News Disney plans to accelerate Parks investment to $60 billion over 10 years

[MrPromey]

In the grand scheme of things, there have not been that many things announced at D23 and then cancelled. I can think of the theater, poppins, play pavilion, and reflections. Three of those 4 were Covid related and would exist today if not for a global pandemic. And the theater was cancelled for a number of reasons.

Most of this board complained endlessly about reflections and would have been relentless with their dislike for poppins.

... If it was just an issue with Covid, why were they canceled?

Why aren't they under construction as we speak?

But you're right, if what you want to do is move the goalposts here - they only didn't follow through on four big projects we can remember in recent history they said they were going to do... Five if you want to count the festival center many of us weren't fans of, too... Six if you want to count the Spaceship Earth redo...

Going back to my comment and what it was a response to, how does that compare to Universal scrapping an attraction they never told the public they were planning to build to begin with?

 

[peter11435]

... If it was just an issue with Covid, why were they canceled?

Why aren't they under construction as we speak?

Everything that gets built in a Disney park is a product of the times and forces at play when it’s greenlit and built.

Covid caused projects to be delayed and that pause resulted in some projects being looked at differently as numerous factors had changed as time moved on. Where and how they want to spend and invest has changed.

The play pavilion was already going to be outdated relatively fast and a multi year delay only made matters worse.

 

[MrPromey]

Everything that gets built in a Disney park is a product of the times and forces at play when it’s greenlit and built.

Covid caused projects to be delayed and that pause resulted in some projects being looked at differently as numerous factors had changed as time moved on. Where and how they want to spend and invest has changed.

So... "Some time has passed and we've changed out minds. You're not getting it now. We aren't saying you're not getting but would like you to forget we said you were", basically.



... Just for fun, you might want to re-read my post because I had some fun with more thoughts after you'd begun your response but before you'd hit submit.

For the record, I'm not on any "side" here. I'd love for them to do cool stuff and to be talking about that.

I'd love to be optimistic again.

I'd love to see them over-deliver and surprise us all. I just haven't seen that happen in a long, long time which is why I have no faith it's going to happen, now.

I very much would like to be proven wrong.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Different type of guests. I have always felt if you can only do family coasters than don't bother. Coasters aren't and will never be for story telling.

What does that have to do with reducing the attraction count of a land?

 

[Indy_UK]

WDW needs Capacity desperately so I don't understand why they can't do easy wins to add capacity? using wonders of life will add capacity. Cheaper builds like Main Street Theatre would have added capacity but they axed that.

Especially in the international parks, they want to build a whole land but add 1 average ride it in. That doesn't sound like financial sense to me?

My wish list which I think WDW needs:

Epcot. Not much needed here.
Wonders of life Pavilion. I would actually revisit what they were doing with the play pavilion. Couple of small attractions with Wreck it Ralf and Inside Out.
Completely gut Imagination Pavilion and give figment a new Dark ride that he deserves.

Hollywood Studios. Fair amount of work still needed.
Toy Story land to be expanded behind Slinky and they literally plop clones of Army Drop and RC Racer from the other parks which are Cheap D-ticket rides that adds some variety for smaller kids.
Animation Courtyard to have Club House Disney updated. Get Licensing for Bluey too.
Build out Galaxy's edge to try and eventually integrate the Star Cruiser. Add the Banther ride
(Not in these 10 years but get the Marvel License, flatten star tours and Indy and build an avengers campus here.

Magic Kingdom
Build the Main Street theatre and add a show like Mickey and the Magician from Paris.
Build behind Thunder Mountain as just a villains land.
Re-theme Village Haus to Snuggly Duckling.
Add an outdoor theatre and have a Tangled stage show. Move the toilets over.
Add another attraction over there. Maybe nick one from Fantasy Springs.

Animal Kingdom
Build what's been announced with South America. Indy, Ecanto ect
Build the Jungle book ride that was rumoured years ago.

 

[MrPromey]

Hold up, the $17B is very clearly part of the $60B they’re planning. Otherwise they’d say $77B in the filing.

I believe it predated the $60B and we've kind of speculated that it's now our share of that $60B but I don't think they've actually said...

