Disneyhead'71
Well-Known Member
IDK, I know the boys in WV like them that way. You know, fried and slathered in cheese.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
A Spirited Perfect Ten
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
FigmentJedi
Well-Known Member
Rodan75
Well-Known Member
Wow. That isn't good.
Rodan75
Well-Known Member
Yeah, it is something that can happen. But they would have know the issue was happening by Tuesday/ Wednesday at the latest. So if it was truly a clerical error on the FDIC file, the communication shouldn't be coming on Friday.
Rodan75
Well-Known Member
Only salaried...we aren't talking frontline.
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
I guess thats only good point. But still..... someone needs to be fired over that.
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
Or dinner for six at Terminus?
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
the threads change way too fast and quickly to have a well developed compilation.So....as a tenured member of this forum is it too much to ask for actual Spirit News/Rumors updates to be compiled on the front page of the thread? I appreciate all the non Disney/Disney deep discussion in the times of Spirits absence but just appreciate his commentary more
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
I hope you dont see the movie idiocracy. might kill your appetite lol.
bhg469
Well-Known Member
To be a fly in the wall.
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
speaking of waterpark, Cochlear had a private party at wizzarding world of harry potter at universal, we entered from the back thru Simbad.
There were some construction going on behind Dr, SEUSS,.
wait.. what?
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Our oddly waifish friend seems to be planting a lot of stories about how great he is. This time in the Wall Street Journal. They're really pushing this narrative that Tom's a creative or "gets" creatives because he was really good at the trumpet. The mixed state of WDI suggests otherwise.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/iger-clone-rises-in-disneys-ranks-1423872566
Iger ‘Clone’ Rises in Disney’s Ranks
Tom Staggs is Disney’s newly appointed chief operating officer. Photo: Bloomberg News
By
Ben Fritz and
Erich Schwartzel
Feb. 13, 2015 7:09 p.m. ET
As the lead trumpet player at Minnetonka High in the late 1970s, Tom Staggs had a “strong, confident sound” that set the pace for the jazz band, recalls Dan Geldert, a former music teacher at the suburban Minneapolis school.
But Mr. Staggs “was not what you’d call a jazz improviser,” Mr. Geldert added. “He led by example.”
Now, nearly 40 years later, Mr. Staggs is the newly appointed chief operating officer of Walt Disney Co. and the leading internal candidate to succeed Chief Executive Robert Iger when he steps down in 2018.
Should Mr. Staggs get the gig as the most powerful executive in Hollywood, associates say the 54-year-old is as unlikely to start riffing as he was in the jazz band.
In interviews with more than a dozen people who have worked with Mr. Staggs during his 25 years at Disney, the executive is described as analytical, intelligent and extremely personable—and also as someone who keeps his strongest opinions close to the vest. It is a description many note also fits Mr. Staggs’s boss.
“He’s like a clone of Bob,” said one former Disney employee.
“Bob has a level of presence and charm that’s very hard to match, but of anyone at the company, Tom comes the closest,” said Steve Wadsworth, a former president of Disney’s Internet Group.
Both Disney executives participate in a triathlon in Malibu, Calif. Mr. Staggs sends his three sons to the same private school that one of Mr. Iger’s children attends.
Mr. Iger will be a hard act to follow. His 10-year tenure is widely viewed on Wall Street and in Hollywood as a success, during which Disney’s stock price has increased nearly fivefold.
A Disney spokeswoman said neither Mr. Staggs nor Mr. Iger would comment.
After growing up the youngest of three sons in the upper-middle-class bedroom community of Excelsior, Minn., Mr. Staggs attended the University of Minnesota, where he began studying music but quickly switched his major to business. He earned an M.B.A. at Stanford University and had a brief stint in investment banking at Morgan Stanley & Co. before joining Disney’s strategic planning group in 1990, where he worked on several major acquisitions. These included the purchases of Capital Cities/ABC and the Anaheim Ducks hockey team, as well as the company’s move into the cruise business.
At “strat planning,” essentially a group of internal consultants that had an often contentious relationship with other parts of the company at the time, Mr. Staggs stood out.
“Tom was different, because people in the operating groups didn’t view him with disdain,” said Jeff Shell, a former Disney employee and longtime friend of Mr. Staggs who is now chairman of Comcast Corp. ’s Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.
