Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust & Profits is a podcast for small business owners who love Disney and want to sprinkle some of that magic onto their own businesses. Join your host, Nicole Boucher and Yasmine Spencer as they explore the mouse’s $12.6 billion operation and break down exactly how you can apply these big-scale concepts to your own.

Nicole (00:26):
Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. We are going to forewarn you. We might get a little bit geeky on this episode because may the fourth just happened and with a Kmart slew of Star Wars information, but only bite-sized information. So we are going to go into speculation and have a bit of fun today talking about the brand new hotel, the Star Wars, Galactic Star Cruiser. And yes, that is the name of a hotel. We got like a little teaser on may the fourth about what these rooms look like and what the experience is going to be. And we are so excited to probably spend thousands of dollars to go do this. So, yes. When do you want to share a little bit about what it even is and why it’s different than a normal hotel?

Yasmine (01:16):
Yeah. So as you know, if you go to Disney, you can book a hotel site and really what that gives you as a room, this new Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser experience that Disney has put together is kind of more akin to a cruise ship on land. So in the sense, It’s all-inclusive, right? Like you buy your ticket, you aboard the ship and then that’s where you have all your experiences. And that’s what they’re doing in this hotel. It’s a completely immersive 360 experience. You sign up, you go and you’re basically characters in a story, which is super duper cool. Everything that you do in literally the hotel, I’m assuming you don’t leave during the entire time that you’re there.

Nicole (01:58):
Yeah. They have like an outdoor area, you know, just like an extremely themed outside areas. So you do leave, but, but you’re supposed

Yasmine (02:08):
To be in space. So like, if you go outdoors and Spacey had you die. So to send somewhere, yeah. Maybe they have their own version of Castaway Cay, which is Disney’s private island in The Bahamas. So maybe we go to a planet, hopefully not Hoff, cause it’s really cold there. But anyway, it’s super cool. And you’re there for three days, two nights you stay in a room with a family and pricing is still sort of like TBD. There’s been speculation that it’s you know, like $1,500 per person. There’s been speculation that there’s a flat fee for a room that can accommodate after five people in a family. So we still don’t quite know how much it’s going to cost. But I think you’re looking at like around five to $10,000 for this like two night experience, which is a pretty penny, but knowing Disney, it’s going to be like unexperienced that you’re not going to forget.

Nicole (03:08):
Yeah. When you look at like the cruise prices, right. Cause I, my husband never wants to go on a cruise, but I have still searched that website to see how much a Disney cruise is. And they’re pretty pricey. It can, for people who even go to Walt Disney World all the time, the curses can feel expensive. But you know, we had an episode last week where we talked about just the differences between a Disney cruise and a regular cruise. And it really is in the guest experience and the service and the magic that’s all around. And I think this takes that to another level entirely where they’re, you know, basically making you a character, like you said, in a story and the story evolves over time. So it’s not that you can arrive any day you want and stay two nights, everyone who’s staying on the galactic star cruiser together arrives on the same day and leaves on the same day.

Nicole (03:57):
Just like it’s a cruise ship because they contain the story. Right? So I think this is even set up to be that every time you go, the story might be different. So even if you’ve done galactic star cruiser before, you might still want to go again, because the next time you go, the story’s going to change because the people on the ship are different that time. So it’s really interesting to see them basically pull their stage show and, and, and make it the whole experience. So while we don’t know the pricing, I would say at least a thousand dollars to $1,500, $1,500 a night per person sounds probably along the lines that we’re looking at here. What’s really interesting. And what I can’t wait to see is this plot of land where the Galactic Star Cruiser is, is right next to Galaxy’s Edge. So I’m wondering if there’s a way to see Galaxy’s Edge.

Nicole (04:51):
They were talking about having like projections on all of the windows in the hotel. So you kind of look like you’re looking out on space, so you won’t even know you’re in Florida, I think for a couple of days. But I’m wondering like what kind of experiences are they going to have to tie it in to Galaxy’s Edge? Do you know? They intentionally chose to build it right next to it. Is there, I know, is it going to be two days, three nights? And then on your day that you leave you, you land at Galaxy’s Edge and you get some exclusive experiences. And I don’t know that, that sounds really cool to me.

Yasmine (05:25):
Yeah. We’re, we’re both like super excited to test this out and go. I know Nicole, you talked about maybe going without your son and going with just your husband.

Nicole (05:36):
Yeah. My son can be a little bit of a worrywart and it takes a lot of convincing to get him to go, even though I think he might like it while there he had done some of the star wars riots, and he was really little and loved them and we couldn’t get him off them. But then as he got older, he was just, I don’t know, it’s inside. It sounds like it might be scary. So still we’re still working on getting him to be all in on the star wars friends. We, my husband tries it every opportunity, but it’s a slow journey we’ll get there.

