News Disney’s Q1 FY26 Earnings Results Webcast

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Disney supercharged its parks. The booming division still has room to run

For Disney's fiscal first quarter, experiences represented 38% of the company's total revenue, yet generated a whopping 71% of its operating income.

www.cnbc.com

Let's see who wrote this puff piece gem.

View attachment 906203

Yup checks out.

Please tell me that’s an AI deepfake (that Bob paid $1,000,000,000 for)?

 

[HauntedPirate]

Proud of it! I don’t mind, my position is well documented. Here we are cresting a 2B OI year and 10% margins in 2026. Next step? Current day Linear. The step after that? Linear circa 2013/14.

Do they have some double-secret must-watch programming coming that no one will be able to resist unless they pony up for Disney+ Super Premium Elite Edition, available with ads for only $99.99/week? In all seriousness - What's going to drive up income and profit numbers to those levels? I hear from multiple people every month how they are dropping streaming services, and Disney/Hulu is never the one of the ones they are keeping.

 

[JD80]

'necessary'

Ok, use a simple metric... to get what you used to have.
Fastpass... parking... dining... merchandise... etc

Sure nothing is 'necessary' besides admission if your metric is "I'm here".

There is a reason Disney's revenue keeps growing more than ticket price increases... SPENDING

Sure, Disney is good at making people spend more money than they need to. That's what good businesses do.

Dining is pretty on par with the outside world. I don't think it's pretty outlandish. And Fastpass+? It was only around for 5 or 6 years was it necessary from 1971 through 2014? But during FP+/Genie+ and early LLMP you also had to "compete" with an abused DAS system which made things worse. Standby is objectively better now than it was previously, at least in recent history.

My whole point is that the parks change. Sometimes parking is free, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you get free line skipping, some times you don't. Food and Merch prices scale with inflation for the most part.

The only base thing you can really compare is Hotels and Tickets. Hotels outside deluxe accommodations have been pretty even. Where prices have really gone up is tickets, by 30%ish or so? I've got it in a spreadsheet somewhere.

So yea, Disney is great at making you spend more money or feel like you HAVE to spend more money. They are great at nostalgia baiting and FOMO.

 

[JD80]

The hotels have less value to us because you’re paying the same price but no longer have Magical Express, package delivery, or luggage delivery.

The parks have less value because you’re paying more and then have to pay an extra $60 a person per day for LL and ILL if you don’t want to wait in hour plus long lines. We had pretty much mastered FP to where we could hit a couple majors early with short lines, use our FPs in the afternoon for a couple majors with short waits, and stay late for a couple majors with short waits.

Now we either pay for LL and ILL or we simply go back to the hotel in the afternoon to avoid the 1 to 4 chaos, losing 3 hours of park time really decreases the value of those tickets, it does however increase the value of the resort. This is part of the reason we’ve considered a resort only stay while skipping the parks.

To each their own - I can't tell anyone how they value their money and entertainment. Personally, I don't feel compelled to buy LL or ILL to enjoy my time - and I just came back from a 10 day trip in July last year. LLMP doesn't tremendously help with that 1-4 hour chaos if you've been in the parks since opening.

I think Magical Express is over valued but the package delivery to your resort is something I miss but I'm not about say a hotel stay has less measurable value because of it.

 

[JD80]

I think this is a major factor also, the room price may be the same but the foods gotten much more expensive, $40 for breakfast for 2 at the resort is a rough way to start the day, then another $30 for a snack and soda, then another $50 for a quick service lunch, then another $40 for cocktails, then another $100 for dinner. I think our last trip we averaged $150 a day each for food and drink alone… over a 5 day trip we spent $1500 on food, it’s always been expensive but now it just feels outrageous.

And that’s not even counting the nicer sit down restaurants, add in Le Cellier, the Boathouse, Chefs de France in place of a couple of those $100 dinners and it was probable over $2000 for food for 5 days.

We've (collectively) had this conversation before somewhere, but those prices are not out of line with almost any other major travel destination. A large combo meal at Burger King is $15 in a lot of places.

 

[HauntedPirate]

Anyone else curious just how much "pre-opening costs" are running for a Disney cruise ship and/or a theme park expansion in France these days?

 

[BrianLo]

In all seriousness - What's going to drive up income and profit numbers to those levels?

Annual Subscription price increases. It’s the Disney Parks model. Basically the same playbook from the last 3 years that swung OI by 2B a quarter. No, I don’t expect that type of swing repeated again on that timeframe. But they are steadily marching still.

I hear from multiple people every month how they are dropping streaming services, and Disney/Hulu is never the one of the ones they are keeping.

Disney hasn’t really manifested subscriber losses, nor Netflix for that matter, whom are out ahead on pricing still. We haven’t really seen a tipping point for any major that we are seeing true subscriber losses. Probably one of the smaller ones like peacock would be the canary.

