Who is CEO when EPCOT and DHS are on life support and AK was until Pandora opened? The parks are in a terrible state at the moment and I'm the biggest Disney apologist on this board.
Do the same thing for the rides we got under Iger versus hat was built on Eisner's watch.
Eisner wasn't perfect, but something like Mission Space was an attempt to be cool (I still think it is) and was a $100M+ investment. At least it wasn't just a cheap give up like Frozen for Maelstrom or closing Snow White for a half baked 7DMT and terrible New Fantasyland.
I'll go over the highlights.
Iger
New Fantasyland - TOTAL miss, took too long, nothing amazing AT ALL
7DMT - Utterly too short and disappointing
Mermaid - Complete miss
Frozen - Fine, but lazy and deleted a ride that was fine to get it
Snow White - Closed for no reason
Toy Story - solid, not great
Pandora - very solid, still should be slightly better in terms of ride offering
Star Wars - Better be great, impossible to screw up unless he does. Taking too long.
Toy Story land - Two carnival rides look dead on arrival.
Test Track refurb - I believe ruined a great ride.
Pirates - essentially ruined with too much Depp.
BILLIONS spent and wasted on an IT project that should be used for attractions, maintenance, expansion.
Festival of Light - Terrible, half baked show.
Maintenance is seemingly always bad under Iger
Raised prices like crazy while cutting costs.
I give him credit for acquisitions
Eisner
Animal Kingdom park - alone probably a bigger accomplishment than anything Iger did...everything in it including Kilimanjaro, a true E-Ticket.
Hollywood Studios Park - That's 2 parks out of the 4.
Water Parks - Again, at least trying to expand.
Everest - E-Ticket. One of the best rides ever built, Iger's fault never fixing it.
ToT - True E-Ticket. One of the greatest rides ever built
Splash Mountain - True E-ticket. One of the greatest rides ever built, universally loved.
Dinosaur - E-Ticket
Test Track - true E-ticket. incredibly ambitious, great ambitious attraction (since ruined)
Mission Space - E-ticket. At least ambitious and I think is really unique/cool.
Fantasmic - Universally loved.
MANY hotels
Eisner had his issues, but from a Disney WORLD parks and attractions perspective, it isn't close. More E-tickets were built on Eisner's watch (I listed 7 still operating and popular today) than Iger could shake a stick at with the only one being FoP at Pandora.
The only reason Iger could ignore and ruin the at least 2 of the parks today is because Eisner built so much while he was CEO and Iger could squeeze margin and expand elsewhere.
Eisner was an epic CEO for the entire company until the late 90's.
All the things you mentioned are his early term when he was doing great for the company. He successfully made money off of small hits in the box office, he added to the park's, but you are missing two things VERY IMPORTANT.
Eisner's
Hollywood Studios was rushed to compete with Universal Studios and it was a failed concept. Literally penned as a half day park. Only had what? 3 rides?
Animal Kingdom opened with 2 rides!!!! TWO!!! Kilimanjaro Safaris and Countdown to Extinction. Kali River Rapids/Asia was followed shortly, but it was a D-ticket at best with its super short length and zero thrills.
Expedition Everest is an epic ride (did I say it was epic?), but the ride has flaws. It wasn't as good as it should have been for the scale. Although I'm not complaining, I do give Eisner props for it, but it was built mainly for the reason that the park was underbuilt.
Toy Story Midway Mania is the best interactive ride ever made. It may not be a super headliner, but it is certainly an E-ticket. Something about it is just so damn fun, and that's what a theme park is all about: FUN. It was one hell of a win then and it is one hell of a win now.
Must I mention Eisner's destruction of the animation division (right before The Little Mermaid, he wanted to close it!) in the late 90's into the 2000's. His fued with Pixar that almost cost Disney their partnership. I mean he literally opened Disneyland Paris and overbuilt the resort, so of course it was going to initially fail.
He destroyed the Disney theme park name making s#%£ parks like Walt Disney Studios, the original Disney's California Adventure, and even to a lesser extent Disney's Hollywood Studios, and the original Animal Kingdom (unlike DCA just being bad everywhere this park was just severely underbuilt).
Notice that while I hate Disney's treatment of The Walt Disney World Resort, every problem that they have now was because of Eisner. Oh and yes there was a lack of investment, but we are now getting it, so stay tuned.
Did I mention that under Iger DCA has become second to worst to one of the best theme parks in the world?
Oh and that's not to mention how good Iger has been for the company TRIPLING THE STOCK, acquiring 3 of the best movie companies the world has ever known, fixing Walt Disney Animation, repairing theme parks like Disney California Adventure and soon to be many others, and the list goes on and on too.
My friends, there is a reason a man, Roy E. Disney, wanted to rid the Walt Disney Company of this man. Eisner's time was up a decade before he left, and had he left then, he would have been viewed as a CEO that made Disney so good, but in turn his last few years were disastrous.
If you want to be fair with comparisons of things done, compare the amount of E-tickets shuttered for inferior attractions, and compare the upcoming attractions (for example, Expedition Everest had nothing to do with Iger). Walt Disney World has been in a terrible state for the last 20 years, but things are changing for the better, unlike Eisner changing for the worse.
What makes it even worse is the fact that Eisner repeatedly made mistakes, whether DCA, Hong Kong, etc. There was a reason that people were flocking to Tokyo Disney SEA yet he completely ignored that reason.
If you haven't stepped through Cars Land I suggest you do. Such an epic land for what's now (surprise, because of Iger) an epic park. People are not going to see eye to eye with me; that's a fact and there's nothing wrong with that. I just wish people would stop hating on a CEO that's clearly doing a better job than Eisner and will leave the parks in far better shape. That doesn't mean I won't get frustrated (closing GMR for Mickey... really?) but as a whole moves in the future seem to be for the better.
Oh, and Iger's team is about to fix Mission: Space, another one of Eisner's (albeit one of his better) mistakes. But it came at a cost of Horizons. The godawful thing that is there today at Epcot? Figment? That was done by Eisner. Wonders of Life going seasonal to its death? That was Eisner. Closing 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea? That was Eisner. Mr. Toad? You guessed it. Not expanding the Monorail when it was more feasible? That was Eisner (funny to talk about but it is true).
My rant is coming to a close, so thank you for reading. Now I am not a Pixie Duster. But the bottom line is that Iger has been much better than Eisner was, and especially how he left the company.
