIassistant that you can just ask
questions about the Star Warsuniverse.
Even AI might even be too muchcredit.
(03:25):
It's basically like GoogleAssistant with a Star Wars skin
applied.
Basically, you look at this fortwo minutes.
It's like hello, tell me moreabout the Star Wars universe and
it'll just give you the mostgeneric Star Wars answer.
Hey, what can you tell me aboutmy room?
Most generic answer ever kindof thing.
In fact, you're pretty surethat it's just like an iPad
built into the wall running areally low-end app on it.
After about a minute of playingwith it, you're bored.
(03:46):
So, yep, your robotic butlersucks, doesn't buttle, or
nothing.
No buttles, no buttles.
And then your eyes slowly go tothe corner of the room and
remember when we were hearingabout you know, don't resist, no
escape fire.
You know what they're talkingabout now.
They fire.
You know what they're talkingabout now.
They were talking about thefire escape for the room, of
which there is none.
That's right, nathan, becauseof how the hotel was designed.
(04:09):
In case of fire you may not beable to escape the blazing
inferno because there are nofire escapes.
So instead you get a smallfireproof closet that you and
your family can cram into andremain safe for up to two hours
(04:35):
in a burning building.
Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna comereal handy.
With a building collapseAbsolutely, that'd be the first
one.
All not fit, especially if yourwife wants to put her feet up,
like she often does you becomekeenly aware that you will be
voted out of the fire closetwhen the time comes.
Nate (04:48):
Absolutely.
That'll be the first one.
Shaun (04:49):
Yeah, it'll be you.
You'll be the last one.
Nate (04:53):
Especially if they'd be like this is your idea 100% of
like.
Shaun (04:57):
No, this was your idea.
You die in that fire, but butthere's plenty of room.
Ginny, I like to put my feet up.
Go away, uh-huh, to take yourmind off this death trap.
You head over to thewall-mounted TV to watch some
Disney goodness.
What kind of cool programmingwill they have?
Custom Star Wars shows, vintageDisney movies?
You turn on the TV to begreeted with a Disney Plus login
(05:18):
screen.
Yes, to watch TV here, you needan existing Disney Plus account
to log in, otherwise no TV foryou, and it's not even.
Nate (05:24):
TV.
It's just your stream, yep.
Shaun (05:28):
Yeah, it's literally just the only thing you can access
on your TV is Disney Plus.
Just stock Disney Plus that youhave to pay for and watch at
$10 a minute.
Well, yeah, $10 a minute, Imean, I guess the service itself
isn't.
Yeah, but still, I mean, you canwatch Disney Plus at home.
Just hunky doodles, right, youwould hope that they would, at
least, you know, have like Idon't know the loop of the old
Ewoks movies going on orsomething.
(05:49):
I mean I guess you could watchthose on Disney Plus, but for
free.
So now that everything's putaway in your room, you decide to
start your immersive adventureexperience and first thing you
do is fire up the app on yourphone and look at the schedule,
so they give you an app when youshow up, and that is to
(06:09):
dispense missions, uh, set upmeetings between you and the
actors, keep track of yourloyalty towards the factions of
the ship, because, uh, basically, as you do things or do little
quests, uh, there's it'll uh,tally up who you're kind of
getting more points with the uh,the resistance, the good guys,
the first order, the bad guys,or the smugglers, the smuggling
guys.
And as you do quests, variouscharacters from each faction
will pop up in the app and giveyou more quests to do and stuff
and help you build a factionwith them and move the story
(06:30):
along for you.
And also, it's got a messagingfeature in the app too.
You'll get messages fromvarious characters on the ship
being like giving youbackstories and lore, not real
messaging.
You know it's just like NPCmessaging, it's not like the
actual actors, text.
And as you look at the app yourealize there are some like
important characters that youhave to be aware of, some like
(06:51):
overall characters that aregoing to really move the head.
The stories.
These are the main guys.
You got captain Keevan, whichis the one you see on the promos
blue captain, blue skin, redhair.
Apparently it looks really badin the photos, but skin red hair
.
Apparently it looks really badin the photos but it looks
pretty good in person, like themakeup and everything.
Yeah, yep, you got Lenka Mok,the cruise director.
Lieutenant Croy, the first orderofficer.
(07:12):
He's the main villain and theone that you really really want
to get buddies with becauseyou're really trying to get that
bad guy thing going.
There are some stormtrooperswandering around and they
basically have like apre-recorded soundboard built
into their costume and they onlyrespond with those things.
So if you try to have aconversation with them, they
kind of only can respond in likeyou know half a dozen
pre-recorded things.
But apparently you can actuallykind of have a decent
(07:34):
conversation with them if youknow what you're doing.
They also have stuff like Sammythe ship's engineer, bumbling
Newbie and the SK-620 droid.
They have a little tiny droidthat just kind of rolls, wanders
around and makes beeps andboops.
He's part of the resistancepackage, or the resistance side,
and the thing about him.
Though.
Wherever you see little SK-620,if you look hard enough, you're
going to see the dudecontrolling it, and it's a dude
(07:57):
dressed in what they callquote-unquote dad gear, which is
usually a hoodie and a hat anda camera bag where the
controller is.
So if you ever seeremote-controlled critters in
any theme park, look for a dudein dad clothes.
Somewhere nearby there'll belike a dude in a hoodie with
like a camera bag and a littlebaseball hat pulled down low,
kind of hiding in the corner.
Nate (08:14):
I mean that makes sense.
I actually looked at the SK-620you're talking about but yeah,
yeah, I mean I understand, theycan't just, I don't know, hide
them better.
Shaun (08:24):
Yeah right, Well, they probably had to be in line of
sight or something for theremote controls to work, I guess
.
Nate (08:29):
I guess it's $10 a minute.
Shaun (08:32):
Who better?
Nate (08:33):
You're making so much money from this I know right,
because I'm not the only onehere and looking around,
everyone around me is playing ata minimum $10.
Never mind the people who payme more for like.
Shaun (08:43):
Thing too as you notice as you wander around looking at
all the actors and actresses, alot of the female actresses all
kind of look like Ray and youassume that's probably because
they just kind of swap aroundthe actresses, you know,
depending on their shifts andschedule, and they just need
some as much cross acting asthey can get, cause, yeah,
apparently there's a this groupknown as a Saja that are there
which are lightsaber lightsabertraining group.
(09:05):
They're kind of like the blindmonk from Rogue One, but
apparently most of those arefemale and they all kind of look
like Rey.
Just enough that you're like hmm, bet you, one of these are the
Rey actors, or most of them justdidn't, mm-hmm, not Rey actors,
as she's sprinted like I'm doneoh what?
Oh well, it's kind of suspectedhow this hall works out, though,
with the quest and everything.
It's kind of cool.
You start out doing stuff onthe app and doing the quests on
(09:26):
there.
You know it's going to be likehey, go to this area and scan
this QR code and whatnot andcontinue on the story this way
and as you do those, it, youknow, builds up tallies for
which crew you're doing it themost, with which side, and that
all syncs up with their headsetor something and as you walk up
it'll give them a quick rundownof what you're doing story-wise.
(09:49):
So it'll basically do somethinglike if you're walking up to
the First Order guy, hisearpiece will be like Nathan
trust level high, and then theactor knows that you're on the
First Order storyline or whatnot.
Or it'd be like Nathan trustlevel low and they would know
that you're the Resistance orwhatnot.
Or it'd be like Nathan trustlevel low and they would know
that you're, you know, theresistance or whatever.
Or you know Nathan smuggler, sothey know that you're doing the
(10:09):
smuggler thing and how to reactwith you on that.
So that's kind of neat.
So when you actually, after you,do enough quests on the little
phone.
When you start walking up tothe actors, they'll start like
kind of individually talking toyou and giving you you know,
going along with how yourstory's going so far, as much as
they can.
You know, right, which.
That's kind of cool, makes itfeel a little bit more
personalized and whatnot.
And also that band too, as youdo quests on the phone.
(10:31):
That's how it'll start unlockingstuff like the bridge and other
little areas, the cargo hold.
You'll just walk up and waveyour little bracelet and be like
ding.
And as you go over this app andplay around with it and figure
out more and more about it, nate, all of a sudden you can't help
but realize that this app lookspretty much identical to the
Star Wars Galaxy Edge Theme Parkapp, the Star Wars Datapad app,
(10:52):
with slightly differentinterface.
You went to Star Wars GalaxyEdge Theme Park, didn't you?
Did you use the app there?
Apparently, when you go there,there's an app you can use to do
little side quests, whichbasically results in just going
around like scanning QR codesand stuff.
No, I didn't do that?
Nate (11:08):
No, okay, well, we were with because we went there, but
it was also with like a schooltrip, like we went there.
So, like you know, it wasn't,we weren't exactly on our own
doing our own things.
We were we had a lot of freedom, but it was still yeah.
Shaun (11:20):
Yeah, we didn't have that much time, so we didn't do it
yeah, it's probably one of thosethings that just would have
been a sidetrack or distractionenough yeah, I just.
Nate (11:28):
We just want to get around led to frustrations yeah, we
had enough kids to keep track of.
Shaun (11:32):
I don't want to be all like let's do this now because
they'd be like no oh, you lookover the quests and you realize,
hey, if I do this one questI'll probably become part of the
first order storyline.
You're like like, hey, whatkind of fun, cool quest am I
going to get?
And you kind of have it in yourhead where it's going to be
like one of thosechoose-your-own-er.
You know one of those adventuregames back in the 90s where you
know it's like, hey, thecaptain wants a kyber crystal,
(11:53):
but first you have to get thekey off the droid.
But to do that you need totrack down data disks.
So you're like, yeah, sweet,what are we gonna do now?
So the quest first has you go upto the atrium and it tells you
to go to a terminal to uh startyour quest.
So you run up and youimmediately assume it's a
touchpad, start pawing at thescreen like a puppy and realize,
(12:13):
nope, not a touch screen.
You feel like an idiot.
Uh, makes sense, though I guessyou don't really want touch
screens everywhere, with uh kidspawing at them and everything
there.
So you go up to this monitorand you start pushing little
buttons and stuff and the screensays please enter password.
Think to yourself oh, yeah, apuzzle, this will be cool.
How do we figure out thepassword?
You start running around theatrium looking for cool clues,
(12:35):
even wander around to the actorsand start a conversation, see
if they blurt out a clue, likean npc, but nope, nothing.
You check the app nope, nothingthere either.
You wander around confusedwatching other people seemingly
do this quest, but nothing'shappening for you.
This is frustrating becausethis is also costing you $10 a
minute, causing you to finallygive up and be like well, let's
go figure out something else todo.
Frustrating.
You learn later what wassupposed to happen as soon as
(12:57):
that password prompt came up onthe screen.
The app in your phone wassupposed to send you a private
message from the smugglerstoryline and send you off to go
do another quest, but forwhatever reason, the app in the
terminal did not sync up and youdidn't get that quest, and this
basically locks you out of thesmuggler storyline.
Oh shit, yeah, which sucks, butyou kind of won the first order
(13:18):
storyline anyway.
So there you go.
Still frustrating, though,because you're seeing children
running around all over likepopping in passwords and stuff
and doors opening from theirmood.
They're like, yay, look, thisis so much fun and you're just
like, huh, I got one brokenquest so far.
You even actually follow arounda little kid at one point.
After he like plays aroundTerminal, you like sneak up
before he logs out and you startplaying around on him and
you're like, wow, there's somecool stuff they're doing in here
(13:39):
.
Things have popped up for you,though, yet so you said maybe if
I go talk to the uh leader ofthe first order, maybe then
that'll trigger a quest form orsomething like that.
So you run up to lieutenantcroyd, the leader of order, the
leader of the first order, and,uh, you meet him and you have
some very delightful role playconversation and you make it
very clear that you're on hisside.
You're like can you, can I doanything for you?
(14:01):
Do you have any missions fornudge, nudge, nudge?
And he's just kind of like youknow, does his thing and then
wanders off.
And when the conversation isdone, you're like hop on the app
.
You're like, maybe, maybe I'llget a message from him or
something.
And then nothing, just wanderaround, nothing's happening.
And then you pick up your phone, you dick around on a little
more and all of a sudden you geta text from Lieutenant Croy
(14:22):
that says I see, I can trust you.
Would you like to help with amission?
And you're like yes, finally,first order mission.
And it's like you follow thisdialogue tree and it keeps going
, keeps going and he's likestarting to build this mission
and then all of a sudden he kindof ghosts you yeah, the app
apparently bugs out or something, and that dialogue tree just
stops halfway through and younever actually get to finish the
quest through that way either.
(14:42):
So this may have actuallylocked you out of the first
order, thing You're not quitesure yet Shows you.
Yeah, they put a lot of effortinto this app thing, didn't they
?
Too much effort and not enough.
Yeah right, you go around tryingto figure out how to keep this
quest going and nothing,nothing's happening.
No quests are popping up foryou.
Your family's actually gettingsome quests pop up.
Your family's actually gettingsome quests poppin'.
(15:02):
They're running off and doingthings.
They're having a little bit offun, but for the most part for
you nothing's happening.
You wander off to go check theSabacc Lessons, as the schedule
says, and you find out there'sgonna be a Sabacc tournament
tomorrow and the winner gets alarge novelty poker chip Neat.
