I’d hazard a guess that licensing costs are a massive part of the equation. An in-house line isn’t going to cost as much as a cobranded one, especially with Disney. I’d be more curious as to average per piece pricing on those sets, not all sets.

10 cents per piece is the typical pricing for LEGO sets (outsides of sales and promos). 800 piece sets sell for ~$80, for example. So given that this set has 3899 pieces, you’d expect it to sell for ~$390. Expensive, but not any MORE expensive than other sets of comparable size.

I definitely am a casual LEGO fan. Even so, I prefer to use conversational language and colloquialisms, which is why I’ve also referred to Galactic Starcruiser as the “Star Wars Hotel” (etc).

Otherwise, I don’t necessarily disagree with you–except on the guests and CMs, which I prefer to characters. I’d prefer more complete buildings and separate sets for each. I assume it’s a matter of LEGO wanting to meet the market and not wanting to create a bunch of buildings that won’t be able to sell on their own.

Both the 2016 and superior 2023 versions of the giant “Disney Castle” set refer to it as Cinderella’s Castle in the first line of text in their instruction manuals.

This set looks very disappointing to me. It’s just too-thin facades. Especially the Fire Station. The Disney Train set station looks like a complete building from the front (it is open in the back like the castles). The Castles also don’t have a backside, but look great because they are huge and the interiors are substantial. Unlike previous sets where the figures are 100% characters, we get a bunch of civilian guests and CM figures. Love the Dapper Dans though.

I think they should have gone building by building down Main Street, and do separate ~3000 part, $300 sets for each building, along the lines of how the excellent LEGO modular building sets look. City Hall, Fire Station w/ Walt’s complete apartment, Emporium, etc.

I say wait until Black Friday, this thing will be a sales dud, just like the superior Disney Train set was. I picked up 2 Disney Train sets for $220 each on Black Friday. I think there was a limit.

Ouch! Thanks for the correction, James. I used one of those fancy new AI agents to look up part of my text. It seems they didn’t catch the price change. Perhaps I needed to specifically prompt them to look up the original price at release, NOT the current (less relevant for this comparison) price.

The price per brick is even worse with that correction. 7.21 cents per brick in 2020 for Diagon Alley.