 

[SamusAranX]

Selling out and limiting ticket sales on a limited ticket event doesn't help Disney.. so they aren't really motivated to have sell outs as some sort of buzz thing... It's counter to the idea of 'low crowds'. They want people singing about their experience... not promote "We have this thing, that you can't have..."

I get that, hence why it’s priced accordingly.

But surely there’s a difference between:

- Disney decides to have 20k max guests for each party, and sells 20k for every party. Nothing is said and no more tickets released
- Disney has decided 50k is the max number for evening events, but notices they slow down when hitting the 30k mark; rather then make the guest experience slightly less stellar, they stop sales and declare a sell out.

The former looks amazing to the public; every night is “sold out” and it looks like incredible demand

The latter, there is no “unprecedented demand”. They struggled to get past 60 percent of what they wanted to sell while not making the park event overly crowded and souring future repeat buys

 

[Trauma]

Stocks drop after every quarterly call because Disney didn't provide DOUBLE DIGIT GROWTH!!

Then they gradually rebound over the next few months.

It's been flat that way for years even tho Disney posts tens of billions of dollars of profit every year.

Wow 10’s of Billions ??!!!!

Thats truly not impressive at all !

 

[HauntedPirate]

Please tell me that’s an AI deepfake (that Bob paid $1,000,000,000 for)?

I have little doubt that AI was used to compose at least some of that puffery.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Wow 10’s of Billions ??!!!!

Thats truly not impressive at all !

10 billion here, 10 billion there, soon you have some real money.

 

[HauntedPirate]

10 billion here, 10 billion fair, soon you have some real money.

That will only cover a year or two of stock buybacks.

 

[SamusAranX]

You double down on not knowing what's happening , so it's odd that you explain to us what's happening.

I’m not explaining what’s happening for certain at all. You are the one saying that so please don’t ascribe to me a position I do not take. I clearly stated a fact (Disney does not release these numbers) so one can’t make a determination of “unprecedented demand” (or lack therof) without said numbers; and what could be what they do, not what they do for sure.

 

[SamusAranX]

To each their own - I can't tell anyone how they value their money and entertainment. Personally, I don't feel compelled to buy LL or ILL to enjoy my time - and I just came back from a 10 day trip in July last year. LLMP doesn't tremendously help with that 1-4 hour chaos if you've been in the parks since opening.

I think Magical Express is over valued but the package delivery to your resort is something I miss but I'm not about say a hotel stay has less measurable value because of it.

I don’t purchase LL (or won’t be I should say, as I may be getting my AP pass back) 99 percent of my visits.

Which makes it all the more interesting they surveyed about AP discounts. Passholders, at least the more frequent ones, are less likely to purchase LL. They can easily come back.

But I imagine they may have internal data showing they spend say, more on food and beverage than the average guest. Who knows

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

To each their own - I can't tell anyone how they value their money and entertainment. Personally, I don't feel compelled to buy LL or ILL to enjoy my time - and I just came back from a 10 day trip in July last year. LLMP doesn't tremendously help with that 1-4 hour chaos if you've been in the parks since opening.

I think Magical Express is over valued but the package delivery to your resort is something I miss but I'm not about say a hotel stay has less measurable value because of it.

July?

Why has it taken it so long for you to go back?
Aren’t you a big fan?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Do they have some double-secret must-watch programming coming that no one will be able to resist unless they pony up for Disney+ Super Premium Elite Edition, available with ads for only $99.99/week? In all seriousness - What's going to drive up income and profit numbers to those levels? I hear from multiple people every month how they are dropping streaming services, and Disney/Hulu is never the one of the ones they are keeping.

D+ does not make enough content…they’re playing with fire…

Also the Bob’s spent several years crying they “spent too much” on content

Not really a good spot to park yourself in

 

[flynnibus]

The former looks amazing to the public; every night is “sold out” and it looks like incredible demand

The latter, there is no “unprecedented demand”. They struggled to get past 60 percent of what they wanted to sell while not making the park event overly crowded and souring future repeat buys

None of this is happening...

 

[flynnibus]

The only base thing you can really compare is Hotels and Tickets

Not really - you are taking a vacation - It's easy to see what your daily spend is... and ironically, that's exactly what Disney tracks too...

Disney isn't just trending with inflation. The whole 'disney is too expensive' narrative didn't just appear out of nowhere while disney held the line on it's budget hotel prices.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

None of this is happening...

That kinda ops info is readily available to the crew at animal kingdom parking?

 

[BrianLo]

Anyone else curious just how much "pre-opening costs" are running for a Disney cruise ship and/or a theme park expansion in France these days?

90 million on Destiny and Adventure for this past quarter. It was in their last guidance.

Don’t know about Paris. Another 60M in drydock as well during this quarter.

This current quarter will have more Adventure costs since they are currently repositioning it without revenue.