Hoping the 75th will outdo both the 50th and 60th, but I’m not holding my breath.
As we're all in a reflective mood here, I should weigh in and tell you that if I've learned anything about observing the Walt Disney Company and it's various theme park executives and strategies over the past 25 years
it's that things can change with breathtaking speed. Trying to predict what things will be like for the 75th Anniversary might as well be like trying to predict the 200th Anniversary the way things can change.
The period of 1997 to 2003 was dark and gloomy and filled with lowered expectations, cheap new standards, and even a series of deaths (some might call them grisly murders due to sheer neglect). And yet in almost an instant, things changed quickly and by 2004 Disneyland was making a 180 degree turn at breathtaking speed and entered a new
Golden Age (literally and figuratively) by 2005.
While things may seem rather bleak and clueless with
@realBobChapek at the helm making some truly bizarre and idiotic decisions, things can also change rapidly. I say that with all due apologies to
@realBobChapek who is so kind to gift us his time and his thoughts here.
A year from now Mr. Chapek may have left to
"do something else" just like Catherine Powell did suddenly after Star Wars Land led to low park attendance, and then some person we'd never considered may take over the parks and lay in a brand new course towards high standards and quality decisions. Of course, things could also change for the worse and we could be looking at some idiot 34 year old executive from Harvard Business School who decides that all CM's should wear blue polo shirts and they should outsource all food service in the parks to Sodexo.
But the optimist in me says that Disneyland will be OK, and that Mr. Chapek will be gone as we head further into the 2020's.
