Don't know where you get your facts, but where is it reported by the company (or viable media), that TRON is costing $300M+ to build? I promise you, it isn't.
Eisner has a better batting average than Iger? Huh? According to who? You? By what metric? Good grief, even Eisner wouldn't say that and you can ask him, he responds to Twitter/Instagram messages. Do you even know what Eisner built/approved?
Iger major projects personally approved:
- Cars Land / DCA 2.0
- Pandora
- Two (now 4) new $1B cruise ships
- Shanghai DL
- Aulani
Pending:
- SWGE x2
- HK DL Rebuild
- DL Studios Paris Rebuild
Are ANY of these duds? Are any of them likely to be? They are extremely high quality/high budget.
Eisner mega duds:
- DCA 1.0
- DL Studios Paris
- HK Disneyland (high quality but completely underperformed, lost money, limited attractions, too small budget, etc.)
- Chester/Hester/and various other "off-the-shelf" cheapo "expansions."
Eisner underbuilds:
- AK - opened with TWO major attractions because budget wouldn't allow more and Imagineers choose quality over quantity, and he went along.
- MGM Studios - opened with TWO rides due to limited budget. Compare that to Shanghai.
Eisner hits:
Yes, a good number during his first 10 years. But hardly enough to call his "batting average" better than Iger.
Don't get me wrong, I worked under Eisner and liked him. He saved the Company, but Iger runs circles around him by every available metric, I believe even HE would admit that.
It hasn't been reported by the company, but it's been reported here by trusted sources and it hasn't gone away yet. I'd love to know what it's costing, if it's less than we've been hearing, because the number has had me puzzled.
I thought I had stated my metric but in reading my post back it wasn't as clear as I'd intended -- my point was that Eisner both spent large sums of money on the parks AND did so in the name of massive creative strides. Bob has certainly made money off of the parks, but his list of creative hits is shorter and less resounding. And of course it looks favorable for Bob when you compare a list of his successes with a list of Eisner's follies.
I'll try to break it down by attraction rather than land or park, just for the sake of 1-to-1 comparison, with a few noted* exceptions, limited to what can somewhat fairly be considered unqualified creative hits:
Eisner:
Splash Mountain
Star Tours
The Great Movie Ride
Disneyland Paris*, where almost
every attraction was arguably the best iteration yet produced in its lineage at the time of opening
The Tower of Terror
Space Mountain: De La Terre A La Lune
The Indiana Jones Adventure
The Tree of Life
Kilimanjaro Safari
Pooh's Hunny Hunt
Tokyo Disney Sea*, where point-for-point everything is executed at a higher level than any other-park equivalent - best A-Tickets around
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Soarin' Over California
Expedition Everest
Toy Story Midway Mania
Bob:
Radiator Springs Racers
Mystic Manor
Pirates of the Caribbean (Shanghai)
TRON
Peter Pan's Flight Shanghai (I don't love this version, personally, but it's more ambitious than any of the others, so I'll give it to him)
Flight of Passage
Rise of the Resistance (Presumed Hit)
Millennium Falcon (Presumed Hit)
The above attractions defined the Disney park experience for a generation - and I think Eisner made that happen more frequently and to a higher degree than Bob. Financially Bob is doing great -- but creatively I think Eisner blew him out of the water with what he was able to make happen. And then, of course, the wheels came off. It's a lot to try to unpack in one post so I won't pretend the ground is sufficiently covered, but it should give you a sense of how I'm looking at it, which is that Eisner made a more lasting positive creative impact on the parks than Iger.