“At Disney, the culture is you’ve got to know people, and Tom is gifted at that,” said a former staffer close to him. “Tom is the kind of guy who always asks how you’re doing on an elevator, never forgets your name once he meets you, and takes the time to learn about your kids.”
His amiable personality did cause some concerns early in his career. After an internal meeting at which Mr. Staggs made a presentation about the Ducks deal, then-CEO Michael Eisner wondered aloud whether the younger executive would be aggressive enough to succeed at the company, according to two people present. Through a spokesman, Mr. Eisner denies making the comment.
Mr. Staggs overcame such concerns, and in 1998 Mr. Eisner named him chief financial officer at the age of 37, a post he held for 12 years. When he attended product reviews and other meetings at Disney’s business units, Mr. Staggs appeared to be as much a strategic partner to Mr. Eisner and then Mr. Iger as he did a chief accountant. “He wasn’t just about managing the numbers,” said Mr. Wadsworth.
Mr. Staggs was a key player in Disney’s digital strategy during the first dot-com boom, including the decision to establish a tracking stock in part to acquire Internet assets without giving away company shares. (The strategy fizzled when the dot-com boom went bust in 2001.) Later, he was heavily involved in managing relations with Wall Street during a 2004 shareholder revolt against Mr. Eisner and in the acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel.
When Mr. Iger took over in 2005, Mr. Staggs became a close aide to the CEO. Among his tasks was helping to make the headquarters more hospitable to young creative executives. A fitness nut, Mr. Staggs oversaw the construction of a new gym, among other projects.
While Mr. Staggs loves wine and cooking—he oversees the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner for more than 50 people at his home each year—his health discipline has achieved near-legendary status. “I never saw the man eat a carb,” said a person who worked closely with him.
In 2010, Mr. Iger had Mr. Staggs trade jobs with Jay Rasulo, then head of Disney’s parks and resorts division. The switch gave Mr. Staggs his first operational experience and placed him in a “bake-off” with Mr. Rasulo, who was seen before Mr. Staggs’s recent promotion as another potential CEO candidate. (Mr. Rasulo’s contract as CFO expired in January and he hasn’t yet renewed it or publicly commented on his future plans.)
People in theme parks, a massive global operation that isn’t as closely tied to Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters as some of its other businesses, were initially skeptical about the newcomer.
Among the changes he brought to the parks group was a process called “constructive discomfort” in which he encouraged employees to challenge their own habits and methods, said Meg Crofton, president of parks and resorts operations for the U.S. and France.
But Mr. Staggs quickly won allies after he spent months exploring the company’s five theme-park resorts and began spending one day a week with Imagineers, the team that designs and builds rides and attractions, Ms. Crofton said.
His major projects have included the rollout of My Magic Plus, a long-in-development and sometimes troubled technology that allows Walt Disney World guests to plan their trip and make purchases with a wirelessly connected wristband; overseeing the construction of an ambitious $5.5 billion Shanghai theme park in partnership with the Chinese government, the completion of which was recently pushed back from late 2015 to spring of 2016; and a deal to build attractions based on the 2009 box-office blockbuster “Avatar” in the Animal Kingdom park at Walt Disney World.
The makeover at Animal Kingdom is one of several projects allowing Mr. Staggs to build his bona fides in creative decision-making, a potential deficiency for a man who has spent much of his career as CFO but could soon ascend to the top of the world’s largest entertainment company.
The parks chief was significantly involved in the design of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which made its debut at Walt Disney World last year, said Ms. Crofton. In addition, he pushed to keep sophisticated audio-animatronic characters at the “Avatar” land when problems arose in their design, said the movie’s director James Cameron.
“He’s got the right balance of hands-on and hands-off,” said Mr. Cameron. “And frankly that’s the biggest issue for leadership in any of these creative content enterprises.”
WDWFigment
Well-Known Member
If you're against In-N-Out, you're against America.
Smiddimizer
Well-Known Member
Worth admission for the Studio Tour alone. Wait until Fast and Furious opens if you can.
bhg469
Well-Known Member
I meant to be a fly on the wall... at the meeting.
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
I've been to the one in Vegas, just off the strip.
It wasn't bad. Just fast-food.
It's not Oso Buco.