Which of course - who knows? They've proven time and time again that no forward looking statements about anything really matter.

Maybe we'll get $17B, maybe more, maybe nothing if "circumstances change" but it's a great talking point for today from the mouth of someone who's A$$ should be retired when it comes time for someone else to cover that check.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

I believe it predated the $60B and we've kind of speculated that it's now our share of that $60B but I don't think they've actually said...

Which of course - who knows? They've proven time and time again that no forward looking statements about anything really matter.

Maybe we'll get $17B, maybe more, maybe nothing if "circumstances change" but it's a great talking point for today from the mouth of someone who's A$$ should be retired when it comes time for someone else to cover that check.

This sort of misunderstands the position Disney has found itself in.

They're not publicly committing to these large dollar amounts out of the goodness of their hearts. They're not drawing up plans for the fun of it.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

If Disney was saying nothing, the read would be they’ve completely turned against parks and no investment is ever forthcoming with current leadership. They have to state some intention of direction.

Indeed. If Disney wasn't saying anything about their plans for the parks, people on here would be upset. However, when Disney states they have big plans with some numbers attached, people are upset because they are not saying precisely what those plans are. When Disney released Blue Sky concepts before they had anything concrete to announce, fans got upset they were announcing projects too early in the development phase.

I honestly wasn't a fan of all the Blue Sky announcements over recent years, except for the course correction announcement of Tropical Americas for Animal Kingdom to reassure people they weren't going to completely disregard the park's current theme. Still, you can't complain that they announce things too early in the development process and then complain that they are not sharing all their plans before they are finalised.

 

[MrPromey]

Toy Story land to be expanded behind Slinky and they literally plop clones of Army Drop and RC Racer from the other parks which are Cheap D-ticket rides that adds some variety for smaller kids.

I don't think these are high enough capacity attractions to really work with the crowds WDW sees. Here in Florida, those sorts of rides work fine at a place like Legoland but I think Swirling Saucers has already exposed the problem with that in a park like HS.

If the park were built up as much as it already should be, those might be additions that could work but Dumbo is already in a park that has more to do than any other park in Florida and they decided to rebuild that one in a new location just to double the capacity and there are still waits long enough they felt the need to put a playground in the line for it to handle the patience and attention spans of it's intended audience so I have my doubts unless maybe they took a similar approach, here.

... with that in mind, maybe revisiting a play area in the vein of the defunct Honey I shrunk the kids area would work... or even an indoor version (something not weather-dependent) that could be a Sunnyside classroom, possibly or something like that since Andy's room is no-longer the focus of the franchise - relatively cheap, some minor interactive elements sprinkled around and intended more for children but designed and built enough for adults to be able to crawl, climb and slide around on, too.

If they really wanted to be innovative, instead of making that a standalone attraction, it could be the virtual line space for a big chunk of the wait for Saucers, Slinky Dog and one or two other low-capacity attractions like the ones you mentioned, the same way Dumbo's playground works today but on a larger scale than that and serving different "lines" at the same time.*

If it's indoors, during bad weather when all that other stuff is shut down, it could just work as an attraction space by itself the way the HISTK "set" did, too.

*Each with their own waits - not suggesting you wait one time here and then get right on all of them.

 

[erasure fan1]

I think this situation gets distorted - they certainly didn't spend a Billion dollars on each coast because they thought "they'll just eat anything up". If that were the case they'd have built the X-Wing Spinner in Echo Lake and called it a day.

When I say eat it up, I'm referring to the handling of star wars as whole. They were going to make star wars their own way. They wanted it to be their creation. They figured they could do whatever they wanted and we'd buy it up. Iger even said, all I have to do is send an email that we're open, and people will be lining up for miles. I'm not saying they wanted to make a lackluster land. But if you asked 1000 people what a star wars land woud be after they announced it. I'm not sure too many would describe what we got. I guarantee you'd get mostly anwers revolving around the OT. And Disney knew it. They just thought the name star wars enough to make people not care. It could have worked the way it is. They just didn't plan out the sequels well enough.