Yasmine (06:09):
And Dylan and I are like patiently waiting for our daughter to grow up so we can like take her on this experience. But you know, it seems so cool that I’m just trying to convince him to go as adults because like, obviously with Disney experiences, like you can enjoy them as adults. I mean, we do, we’re both in our mid thirties and we freaking love going to Disney, but star wars, isn’t a like franchise that was originally tailored towards youngins. And I imagine that there’s going to be like a lot of like grown-up experiences. Like I’ve seen talks about like the bars that they’ll have on the ship. And yeah, I’m curious to see how they’ll be catering to you know, adults attending or flying, I should say without kiddos.

Nicole (06:52):
Yeah. Well, before the pandemic hit, we were able to take a trip to Disney world and go seek Galaxy’s Edge. And you could tell that even though it was child-friendly, there were so many nods and elements for the adults and the long-term Star Wars fans, and just the interactive experiences. You could have your phone out and play this. I don’t even know what it was. I was, I was in charge of watching our kid while we were in Galaxy’s Edge. So my husband could run around having fun. And he was showing me this app on his phone. It’s a game where you go collect loot from different crates all around the place. And you know, I’m looking forward to actually being able to play that the next time we go. But you know, it’s really, it’s, it’s really just immersing people in an experience. Right?

Nicole (07:35):
And we talk about this all the time on Disney does it really well. And we always bring it back to your business where we talk about how it’s important to make sure that when people are in your brand, they’re in your brand, they know who you are and they know what you’re about. They know what kind of products or services or support that they can get from you. And it’s completely immersing them in that. So how can you keep people in this bubble? How can you get them to arrive, you know, at valet and then put them in an elevator, send them to the star cruiser and make them believe that they’re in this star cruiser for three days, right? How can you keep people in your bubble? The other thing that like is really important, I think to mention about this whole experiment, cause this is an experiment I haven’t heard of other places that have themed hotel experiences, but the other thing to keep in mind here is that they didn’t reinvent the wheel.

Nicole (08:28):
They didn’t go back to the drawing board to find out, okay, we want, we know we want to do a star wars hotel. What do we do? They have significant experience in the cruise ship industry. They, they thought of this model that they already have in a different line of an, a different revenue stream and thought, how can we apply the same concept to something that’s on land? And I think that’s such an innovation. You know, we talk a lot about innovation and creating new products and thinking a new way, but there’s so much beauty in the simplicity of seeing what works and how can I just twist it a little bit? You know, it’s an elegant form of innovation that I think it’s overlooked often in favor of when we throw more spaghetti at the wall and start from scratch because nothing worked, which is hardly ever true.

Nicole (09:21):
You know, if you ever have a launch or a product that seemingly flops you know, I think product sellers can share a lot of their experiences with you about creating some new card or t-shirt or something. And that just didn’t take off, like they thought it would. So they kind of take elements of that and use it later. I mean, even graphic designers, right? They send four concepts to a client and the client loves or hates them. And they reuse those concepts that, you know, got to know for the next client that it seems like it might be a really good fit for. So there there’s a simplicity in innovating through what you already have versus, you know, starting from zero.

Yasmine (10:06):
And one other thing that they’re probably leveraging from that, like cruise experience is the incorporation of premium experiences on board. Like, so if you go on a Disney cruise, like yes, your food and your stays are included, but there’s a lot of extra things to pay for. Are there restaurants on the cruise that are adult only, and that you have to like actually pay to like order from there are the alcoholic beverages, again, those aren’t included in your stay, where in, I think a lot of other cruise lines like alcohol is included, there is a spa that’s onboard. And then of course the experiences, if you’re actually stopping anywhere that that Disney has. So it’d be really interesting to see what they’ll do with the galactic star cruiser and what premium experiences you can purchase there. But when you think about applying it to your own business, I mean, just because someone buys your product, or course that doesn’t mean that the sale necessarily has to stop there.

Yasmine (11:02):
Sometimes you can layer in things like additional support, like a bonus coaching call or one-on-one time that they can pay maybe a discounted price for it. Or maybe there is an additional experience that they can attend, like an in-person retreat. That’s an extra hard cost because they’re physically getting together. And obviously that has expenses with you. There are always ways that you can enhance the experience within, you know, something that’s either like low cost already or already premium, like this Disney experience is, and still provide that support and keep people in that bubble while generating some revenue for your business and for my product based business owners out there, don’t worry. We got you too. If you have a subscription, for example, like you can always add in these upsells or add ons to your subscription, which, you know, encourages people to spend more and buy more, but still keeps them in your bubble, right? You’re you’re offering the things that they need.

