I try to find some nuance in modern attraction development that makes me appear deferential to Disney and critical of modern consumer tastes. I do think that development of the Guardians coaster project in EPCOT and the cloning of TRON in Magic Kingdom are examples of the company responding to consumer tastes in an incredibly cynical and flippant way. I don't want to use the word lazy because plenty of footsoldiers are definitely working hard on developing the attractions. I put a failure to challenge WDI to come up with a TRON concept that fits EPCOT (a Digital Frontier of TRON pavilion seems like a good enough fit like The Seas), and a Guardians dark ride that fits Tomorrowland on management. Take the most-value engineered idea of cloning a Space Mountain replacement in another castle park to be a Space Mountain... challenger? companion? in the biggest castle park is cynical and flippant. Tossing a roller coaster into EPCOT with little reasoning other than wanting to throw slop to the masses is cynical and flippant.
Trying to finagle an actual percentage belies the rhetorical point: there is some degree with which Wall Street has influenced how Disney management treats the company they are charged to run, but the multigenerational institutional rot is a problem that is apparent to most any stakeholder in the company, from frontline employees to now-wavering but once enthusiastic customers. Since the death of Frank Wells, the Disney difference has devolved from being a creative company challenging itself for the benefit of itself and its customers, into a Borg, an infinite maw. No one invested at any point in developing meaningful, transcendent production in the company has been at the head in almost 20 years. No one in the relevant EVP offices have either. Treating the domestic parks as a mature asset for the last two decades has been a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Flight of Passage was the first innovation in the domestic parks since, I don't know, Soarin'? Toy Story Mania feels too charitable, and I can't think of anything else between 1999 and 2015 (I guess it's hypocritical to not think that FoP is derivative of Soarin and Toy Story Mania IS derivative of any dark ride shooter that came before, but c'est la vie). Disregarding the need to develop and innovate the product allowed the parade of soul-sucking clowns from Pressler, to Staggs, to the final boss of Bob Chapek, to drive the most unique and defining division of the company into the ditch.
Now it's all we can come to accept and know; that the division has no higher ambition than making more money. Hey, it's a publicly traded, for profit American corporation. Making money is kind of the point! We're not children. In fact, I think people who focus on the parks division of the company can by and large have a more healthy approach to engaging with the company than the adults who froth over the latest movies or shows. Most anyone who aligns with these thoughts consciously visit the parks less, or otherwise engage with the parks in a way that separates less money from them than it would in the past.
Imagining that to be the ultimate solution to the plight is disingenuous. I have friends who work for the company. I have memories I love to share with people in my life now or might be in the future, because of the work the company has done. I recognize that so much of the value of the company, both on and off the balance sheet, comes from adequate stewardship of the domestic parks. Poor stewardship will rot the company out until it might be too late, but all we really get to do on here is complain about it.
