I have seen the build your own lightsabers in person. The quality is comparable to what you would pay for an officially licensed high end replica lightsaber for a known character in the Star Wars stories at a price point comparable to what they were for years before Disney bought Lucasfilm. Building your own lightsaber in Galaxy's Edge is not even comparable to the toy lightsabers you can build in
Disneyland or DHS. It's a very different experience that is ultimately aimed at a specific kind of Star Wars fan.
Same thing with the droids. These will make noise and move around after you leave Galaxy's Edge.
I know these things are expensive. I will not dispute that. But I do not think they are pay for play. I will soon build a droid and lightsaber, but I have had a lot of fun in Galaxy's Edge without doing either of those yet. Those experiences are very different and in a sense not designed for everybody.
If Disney were to offer the build your own lightsaber like they do outside Galaxy's Edge for the same price point as they do outside of Galaxy's Edge, they would be heavily criticized for making the experience cheap. So if someone really wants to build their own high end lightsaber, they can do so. I view these as supplemental experiences. Guests will certainly have a great time without doing them.
Aside from the cost, I don't see these as any different from buying a banshee in Pandora
Agreed and I will take it one step further. Do you want to cast spells in Wizarding World just down the street from Disney? Then you most definitely must pay to play. Because it will cost you to buy that wand from Universal in order to cast those spells. Except there's one major difference. As soon as you are no longer in Wizarding World, those wands magically transform into paperweights with the same ability as a stick you find on the ground. Yes, the wand is cheaper, but it also does nothing once you leave Wizarding World whereas the lightsaber and droid will continue to operate outside Galaxy's Edge.
To be clear, I'm not bagging on Universal here. That's a very cool feature of Wizarding World. I just don't understand why Universal gets so much praise for doing something incredibly awesome and then when Disney follows suit, Disney gets all the criticism for pay to play. It's not like Universal is giving away butter beer for pennies on the dollar. They're expensive too, but they rarely face criticism the way Disney does.
And there are plenty of ways in which guests can participate in Galaxy's Edge that do not cost extra. The app can be used to scan containers and find out what's inside. People are free to interact with Star Wars characters wandering the land and get photos with them. Likewise, they can interact with the cast members in Galaxy's Edge, many of whom have created their own in universe backstory as to how they ended up at Black Spire Outpost. And Smugglers Run is most definitely not Mission Space. Ignoring the buttons on Smugglers Run will change your experience.
I suppose I feel this way about the 3.
At Wizarding World, I felt almost like they had opened Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley to the public to let us wander around. It felt incredibly immersive, yet I also did not feel like I was living my own wizarding adventure.
At Pandora, I felt like it was incredibly detailed with one spectacular attraction and one okay attraction. But I didn't really feel like I was on Pandora. Although that may be a function of the movie itself, which I think has incredible effects, but an okay story that has been told in much the same way many times before and often better.
In Galaxy's Edge, I felt like I was in a completely different place. It's incredibly surreal to leave Galaxy's Edge and return to Disneyland. It also felt like I was right in the middle of a Star Wars story that I could explore for myself and not actually know what will happen next. In my opinion, having real Star Wars characters roam the land adds to that experience. You will never see Harry Potter in Wizarding World except on the Forbidden Journey. But you can interact with Rey, Chewbacca, and others in Galaxy's Edge.