You don't wanna play that soyou don't hang around there.
But you're hoping that if younotice there's some events going
(15:25):
on like space bingo and spaceline dancing not stuff you'd be
interested in, but that's whatyou could do in this hotel space
bingo and space line dancing.
It's out of space line dancingjust brings a chuckle to me yeah
, that's pretty bad.
You wander around playing withterminals still no quest,
nothing popping up.
You see a family about to popinto the bridge, which, uh, you
know that takes doing quests andstuff, and the door opens for
(15:46):
them and you basically just sortof like sneak in with that
group behind them to see what'sgoing on, cause well, nothing
else is going on.
But since you get in therethere's nothing.
There's like your app isn'tsyncing up with any of the
computers in there, so nothinghappens.
You just kind of wander aroundthe bridge and boredom there too
.
This keeps you busy untildinner time.
So you head to the restaurantto have dinner.
Food is buffet style for theand, uh, okay, the sides are a
(16:07):
buffet style and the main dishesare picked from a menu you know
you can have, like your meat oryour veggie or your fish or
whatever.
Food is good.
Star Wars themed Service isreally good.
And then while you're eating,suddenly Sammy the smuggler guy
comes running through the areawith none other than Chewbacca.
Ooh, exciting, something'sgoing on.
(16:28):
They make a commotion as theyrun through the place looking
for a place to hide Chewbacca.
They don't succeed andChewbacca gets cost and hauled
off to jail.
Then comes the big dinner musicshow with the Twi'lek singer
and her band that are going toperform for the night, and they
set up at the end of therestaurant and start dancing and
singing on and putting on whatsounds like a really cool show.
However, you can't really tellhow cool of a show this is
because you and your family gotseated right by one of the four
support beams that decorate therestaurant.
(16:48):
That thing is right in yourline of sight, did?
Nate (16:51):
that actually happen to this lady.
Shaun (16:53):
Yes, this literally happened to her.
Everything that's on thishappened to her.
The whole app's not working.
This is like straight fromeverything that's happened to
her.
Literally, there's like fourgiant white support columns in
the middle of this restaurantand they are like seated right
next to one and that column isliterally blocking the entire
band and the music going on andyou can't see them doing
anything.
(17:13):
And, even worse, at one pointthey kind of shimmy back and
forth around the pole, almost asthey're like teasing you and
joking with you.
Because, yeah, like you'll justsee, like one of them like take
two steps out from behind thepole and then two steps back and
for the majority of that showit's performed behind the pole.
At one point the lead singerdoes walk through the crowd to
the other side of the restaurantand right behind the other pole
, on the other side of you, andagain you see nothing.
(17:35):
Then you notice that, uh, inthe middle of this room is, uh,
it's no poles, nothingobstructing you.
It seems like people are havinga really good time, with
characters walking aroundtalking to them, almost like
some sort of VIP area.
Let's cut back to that lostemail that you never got.
Turns out for $30 per personyou could have upgraded to those
captains table and been likeright in the middle of
everything.
Oh, so they're kind of likepunishing you.
Nate (17:56):
You didn't do this, so we're going to stick you behind
the pole.
Shaun (17:58):
Possibly yes, there is a looked at him and were like, hmm
, we'll just stick you behind.
This pole bitch Show is overand you're like well, that
sucked, since we only got to seehalf of it.
But then something excitinghappens.
Lieutenant Croy messages youand tells you he needs you to
meet him for some blueprintsthat he needs.
And since there's no specifictime listed, you assume you can
kind of wait until you're doneeating your meal and everything.
(18:19):
As you finish your meal, all ofa sudden the check comes and on
it it has a torn up piece of asecret message.
It's like a third of a notebookpiece of paper, like a third of
a sheet of A9.
And you notice the other tableshave gotten thirds of a page
also and you wisely assume thatyou should bring them all
together for a clue.
But actually no, pretty mucheverybody's paper, even though
it's from different chunks ofthe paper.
It all just basically says thesame thing, slightly worded
(18:41):
differently.
So no reason to bring thesenotes together.
It's just a cool aesthetic Iwrite stupid.
This message was from Sammy theSmuggler, to meet at the atrium
at 945 to help him break outChewbacca.
This you know.
You're like well, this is aresistance thing, I guess, and I
didn't really want to do it,but at least it's something.
So maybe I'll go check that out.
But before this happens,happens.
You get to hear about bridgetraining is happening.
(19:02):
Yay, you got to go up to thebridge and see all those cool
things, and maybe we'll even getto punch it to light speed,
like you always dreamed about orat least the commercials
gaslight you into believing.
Right, get up the bridge forsome fun activities game and
hopefully a chance to punch it.
And you get there and you'regreeted with what's kind of neat
at first.
It's this giant open windowscreen covering an entire wall,
(19:22):
kind of like from the conceptart you saw.
You're like, oh, that's cool.
And also there's a bunch ofthese tiny little stations
everywhere that people are linedup to and doing stuff at, and a
lot of these stations are justthere for looks.
It's just like useless buttonsand levers and you know knobs to
spin.
Okay, think of those.
You know the car driving thingsyou get for a toddler with the
steering wheel and little gearshifter and speedometer.
(19:43):
Most of the stations there arebasically like fancy Star Wars
themed ones of those, but thereare a few other stations that
you actually get to play littlegames on.
And these are four activitiesyou get doing this thing Gunner
shields, loader engineeringthese activities are not doing
this thing Gunner shields,loader engineering these
activities are not that asexciting.
Like for the gunner, you standat a station and guide this
little reticle around the hugewindow up there and you shoot at
(20:06):
enemy ships, kind of like anold Atari game.
This is actually done in a teamof two.
You guide the little reticlearound and then whoever your
partner is actually pushes thebutton to shoot.
And you got like team stufftogether, which this is kind of
held back by the fact you'redoing stuff on this giant screen
along with everybody else atthe same time.
So you're just one reticle outof like 10 flying around and
you're got to keep track ofwhat's going on and that's kind
(20:29):
of fun.
But again just feels like anipad app.
You're playing on a big screen.
You move on to the loader game,which, uh, is kind of basically
just like a little.
You get your own screen.
You get basically do like acrane game going around and
picking up stuff, and when youpick up stuff with your little
crane you gotta like rearrangethe block, so it fits a little
hole it's going through.
There's another one that goesuh is done in pairs, also kind
(20:50):
of like a fancy ipad app.
When you get to the shields uhstation, play the shields game.
Uh, you know that game.
You're just like hitting theball through the wall and trying
to flip it back and that kindof thing.
Or Arkanoid.
It's basically a reverse thatYou're building a shield, though
, instead of knocking one down.
That one's kind of cool, though, because it has its own custom
table that you get to play it at, kind of like those old Pac-Man
(21:11):
bar tables.
You know where it tables, youget to stand over and look down.
That one's kind of neat.
After you play these games for acouple moments at each station,
they're like rotate, and youget to go rotate and try one of
the other games.
These all kind of suck.
They feel like games that weremade for an eight-year-old to
play and, on that note, theyalso score up everything at the
end of the thing and rank youamong the other people.
(21:32):
This also sucks because youalso get beaten by
eight-year-olds who are betterat this game than you, and at
one point during all this gamingthey grab one kid to put us
into light speed.
Now go do it and they run himup to the button.
He gets to hit the button andbe like yay, and everybody gets
to go like yay.
Look, the kid got to live outhis dream of punching it to
light speed.
Nate (21:50):
So there you go, that's that one thing they hyped much,
yep one kid gotta do it out ofthat whole group.
Shaun (21:57):
Good for him.
I'm sure, yeah, good for him.
He probably is underwhelmed,just like everybody else too.
Uh, the time you're at thebridge, though, there's going to
be a special fancy storyencounter that affects the whole
thing that everybody in thebridge gets to experience.
You know, and, uh, sometimes anenemy ship shows up on the uh
screen and you get to fight thatoff as a whole team, or a
special encounter with a starwars character will walk into
(22:17):
the room.
That'll be kind of fun, but themajority of the time and the
time you're there, it's going tobe an asteroid field, and this
is determined by the fact, theysay, an asteroid field shows up
and all the windows in the hotelstart showing asteroid fields,
and this happens a lot, becauseabout every 45 minutes, you're
going to see asteroid fields outthe windows, and this is
because all the windows aresynced, so you're going to see
asteroid fields out the windows,and this is because all the
(22:38):
windows are synced, so you'relike, every 45 minutes, you'll
probably see a asteroid.
You'll be like, hey, somebody'sin the bridge doing those
bridge games neat.
Apparently, though, the firsttime you go into the bridge is
just a training to be like hey,here's how you do all this stuff
.
Later on they bring you back onthe second day to do more stuff
and actually be morecompetitive and whatnot, but
it's still the same lame gamesthat, that sucks.
Nate (22:56):
I mean I don't know Like games can be hard.
You know, sometimes they're fun.
Some people think they're gamesfun, some people think games
stupid.
Shaun (23:05):
But if everyone thinks it's fun, yeah, you look at your
phone after you're done thebridge Time to go help Sammy
rescue Chewbacca.
Yay.
You go to the location that thenote said and you come across
Chewie and a group of excitedpeople running around.
Why were they excited?
Apparently they had just brokenChewie out of jail during a
cool event.
You check your watch Stillthree minutes until the meeting
time.
On the note, that means thatthis event either started early
(23:26):
and you missed it, or theprevious event just ran way too
long.
Just in case, uh, you go toother locations to see if
anything else is happening.
No, you're quite bummed, though.
You missed Chewie gettingbroken out.
I mean, granted, for all youcare that Wookiee can rot in a
cell, but it would have beencool to finally do something or
witness something other than youknow shitty bridge games.
Then you remember that therewas a message from Lieutenant
Croy to meet him and there's nospecific time.
(23:48):
So maybe you go, go meet himnow.
You go to the location and,sure enough, he's there.
And, hey, you know thatChewbacca guy that you had in
prison.
He got out.
Maybe we should go do somethingabout it, because you're like,
hey, maybe that'll be a coolstory thing.
Yeah Well, apparently yourlittle wristband has you pegged
(24:09):
for the resistance or somethinglike that, because all he does
is look at you and goes oh yeah,why should I trust you?
But I'm part of the First Order.
Why should I trust you?
Because apparently they haveyou pegged as one of the good
guys.
Now, so much for you being onthe bad guy path.
Nate (24:24):
That sucks.
Shaun (24:25):
Yep.
You go back to your room forthe night and you realize that
today, sucked, none of thisimmersive adventure experience
came to fruition.
You go to bed.
As you're laying in bed, youlook at your app and you look at
all those.
There's this area where you canlook up all the NPCs or all the
actors and stuff and be likehow good is your familiarity and
trust with them?
And you know it's supposed tobe like high level, low level,
(24:45):
high level, blah, blah, blah andyou notice that your trust
level with everybody is neutral.
In fact, it's like the apphasn't been taking inventory of
anything.
You.
You've been doing None of thequests or nothing you've been
going through Like well, thatblows yeah.
Nate (24:58):
I mean, if it, if your enjoyment hinges on like some
kind of trustworthiness with youknow the actors and they're
just going off what you're, whatthe app is saying, yeah,
whatever info it's gotten, Ifit's not working, that's not
cool.
Shaun (25:13):
Day two you get up early for your 16 hours of immersive
adventure experience becausetoday is the day you go to Star
Wars Galaxy Edge.
The event schedule has youstarting at 7 am and then you
hop on a 9 am shuttle and to doall this you personally get up
at 4 am because you know you gotfour other members trying to
use that tiny little bathroom inyour hotel.
She didn't actually do that, Ijust kind of added that in.
Yeah, Imagine one tiny littlebathroom with all five of you
(25:35):
trying to use it that'd be awfulyeah, you'd probably have to go
use the public bathroom withall the space, coke and stuff.
So as you sit there waiting foryour turn in the bathroom, you
notice that you load up the appand notice all of a sudden you
have a ton of quests popping upeverywhere and you're like, yay,
this would be kind of cool, ifit's not going to be for the
fact we'll be gone all day atthe park.
Nate (25:53):
So you get your breakfast.
I don't care what queststhey're giving me.
We're going.
Shaun (25:56):
Now, today is going to be your most exhausting day ever 7
am to 8 am.
Breakfast 8.15 to 8.25,.
Transport shuttle to Batuu 8.45to 9.30,.
Star Wars Rides of theResistance ride 9.30 to 9.50,.
Story moment 10 to 10.30,.
Millennium Falcon Smuggler'sRun 11.15 to 1145,.
Lunch at Docking Bay 7,.
(26:16):
Food and Cargo 1240 to 1250,.
Transport Shuttle Back to StarCruiser 1 to 130,.
Lightsaber Training 230 to 250,droid Racing Competition 3 to
330,.
Build a Model Ship 4 to 5,sabacc Tournament 5 to 530,.
Cocktails at Sunlight Lounge530 to 7, taste Around the
Galaxy Dinner 730 to 845,.
(26:38):
Story Moment Sounds exhausting,doesn't it, nate?
Nate (26:42):
Oh my god, that's awful.
Shaun (26:44):
But all in the name of making memories for you and your
family.