Nicole (11:54):
I think we kind of get a glimpse at what one of the upsells will be for the star cruiser, because the video that they released on may, the fourth was of you know, re holding a light saber and pressing a button. And, you know, the hologram comes out of the lightsaber and it actually works. Like it it’s an actual video. It’s not CGI. Like they’ve had their imaginary is working on making real lightsabers. And so I wonder if those will be purchasable and if so, I am sure my husband will want one. We, we made droids at the Galaxy’s Edge. We did not make a light saber. So maybe he was holding on to that request for when they had the real ones. So that’s like an that they’ll have, but you know, going back to what you can do in your business, I think about stuff like, gosh, like HelloFresh, I use that for a short time and moved onto something else, but I was looking for local options that were similar, where like a chef makes meals to help us like figure out the whole dinner situation, which I think is the hardest part of the pandemic so far is figuring out what’s for dinner every day.

Nicole (13:06):
But you know, they have their standard, right? You’ve got three days or three evenings of meals. Do you want more meals? Okay. You can go up to five days. Here’s, here’s an extra, like $20 you need to spend or, oh, are you getting steak? Okay, that’s going to be an extra $3. So sometimes we think about things as fixed costs, especially as small business owners that, you know, we can’t ask for that little bit additional, but next time you’re at a restaurant, go look at the menu where it says, right there, $2 for cheese, one slice of bacon, $3. You know, if these restaurants can do things like that, you can think about it in terms of your brand too. I’m not saying nickel and dime your customers, but think about, okay, well, if they’re already ordering a subscription box for me, then what, what can I include with this subscription box to make it more premium?

Nicole (13:55):
So is there one more item I can put in and they can opt in for that one item or not. So it kind of puts things in line with what the person’s budget is and what they want from you. And you already have their credit card on file, or, you know, they trust the stuff that they get from you. And I think that’s the biggest thing is that they trust what they’re going to get from you. So it’s easier to get that resale. And that’s why it’s so much more expensive to bring in a new customer than it is to sell to an existing customer because the level of trust in each of those audiences is significantly different. So I don’t know when we’re going to get to go on the galactic star cruiser. It sounds like it’s opening in 2022. There are no details about when we can book.

Nicole (14:40):
And so maybe our next episode on this will be from the Star cruiser. I don’t know, we’re really excited about it, but we thought we’d share with you just some of thoughts we’ve had in our head about, you know, the elegance of simple innovation and using things that, you know, work and twisting them to your new need, to upselling wherever possible and in an ethical way, of course. And again, immersing people in this experience that I am pretty sure this is going to sell out no matter what its price point is the day it goes live. You know, this is, I mean, how many people have been, I don’t know, Comicon and star wars for the eight days seemed like they weren’t that long ago, but it’s like 40 years ago. So there are people who’ve been into this world, their entire lives, like this is going to be really cool.

Yasmine (15:39):
Yeah. Definitely cannot wait and hoping that like I personally don’t have to wait until my kid is old enough to enjoy the experience to go. Cause yeah, like just going back to what you said earlier, Nicole, like I think it absolutely makes sense. They’ll have different experiences that you could buy into similar to how they have different cruises or cruises.

Nicole (16:00):
It’ll be, you know, how you have like the private captains quarter on a cruise ship, like by that level, are you going to be, I don’t know, like a rebel general, like, are they going to treat you differently or are you going to like have to go into battle? Like, I don’t think that they would do that based on the price of the room, but I don’t know, maybe like a certain room level. It means like you’re with the Stormtrooper,

Yasmine (16:29):
I’d be interested in that you can choose, maybe you can

Nicole (16:33):
Choose. Cause my husband would totally choose to be with like the first order or he would be all over. Like they were just trying to bring order to the galaxy. So when we did the Star Wars rival run, I was running with the heroes and he was running for the villains. And like, it’s just, it’s kind of fun. It’s fun between us. Cause I was like, just have hope.

Yasmine (16:54):
Awesome. Well, we we’d love to know if you were excited about this upcoming experience at Disney, do you want to go or are you even a Star Wars fan? As you know, you can always catch us on Instagram, let us know what you think @pixiedustandprofits, or you can interact with us in a brand new way. Why don’t you just give us a text? You can text your business fairy, godmothers. That again is me and Nicole. And tell us what you think about this episode. You can catch us at 2 0 7 2 0 3 6 7 6 9. Again, it’s 2 0 7 2 0 3 6 7 6 9. Yes, it is us on the other end. So give us a text. And in case you didn’t catch the number, we have it in our show notes. So we look forward to hearing from you and yeah. Finding out what you think. See you real soon.