The reality is if it’s an internal promotion, no one right now has vision to lead Disney forward. They are all pawns of Iger ala Chapek and we don’t need a repeat. This is a major crisis and isn’t like the final years of Eisner where we had a Roy to hand pick and change the status quo within the company.
Politics aside, TWDC hasn’t had a great decade of films sure there’s a billion here a billion there but there are one too many flops. The parks are not as fresh or as bold as years past and it shows with the desperation to lower the price to, what the company fails to realize are the very people who keep returning to the U.S. based parks, their pass holders both in California and Florida. Price those families out and you don’t get enough.
Sure the cruise lines are booming but this company has grown too large during Igers tenure to have someone come from Parks to lead the company into possibly the next two decades. We need strong leadership in the company. Not old senile men/women who have no vision, no taste for modernism or the current state of the world we are living in.
Over gave us a lot of great things, questionable purchases/mergers, but in his final decade Disney has lost its standing in the parks, Universal became more than just a bunch of simulators, shoot even seaworld is giving a run at Disney for thrills. A fresh coat of paint and cheap AA’s does not scream fresh and new. I wasn’t a fan of getting rid of rivers but that’s where we are in today’s Imagineering. A shuttered workforce of people who rather keep to themselves than to be turned down by budget.
I won’t forget so many of my colleagues who lost their jobs because they refused to move to the Lake Nona campus that never came to fruition. Now they’re behind some of the really amazing stuff at Universal Creative.
I love this company, it’s more than just a job. My grandparents met and worked together for Walt. My dad moved to Florida for the EPCOT project, and I enjoy a small cubicle behind Epcot. But the reality is I don’t see a promising future for the company. If it is an internal promotion, it needs to be a split job. Entertainment and Experiences are two different behemoths and honestly running multiple theme parks is not the same as greenlighting the next Pandora, the Next MCU, or Galaxy Far Far Away.
Iger did good in his first few years but honestly I feel he became too comfortable at his job and the mass majority of shareholders too afraid of change that he stayed as long as he did but that’s just me. A measly Imagineer looking from afar as to what comes next for the company that has given me so much to live for and enjoy coming into work. But when you know fellow cast members across all aspects of the company looking elsewhere it comes to the fruition after nearly 15 years myself with the mouse, is it time to look for greener pastures. Then I listen to the steam train underneath Mainstreet station and I tell myself the same thing I told myself when I first walked in as a child, this is what I wanted to do and be when I grew up. I haven’t looked back as hard as I have in the last few months in the hopes that things start to get better within the company.
Whom ever the board selects to be the new CEO, I just hope they know how to treat every last one of us Castmembers with as much love and respect to the bottom line as possible. There are ways to save money without having to layoff and there are ways to produce new content without making anyone mad or sad in the process. Disney has been here for 100+ years let’s keep that momentum into the next century of my companies beloved history.
