@egg If people are annoyed by this back and forth they can put us both on ignore. No need to apologize for having a discussion or an argument if you prefer to call it that. Since you keep asking I'll try to answer your question. I assume this is the one you want me to try to answer:
To answer question #1, in my opinion Disney probably decided to buy the rights to Avatar for some of the following reasons and there are probably others I'm forgetting:
- It was the highest grossing film of all time with sequels on the way
- The deal affords Disney the opportunity to work directly with James Cameron and his Lightstorm Entertainment people as creative consultants
- The movie was known for having stunning visual effects (especially 3D) which translate well into a theme park ride
- The movie had a highly recognizable setting that if done correctly should be visually stunning in a theme park environment
- The movie has some underlying themes of conservation which is one of the core themes of AK
- AK needed an addition with several people eating rides that could be enjoyed at night as well as during the day to anchor its expansion to a full day park.
- This deal blocked Universal from buying theme park rights to Avatar and potentially building it down the road from WDW
For question # 2 in my opinion they probably don't regret the decision so I'm not sure how to answer that. I'll say that they probably don't regret the choice because none of the items listed above have changed. I'm trying to avoid further frustrating you or not making sense but in my view something usually has to happen or change for you to regret a decision. Kraft foods regrets having Bill Cosby as its spokesperson for Jello Pudding pops because the allegations against Cosby became public. Pete Carrol regrets not running the ball in the Super Bowl since the pass got picked off and they lost the game. People get drunk or just do stupid spontaneous things all the time and regret it, but this was not a spontaneous move it was thought out and vetted by the people involved. I'm sure they considered alternatives at the time. Obviously, if the land bombs like
@s8film40 thinks and nobody shows up then I'm sure they will regret the decision but as of right now, as I sit here typing this, there is nothing that has changed that would cause regret (budget overruns aside).
There are literally hundreds of possible alternatives Disney could have picked instead of Avatar. Those same alternatives existed in 2011 and 2014 and still do now. I have a hard time believing that any of those alternatives would cause Iger to regret the decision now because he could have just picked one of those in 2011 with no money down and no formal announcement. The one exception could be Star Wars since Disney didn't buy Lucas Films until a year later, but I think they are happy with Star Wars anchoring the DHS reboot.
So hopefully that qualifies as an answer to your question.
Okay, so here are my thoughts. Sorry if some is repetative from before, but since those previous posts are a jumbled mess worth forgetting about, I'll lay my thoughts out nicely here:
Bob Iger likes synergy. Synergy, if anyone doesn't know, is basically different parts of the company promoting eachother to create greater value in the end. So, for example, the Frozen ride in Norway will not only being popularity to that pavillion, but the ride will also bring popularity to the Frozen francise, and in the end, that means dollar bills for Bob. But Avatar is problematic, because synergy doesn't work both ways here. Avatar is supposed to make the land more popular, but in return, the land (if done well) will inevitably bring more popularity to Avatar. And especially now that the first sequel is coming out after the land opens, I feel like Bob Iger thinks "how unfair, our land is basically a real-life advertisement for your sequel!" He expected the land to open after the sequel in 2011, and could not foresee that Cameron would delay it
4 times.
And on top of that, Avatar is in somewhat of a competition with Star Wars. Or with Marvel. Or with Disney's movie division as a whole. So does Bob Iger really want Avatar 2 to succeed? If it does, that means a competing studio and a competing company's francise is succeeding in Bob's favorite division. If Avatar 2 doesn't succeed, then it likely spells doom for Avatar land in Iger's mind. Sure, realistically the land should be able to do just fine without the movie, but Bob places such a high importance on the value of IP that I doubt he'd see that.
So basically those two paragraphs are saying that Avatar is a double-edged sword. Does he want it to succeed or not? I don't think that Bob Iger foresaw in 2011 how much competition Disney would be in with Avatar years later, directly or indirectly. It's like, do you root for your lifelong favorite NFL team, or the one that your brother plays on? Tough call, and in the end, you probably wish that your brother could just be on your favorite team.
Another big concern is fans. Fans of Avatar, I mean. Oh wait, you can't find them? Yeah neither can I, and neither can Bob, because there are so very few die-hard Avatar fans. Bob is probably comparing Pandora to WWoHP in his head since this is his "revenge" or "comback" project in a certain way (at least I think so). So he's probably been thinking about WWoHP's opening day quite a bit. If you recall, that opening day had so many fans packed everywhere, there were lines and backups across the entire resort. A lot of these people were superfans (dare I say, geeks?) of Harry Poter who came in droves to be there at opening. But for Avatar, I don't see those same type of people. I don't see, other than theme park entusiasts, who would make that type of effort to visit on opening day. I think Iger is definitely concerned that the news won't see pictures of a huge crowd of dressed up superfans on opening day, but rather, a normal day's crowd of normal looking people. And that that lack of momentum and lack of true fans might carry over how popular the land is. In 2011, I don't think enough time had passed for him to see how few potter-caliber fans there are for Avatar.
Very few people 18 and under have seen Avatar, and in an effort to attract all ages, that's gotta be concerning to him a bit. If children do not have much interest or have no knowledge of the IP, will parents be inclined to book a trip for it? I don't know if Bob thinks like that but his spreadsheets and pie charts must indicate this concern somehow. After all, Disney made such an effort in 2009 and 2010 to appeal to boys, with buying marvel, taking Cinderella's name out of the carousel and replacing it with Prince Charming, and then finally, changing their plans for New Fantasyland by getting rid of the snow white ride and adding a seven dwarfs ride instead. Sure, this age issue with Avatar hasn't changed much since 2011, but I don't think Iger saw every problem clearly back then.
I think he's worried about merchandise as well, especially that the merchandise sales won't be high enough to make up for that percentage (still don't know how much) Disney is giving to Cameron. But that's been discussed and I have no evidence or thoughts to prove this one, so I'll skip it.
Bob doesn't understand theme parks very well, and doesn't understand what makes a certain thing in a park popular. I think his main motivation to sign that deal was Avatar's glowing theater numbers. However, and you may disagree, but I truly think it's shocking and unpredictable to him and many others how the top-grossing movie of all time (by a landslide) has completely disappeared from people's radars. Not saying people hate the movie, but nobody really talks about it in normal conversation. It feels gone. Finding Nemo wasn't the top-grossing film, but it's one movie and yet it's still highly known and talked about today. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory flopped in theaters and yet everyone uses it for memes. Avatar is dead, in my opinion, and I don't think Bob is optimistic enough to put a ton of faith in it being revived,
We all know what happens when we're angry. Sometimes it comes out, but other times, we just move swiftly and in our own path, and we don't look at the full picture. Not saying Bob reached what we can call anger, but I think Harry Potter's success came at such a surprise to him that he was thrown off, and so he responded. I believe the newness of the situation and his lack of theme park knowledge caused him to look at it all with foggy glasses when he was signing his name in 2011, but now he's had time to sit back and think about whether it was a good idea. And the things I said above lead me to believe he isn't totally happy.
So your points are good and I didn't attack them because, to be honest, they are true and I don't have anything to say against them. I don't agree with them personally but Bob Iger probably still does, and that's what we're talking about here. I just think that the negatives are more overwhelming. My argument is putting a lot of faith in Bob Iger (and his executive minions) having time to sit back and think, as well as now being able to see the double-edged sword that might've been too far off in 2011. So yeah, that's my (very long) argument, and I hope I have talked in terms of Bob and Disney execs' opinions rather than my own. I hope what I've said is discussable if anyone wants to take a stab at it.
Feel free to reply and disagree. We still have a long time to go before the land opens so all we can do is discuss possibilities. 