 

[Jrb1979]

Indeed. If Disney wasn't saying anything about their plans for the parks, people on here would be upset. However, when Disney states they have big plans with some numbers attached, people are upset because they are not saying precisely what those plans are. When Disney released Blue Sky concepts before they had anything concrete to announce, fans got upset they were announcing projects too early in the development phase.

I honestly wasn't a fan of all the Blue Sky announcements over recent years, except for the course correction announcement of Tropical Americas for Animal Kingdom to reassure people they weren't going to completely disregard the park's current theme. Still, you can't complain that they announce things too early in the development process and then complain that they are not sharing all their plans before they are finalised.

I wouldn't be upset they don't announce anything early. I have always been on the side of not saying anything til shovels are in the ground. At D23 only announce things that have started construction and stay away from concept art.

I would even be a fan of dropping D23 altogether.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I wouldn't be upset they don't announce anything early. I have always been on the side of not saying anything til shovels are in the ground. At D23 only announce things that have started construction and stay away from concept art.

I would even be a fan of dropping D23 altogether.

Except Disney uses elements of fast-track project delivery so shovels are in the ground early during the design phases. Plenty of changes also occur after shovels are in the ground. So you’re looking at maybe a few months of delay in announcements to meet what you claim to want.

 

[MisterPenguin]

... If it was just an issue with Covid, why were they canceled?

Disney was pulling in about $12B in profit every year. The COVID years brought income down to virtually nil.

So, projects that they thought would be funded by cash on hand, no longer had cash on hand.

Not to mention making streaming the top priority to save their home entertainment market in the light of linear cord cutting.

 

[MrPromey]

Disney was pulling in about $12B in profit every year. The COVID years brought income down to virtually nil.

So, projects that they thought would be funded by cash on hand, no longer had cash on hand.

Not to mention making streaming the top priority to save their home entertainment market in the light of linear cord cutting.

So I guess they're still broke?

 

[MisterPenguin]

So I guess they're still broke?

By Disney standards... yeah.

They went from just $2B cash on hand last year to now $14B and are projecting (I think) over $20B by end of this fiscal year.

As Iger keeps putting it: They turned a corner.

 

[MrPromey]

When I say eat it up, I'm referring to the handling of star wars as whole. They were going to make star wars their own way. They wanted it to be their creation. They figured they could do whatever they wanted and we'd buy it up. Iger even said, all I have to do is send an email that we're open, and people will be lining up for miles. I'm not saying they wanted to make a lackluster land. But if you asked 1000 people what a star wars land woud be after they announced it. I'm not sure too many would describe what we got. I guarantee you'd get mostly anwers revolving around the OT. And Disney knew it. They just thought the name star wars enough to make people not care. It could have worked the way it is. They just didn't plan out the sequels well enough.

Or apparently didn't plan them out at all.

Still boggles my mind that they were in the mouse house and paying no attention to how Marvel was doing it when they knew going in they were making a trilogy and still apparently decided to wing it.

 

[MrPromey]

By Disney standards... yeah.

They went from just $2B cash on hand last year to now $14B and are projecting (I think) over $20B by end of this fiscal year.

As Iger keeps putting it: They turned a corner.

I don't know.

Even with that being the case, knowing the state of their own parks, knowing the competition, you'd think they'd at least have been in the planning stages and preparing to start construction once the funds started rolling in.

And it would be nice to think they were... but if they were, I think we'd have already gotten that announcement instead of blue sky at their recent paid events since they've had no problem announcing things that were a half decade away in the past.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Maybe it's that the blue sky stuff needs to be nailed down a bit more. I mean, I hate a lot of the thought process on it (lands dedicated to one IP) but I'd be happy with expansion. Now, I'm a ways away from being in that thread, so I could be remembering completely wrong, and maybe that's why I thought the skepticism was warranted, but I don't remember it being "We are going to develop this land. We are currently designing ideas for it." I remember it more as we have this land we COULD develop, and we could do something like this. I guess I don't remember it being a concrete 10 year plan, I remember it as there being nothing to announce in the pipeline, so here is some things people have pitched as ideas. Then the next year it was different stuff. Maybe it gets nailed down at D23 this year a bit more, and that would change a lot of (at least my) perspective.

