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.
Cool idea, great writeup!