It was ambitious, for sure.
But the pricing was ridiculous.
If it is true that the final build budget ended up being $200 million for only 100 hundred rooms, that means from a capacity standpoint each room cost $2 million.
If that number does not include any of the operating costs once it opened (actors, game masters, food, servers, etc) then that’s even worse from a budgetary standpoint.
Further math:
With a two night stay, they could only run a MAXIMUM of 182 cruises a year. This assumes no days off for actor recovery, reset, general maintenance, etc; which we know they did factor in.
So to recoup JUST THE BUILDING COSTS in one year, you have to charge about $10,990 per room.
And again, if all my assumptions are correct, that doesn’t even cover operating costs for that year.
What they were charging ($5,000 to $6,000 per room) would have taken about two years to recoup build costs and about another year (possibly more) to recoup operating costs. They basically had to commit to it running in the red for 3 years and hope it still maintained full capacity for that time to even get into the black.
And to charge less, which probably would have enticed more people to book a stay, would have meant running in the red longer.
And this all assumes every room is booked every time (which seems impossible), they run 182 shows a year (which also seems impossible), and that there are no outside factors that intrude upon the daily operations (which also also seems impossible).
Given all of that, this thing seemed doomed from the get-go. When the capacity dropped quite a few months ago, it was basically a dead man walking.
I realize I am making a lot of assumptions, but that’s all I got.
I think the real lessons here are don’t promise people interactivity, then price them out of it and know your audience when budgeting your projects.