Nate (26:47):
Memory, how I hated this trip.
Shaun (26:50):
So off to Batuu.
You go, batuu, quote-unquote,the theme park, right.
So you go.
You get ready and you go to hopon your fancy little transport
that you go to with your realcustom droid pilot and you're
immediately let down by thatbecause basically you're in the
back of a giant box truck withsome seats bolted down into it,
with some stickers and an LCDmonitor on the inside showing
(27:12):
you some stuff and your droidpilot.
You don't really have a droidpilot.
You know those little taxi cabstickers that say like, hey,
your driver's name is blah, blah, blah, and a little picture of
them.
Yeah, that's your droid pilot.
It's just one of those littlestickers in the corner of the
room.
Yep, it's just stickers likethis is your droid pilot for the
day.
Very, very lame.
At best you're hoping forsomething like a you know
(27:34):
animatronic thing, like a JohnnyCab.
At worst you're hoping forsomething like you know
something on the little screenthere to interact with.
But nope, you don't even getthat, just basically a picture
of a driver's license.
So you get to the park.
You get to the park to your ownpersonal entrance which is kind
of cool, I guess and it isdumping rain at the park, nate,
just the thing you want to dowhile you're at the Florida park
.
You do get free loanerumbrellas downside.
(27:55):
Is these free loaner umbrellasreally suck?
And they will be collapsing ontop of you as you wander around
the park, dumping water over youand your family each time I
mean I'll give a small pass.
Nate (28:05):
You can't, they can't control the weather.
But yeah, yeah however, theyshould have been with for ten
dollars an hour.
They should have figured a wayaround that you know, yeah, get
better umbrellas.
Do something you know.
Shaun (28:19):
You fire up your app and you decide to see what kind of
exciting quest you get to do atthis park here.
The app says hey, we got aquest for you.
We need to find out what's inthese crates.
Head over there and find out.
So you excitedly run over thereand figure out what you're
supposed to do with these cratesand it turns out you're
supposed to take your app andscan a QR code and then you get
(28:40):
a thank you message from acharacter and then they send you
off on another quest to go findsomething else, which is
another QR code you scanned andyou get the thank you message
and maybe the app will make anoise, if you're lucky.
In fact, it's really lame, verylame, in fact.
One example of this quest is uh,they, the storyline is like
there's this giant jet engineoutside of a restaurant and the
storyline is like that jetengine is really loud and
(29:00):
annoying.
Will you please turn it off forme?
So you go over there and youscan a QR code and you do this
real quick little hacking game,a very simple thing and you turn
off the jet engine, but theactual prop itself does nothing
the actual jet engine that's inthe park.
It doesn't turn off, it doesn'tflash.
It doesn't turn off, it doesn'tflash, doesn't make a noise or
nothing.
You just get text tone fromyour app being like thank you
for turning off that jet engineand basically the way you turn
(29:23):
off is just like a simple littlerhythm game or almost like a
lock picking kind of game fromSkyrim.
Very, very, very subpar stuffhere.
Nate (29:30):
I would be so angry I mean I don't know, very, very angry
Yep.
Shaun (29:33):
I mean I don't know, very , very angry Yep.
And also, as you notice, thereare people there who are trying
to do the same thing too, butthey can't get the QR code
scanner to work on their littlephone, on their app, and this
was actually screwing uppeople's like missions through
their entire experience, and Iguess the only way to fix this
bug that was happening at thispark was to go to the park
entrance check out an iPad fromthe place, but that would reset
(29:56):
all your progress that you'vemade so far for the Star Wars
experience.
So, basically, you'd have tostart over from your questing
from the start if you got thisbug that happened at this park.
Does that make sense?
Nate (30:05):
Yeah, that's not good.
Shaun (30:09):
Especially if you were invested.
Nate (30:11):
If you were invested in your progress, lost it all.
Shaun (30:13):
Yeah, also too.
When you get there, you getthis little pin that basically
says, yeah, also too.
When you get there, you getthis little pin that basically
says, hey, this person's fromthe Star Wars hotel thing.
And you're like cool, maybe theemployees will give us like
special treatment or something,a role play with us.
Nope, they won't.
They just look at it.
If you show them the pin,they're just like, oh neat, well
, if you want the quest thing,it's over there, I guess.
Yeah, the people in the parkdon't give two.
(30:39):
You're a part of the uh hotelexperience.
There are some other stuffthere to do outside of, like
scanning qr codes, like alightsaber shop that lets you
build a lightsaber for 200, or aclass that lets you build a
droid for about 200, because yougot to buy the kits to do them
for these classes.
Nate (30:48):
You can do that without paying, like you can just go
there and do that, because Iwent to those places.
I didn't do either one of thosethings but that was available
there for everybody.
It was available I walked inthere like, oh look, I can do
that, let's not.
Shaun (31:02):
And left yep uh, oh, okay , here's the thing.
Sorry I kind of skipped arounda little bit, but the reason why
, uh, some people's qr codeswere failing or when people were
having their app lock up on theqr codes and this and that
walking around the park, yeah,yeah, so what happens is, you
know, you bring up this whole,you bring up the app and it
brings up like the little scanthe QR code.
(31:24):
You know, you put your cameraover and you push a little
button, doodle, do, and it takesa picture.
Well, that's actually not howyou're supposed to do it.
You're supposed to use like thelittle take a picture button if
you're part of the actual justthe park, if you're part of the
hotel experience, to make itsync up with your hotel
experience.
There's like this littlequestion mark in the corner of
the app that you click that totake a picture of the qr code
(31:45):
for.
And you know it looks just likeone of those help menu icons.
So, yeah, nobody explained thatto anybody.
So everybody's like taking qrcode pictures, the quote unquote
wrong way and screwing up their, uh, star wars experience.
Do you think that'd besomething they would figure it
out beforehand?
But yeah, apparently not.
Nate (32:00):
So they figure it out and let people know hey, seriously,
or they would have changed theicon.
Yeah right, there's a bitthere's.
I'm saying there's a millionways, but they're, they're okay.
There are several ways youcould approach this, doubt being
logical, one A tell peopleabout it.
Or B change the icon, like ohhit this it looks like a little
camera or a lightsaber orsomething, or something, yeah
(32:21):
like hey, you know, if you'redoing this experience, make sure
you hit the lightsaber on thetop right hand screen the camera
function.
Shaun (32:27):
Eventually, while you're there, you do get a quest that
actually legitimately excitesyou.
Nate, it's time to go to thecanteen to get some information.
Now, the cantina is basically arestaurant slash bar that's
there at the park and I guessit's always packed and you need
to book it like way in advanceif you want to actually get
inside of it.
And thanks to the power of thishotel experience, you finally
get to see the inside of it.
Yay, nate, no bookingreservation needed.
(32:48):
Exciting stuff, or so youthought.
You get to the door, flash yourpin and they just hand you a
coaster with a QR code on theback of it and send you on your
way.
You don't get to see the insideof the cantina.
Nate (32:58):
So they're like it's, we'll just skip.
Just skip the candy apart.
Just give you the reward forgoing.
Shaun (33:02):
Exactly.
They're like figure out thisinfo at the cantina.
So you show up at the cantina.
Nate (33:06):
They're like no, no all the info he needs on the QR code
.
Was you know a reason to gethere?
But it was like I was here for.
Shaun (33:19):
Yep, the two best.
Your two favorite quests forthe day was the ones that took
you on the two rides there thatyou were supposed to do the
Millennium Falcon and the Riseof Resistance or whatever it was
app or rides.
However, to finish those quests, that ride, do those rides, you
literally could just stood nextto the ride and said I'm, I did
it and they'll be like okay,cool, you're in the area.
Obviously you did so.
(33:40):
You don't even have to ride therides to do the uh quest do um,
do you the fast pass?
at least wait in the whole linenope, you get a fast pass with
them okay that's something Imean yeah, that's that's not
nothing, that that is helpsoffset that ten dollars a minute
you're paying.
Nate (33:54):
We waited in that line from I line from.
That was one of the worst partsabout that.
The whole park is the fact thatyou have to wait all the time
and of course I've probablymentioned this before.
I don't know if I mentioned.
It's designed.
The parks are designed.
The parks are designed to get abunch of people in line for as
long as possible.
Not on the rides in linethere's more people in line.
(34:14):
There's less people walkingaround so they can fit more
people in, so that it'sliterally it benefits disney and
any any theme park.
Shaun (34:22):
It benefits them to have a bunch of people waiting in
line because they can get morepeople in I've heard now there's
even so much fast pass beingbought that there's a line for
the fast pass stuff too.
Now, oh yeah, I believe it yeah, I refuse.
Nate (34:33):
Though I refuse like I mean, maybe if I had a more
expendable money I would refuse,but as of right now, I'm like
look, we paid this much money toget here, I'm not gonna pay
another like this pump.
That's the thing with the fiveof us like it's fifteen dollars
for one go.
Okay, well, fifteen dollars forone go isn't a lot, but then
you do that multiple rides forfive people, it gets very, very
yeah, I bet.
Shaun (34:54):
So that experience sucked on.
Uh, your trip to Batuu orwhatever that planet was, I
already forgot the name of youhop on your shuttle back to the
hotel, dejected, and you startto think to yourself.
You think back to 2011 andDisney's Kim Possible Adventure
Experience.
For this adventure thing thatwas free at Disneyland.
When you first showed up, theyhanded you like an old school
(35:16):
cell phone and as you walkedaround the park you would see
things that would be like textplatypus to 6524 kind of thing
and when you'd do that, actualcool stuff would happen like
aquariums would drain, a pair ofthe platypus mannequin would
like pop out of a door and waveat you or something like that.
Little characters like ziplineacross the sky off in the
distance.
Things would actually happenand it was free.
(35:36):
And this was also 13 years ago,nate.
Somehow Disney was able to puttogether a more interesting and
immersive experience back in2011 for free than they did for
this Star Wars adventure thing.
Nate (35:48):
Well, it had the SW words oh.
Shaun (35:50):
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
Yeah, because when you think oflike Kim Possible and stuff,
you don't see dollar signspopping up in Disney execs' eyes
.
Yeah, this is very, very true.
You get back and now it's timefor lightsaber training, nate,
so lightsaber training.
Remember how you saw that guystand there and he was so very,
very stiff and unanimated,blocking those lightsaber blasts
(36:11):
, and you're like, oh, that'slame and he looks lame.
So you get up there and you'relike, fuck, yeah, I'm about to
do some twirls and some spinsand this and that.
And you immediately start to dothe old Nathan pizzazz with the
lightsaber.
And they immediately grab youand you're like stop, nope, nope
, nope.
Both feet on the ground.
You have to stand there, movethe lightsaber very slowly back
and forth.
Yeah, if you try to get fancy,they tell you to stop.
(36:32):
It turns out it's because, uh,the first round is basically
just a calibration round.
It's gonna be like shininglight at you and it's just like
wave your lightsaber around andthat's a calibration round.
And then the uh.
Second, uh, then there's anactual uh one where it's like
the second round is uh, kind oflike an actual real game, where
it's, you know, shines a littlelight and you're actually
supposed to block it and whatnot, but because the tracking isn't
(36:54):
that good on it, basically youhave to stand, stand there
perfectly still and you know,keep your body still and just
move your arms out in front ofyou.
And then the third one issupposed to be the final one,
where it's like you've passedall your training.
Now you get to feel like abadass and it basically starts
shooting blasts at you and itmakes it look like you're
blocking every blast perfectly.
But basically it's just atiming trick where it's sending
(37:15):
the layers for blast after youlike do the blocking motion and
stuff to make you feel likeyou're doing really good.
But it's just a light trick.
The whole.
Thing is actually pretty boringand dumb.
Nate (37:24):
I was wondering about that .
It's like how much holding yourhand to win.
Shaun (37:27):
Yeah, yep, it was.
Just it's not good.
And again, you know you try todo like little spins and back
flips and everything and nope,can't do that.
They're literally like you haveto keep your torso and your
hips still and just move yourarms, kind of thing.
That's like the directions theygive you on that.
Yeah, they even jenny showed athing.
Jenny nicholson showed a thingof her like she was barely just
bopping around just left andright a little bit and they like
(37:49):
ran over and told her to knockit off.
You can see a droid racingcompetition, and that's more for
little kids, so it's like, eh,whatever.
That's kind of cool, though,watching the kids have fun with
that.
There's a model shipbuildingclass too that you can
participate in if you'd like,but in order to do that you need
to buy a model from the giftshop, and you'll be damned if
you're going to dump more moneyinto that.
The Sabacc tournament is kindof boring and you just win a
(38:10):
commemorative coin if youactually do good at that, but
most people don't, so they don'tget anything.
If you're interested, when yougo to the cocktail lounge, they
actually have drinks there thatare free for the non-alcoholic
drinks, or a $49 per personupgrade for alcoholic drinks to
get made for you.
But they do have things wherethey make like custom Star Wars
cocktails for you and they tellyou a cool little story and they
(38:32):
have like smoke coming off ofthem and stuff.
And this is like one of theevents that you're really
excited about because you'veheard it's cool, you've seen
little videos and you decide I'mgoing to do that tonight for
one of my last things here.
