Bob Iger at WDW now ... BoD to Follow?

[Jahona]

Hey Guys @PhotoDave219 has already said this once, and I'm guilty with replying once before but, can we please move the UNI vs. Disney Discussion to another thread? You have some decent discussion going and it should be completed elsewhere.

 

[The Mom]

We will discuss universal in the appropriate thread.

This isnt it.

I agree.

 

[Electricsoup]

Nothing for certain. There isn't to much room to expand the park. This map was brought up before in this thread. It was posted by @marni1971 of possible locations for use. One of them was saying use the grey section. that is located across from the park.

There's enormous amounts of room to expand the park. They could even keep everything on site and add almost a whole second park by just movie the parking lots elsewhere. I truly hope that park footprint expansion is a part of this expenditure.

 

[PhotoDave219]

As long as they don't mess around with the retro vibe of Hollywood and Sunset. I love that.

Not that I'm aware of, but my Bothans havent gotten their hands on the plans quite yet. Just the agenda.

 

[Jahona]

There's enormous amounts of room to expand the park. They could even keep everything on site and add almost a whole second park by just movie the parking lots elsewhere. I truly hope that park footprint expansion is a part of this expenditure.

I just have a hard time seeing them dramatically increasing the footprint of the park. The western side is stuck against the road. The southern side could be cleared of trees if the land is able to built upon. They would have to create a way to cross over or under the entrance gate. There is also a water way to the south that would have to be taken into account.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

No real need to expand since they will be flattening 3/5ths of the park. That will open up a ton of room.

And that's why, for close to $2 Billion, we still won't get anything like the Cadillac Range.

 

[Jlasoon]

Dividend boosted 15%. Payout now twice a year. Just announced.

1 topic of discussion with BoD I would assume lol.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Dividend boosted 15%. Payout now twice a year. Just announced.

1 topic of discussion with BoD I would assume lol.

Interesting. On the financial wires I suppose?

 

[Shaman]

So the meetings are over?

 

[PhotoDave219]

Wait. Found it. From the associated press....

NEW YORK (AP) — Disney says it will pay dividends twice a year instead of once, and increased its dividend rate.

The company said Wednesday it will pay a dividend of 66 cents on July 29. The payment will go to shareholders of record as of July 6. At that rate, it would pay $1.32 in annual dividends, up almost 15 percent over a year ago.

The Burbank, California-based company paid an annual dividend of $1.15 in January.

The Walt Disney Co. had a strong year in 2014 thanks to popular movies like "Frozen," which came out in late 2013, along with sales of toys and other merchandise and solid results from its theme parks and media networks. This spring "Avengers: Age of Ultron" did more than $1 billion at the box office, and in December Disney is set to release "Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens," the first "Star Wars" film in a decade, following its acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012.

Shares of Disney have risen 38 percent over the last year. Its shares finished at $113.77 on Wednesday, down 64 cents. The dividend hike was announced after the close. Its shares rose 62 cents to $114.39 in after-hours trading.

 

[PhotoDave219]

So the meetings are over?

No.

 

[DGracey]

Dividend boosted 15%. Payout now twice a year. Just announced.

1 topic of discussion with BoD I would assume lol.

Oh dear. This will cost the company a lot of free cash flow. Too bad that dividend boost wasn't re-allocated to capital expenditures in the swamp. Shareholders have done well the last few years, and now they're doing even better I guess ...

Always find it fascinating the Chairman of the Board who approves these dividends, directly benefits from this stuff in a massive way, because he is paid heavily in ... company stock! What a tangled web capitalism weaves.

Onward and upward.

 

[BrerJon]

On the timing of announcements... a friend of mine just pointed out that Marvel Studios hasn't booked the main hall at Comic-Con this year. Normally they do a big presentation, and with the new Spider-Man you would have thought the coming together of the Civil War cast would have been the big deal.

