To me there is plenty to be excited about the future of the parks.
Merchandising and retail managers and supply chain managers from a dying industry bring nothing at all to parks and resorts, which is a thriving division of the company. What would they bring to the movie studios? How could a profitable and successful and growing industry and division of the company gain anything from this merger when their current direction is working? Not only does this not bode well for anti-ip theme park purists, it doesn't seem to make sense for synergy folks either. The balance they've struck is working right now and they are spending like crazy to scale the business. IP discussion aside, there is no guarantee that the thousands of new uncreative labor with access to parks and resorts leadership and decision-making will be okay with the culture of scaling the business.
If you are optimistic about the future, that optimism is unrelated to this merger of corporate bureaucracies and based on the general business direction that precedes it. Furthermore, I don't believe that any mandates that constrain the design process, even though in some cases design benefits from constraints, is shown to create superior results. The darkest period of Disney parks history, end of the 90s and early 2000s, is when merchandising culture took over Disney parks. Show quality deteriorated, and maintenance deteriorated too, to the extent that people died. It cost hundreds of millions to restore disneyland before the 50th because show upkeep was relaxed. Shops became less diegetic and replaced with a system of pushing generic merchandise, mixed, and less lucrative show-relevant merchandising. Shops interior and fixtures were homogenized. Project budgets slashed for new attractions (but not for retail!) Rides that were deemed less popular or frequented by guests or expensive to maintain were closed or threatened with closure... see lincoln, country bears, the subs, treehouse. Tony baxter saved the subs with nemo, saved the treehouse with tarzan, and nobody would let pressler get away with closing lincoln because of its place in disneyland history. This merge isn't likely to excite hundreds of consumer products business managers about the nuances of themed entertainment; it is more likely to inject their [failing] business models and "processes" into imagineering and parks and resorts management the way that engineering processes were acquired in the late 70s/early 80s when wdi hired a ton of engineers to design epcot as the aerospace industry saw a dip in employment. We've recovered from pressler era, sort of, but the legacy survives, and I'm obviously afraid that history is repeating itself.
And how does merging the two help investors and business managers understand what divisions of the company are to credit with growth? Or what strategies are working? Maybe it would accelerate the flow of capital between these business divisions, freeing up capital for parks. Could projects get constructed more quickly? Perhaps. But if parks are already doing really well, it is just as likely that spending gets pulled out of parks to save other business models. If we had #thanksshanghai last year, because of funds being shuffled around to subsidize parks around the globe, imagine #thanksdcp, when hundreds of the disney stores are failing and disney pulls billions out of parks and resorts' theme parks and cruise ships to subsidize a failing business model. This news is kind of meaningless without seeing what that merging strategy is, the intent, and the corporate culture that will emerge. But it certainly doesn't automatically translate to good news or reason for optimism.