So you sign up because you gotto like sign up for the class
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So you sign up for the classand you get your notification.
Be like, be here.
(39:00):
The mixology class is canceled.
Sorry, no explanation, noreason why, but you sat there
for a good 15 minutes waitingonly to get nothing.
Also, kind of you know a littlebit more of the short end of
the stick there for you.
Yeah, you think yeah, apparently.
Reading online later you findout that I guess more often than
not those mixology classes didget canceled, which I don't know
.
I guess maybe the bartender washaving withdrawals or something
(39:22):
and couldn't do them certaindays.
Nate (39:24):
Paying that much money?
What attracts you to come?
Shaun (39:26):
in Yep, as the night winds down, you are summoned for
an event.
You're like, hey, this is kindof neat, let's see what this is
about.
Since, back at the park, one ofthe few QR code missions you
did was scanning those cratesthat they asked you about.
You get to participate infinding out what was inside
those crates, ooh.
So you get summoned to a roomand in there you can see one of
those Saja people and Ray, andthey look around the room and
(39:48):
they ask everybody like hey, didanybody scan some crates on
that planet?
And so and so and this and thatdo these quests and apparently
only about a third of the peopleyou notice are like yeah, we
did.
Everybody else's kind of looksconfused, like why are we here?
So it's that kind of clues youin that maybe everybody else's
app is being weird too, or yourother thought too is there might
(40:08):
just not have been enoughpeople on that storyline that
they decide just pull in randompeople to make it look busier
than it was.
You don't really really knowbecause they're not letting
loose the secrets of this.
But this whole storyline thingis basically you get to sit
there and watch Rey and theSajah open up a fake box and
pull out a holocron andeverybody goes ooooh, ahhh.
And then Yoda pops from theholocron and gives a little bit
(40:29):
of storyline info and that'spretty much it.
Then they're just like cool,bye.
But then next up you get to goto dinner and that one's
actually going pretty good andeverything's enjoyable.
Then all of a sudden, dinneralarm goes, or the emergency
alarm goes off and summons youto the atrium, which that's fine
by.
You already ate your dinner.
(40:49):
But apparently, if you watch alot of bloggers and stuff, a lot
of people were like in themiddle of eating when this
happened and I guess they comeand they grab you from your
table Like Nope, you got to gosee the storyline thing.
Now it's the big fight finale,yay.
So, uh, if you weren't donewith your food or you got your
food late, you're kind of SOL onthat one.
Yeah, I know, remember Nate amoment.
(41:18):
Yes, you wind up in the atriumwhere bad guy Lieutenant Croy
and the stormtrooper stand onthe balcony that runs around the
room.
He announces that he has foundresistant members aboard the
Halcyon and everyone is underarrest.
Oh no.
Then from the shadows of thebalcony steps the one and only
Kylo Ren, and he stands thereintimidating in front of the
crowd and proclaims so theydidn't pre-record stuff.
And the dude was trying to dohis lines through a mask and
(41:39):
apparently you can barely hearwhat he's saying, to the point
where he would like give cluesto the crowd, like all of you
out there, and people would justbe like what, even though
you're supposed to like be likeoh, no kind of thing.
So that, yeah, at one point too,he even mumbles something that
sounds like make you screamwhile he gestures at the crowd.
But apparently you're the onlyone that heard that, because you
(42:01):
tried to like scream.
You're like ah, oh, and nobodyelse does, and everybody stares
at you and you're just like, oh,well, I thought he said scream,
eh-eh.
But anyways, as you struggle tohear him and what he says, out
of nowhere, ray shows up to saveeverybody.
And here's that moment.
Nate, do you remember where wetalked about that fancy new
lightsaber?
You get to say the debut of therealistic lightsaber.
Well, here stands Rey, proudly.
(42:23):
She pulls out that lightsaberand then stands there very still
as it very slowly extends outto full length, and then she
very carefully sets down thissword and picks up what's
obviously a prop combat sword,and that was the lightsaber
debut you waited for.
Nate (42:38):
So it very slowly turned on.
Then she switches to somethingelse.
Shaun (42:42):
Yes, because apparently, if you look up the patent, this
functioning lightsaber isactually a very delicate piece
of work.
So think of like a clear tapemeasure that has LED lights on
it and that basically justslowly extends straight out.
So there's like no support ornothing.
It's basically just like a verythin wire with lights on it
coming up so it can like spoolin the handle.
So it's only functioning in thesense that it will looks like
(43:04):
it comes out of the handle.
It is not usable for anythingelse Like apparently, even if
you like swing it too hard,it'll break from air resistance.
Nate (43:12):
Air resistance.
Shaun (43:13):
Yeah, I'll send you the patent for it too.
It's yeah, it's literallybasically just think an LED rope
light extending out of a handle, like if you tried to swing it
it would have snapped, which iswhy she had to, like, set it
down before the sword fightstarted and pulled out like an
actual, real prop sword.
Nate (43:27):
I'll send you footage try to pretend like it was the same
thing, or they just like kind of.
Shaun (43:32):
Yeah, she sort of did this thing where she sort of
like squatted down a little bitlike to do a battle pose and
then picked up the other one,but it didn't translate very
well.
Yeah, they tried to hide it,but they didn't really do a very
good job.
There was one cool specialeffect, though, where somebody
in the crowd actually pulls outa holocron and they actually did
a pretty good special effectwhere Rey uses like the force to
(43:52):
pull it out of their hand andup to the balcony.
Where Rey uses like the Forceto pull it out of their hand and
up to the balcony, which isjust like a magician's sleight
of hand with like collapsiblestuff and, you know, getting
people to look the wrong way atthe right time.
But that was kind of neat.
And they also have like alittle conveyor belt up there.
So when Rey was standing on it,kylo Ren got a Force choker and
like pulled her towards him,and that was kind of neat
(44:17):
because she got standstill andbe like.
The battle goes on and on and on.
The characters get their littlespots you know all the little
like characters that you've beenencountering on the ship get
their like little moment wherethey show up and like help out
Ray, and eventually Ray winsFirst, order is defeated and
everyone is saved Yay.
There's one kind of cool parttoo where, like in the middle of
the battle, like force powersare being used and like the
chandelier at the top of theroom kind of like breaks and
(44:37):
falls down like a foot.
But I guess they didn't reallylike point out that was going to
happen, so most people kind ofmissed it.
And there's also one pointwhere Sammy the smuggler he was
dressed as a stormtrooper in asurprise twist and pulls out his
hands like look, it's me allalong.
(44:58):
Anyways, fight's over, everybodygets their long speeches.
And then, uh, people who didlike a whole lot of quests and
did really good in thestorylines and like their app
like actually worked properly.
They actually got called out bynames during the uh, this end
be like joe jeffries.
You sure helped me find thatholocron earlier this day.
Blah, blah, blah.
But not you, nate.
You got no call outs because,well, your app sucked and didn't
like take track of anything foryou.
I mumbled in my breath.
(45:19):
Bed Wake up on day three.
This is checkout.
Day Schedule is as follows 830to 930.
Breakfast 930 to 10.
Get the hell out time.
You eat your last meal at thehotel and think back to what was
a very mediocre experience youhad.
Then you get home, nate, andlearn that Disney lost your $200
droid you mailed through them.
You call and complain.
Disney tells you to get bent.
(45:39):
The only time that theyactually come back and refund
your money is when you complainto your large Twitter fan base.
Keep in mind this is JennyNicholson.
As soon as you complained toyour Twitter fan base and they
got rid of it, disneyimmediately sends you a new
droid and a gift package.
Jenny Nicholson's like.
That's really messed up Causeyou know they're only doing it
because I'm a influencer.
If this is a normal person, youknow they would just kept
(46:00):
telling them to get bent, nomatter what she was like.
It actually kind of made memadder that they did this as
opposed to just, you know,sticking to their guns.
She's a good person that way.
Then that's taken by thewandering photographers.
Remember that?
Did you spend like $69 for, orwhatever it was, or yeah, I
think that's what it was.
Yeah, well, turns out there'sno pics of you or your family
(46:23):
online.
In fact, there's barely anypics on there at all.
You know that turned the hirethe professional photographer
guy for $400 an option.
Turns out that was so popularenough that all the
photographers were full up andDisney did not hire any extra
photographers to compensate forthe popularity, so there were no
wandering photographers takingpictures the entire time.
You wasted 69 bucks on that.
(46:45):
You go around looking on theinternet and other people saying
the same exact thing with thepictures they're like there are
no pictures of me up here online, none of them.
I paid money for it and nothing.
And Disney of course said Goget bent.
Yep, you for nothing.
And Disney of course is Go getbent.
Yep, you go online to complainabout your experience because,
hey, it'd be kind of nice to getsome support on this.
Turns out, if you go online andcomplain about this, people
will mock and insult you for it,nate, raging from.
(47:05):
You're an idiot who did thisall wrong to.
You're a rich scumbag anddeserve what you get on this.
Nobody has any sympathy foranybody who had a bad experience
on this hotel thing.
Nate (47:14):
Yeah, fair enough.
I mean, on one hand it's likethat's bullshit, but on the
other hand it's like yeah.
Shaun (47:19):
Yeah, I know, on my end it'd be like man, that would
suck if that happened to me.
On the other hand, if I heardsomebody complain about it I'd
be like, yeah.
Nate (47:26):
It's the driver slash pedestrian when I'm driving and
there's a pedestrian in my way,give away.
But when I'm walking I'm likeI'm walking here, right?
Shaun (47:39):
So that concludes your trip to the Star Wars Hotel.
Nathan, how did that feel for$15,000, aka $10 per minute?
Nate (47:46):
I am pseudo-enraged, but it didn't actually happen, so
I'm fine.
Shaun (47:50):
But if this happened to you, you would have been enraged
.
I would be.
And the worst thing about thistoo is it feels like they didn't
even beta test anything of it.
It felt like they justliterally like hammered out the
most hackneyed thing.
They couldn't be like run withit.
Nobody once was like, hey,should we test out this app to
make sure it works right?
They was, they're like oh,complain, whatever, we got their
(48:13):
money, who cares?
And thing too is uh, youweren't the only person had this
horrible experience.
You go online.
A lot of people had miserableexperiences along the same thing
.
Tiny hotel rooms, um, oneperson complained about, uh,
they were a vegetarian and theyhad, like, no vegetarian options
for one of the dinners and theyasked if they could have a
vegetarian meal and theyliterally just got a pile of
steamed or steamed cauliflowerthat was their fancy like luxury
(48:35):
dinner that they got.
Nate (48:36):
That's.
Shaun (48:37):
Yeah, so now you can see why it went out of business,
thankfully, yeah.
Nate (48:41):
Thank God, as it should have.
Shaun (48:42):
As it should have.
Yeah, but once again, disneydoesn't care.
They have their money.
People will forget about thissoon enough, except for the 10
million people that watched thisvideo.
Ginny did.
Nate (48:51):
Did anything happen from that?
Shaun (48:57):
Like anything happen from that, like did they yell, did
they sue her?
Or like, nope, nothing reallyhappened, uh, far as I know,
anyways.
Uh, she got 10 million views onthis four hour long video
though, so that was kind of coolon her part that's good.
I mean yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,she's actually a pretty popular
youtube creator.
You probably never heard of her, but she does a lot of like
long form stuff.
She does a lot of visiting,like, uh, theme parks and does
reviews on them and stuff.
Part 2 of Nate's Star Wars Hotel Experience.
On our last episode, natebought his family tickets for
the vacation of a lifetime atthe Star Wars Hotel.
However, things aren't off tosuch a good start, and they
don't get any better for themfrom here on out.
Finally, you arrive at yourroom and place to sleep for the
next two nights and, to yourhorror, you find out boy, it's
(00:21):
tiny, so very, very tiny, nate.
Two nights, yeah, they're twonights.
So very, very tiny.
Two nights, yeah, three days,two nights.
Nate (00:30):
Pay $1,500 for two nights.
Yes, two nights.
Shaun (00:32):
Three days, two nights, and remember the third day.
You're only there for an hourand a half.
It's basically just checkout.
Nate (00:36):
Yeah, that's bullshit.
I call shenanigans.
Let me speak to the manager, soyou?
Shaun (00:40):
get into your room and you have two bunk beds, or you
got some bunk beds and a murphybed is what's going on there?
You got, uh, two sets of bunkbeds and the odd man out gets a
murphy bed.
That's very uncomfortable andjust kind of swings down from
the wall.
In fact, it's a very small bedthat most people just use as a
shelf.
Uh, this room is actuallysmaller than your average motel
(01:00):
six room.
If you uh bring up that littleuh, those pictures I sent you.
Yeah, oh, hold on, I'll uploadthe picture of the uh room real
quick.
Doop boop, there we go okay, Iguess there is an actual bed, a
pull-out murphy bed and then aset of bunk beds, but the room
is incredibly tiny, yeah smalleryeah, smaller than your average
.
Nate (01:19):
Uh hotel six room yeah, I mean they had to know.
They had to know, like at thebeginning, their very beginning.
They're like yay dreams, butlike, as things were starting to
wrap up, they had to walkaround going, oh god, going on
here.
Shaun (01:32):
Yeah, those poor employees as they're uh looking
around be like, oh god, I'mgonna have deal with angry
customers over this.