So if it's not happening at Comic-Con, that almost certainly means D23 is where it's at. So it seems Disney is looking to push their convention as being much more than just a Disneyana-type fan event, but a rival, competing event on Comic-Con's turf and scale. If that's the case, it makes sense that they would want to save any decent park announcements for then too.

 

[Jlasoon]

Oh dear. This will cost the company a lot of free cash flow. Too bad that dividend boost wasn't re-allocated to capital expenditures in the swamp. Shareholders have done well the last few years, and now they're doing even better I guess ...

Always find it fascinating the Chairman of the Board who approves these dividends, directly benefits from this stuff in a massive way, because he is paid heavily in ... company stock! What a tangled web capitalism weaves.

Onward and upward.

I know what you mean. The people who need it the least profit the most. I'm not going to complain as a shareholder. But this wasn't needed. I'm just waiting for the increase in share buyback at the expense of the neglected parks.

 

[WDW1974]

It's entertaining to think you could be talking to a billionaire and have no idea.

I've talked to plenty. And I've known of their wealth beforehand. ... Some were quite nice and down to earth (the type who would drive themselves, eat at a Denny's from time to time and have been in a Target) and I didn't feel bad that they had these massive fortunes, others were obnoxious and seemed to feel that they truly are from a superior 'tribe' or that the rest of us exist like monkeys at the zoo, to be used for their entertainment!

In other words, there's good and bad in every group you can possibly find.

 

[zooey]

On the timing of announcements... a friend of mine just pointed out that Marvel Studios hasn't booked the main hall at Comic-Con this year. Normally they do a big presentation, and with the new Spider-Man you would have thought the coming together of the Civil War cast would have been the big deal.

So if it's not happening at Comic-Con, that almost certainly means D23 is where it's at. So it seems Disney is looking to push their convention as being much more than just a Disneyana-type fan event, but a rival, competing event on Comic-Con's turf and scale. If that's the case, it makes sense that they would want to save any decent park announcements for then too.

They did that in 2013 at the last D23 too, so nothing new. A lot of the big studios pulled out of comic con this year.

 

[WDW1974]

So how many attractions would this involve? And will the attraction count be higher than what was there before?

There are so few attractions in that park that you can almost count them on one hand.

I'm hoping TSPL and a Star Wars D/E isn't all a $1.5 billion-$2 billion makeover gets us.

The park will be a much better place when all is said and finished (years from now). But don't get too crazy with expectations or you'll be disappointed.

Ultimately, this will be a good thing. Isn't that what you should care about?

P.S. I think I'm jumping to Page 40 ... I don't have the time or patience to go through 35 pages. Nope.

 

[BrerJon]

A friend of mine took a pic this afternoon of him over at Uni.

View attachment 98270

If only. The sighting of Staggs in Hogsmeade would give me more hope than anything here. Mind you given how molly-coddled and handler-led they are in their own parks, if the execs did visit Universal they'd probably come away thinking it was awful - I doubt the Team Members would kiss their behinds anywhere near as much as the plaids do!

 

[WDW1974]

I don't know that there IS a number specifically for Pandora. To my knowledge, relocating FotLK, the Harambe expansion, converting existing infrastructure to be nighttime-compatible, and Pandora itself are all lumped into one overall project. Something in my memory banks says "between $0.5B and $1B."

As you can see in many of the permits that @danlb_2000 has shared, the project is referred to as "DAK Expansion" (code name Morpho), not "Avatarland" or anything specific.

Pandora has always been presented to me as one $500 million project. You could see relocating the LK show in there, but some people want to place things like the Doo-Doo Dessert Shoppe and the RoL show and the night safaris and I think that's off.

A lot of people like to stick TSMM and WoC and Pixar Play Parade in the DCA 2.0 Makeover Budget when they were not part of it.

 

[WDW1974]

I'm well familiar, Dr. Ryan....

Its why i never post documents. And sometimes am vague with the details. However this is a meeting agenda we're talking about... and yeah there are likely other things on it.

Of course there are. But the main reason for the reason, as well as the locale, was to deal with issues directly related to this business unit.