The level of stupidity is astounding.
Even more astonishing is that stupidity is the widely accepted principle.
How is Disney supposed to grow as a company (which is the sole interest of shareholders) if they don’t invest to grow?
Movies aren’t doing too hot, so their bet in the film segment is streaming. So investment to grow has been directed to streaming as their linear revenue streams are drying up.
Elsewhere, in Parks and Resorts, you had a steady stream of additions (Shanghai, Fantasy and Dream, 2 Galaxy Edges, Pandora, Zootopia, Frozen, Mystic Point, three Toy Story Lands, Grizzly Gulch, couple Avengers Campuses, another Frozen land and doubling of a park’s footprint, 3 new ships on the way and one (Wish) recently delivered, private island, and a bunch of smaller stuff like a redone TT, two MMRRs, Tron, Guardians, mistake on the lake, cars land, mistake on the lake fix, rivers of light, etc. etc.) across the world Cars Land until covid shut off the pipe and pressed reset on all projects in the pipeline.
But since covid we’ve still had projects open up (albeit delayed) that were from pre-covid. Now, outside of two rethemes and Paris, there’s really no active projects across the globe. Which is an undeniable issue for future growth.
So how can they drive future growth? Jacking up prices? They already did that stateside to absorb post-COVID travel, and it’s not a sustainable business model long-term (which they know, shockingly, not everyone is a bumbling idiot that doesn’t fit your agenda).
A huge number of projects are coming through the pipeline. That is a fact.
Imagineering cleared house during covid, but they’ve been furiously rehiring over the last few months. Plus they’ve just had several projects finish after layoffs ended (Disneyland Toontown, Guardians, Tron, Epcot overhaul, Zootopia, Hong Kong Frozen, and Avengers Campuses), so they at least maintained enough staff to finish those projects, so that’s the baseline floor, and then they’ve been adding like crazy (veteran and new staff), so projects are coming.
On the imagineering side, even Fantasy Springs would factor in. Huge mega project that’s basically delivered at this point that’ll relocate huge amounts of staff.
Restrained optimism is good, but pure cynicism is silly.