Yeah, this is not good, there'sno jenny theorizes that the uh.
Jenny nicholson theorizes that,uh, this room is about half the
size of your average Motel 6room and, uh, she said that her
and her sister were cramped,being just two people in these
rooms, and this room wasdescribed as fitting up to five.
(01:52):
So this would be the room thatyou guys got as the cheapest
room available.
Ugh, yep, mattresses are firmbut not awful.
There's a nice comfy quilt onthe bed and you want to buy one
as a souvenir, but they don'tsell them at the gift shop.
This bums you out.
You later read online peoplejust stole them and let their
car be billed for it, and youwish you had thought of that.
There is a window in your roomshowing the vast openness of
(02:13):
space A quote-unquote window,you know monitor, again, with
ships flying by on occasion, andthis one is also synced up with
the windows.
So you know, if you watch a shippop in a window outside your
room, you can run inside yourroom and be like, oh, look,
there it goes, and also you'llget to see when the ship goes to
light speed.
However, apparently the screenquality in your room isn't that
good.
It looks like it has a glass,has like oil smeared all over it
(02:34):
.
So everything's kind of fuzzylooking and around this window
there's also, to help it likepop out from room there's a
really bright white LED striparound it.
So if you try to sleep withyour window quote unquote open,
it's bright enough to keep youup at night.
In fact, apparently people theywanted to keep the window open
so they could see, like thespace at night as they laid to
bed, but the lights were toobright so people would actually
(02:54):
take like gaffer tape andcovering up the tape around the
window because it's so bright.
Nate (02:58):
Oh well, I mean it sucks to them also.
I mean, that makes sense, whynot?
Shaun (03:03):
so then you get also finally get to experience your
robotic butler or your roboticroom droid.
Remember they talked aboutrobotic butlers and stuff like
that in the hype?
Yes, so your robotic butler is,um, basically, it's this tiny
little tablet mounted to thewall.
That's more or less an AIassistant that you can just ask
questions about the Star Warsuniverse.
Even AI might even be too muchcredit.
(03:25):
It's basically like GoogleAssistant with a Star Wars skin
applied.
Basically, you look at this fortwo minutes.
It's like hello, tell me moreabout the Star Wars universe and
it'll just give you the mostgeneric Star Wars answer.
Hey, what can you tell me aboutmy room?
Most generic answer ever kindof thing.
In fact, you're pretty surethat it's just like an iPad
built into the wall running areally low-end app on it.
After about a minute of playingwith it, you're bored.
(03:46):
So, yep, your robotic butlersucks, doesn't buttle, or
nothing.
No buttles, no buttles.
And then your eyes slowly go tothe corner of the room and
remember when we were hearingabout you know, don't resist, no
escape fire.
You know what they're talkingabout now.
They fire.
You know what they're talkingabout now.
They were talking about thefire escape for the room, of
which there is none.
That's right, nathan, becauseof how the hotel was designed.
(04:09):
In case of fire you may not beable to escape the blazing
inferno because there are nofire escapes.
So instead you get a smallfireproof closet that you and
your family can cram into andremain safe for up to two hours
(04:35):
in a burning building.
Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna comereal handy.
With a building collapseAbsolutely, that'd be the first
one.
All not fit, especially if yourwife wants to put her feet up,
like she often does you becomekeenly aware that you will be
voted out of the fire closetwhen the time comes.
Nate (04:48):
Absolutely.
That'll be the first one.
Shaun (04:49):
Yeah, it'll be you.
You'll be the last one.
Nate (04:53):
Especially if they'd be like this is your idea 100% of
like.
Shaun (04:57):
No, this was your idea.
You die in that fire, but butthere's plenty of room.
Ginny, I like to put my feet up.
Go away, uh-huh, to take yourmind off this death trap.
You head over to thewall-mounted TV to watch some
Disney goodness.
What kind of cool programmingwill they have?
Custom Star Wars shows, vintageDisney movies?
You turn on the TV to begreeted with a Disney Plus login
(05:18):
screen.
Yes, to watch TV here, you needan existing Disney Plus account
to log in, otherwise no TV foryou, and it's not even.
Nate (05:24):
TV.
It's just your stream, yep.
Shaun (05:28):
Yeah, it's literally just the only thing you can access
on your TV is Disney Plus.
Just stock Disney Plus that youhave to pay for and watch at
$10 a minute.
Well, yeah, $10 a minute, Imean, I guess the service itself
isn't.
Yeah, but still, I mean, you canwatch Disney Plus at home.
Just hunky doodles, right, youwould hope that they would, at
least, you know, have like Idon't know the loop of the old
Ewoks movies going on orsomething.
(05:49):
I mean I guess you could watchthose on Disney Plus, but for
free.
So now that everything's putaway in your room, you decide to
start your immersive adventureexperience and first thing you
do is fire up the app on yourphone and look at the schedule,
so they give you an app when youshow up, and that is to
(06:09):
dispense missions, uh, set upmeetings between you and the
actors, keep track of yourloyalty towards the factions of
the ship, because, uh, basically, as you do things or do little
quests, uh, there's it'll uh,tally up who you're kind of
getting more points with the uh,the resistance, the good guys,
the first order, the bad guys,or the smugglers, the smuggling
guys.
And as you do quests, variouscharacters from each faction
will pop up in the app and giveyou more quests to do and stuff
and help you build a factionwith them and move the story
(06:30):
along for you.
And also, it's got a messagingfeature in the app too.
You'll get messages fromvarious characters on the ship
being like giving youbackstories and lore, not real
messaging.
You know it's just like NPCmessaging, it's not like the
actual actors, text.
And as you look at the app yourealize there are some like
important characters that youhave to be aware of, some like
(06:51):
overall characters that aregoing to really move the head.
The stories.
These are the main guys.
You got captain Keevan, whichis the one you see on the promos
blue captain, blue skin, redhair.
Apparently it looks really badin the photos, but skin red hair
.
Apparently it looks really badin the photos but it looks
pretty good in person, like themakeup and everything.
Yeah, yep, you got Lenka Mok,the cruise director.
Lieutenant Croy, the first orderofficer.
(07:12):
He's the main villain and theone that you really really want
to get buddies with becauseyou're really trying to get that
bad guy thing going.
There are some stormtrooperswandering around and they
basically have like apre-recorded soundboard built
into their costume and they onlyrespond with those things.
So if you try to have aconversation with them, they
kind of only can respond in likeyou know half a dozen
pre-recorded things.
But apparently you can actuallykind of have a decent
(07:34):
conversation with them if youknow what you're doing.
They also have stuff like Sammythe ship's engineer, bumbling
Newbie and the SK-620 droid.
They have a little tiny droidthat just kind of rolls, wanders
around and makes beeps andboops.
He's part of the resistancepackage, or the resistance side,
and the thing about him.
Though.
Wherever you see little SK-620,if you look hard enough, you're
going to see the dudecontrolling it, and it's a dude
(07:57):
dressed in what they callquote-unquote dad gear, which is
usually a hoodie and a hat anda camera bag where the
controller is.
So if you ever seeremote-controlled critters in
any theme park, look for a dudein dad clothes.
Somewhere nearby there'll belike a dude in a hoodie with
like a camera bag and a littlebaseball hat pulled down low,
kind of hiding in the corner.
Nate (08:14):
I mean that makes sense.
I actually looked at the SK-620you're talking about but yeah,
yeah, I mean I understand, theycan't just, I don't know, hide
them better.
Shaun (08:24):
Yeah right, Well, they probably had to be in line of
sight or something for theremote controls to work, I guess
.
Nate (08:29):
I guess it's $10 a minute.
Shaun (08:32):
Who better?
Nate (08:33):
You're making so much money from this I know right,
because I'm not the only onehere and looking around,
everyone around me is playing ata minimum $10.
Never mind the people who payme more for like.
Shaun (08:43):
Thing too as you notice as you wander around looking at
all the actors and actresses, alot of the female actresses all
kind of look like Ray and youassume that's probably because
they just kind of swap aroundthe actresses, you know,
depending on their shifts andschedule, and they just need
some as much cross acting asthey can get, cause, yeah,
apparently there's a this groupknown as a Saja that are there
which are lightsaber lightsabertraining group.
(09:05):
They're kind of like the blindmonk from Rogue One, but
apparently most of those arefemale and they all kind of look
like Rey.
Just enough that you're like hmm, bet you, one of these are the
Rey actors, or most of them justdidn't, mm-hmm, not Rey actors,
as she's sprinted like I'm doneoh what?
Oh well, it's kind of suspectedhow this hall works out, though,
with the quest and everything.
It's kind of cool.
You start out doing stuff onthe app and doing the quests on
(09:26):
there.
You know it's going to be likehey, go to this area and scan
this QR code and whatnot andcontinue on the story this way
and as you do those, it, youknow, builds up tallies for
which crew you're doing it themost, with which side, and that
all syncs up with their headsetor something and as you walk up
it'll give them a quick rundownof what you're doing story-wise.
(09:49):
So it'll basically do somethinglike if you're walking up to
the First Order guy, hisearpiece will be like Nathan
trust level high, and then theactor knows that you're on the
First Order storyline or whatnot.
Or it'd be like Nathan trustlevel low and they would know
that you're the Resistance orwhatnot.
Or it'd be like Nathan trustlevel low and they would know
that you're, you know, theresistance or whatever.
Or you know Nathan smuggler, sothey know that you're doing the
(10:09):
smuggler thing and how to reactwith you on that.
So that's kind of neat.
So when you actually, after you,do enough quests on the little
phone.
When you start walking up tothe actors, they'll start like
kind of individually talking toyou and giving you you know,
going along with how yourstory's going so far, as much as
they can.
You know, right, which.
That's kind of cool, makes itfeel a little bit more
personalized and whatnot.
And also that band too, as youdo quests on the phone.
(10:31):
That's how it'll start unlockingstuff like the bridge and other
little areas, the cargo hold.
You'll just walk up and waveyour little bracelet and be like
ding.
And as you go over this app andplay around with it and figure
out more and more about it, nate, all of a sudden you can't help
but realize that this app lookspretty much identical to the
Star Wars Galaxy Edge Theme Parkapp, the Star Wars Datapad app,
(10:52):
with slightly differentinterface.
You went to Star Wars GalaxyEdge Theme Park, didn't you?
Did you use the app there?
Apparently, when you go there,there's an app you can use to do
little side quests, whichbasically results in just going
around like scanning QR codesand stuff.
No, I didn't do that?
Nate (11:08):
No, okay, well, we were with because we went there, but
it was also with like a schooltrip, like we went there.
So, like you know, it wasn't,we weren't exactly on our own
doing our own things.
We were we had a lot of freedom, but it was still yeah.
Shaun (11:20):
Yeah, we didn't have that much time, so we didn't do it
yeah, it's probably one of thosethings that just would have
been a sidetrack or distractionenough yeah, I just.
Nate (11:28):
We just want to get around led to frustrations yeah, we
had enough kids to keep track of.
Shaun (11:32):
I don't want to be all like let's do this now because
they'd be like no oh, you lookover the quests and you realize,
hey, if I do this one questI'll probably become part of the
first order storyline.
You're like like, hey, whatkind of fun, cool quest am I
going to get?
And you kind of have it in yourhead where it's going to be
like one of thosechoose-your-own-er.
You know one of those adventuregames back in the 90s where you
know it's like, hey, thecaptain wants a kyber crystal,
(11:53):
but first you have to get thekey off the droid.
But to do that you need totrack down data disks.
So you're like, yeah, sweet,what are we gonna do now?
So the quest first has you go upto the atrium and it tells you
to go to a terminal to uh startyour quest.
So you run up and youimmediately assume it's a
touchpad, start pawing at thescreen like a puppy and realize,
(12:13):
nope, not a touch screen.
You feel like an idiot.
Uh, makes sense, though I guessyou don't really want touch
screens everywhere, with uh kidspawing at them and everything
there.
So you go up to this monitorand you start pushing little
buttons and stuff and the screensays please enter password.
Think to yourself oh, yeah, apuzzle, this will be cool.
How do we figure out thepassword?
You start running around theatrium looking for cool clues,
(12:35):
even wander around to the actorsand start a conversation, see
if they blurt out a clue, likean npc, but nope, nothing.
You check the app nope, nothingthere either.
You wander around confusedwatching other people seemingly
do this quest, but nothing'shappening for you.
This is frustrating becausethis is also costing you $10 a
minute, causing you to finallygive up and be like well, let's
go figure out something else todo.
Frustrating.
You learn later what wassupposed to happen as soon as
(12:57):
that password prompt came up onthe screen.
The app in your phone wassupposed to send you a private
message from the smugglerstoryline and send you off to go
do another quest, but forwhatever reason, the app in the
terminal did not sync up and youdidn't get that quest, and this
basically locks you out of thesmuggler storyline.
Oh shit, yeah, which sucks, butyou kind of won the first order
(13:18):
storyline anyway.
So there you go.
Still frustrating, though,because you're seeing children
running around all over likepopping in passwords and stuff
and doors opening from theirmood.
They're like, yay, look, thisis so much fun and you're just
like, huh, I got one brokenquest so far.
You even actually follow arounda little kid at one point.
