I'll take my free cruise ship now please. According to the story it should be no trouble to dry dock it indefinitely and construct an entire building around it!
I can see some cities definitely cutting you a break on mooring fees as it could be a very attractive tourist draw and OP is correct that once they are clapped out big cruise liners are VERY cheap (kinda) but they vary between 70,000 tons up to over 200,000 tons and lets assume a scrap value of $50 per ton and a 100,000 ton ship you're still going to be $5 million in the hole as a starting point before a very expensive fitout.
Its not a terrible idea, but kickstarter isnt going to cut it for this one.
The image OP put in is from the Disney star wars hotel thing I think. If so OP is basically calling it overpriced shit and proposing a better experience. So yeah Fisney most certainly has the sway and cash for the cruise ship idea.
I don't think this would work as a tourist draw in the conventional sense. The problem is that money doesn't change hands enough times to generate enough secondary revenue and taxes, since everyone is "locked in" for the duration and the ticket sales happen online (or somewhere else). Typical hotels draw people to business and tourism all over the city, and this proposal is the opposite of that. Just like a typical cruise, this puts the cruise-liner in position to run their own tax free economy/experience for guests during their entire stay; just build everything into the ticket price.
Then you add the fact that an aging and immobile cruise ship is permanently occupying a deep-sea launch/slip in your harbor. That mooring point is no longer generating anywhere near as much income as before, since people are coming/going at a much more lax pace and you can't use it for freight. And moving the ship around to accommodate other boats is likely going to require tugs which is time consuming and probably a huge PITA for the harbor.
Now, if you could anchor it somewhere remote where none of that matters, then you'd have something.
I think it could work as a hotel instead. I think it would be cool to go on a "dry cruise," with all of the events and whatnot a cruise would have. I'd spend 2-3 days on one just exploring the ship and whatnot.
I mean, it's not free but you could absolutely write a good loan proposal or appeal to angel investors for your "luxury space cruise experience." They'd probably jump at the small cost relative to the audience for it and potential earnings.
And keeping it cool enough for human comfort would be super cheap too!
If the dome wall is well insulated and has a white or reflective surface, it may not be as challenging as you'd think. The other way to achieve good low-energy cooling is to build underground if the terrain, hydrological and geological conditions are right. It costs money to dig but that's a one-time cost.
Why this wouldn't work:
"Okay honey, we'll watch the launch!"
I wonder how hard it would be to fake a 'ship' being towed from the rough area where you boarded, and put on a real rocket. How many people would still argue it wasn't real when they saw the launch of a rocket that could reach a few dozen miles up? Sure, some would have the technical knowledge to look at the rocket and know it wouldn't be enough.
Hide the true numbers off people boarding, and thus you can fake the 'ship' being super small, and it could work on the unknowledgeable viewer who is placed several miles away.
I would definitely pay for a fake space cruise, assuming the outside “space” environment was sufficiently detailed, and they had quality actors running the show.
Everything is...nominal.
Jason Nesmith or bust.
I don’t think they’ve fully understood the gravity of the situation….
Channel 4 managed to convince a group of people that they had gone to space! They just had to find some very special people who would believe the 'gravity compensator' story.
Isn't this basically what that star wars hotel is?
That’s the point. OP is trying to find a way to reduce costs and make it more viable, which could lower the rate for a stay and expand the market for it. Disney’s idea sounded interesting to me, but I don’t have the kind of money they were charging for it. I’m still sorry I missed it.
Isn't this basically a stop on the continuum between visiting Colonial Williamsburg and Westworld depending on the labour used?
On both ends, I always figured there was a narrow market of people who want that level of all-inclusive themed experience. You go to London, you can always break out of the package tour and do something "the locals do".
Im in SoCal I have personally seen people try things the local way and it usually ends with a tour bus worth of old Japanese people with heat and sun stroke. Or a car worth of Scots going local, they were fully embraced by one of the local bars.
Was
Well yeah, a long long time ago.
There was a show where they tricked a bunch of people into thinking they are on a space ship with a similar method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadets_(TV_series)
Highly recommend. It’s hilarious.
Disney is closing their attempt at this down after a year because they couldn't do it right.
I don’t think the problem was the building.
Financially, I think the biggest problem was paying an entire cast of actors… AND an entire secondary backup cast backstage already in makeup and ready to swap in at a moment’s notice, because the breakneck pace meant you absolutely couldn’t afford to wait an hour for somebody to drive in.
Like, the limiting factor here isn’t that Disney couldn’t make a building big enough—it was that the whole design of “every guest should get enough face time with an actor character to feel like they’re a protagonist” just doesn’t scale well. Double the seats? Now you need twice the actors for the same amount of interaction, and that ratio means your overhead is going to be thin no matter what.
…I still wanna see somebody do this with a cruise ship, though. Just… if you’re also gonna make it a LARP, you’re gonna have to be more careful about the business implications of your narrative design.
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