And I don't think it's totally ridiculous. You are correct, a host of things could happen that impact Disney, or ALL theme parks. But that's kind of my point. I think people are skeptical when nothing has started in terms of WDW with that large amount of money. It's a lot easier when something happens to cancel a project that is not even really in a development phase than it is for one where the structure has started (and I'm not saying it could never happen, or wouldn't happen, etc. Just that it's easier to justify when money hasn't yet been invested).

I don't know, I get it's easy to dismiss the same people who do seem to complain about everything (and they deserve it as much as the people who praise everything). But I do understand there being some of the "Lets see some of these plans already" with it being talked about as much as it is.

Disney didn’t say they have a specific ten year plan. People here are complaining that they have not been more specific when it would make no sense to have a lot of those specifics at this time.

Disney definitely did a lot of hedging in their presentations because it has been a long time since they’ve talked about projects that have not yet cleared Feasibility. And while lots of projects are considered and don’t make it out of Blue Sky and Concept Design, there’s a lot of popular misunderstanding about how those phases of design work. They can last months and even years. They’re also not being handled by individual auteurs. This is true at Disney and Universal, getting a project through Feasibility is going to, at a minimum, take a few months and at least a few dozen people. So while having construction work done is definitely a bigger thing that will manifest sunk cost responses and is the start of serious expenses, design is also not cheap.

My issue isn’t constant complaining. I do plenty. My general view is quite pessimistic. My problem is when the complaints are based on inconsistent nonsense.

 

[Jrb1979]

Disney didn’t say they have a specific ten year plan. People here are complaining that they have not been more specific when it would make no sense to have a lot of those specifics at this time.

Disney definitely did a lot of hedging in their presentations because it has been a long time since they’ve talked about projects that have not yet cleared Feasibility. And while lots of projects are considered and don’t make it out of Blue Sky and Concept Design, there’s a lot of popular misunderstanding about how those phases of design work. They can last months and even years. They’re also not being handled by individual auteurs. This is true at Disney and Universal, getting a project through Feasibility is going to, at a minimum, take a few months and at least a few dozen people. So while having construction work done is definitely a bigger thing that will manifest sunk cost responses and is the start of serious expenses, design is also not cheap.

My issue isn’t constant complaining. I do plenty. My general view is quite pessimistic. My problem is when the complaints are based on inconsistent nonsense.

I understand all that, I know it takes time to plan and develop things from Concept. My complaint is don't release that information to hype new attractions.

Follow the regional park plan and don't say anything til blueprints and plans are all done. Basically do what Universal did with Velocicoaster

 

[lazyboy97o]

Would it be better than closing them and just leaving the spaces vacant for a decade or more in parks that don't have enough attraction capacity to handle the guests they've got?

... because that seems to be more Disney's speed these days.

I e said plenty about vacant and under utilized space at Walt Disney World. But Universal Orlando Resort also has vacant attraction space. Islands of Adventure now has an entire land without its attractions.

... If it was just an issue with Covid, why were they canceled?

Why aren't they under construction as we speak?

But you're right, if what you want to do is move the goalposts here - they only didn't follow through on four big projects we can remember in recent history they said they were going to do... Five if you want to count the festival center many of us weren't fans of, too... Six if you want to count the Spaceship Earth redo...

Going back to my comment and what it was a response to, how does that compare to Universal scrapping an attraction they never told the public they were planning to build to begin with?

Really? Those projects really weren’t that great. Complaining that they’re not building something that wasn’t really very good that people didn’t like is pretty much just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

Many of the aspects of projects that people complain about Disney cutting aren’t things that were publicized. We’re also not talking about the “General public” and what they know. We’re talking about fans who follow this stuff so the fact that Universal didn’t publicly announce the project is irrelevant because it was still known. Even if things were never announced, people would absolutely be going on and on if a Disney project was permitted for three attractions and those were all killed and only one new attraction ended up being added. Disney never announced the Bantha ride or third Pandora ride but people know they were cut.