After he like plays aroundTerminal, you like sneak up
before he logs out and you startplaying around on him and
you're like, wow, there's somecool stuff they're doing in here
(13:39):
.
Things have popped up for you,though, yet so you said maybe if
I go talk to the uh leader ofthe first order, maybe then
that'll trigger a quest form orsomething like that.
So you run up to lieutenantcroyd, the leader of order, the
leader of the first order, and,uh, you meet him and you have
some very delightful role playconversation and you make it
very clear that you're on hisside.
You're like can you, can I doanything for you?
(14:01):
Do you have any missions fornudge, nudge, nudge?
And he's just kind of like youknow, does his thing and then
wanders off.
And when the conversation isdone, you're like hop on the app
.
You're like, maybe, maybe I'llget a message from him or
something.
And then nothing, just wanderaround, nothing's happening.
And then you pick up your phone, you dick around on a little
more and all of a sudden you geta text from Lieutenant Croy
(14:22):
that says I see, I can trust you.
Would you like to help with amission?
And you're like yes, finally,first order mission.
And it's like you follow thisdialogue tree and it keeps going
, keeps going and he's likestarting to build this mission
and then all of a sudden he kindof ghosts you yeah, the app
apparently bugs out or something, and that dialogue tree just
stops halfway through and younever actually get to finish the
quest through that way either.
(14:42):
So this may have actuallylocked you out of the first
order, thing You're not quitesure yet Shows you.
Yeah, they put a lot of effortinto this app thing, didn't they
?
Too much effort and not enough.
Yeah right, you go around tryingto figure out how to keep this
quest going and nothing,nothing's happening.
No quests are popping up foryou.
Your family's actually gettingsome quests pop up.
Your family's actually gettingsome quests poppin'.
(15:02):
They're running off and doingthings.
They're having a little bit offun, but for the most part for
you nothing's happening.
You wander off to go check theSabacc Lessons, as the schedule
says, and you find out there'sgonna be a Sabacc tournament
tomorrow and the winner gets alarge novelty poker chip Neat.
You don't wanna play that soyou don't hang around there.
But you're hoping that if younotice there's some events going
(15:25):
on like space bingo and spaceline dancing not stuff you'd be
interested in, but that's whatyou could do in this hotel space
bingo and space line dancing.
It's out of space line dancingjust brings a chuckle to me yeah
, that's pretty bad.
You wander around playing withterminals still no quest,
nothing popping up.
You see a family about to popinto the bridge, which, uh, you
know that takes doing quests andstuff, and the door opens for
(15:46):
them and you basically just sortof like sneak in with that
group behind them to see what'sgoing on, cause well, nothing
else is going on.
But since you get in therethere's nothing.
There's like your app isn'tsyncing up with any of the
computers in there, so nothinghappens.
You just kind of wander aroundthe bridge and boredom there too
.
This keeps you busy untildinner time.
So you head to the restaurantto have dinner.
Food is buffet style for theand, uh, okay, the sides are a
(16:07):
buffet style and the main dishesare picked from a menu you know
you can have, like your meat oryour veggie or your fish or
whatever.
Food is good.
Star Wars themed Service isreally good.
And then while you're eating,suddenly Sammy the smuggler guy
comes running through the areawith none other than Chewbacca.
Ooh, exciting, something'sgoing on.
(16:28):
They make a commotion as theyrun through the place looking
for a place to hide Chewbacca.
They don't succeed andChewbacca gets cost and hauled
off to jail.
Then comes the big dinner musicshow with the Twi'lek singer
and her band that are going toperform for the night, and they
set up at the end of therestaurant and start dancing and
singing on and putting on whatsounds like a really cool show.
However, you can't really tellhow cool of a show this is
because you and your family gotseated right by one of the four
support beams that decorate therestaurant.
(16:48):
That thing is right in yourline of sight, did?
Nate (16:51):
that actually happen to this lady.
Shaun (16:53):
Yes, this literally happened to her.
Everything that's on thishappened to her.
The whole app's not working.
This is like straight fromeverything that's happened to
her.
Literally, there's like fourgiant white support columns in
the middle of this restaurantand they are like seated right
next to one and that column isliterally blocking the entire
band and the music going on andyou can't see them doing
anything.
(17:13):
And, even worse, at one pointthey kind of shimmy back and
forth around the pole, almost asthey're like teasing you and
joking with you.
Because, yeah, like you'll justsee, like one of them like take
two steps out from behind thepole and then two steps back and
for the majority of that showit's performed behind the pole.
At one point the lead singerdoes walk through the crowd to
the other side of the restaurantand right behind the other pole
, on the other side of you, andagain you see nothing.
(17:35):
Then you notice that, uh, inthe middle of this room is, uh,
it's no poles, nothingobstructing you.
It seems like people are havinga really good time, with
characters walking aroundtalking to them, almost like
some sort of VIP area.
Let's cut back to that lostemail that you never got.
Turns out for $30 per personyou could have upgraded to those
captains table and been likeright in the middle of
everything.
Oh, so they're kind of likepunishing you.
Nate (17:56):
You didn't do this, so we're going to stick you behind
the pole.
Shaun (17:58):
Possibly yes, there is a looked at him and were like, hmm
, we'll just stick you behind.
This pole bitch Show is overand you're like well, that
sucked, since we only got to seehalf of it.
But then something excitinghappens.
Lieutenant Croy messages youand tells you he needs you to
meet him for some blueprintsthat he needs.
And since there's no specifictime listed, you assume you can
kind of wait until you're doneeating your meal and everything.
(18:19):
As you finish your meal, all ofa sudden the check comes and on
it it has a torn up piece of asecret message.
It's like a third of a notebookpiece of paper, like a third of
a sheet of A9.
And you notice the other tableshave gotten thirds of a page
also and you wisely assume thatyou should bring them all
together for a clue.
But actually no, pretty mucheverybody's paper, even though
it's from different chunks ofthe paper.
It all just basically says thesame thing, slightly worded
(18:41):
differently.
So no reason to bring thesenotes together.
It's just a cool aesthetic Iwrite stupid.
This message was from Sammy theSmuggler, to meet at the atrium
at 945 to help him break outChewbacca.
This you know.
You're like well, this is aresistance thing, I guess, and I
didn't really want to do it,but at least it's something.
So maybe I'll go check that out.
But before this happens,happens.
You get to hear about bridgetraining is happening.
(19:02):
Yay, you got to go up to thebridge and see all those cool
things, and maybe we'll even getto punch it to light speed,
like you always dreamed about orat least the commercials
gaslight you into believing.
Right, get up the bridge forsome fun activities game and
hopefully a chance to punch it.
And you get there and you'regreeted with what's kind of neat
at first.
It's this giant open windowscreen covering an entire wall,
(19:22):
kind of like from the conceptart you saw.
You're like, oh, that's cool.
And also there's a bunch ofthese tiny little stations
everywhere that people are linedup to and doing stuff at, and a
lot of these stations are justthere for looks.
It's just like useless buttonsand levers and you know knobs to
spin.
Okay, think of those.
You know the car driving thingsyou get for a toddler with the
steering wheel and little gearshifter and speedometer.
(19:43):
Most of the stations there arebasically like fancy Star Wars
themed ones of those, but thereare a few other stations that
you actually get to play littlegames on.
And these are four activitiesyou get doing this thing Gunner
shields, loader engineeringthese activities are not doing
this thing Gunner shields,loader engineering these
activities are not that asexciting.
Like for the gunner, you standat a station and guide this
little reticle around the hugewindow up there and you shoot at
(20:06):
enemy ships, kind of like anold Atari game.
This is actually done in a teamof two.
You guide the little reticlearound and then whoever your
partner is actually pushes thebutton to shoot.
And you got like team stufftogether, which this is kind of
held back by the fact you'redoing stuff on this giant screen
along with everybody else atthe same time.
So you're just one reticle outof like 10 flying around and
you're got to keep track ofwhat's going on and that's kind
(20:29):
of fun.
But again just feels like anipad app.
You're playing on a big screen.
You move on to the loader game,which, uh, is kind of basically
just like a little.
You get your own screen.
You get basically do like acrane game going around and
picking up stuff, and when youpick up stuff with your little
crane you gotta like rearrangethe block, so it fits a little
hole it's going through.
There's another one that goesuh is done in pairs, also kind
(20:50):
of like a fancy ipad app.
When you get to the shields uhstation, play the shields game.
Uh, you know that game.
You're just like hitting theball through the wall and trying
to flip it back and that kindof thing.
Or Arkanoid.
It's basically a reverse thatYou're building a shield, though
, instead of knocking one down.
That one's kind of cool, though, because it has its own custom
table that you get to play it at, kind of like those old Pac-Man
(21:11):
bar tables.
You know where it tables, youget to stand over and look down.
That one's kind of neat.
After you play these games for acouple moments at each station,
they're like rotate, and youget to go rotate and try one of
the other games.
These all kind of suck.
They feel like games that weremade for an eight-year-old to
play and, on that note, theyalso score up everything at the
end of the thing and rank youamong the other people.
(21:32):
This also sucks because youalso get beaten by
eight-year-olds who are betterat this game than you, and at
one point during all this gamingthey grab one kid to put us
into light speed.
Now go do it and they run himup to the button.
He gets to hit the button andbe like yay, and everybody gets
to go like yay.
Look, the kid got to live outhis dream of punching it to
light speed.
Nate (21:50):
So there you go, that's that one thing they hyped much,
yep one kid gotta do it out ofthat whole group.
Shaun (21:57):
Good for him.
I'm sure, yeah, good for him.
He probably is underwhelmed,just like everybody else too.
Uh, the time you're at thebridge, though, there's going to
be a special fancy storyencounter that affects the whole
thing that everybody in thebridge gets to experience.
You know, and, uh, sometimes anenemy ship shows up on the uh
screen and you get to fight thatoff as a whole team, or a
special encounter with a starwars character will walk into
(22:17):
the room.
That'll be kind of fun, but themajority of the time and the
time you're there, it's going tobe an asteroid field, and this
is determined by the fact, theysay, an asteroid field shows up
and all the windows in the hotelstart showing asteroid fields,
and this happens a lot, becauseabout every 45 minutes, you're
going to see asteroid fields outthe windows, and this is
because all the windows aresynced, so you're going to see
asteroid fields out the windows,and this is because all the
(22:38):
windows are synced, so you'relike, every 45 minutes, you'll
probably see a asteroid.
You'll be like, hey, somebody'sin the bridge doing those
bridge games neat.
Apparently, though, the firsttime you go into the bridge is
just a training to be like hey,here's how you do all this stuff
.
Later on they bring you back onthe second day to do more stuff
and actually be morecompetitive and whatnot, but
it's still the same lame gamesthat, that sucks.
Nate (22:56):
I mean I don't know Like games can be hard.
You know, sometimes they're fun.
Some people think they're gamesfun, some people think games
stupid.
Shaun (23:05):
But if everyone thinks it's fun, yeah, you look at your
phone after you're done thebridge Time to go help Sammy
rescue Chewbacca.
Yay.
You go to the location that thenote said and you come across
Chewie and a group of excitedpeople running around.
Why were they excited?
Apparently they had just brokenChewie out of jail during a
cool event.
You check your watch Stillthree minutes until the meeting
time.
On the note, that means thatthis event either started early
(23:26):
and you missed it, or theprevious event just ran way too
long.
Just in case, uh, you go toother locations to see if
anything else is happening.
No, you're quite bummed, though.
You missed Chewie gettingbroken out.
I mean, granted, for all youcare that Wookiee can rot in a
cell, but it would have beencool to finally do something or
witness something other than youknow shitty bridge games.
Then you remember that therewas a message from Lieutenant
Croy to meet him and there's nospecific time.
(23:48):
So maybe you go, go meet himnow.
You go to the location and,sure enough, he's there.
And, hey, you know thatChewbacca guy that you had in
prison.
He got out.
Maybe we should go do somethingabout it, because you're like,
hey, maybe that'll be a coolstory thing.
Yeah Well, apparently yourlittle wristband has you pegged
(24:09):
for the resistance or somethinglike that, because all he does
is look at you and goes oh yeah,why should I trust you?
But I'm part of the First Order.
Why should I trust you?
Because apparently they haveyou pegged as one of the good
guys.
Now, so much for you being onthe bad guy path.
Nate (24:24):
That sucks.
Shaun (24:25):
Yep.
You go back to your room forthe night and you realize that
today, sucked, none of thisimmersive adventure experience
came to fruition.
You go to bed.
As you're laying in bed, youlook at your app and you look at
all those.
There's this area where you canlook up all the NPCs or all the
actors and stuff and be likehow good is your familiarity and
trust with them?
And you know it's supposed tobe like high level, low level,
(24:45):
high level, blah, blah, blah andyou notice that your trust
level with everybody is neutral.
In fact, it's like the apphasn't been taking inventory of
anything.
You.
You've been doing None of thequests or nothing you've been
going through Like well, thatblows yeah.
Nate (24:58):
I mean, if it, if your enjoyment hinges on like some
kind of trustworthiness with youknow the actors and they're
just going off what you're, whatthe app is saying, yeah,
whatever info it's gotten, Ifit's not working, that's not
cool.
