Disney Renaissance 2/Disney Revival

[ShyViolet]

Interesting article from WDW News (watch out for pop-ups.)

https://wdwnt.com/2022/11/disney-ceo-bo ... rent-they/

[ShyViolet]

Almost 200 dollars a person for the Christmas holidays:

https://nypost.com/2022/11/15/disney-wo ... ext-month/

(I think that’s for one park, one day.)

EDIT: Oh wait it’s typically not. But that’s still outrageous in my opinion.

[EricJ]

The one-day fares get all the headlines, but they're actually pretty rare:
WDW is built more around tourists staying for a package-week at the hotels, and the per-day price goes down when tickets are bought in 5 or 6-day bulk.

Unlike Disneyland, which is more of a 3-day park, has fewer hotels, and caters more to the loyal local residents.
Most of WDW's local Florida residents already buy the Annual Passes, and while they complain about those prices lately, there's no real market for one-day stop-throughs, except for maybe families on cross-country road trips, which isn't as common as it used to be in the 70s.

[Randall]

Stunning news about Iger coming back!!! Is Disney eating the last 2.5 years of Chapek's new contract? Wow, they suddenly got desperate to dump him after the last earnings report. I'm sure that many at the company will welcome the news. It'll be interesting to see if their stock price rebounds this week.

[ShyViolet]

Wow!!!! I definitely didn’t expect that. Very interesting developments!

[Daniel]

The Bob is dead, long live the Bob!

[Ben]

I literally called this four days ago!

I should have posted it here, just for fun, but honestly I’d seen something about Iger being somewhere where he had intimated his disappointment with Chapek, and had the thought, "I wonder if he would go back if Disney asked", which turned into, "I wonder if he is having backdoor channel discussions about going back". Just in time for Disney100 too!

I love it when I’m right!

[EricJ]

It's rare that you can ever blame a company's problems on just one man, but EVERY single one of Chapek's hi-profile blunders has his neurotic signature on it.
Genie+, turning the theatrical studio's output over to Disney+ subscriptions, three new DVC hotels and the infamous Galactic Starslammer, every decision he made kept indulging the fantasy of being a "VIP" guest, and paying extra for the privilege of being behind the velvet rope.

It's hard not to be populist by comparison, but Iger knew that the product had a sales base with the common parent-folk, and that's how sales and profits stayed solid.
I'm not sure if we're going to see a rollback in the price gouges of the last three years (they're still paying for the Pandemic, the Big Empty, and new park projects), but I suspect a few things are about to be "fixed". Starting with the new DVC hotels that only snooty people like.

[ShyViolet]

Have absolutely no idea if this is true or not but if so…basically, my head is spinning.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/why ... 00597.html

[EricJ]

Think most of the sales rumors started when Disney's stock price was hitting bottom, but if Iger believes he's got to turn the entire mindset of the company back around to where it was seven to ten years ago, the LAST thing he's going to do is sell it to someone else.

Latest rumors have him looking at Tom Staggs, who headed the Parks under their greatest years in '15, but left the company to go independent during Chapek. Iger had already sounded him out, just in case, during the first vote on whether to keep Chapek, and it's been a backup dream ever since.

[Ben]

Disney and Apple have long been something of a strategic partnership — remember Disney Second Screen? — and certainly the Pixar deal put an already friendly Iger and Jobs in an even closer orbit. There were even rumours before all the streaming stuff all started that Apple wanted to create content and that Apple Pictures could be distributed by Disney. Then Jobs died and the two have kind of been mutual beneficiaries but not as closely tied or really linked in the same way at all.

So while this wouldn’t be totally unexpected, and out of them all, Apple is the most sensible bet, it could still be a surprise. The whole reason it went into D+ was to move into the tech space and compete in that same space as a content streamer, thus preserving itself from a big tech takeover. A merger is a slightly different thing, of course, but I can’t see it happening *just* yet…

[Daniel]

An now a comment from the man who gets mentioned here ad nauseam:

The Walt Disney Company has suffered in recent years. This is a good time for us to remember the words of Walt Disney who said, “Everybody falls down. Getting back up is how you learn to walk.”

Guess he's no longer a big fan of both Bob's.

[ShyViolet]

Yeah, they were both very different in their management style from Eisner. Also how they saw Disney culturally…Eisner did everything he could to keep Disney OUT of politics (that’s why he wouldn’t let Miramax distribute Fahrenheit 9/11) because that’s how Walt ran the company. But times have changed a lot, and I see how it would be much harder to do this in the 21st century.

[Ben]

I donut know the context, but isn’t he basically commenting on Cheapek's tenure with the falling down, and the getting back up is Iger's walking again…? I donut get why he wouldn’t be supportive of Iger's return, unless he really does think he might be asked to come back next…!

[Daniel]

Definitely supportive based on an earlier tweet:

Welcome back to Disney, @RobertIger!