Shaun (25:13):
Day two you get up early for your 16 hours of immersive
adventure experience becausetoday is the day you go to Star
Wars Galaxy Edge.
The event schedule has youstarting at 7 am and then you
hop on a 9 am shuttle and to doall this you personally get up
at 4 am because you know you gotfour other members trying to
use that tiny little bathroom inyour hotel.
She didn't actually do that, Ijust kind of added that in.
Yeah, Imagine one tiny littlebathroom with all five of you
(25:35):
trying to use it that'd be awfulyeah, you'd probably have to go
use the public bathroom withall the space, coke and stuff.
So as you sit there waiting foryour turn in the bathroom, you
notice that you load up the appand notice all of a sudden you
have a ton of quests popping upeverywhere and you're like, yay,
this would be kind of cool, ifit's not going to be for the
fact we'll be gone all day atthe park.
Nate (25:53):
So you get your breakfast.
I don't care what queststhey're giving me.
We're going.
Shaun (25:56):
Now, today is going to be your most exhausting day ever 7
am to 8 am.
Breakfast 8.15 to 8.25,.
Transport shuttle to Batuu 8.45to 9.30,.
Star Wars Rides of theResistance ride 9.30 to 9.50,.
Story moment 10 to 10.30,.
Millennium Falcon Smuggler'sRun 11.15 to 1145,.
Lunch at Docking Bay 7,.
(26:16):
Food and Cargo 1240 to 1250,.
Transport Shuttle Back to StarCruiser 1 to 130,.
Lightsaber Training 230 to 250,droid Racing Competition 3 to
330,.
Build a Model Ship 4 to 5,sabacc Tournament 5 to 530,.
Cocktails at Sunlight Lounge530 to 7, taste Around the
Galaxy Dinner 730 to 845,.
(26:38):
Story Moment Sounds exhausting,doesn't it, nate?
Nate (26:42):
Oh my god, that's awful.
Shaun (26:44):
But all in the name of making memories for you and your
family.
Nate (26:47):
Memory, how I hated this trip.
Shaun (26:50):
So off to Batuu.
You go, batuu, quote-unquote,the theme park, right.
So you go.
You get ready and you go to hopon your fancy little transport
that you go to with your realcustom droid pilot and you're
immediately let down by thatbecause basically you're in the
back of a giant box truck withsome seats bolted down into it,
with some stickers and an LCDmonitor on the inside showing
(27:12):
you some stuff and your droidpilot.
You don't really have a droidpilot.
You know those little taxi cabstickers that say like, hey,
your driver's name is blah, blah, blah, and a little picture of
them.
Yeah, that's your droid pilot.
It's just one of those littlestickers in the corner of the
room.
Yep, it's just stickers likethis is your droid pilot for the
day.
Very, very lame.
At best you're hoping forsomething like a you know
(27:34):
animatronic thing, like a JohnnyCab.
At worst you're hoping forsomething like you know
something on the little screenthere to interact with.
But nope, you don't even getthat, just basically a picture
of a driver's license.
So you get to the park.
You get to the park to your ownpersonal entrance which is kind
of cool, I guess and it isdumping rain at the park, nate,
just the thing you want to dowhile you're at the Florida park
.
You do get free loanerumbrellas downside.
(27:55):
Is these free loaner umbrellasreally suck?
And they will be collapsing ontop of you as you wander around
the park, dumping water over youand your family each time I
mean I'll give a small pass.
Nate (28:05):
You can't, they can't control the weather.
But yeah, yeah however, theyshould have been with for ten
dollars an hour.
They should have figured a wayaround that you know, yeah, get
better umbrellas.
Do something you know.
Shaun (28:19):
You fire up your app and you decide to see what kind of
exciting quest you get to do atthis park here.
The app says hey, we got aquest for you.
We need to find out what's inthese crates.
Head over there and find out.
So you excitedly run over thereand figure out what you're
supposed to do with these cratesand it turns out you're
supposed to take your app andscan a QR code and then you get
(28:40):
a thank you message from acharacter and then they send you
off on another quest to go findsomething else, which is
another QR code you scanned andyou get the thank you message
and maybe the app will make anoise, if you're lucky.
In fact, it's really lame, verylame, in fact.
One example of this quest is uh,they, the storyline is like
there's this giant jet engineoutside of a restaurant and the
storyline is like that jetengine is really loud and
(29:00):
annoying.
Will you please turn it off forme?
So you go over there and youscan a QR code and you do this
real quick little hacking game,a very simple thing and you turn
off the jet engine, but theactual prop itself does nothing
the actual jet engine that's inthe park.
It doesn't turn off, it doesn'tflash.
It doesn't turn off, it doesn'tflash, doesn't make a noise or
nothing.
You just get text tone fromyour app being like thank you
for turning off that jet engineand basically the way you turn
(29:23):
off is just like a simple littlerhythm game or almost like a
lock picking kind of game fromSkyrim.
Very, very, very subpar stuffhere.
Nate (29:30):
I would be so angry I mean I don't know, very, very angry
Yep.
Shaun (29:33):
I mean I don't know, very , very angry Yep.
And also, as you notice, thereare people there who are trying
to do the same thing too, butthey can't get the QR code
scanner to work on their littlephone, on their app, and this
was actually screwing uppeople's like missions through
their entire experience, and Iguess the only way to fix this
bug that was happening at thispark was to go to the park
entrance check out an iPad fromthe place, but that would reset
(29:56):
all your progress that you'vemade so far for the Star Wars
experience.
So, basically, you'd have tostart over from your questing
from the start if you got thisbug that happened at this park.
Does that make sense?
Nate (30:05):
Yeah, that's not good.
Shaun (30:09):
Especially if you were invested.
Nate (30:11):
If you were invested in your progress, lost it all.
Shaun (30:13):
Yeah, also too.
When you get there, you getthis little pin that basically
says, yeah, also too.
When you get there, you getthis little pin that basically
says, hey, this person's fromthe Star Wars hotel thing.
And you're like cool, maybe theemployees will give us like
special treatment or something,a role play with us.
Nope, they won't.
They just look at it.
If you show them the pin,they're just like, oh neat, well
, if you want the quest thing,it's over there, I guess.
Yeah, the people in the parkdon't give two.
(30:39):
You're a part of the uh hotelexperience.
There are some other stuffthere to do outside of, like
scanning qr codes, like alightsaber shop that lets you
build a lightsaber for 200, or aclass that lets you build a
droid for about 200, because yougot to buy the kits to do them
for these classes.
Nate (30:48):
You can do that without paying, like you can just go
there and do that, because Iwent to those places.
I didn't do either one of thosethings but that was available
there for everybody.
It was available I walked inthere like, oh look, I can do
that, let's not.
Shaun (31:02):
And left yep uh, oh, okay , here's the thing.
Sorry I kind of skipped arounda little bit, but the reason why
, uh, some people's qr codeswere failing or when people were
having their app lock up on theqr codes and this and that
walking around the park, yeah,yeah, so what happens is, you
know, you bring up this whole,you bring up the app and it
brings up like the little scanthe QR code.
(31:24):
You know, you put your cameraover and you push a little
button, doodle, do, and it takesa picture.
Well, that's actually not howyou're supposed to do it.
You're supposed to use like thelittle take a picture button if
you're part of the actual justthe park, if you're part of the
hotel experience, to make itsync up with your hotel
experience.
There's like this littlequestion mark in the corner of
the app that you click that totake a picture of the qr code
(31:45):
for.
And you know it looks just likeone of those help menu icons.
So, yeah, nobody explained thatto anybody.
So everybody's like taking qrcode pictures, the quote unquote
wrong way and screwing up their, uh, star wars experience.
Do you think that'd besomething they would figure it
out beforehand?
But yeah, apparently not.
Nate (32:00):
So they figure it out and let people know hey, seriously,
or they would have changed theicon.
Yeah right, there's a bitthere's.
I'm saying there's a millionways, but they're, they're okay.
There are several ways youcould approach this, doubt being
logical, one A tell peopleabout it.
Or B change the icon, like ohhit this it looks like a little
camera or a lightsaber orsomething, or something, yeah
(32:21):
like hey, you know, if you'redoing this experience, make sure
you hit the lightsaber on thetop right hand screen the camera
function.
Shaun (32:27):
Eventually, while you're there, you do get a quest that
actually legitimately excitesyou.
Nate, it's time to go to thecanteen to get some information.
Now, the cantina is basically arestaurant slash bar that's
there at the park and I guessit's always packed and you need
to book it like way in advanceif you want to actually get
inside of it.
And thanks to the power of thishotel experience, you finally
get to see the inside of it.
Yay, nate, no bookingreservation needed.
(32:48):
Exciting stuff, or so youthought.
You get to the door, flash yourpin and they just hand you a
coaster with a QR code on theback of it and send you on your
way.
You don't get to see the insideof the cantina.
Nate (32:58):
So they're like it's, we'll just skip.
Just skip the candy apart.
Just give you the reward forgoing.
Shaun (33:02):
Exactly.
They're like figure out thisinfo at the cantina.
So you show up at the cantina.
Nate (33:06):
They're like no, no all the info he needs on the QR code
.
Was you know a reason to gethere?
But it was like I was here for.
Shaun (33:19):
Yep, the two best.
Your two favorite quests forthe day was the ones that took
you on the two rides there thatyou were supposed to do the
Millennium Falcon and the Riseof Resistance or whatever it was
app or rides.
However, to finish those quests, that ride, do those rides, you
literally could just stood nextto the ride and said I'm, I did
it and they'll be like okay,cool, you're in the area.
Obviously you did so.
(33:40):
You don't even have to ride therides to do the uh quest do um,
do you the fast pass?
at least wait in the whole linenope, you get a fast pass with
them okay that's something Imean yeah, that's that's not
nothing, that that is helpsoffset that ten dollars a minute
you're paying.
Nate (33:54):
We waited in that line from I line from.
That was one of the worst partsabout that.
The whole park is the fact thatyou have to wait all the time
and of course I've probablymentioned this before.
I don't know if I mentioned.
It's designed.
The parks are designed.
The parks are designed to get abunch of people in line for as
long as possible.
Not on the rides in linethere's more people in line.
(34:14):
There's less people walkingaround so they can fit more
people in, so that it'sliterally it benefits disney and
any any theme park.
Shaun (34:22):
It benefits them to have a bunch of people waiting in
line because they can get morepeople in I've heard now there's
even so much fast pass beingbought that there's a line for
the fast pass stuff too.
Now, oh yeah, I believe it yeah, I refuse.
Nate (34:33):
Though I refuse like I mean, maybe if I had a more
expendable money I would refuse,but as of right now, I'm like
look, we paid this much money toget here, I'm not gonna pay
another like this pump.
That's the thing with the fiveof us like it's fifteen dollars
for one go.
Okay, well, fifteen dollars forone go isn't a lot, but then
you do that multiple rides forfive people, it gets very, very
yeah, I bet.
Shaun (34:54):
So that experience sucked on.
Uh, your trip to Batuu orwhatever that planet was, I
already forgot the name of youhop on your shuttle back to the
hotel, dejected, and you startto think to yourself.
You think back to 2011 andDisney's Kim Possible Adventure
Experience.
For this adventure thing thatwas free at Disneyland.
When you first showed up, theyhanded you like an old school
(35:16):
cell phone and as you walkedaround the park you would see
things that would be like textplatypus to 6524 kind of thing
and when you'd do that, actualcool stuff would happen like
aquariums would drain, a pair ofthe platypus mannequin would
like pop out of a door and waveat you or something like that.
Little characters like ziplineacross the sky off in the
distance.
Things would actually happenand it was free.
(35:36):
And this was also 13 years ago,nate.
Somehow Disney was able to puttogether a more interesting and
immersive experience back in2011 for free than they did for
this Star Wars adventure thing.
Nate (35:48):
Well, it had the SW words oh.
Shaun (35:50):
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
Yeah, because when you think oflike Kim Possible and stuff,
you don't see dollar signspopping up in Disney execs' eyes
.
Yeah, this is very, very true.
You get back and now it's timefor lightsaber training, nate,
so lightsaber training.
Remember how you saw that guystand there and he was so very,
very stiff and unanimated,blocking those lightsaber blasts
(36:11):
, and you're like, oh, that'slame and he looks lame.
So you get up there and you'relike, fuck, yeah, I'm about to
do some twirls and some spinsand this and that.
And you immediately start to dothe old Nathan pizzazz with the
lightsaber.
And they immediately grab youand you're like stop, nope, nope
, nope.
Both feet on the ground.
You have to stand there, movethe lightsaber very slowly back
and forth.
Yeah, if you try to get fancy,they tell you to stop.
(36:32):
It turns out it's because, uh,the first round is basically
just a calibration round.
It's gonna be like shininglight at you and it's just like
wave your lightsaber around andthat's a calibration round.
And then the uh.
Second, uh, then there's anactual uh one where it's like
the second round is uh, kind oflike an actual real game, where
it's, you know, shines a littlelight and you're actually
supposed to block it and whatnot, but because the tracking isn't
(36:54):
that good on it, basically youhave to stand, stand there
perfectly still and you know,keep your body still and just
move your arms out in front ofyou.
And then the third one issupposed to be the final one,
where it's like you've passedall your training.
Now you get to feel like abadass and it basically starts
shooting blasts at you and itmakes it look like you're
blocking every blast perfectly.
But basically it's just atiming trick where it's sending
(37:15):
the layers for blast after youlike do the blocking motion and
stuff to make you feel likeyou're doing really good.
But it's just a light trick.
The whole.
Thing is actually pretty boringand dumb.
Nate (37:24):
I was wondering about that .
It's like how much holding yourhand to win.
Shaun (37:27):
Yeah, yep, it was.
Just it's not good.
And again, you know you try todo like little spins and back
flips and everything and nope,can't do that.
They're literally like you haveto keep your torso and your
hips still and just move yourarms, kind of thing.
That's like the directions theygive you on that.
Yeah, they even jenny showed athing.
Jenny nicholson showed a thingof her like she was barely just
bopping around just left andright a little bit and they like
(37:49):
ran over and told her to knockit off.
You can see a droid racingcompetition, and that's more for
little kids, so it's like, eh,whatever.
That's kind of cool, though,watching the kids have fun with
that.
There's a model shipbuildingclass too that you can
participate in if you'd like,but in order to do that you need
to buy a model from the giftshop, and you'll be damned if
you're going to dump more moneyinto that.
The Sabacc tournament is kindof boring and you just win a
(38:10):
commemorative coin if youactually do good at that, but
most people don't, so they don'tget anything.
If you're interested, when yougo to the cocktail lounge, they
actually have drinks there thatare free for the non-alcoholic
drinks, or a $49 per personupgrade for alcoholic drinks to
get made for you.
But they do have things wherethey make like custom Star Wars
cocktails for you and they tellyou a cool little story and they
(38:32):
have like smoke coming off ofthem and stuff.
And this is like one of theevents that you're really
excited about because you'veheard it's cool, you've seen
little videos and you decide I'mgoing to do that tonight for
one of my last things here.
So you sign up because you gotto like sign up for the class
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So you sign up for the classand you get your notification.
Be like, be here.
(39:00):
The mixology class is canceled.
Sorry, no explanation, noreason why, but you sat there
for a good 15 minutes waitingonly to get nothing.
Also, kind of you know a littlebit more of the short end of
the stick there for you.
Yeah, you think yeah, apparently.
Reading online later you findout that I guess more often than
not those mixology classes didget canceled, which I don't know
.
I guess maybe the bartender washaving withdrawals or something
(39:22):
and couldn't do them certaindays.
Nate (39:24):
Paying that much money?
What attracts you to come?
Shaun (39:26):
in Yep, as the night winds down, you are summoned for
an event.
You're like, hey, this is kindof neat, let's see what this is
about.
Since, back at the park, one ofthe few QR code missions you
did was scanning those cratesthat they asked you about.
You get to participate infinding out what was inside
those crates, ooh.
So you get summoned to a roomand in there you can see one of
those Saja people and Ray, andthey look around the room and
(39:48):
they ask everybody like hey, didanybody scan some crates on
that planet?
And so and so and this and thatdo these quests and apparently
only about a third of the peopleyou notice are like yeah, we
did.
Everybody else's kind of looksconfused, like why are we here?
So it's that kind of clues youin that maybe everybody else's
app is being weird too, or yourother thought too is there might
(40:08):
just not have been enoughpeople on that storyline that
they decide just pull in randompeople to make it look busier
than it was.
You don't really really knowbecause they're not letting
loose the secrets of this.
But this whole storyline thingis basically you get to sit
there and watch Rey and theSajah open up a fake box and
pull out a holocron andeverybody goes ooooh, ahhh.
And then Yoda pops from theholocron and gives a little bit
(40:29):
of storyline info and that'spretty much it.
Then they're just like cool,bye.
But then next up you get to goto dinner and that one's
actually going pretty good andeverything's enjoyable.
Then all of a sudden, dinneralarm goes, or the emergency
alarm goes off and summons youto the atrium, which that's fine
by.
You already ate your dinner.
(40:49):
But apparently, if you watch alot of bloggers and stuff, a lot
of people were like in themiddle of eating when this
happened and I guess they comeand they grab you from your
table Like Nope, you got to gosee the storyline thing.
Now it's the big fight finale,yay.
So, uh, if you weren't donewith your food or you got your
food late, you're kind of SOL onthat one.
Yeah, I know, remember Nate amoment.
(41:18):
Yes, you wind up in the atriumwhere bad guy Lieutenant Croy
and the stormtrooper stand onthe balcony that runs around the
room.
He announces that he has foundresistant members aboard the
Halcyon and everyone is underarrest.
Oh no.
Then from the shadows of thebalcony steps the one and only
Kylo Ren, and he stands thereintimidating in front of the
crowd and proclaims so theydidn't pre-record stuff.
And the dude was trying to dohis lines through a mask and
(41:39):
apparently you can barely hearwhat he's saying, to the point
where he would like give cluesto the crowd, like all of you
out there, and people would justbe like what, even though
you're supposed to like be likeoh, no kind of thing.
So that, yeah, at one point too,he even mumbles something that
sounds like make you screamwhile he gestures at the crowd.
But apparently you're the onlyone that heard that, because you
(42:01):
tried to like scream.
You're like ah, oh, and nobodyelse does, and everybody stares
at you and you're just like, oh,well, I thought he said scream,
eh-eh.
But anyways, as you struggle tohear him and what he says, out
of nowhere, ray shows up to saveeverybody.
And here's that moment.
Nate, do you remember where wetalked about that fancy new
lightsaber?
You get to say the debut of therealistic lightsaber.
Well, here stands Rey, proudly.
(42:23):
She pulls out that lightsaberand then stands there very still
as it very slowly extends outto full length, and then she
very carefully sets down thissword and picks up what's
obviously a prop combat sword,and that was the lightsaber
debut you waited for.
Nate (42:38):
So it very slowly turned on.
Then she switches to somethingelse.
Shaun (42:42):
Yes, because apparently, if you look up the patent, this
functioning lightsaber isactually a very delicate piece
of work.
So think of like a clear tapemeasure that has LED lights on
it and that basically justslowly extends straight out.
So there's like no support ornothing.
It's basically just like a verythin wire with lights on it
coming up so it can like spoolin the handle.
So it's only functioning in thesense that it will looks like
(43:04):
it comes out of the handle.
It is not usable for anythingelse Like apparently, even if
you like swing it too hard,it'll break from air resistance.
Nate (43:12):
Air resistance.
Shaun (43:13):
Yeah, I'll send you the patent for it too.
It's yeah, it's literallybasically just think an LED rope
light extending out of a handle, like if you tried to swing it
it would have snapped, which iswhy she had to, like, set it
down before the sword fightstarted and pulled out like an
actual, real prop sword.
Nate (43:27):
I'll send you footage try to pretend like it was the same
thing, or they just like kind of.
Shaun (43:32):
Yeah, she sort of did this thing where she sort of
like squatted down a little bitlike to do a battle pose and
then picked up the other one,but it didn't translate very
well.
Yeah, they tried to hide it,but they didn't really do a very
good job.
There was one cool specialeffect, though, where somebody
in the crowd actually pulls outa holocron and they actually did
a pretty good special effectwhere Rey uses like the force to
(43:52):
pull it out of their hand andup to the balcony.
Where Rey uses like the Forceto pull it out of their hand and
up to the balcony, which isjust like a magician's sleight
of hand with like collapsiblestuff and, you know, getting
people to look the wrong way atthe right time.
But that was kind of neat.
And they also have like alittle conveyor belt up there.
So when Rey was standing on it,kylo Ren got a Force choker and
like pulled her towards him,and that was kind of neat
(44:17):
because she got standstill andbe like.
The battle goes on and on and on.
The characters get their littlespots you know all the little
like characters that you've beenencountering on the ship get
their like little moment wherethey show up and like help out
Ray, and eventually Ray winsFirst, order is defeated and
everyone is saved Yay.
There's one kind of cool parttoo where, like in the middle of
the battle, like force powersare being used and like the
chandelier at the top of theroom kind of like breaks and
(44:37):
falls down like a foot.
But I guess they didn't reallylike point out that was going to
happen, so most people kind ofmissed it.
And there's also one pointwhere Sammy the smuggler he was
dressed as a stormtrooper in asurprise twist and pulls out his
hands like look, it's me allalong.
(44:58):
Anyways, fight's over, everybodygets their long speeches.
And then, uh, people who didlike a whole lot of quests and
did really good in thestorylines and like their app
like actually worked properly.
They actually got called out bynames during the uh, this end
be like joe jeffries.
You sure helped me find thatholocron earlier this day.
Blah, blah, blah.
But not you, nate.
You got no call outs because,well, your app sucked and didn't
like take track of anything foryou.
I mumbled in my breath.
(45:19):
Bed Wake up on day three.
This is checkout.
Day Schedule is as follows 830to 930.
Breakfast 930 to 10.
Get the hell out time.
You eat your last meal at thehotel and think back to what was
a very mediocre experience youhad.
Then you get home, nate, andlearn that Disney lost your $200
droid you mailed through them.
You call and complain.
Disney tells you to get bent.
(45:39):
The only time that theyactually come back and refund
your money is when you complainto your large Twitter fan base.
Keep in mind this is JennyNicholson.
As soon as you complained toyour Twitter fan base and they
got rid of it, disneyimmediately sends you a new
droid and a gift package.
Jenny Nicholson's like.
That's really messed up Causeyou know they're only doing it
because I'm a influencer.
If this is a normal person, youknow they would just kept
(46:00):
telling them to get bent, nomatter what she was like.
It actually kind of made memadder that they did this as
opposed to just, you know,sticking to their guns.
She's a good person that way.
Then that's taken by thewandering photographers.
Remember that?
Did you spend like $69 for, orwhatever it was, or yeah, I
think that's what it was.
Yeah, well, turns out there'sno pics of you or your family
(46:23):
online.
In fact, there's barely anypics on there at all.
You know that turned the hirethe professional photographer
guy for $400 an option.
Turns out that was so popularenough that all the
photographers were full up andDisney did not hire any extra
photographers to compensate forthe popularity, so there were no
wandering photographers takingpictures the entire time.
You wasted 69 bucks on that.
(46:45):
You go around looking on theinternet and other people saying
the same exact thing with thepictures they're like there are
no pictures of me up here online, none of them.
I paid money for it and nothing.
And Disney of course said Goget bent.
Yep, you for nothing.
And Disney of course is Go getbent.
Yep, you go online to complainabout your experience because,
hey, it'd be kind of nice to getsome support on this.
Turns out, if you go online andcomplain about this, people
will mock and insult you for it,nate, raging from.
(47:05):
You're an idiot who did thisall wrong to.
You're a rich scumbag anddeserve what you get on this.
Nobody has any sympathy foranybody who had a bad experience
on this hotel thing.
Nate (47:14):
Yeah, fair enough.
I mean, on one hand it's likethat's bullshit, but on the
other hand it's like yeah.
Shaun (47:19):
Yeah, I know, on my end it'd be like man, that would
suck if that happened to me.
On the other hand, if I heardsomebody complain about it I'd
be like, yeah.
Nate (47:26):
It's the driver slash pedestrian when I'm driving and
there's a pedestrian in my way,give away.
But when I'm walking I'm likeI'm walking here, right?
Shaun (47:39):
So that concludes your trip to the Star Wars Hotel.
Nathan, how did that feel for$15,000, aka $10 per minute?
Nate (47:46):
I am pseudo-enraged, but it didn't actually happen, so
I'm fine.
Shaun (47:50):
But if this happened to you, you would have been enraged
.
I would be.
And the worst thing about thistoo is it feels like they didn't
even beta test anything of it.
It felt like they justliterally like hammered out the
most hackneyed thing.
They couldn't be like run withit.
Nobody once was like, hey,should we test out this app to
make sure it works right?
They was, they're like oh,complain, whatever, we got their
(48:13):
money, who cares?
And thing too is uh, youweren't the only person had this
horrible experience.
You go online.
A lot of people had miserableexperiences along the same thing
.
Tiny hotel rooms, um, oneperson complained about, uh,
they were a vegetarian and theyhad, like, no vegetarian options
for one of the dinners and theyasked if they could have a
vegetarian meal and theyliterally just got a pile of
steamed or steamed cauliflowerthat was their fancy like luxury
(48:35):
dinner that they got.
Nate (48:36):
That's.
Shaun (48:37):
Yeah, so now you can see why it went out of business,
thankfully, yeah.
Nate (48:41):
Thank God, as it should have.
Shaun (48:42):
As it should have.
Yeah, but once again, disneydoesn't care.
They have their money.
People will forget about thissoon enough, except for the 10
million people that watched thisvideo.
Ginny did.
Nate (48:51):
Did anything happen from that?
Shaun (48:57):
Like anything happen from that, like did they yell, did
they sue her?
Or like, nope, nothing reallyhappened, uh, far as I know,
anyways.
Uh, she got 10 million views onthis four hour long video
though, so that was kind of coolon her part that's good.
I mean yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,she's actually a pretty popular
youtube creator.
You probably never heard of her, but she does a lot of like
long form stuff.
She does a lot of visiting,like, uh, theme parks and does
reviews on them and stuff.
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