The Spirited 11th Hour ...

[tirian]

On what basis do you say he "hates the parks"? He has spent more money expanding/overhauling all the existing resorts (as well as constructing a new park in Shanghai) than Eisner did in his last 10 years. Yes there were misfires like Mymagic+ and New Fantasyland but we also got stuff like the redo of DCA with Cars Land and Star Tours 2. Just look at what we are getting in the next few years: Avatar Land, Rivers of Light, Star Wars Land, Huge retooling of Hollywood Studios, and then there is stuff that hasn't been announced yet (Marvel Land for DCA, Changes to Epcot, etc.) in addition to little stuff like a new Soarin' and Frozen-Strom. Under Eisner something like Soarin' or Frozen would have been hailed as a "Major addition" to the parks and would be used as an excuse not to reinvest for at least 5 years. Do you remember when THIS (see below) was labeled as a legitimate attraction on Disneyland park maps in the late 90s/early 00s? Because I do

I hope you noticed I said "early Eisner" was successful, not the man who later ran everything into the ground.

Iger is investing in the parks when it needs to be done. The parks simply aren't his passion. They're also not his focus; many of the changes came through others who fought for the money (e.g. Lasseter and even Staggs). Iger's babies are Pandora and MyMagic, and he largely doesn't understand what how the parks function when you aren't being whipped around by a tour guide.

A few years ago, he was legitimately looking at selling them off.

However, I'm pleased with his latest changes to WDI. It looks like Iger is wisely allowing someone with the necessary passion to run the division, and we might see a renaissance as a result.

 

[wdwfan4ver]

I don't know if this is the right thread or not to say that Disney will not be doing the "I'm going to Disney World" commercial this year. From what I have heard that the NFL is asking for double the amount of payment for producing the commercial. This fee is usually on top of the expenses Disney spends to fly the MVP player to Disney, producing the commercial, and other expenses. The tradition of the commercial has been going for 17 years but not anymore.

I'm not surprised. The NFL trying to do things for making more money for the league. Roger Goodell has done stuff in the past like trying to expand the regular season the NFL Playoffs in the name making more money. The NFL matter of fact is moving team to LA due to Market and that means potential of more money for the NFL.

 

[doctornick]

Iger is investing in the parks when it needs to be done. The parks simply aren't his passion.

Iger is long long overdue to be investing int he parks at the level they should be invested at. Only now is there investment at an appropriate level for WDW coming and it's still not enough to make up for the years of stagnation that should have never happened.

 

[tirian]

Iger is long long overdue to be investing int he parks at the level they should be invested at. Only now is there investment at an appropriate level for WDW coming and it's still not enough to make up for the years of stagnation that should have never happened.

I won't defend the years of stagnation and insane price hikes, but I will concede that the MK had to fix a decade's worth of neglect before it could move forward. Even then, the refurbs took too long and in some cases (SPACE), weren't completed.

It's time for a welcome rush of projects at all the parks (especially Epcot), along with overall maintenance.

 

[DisneyDaver]

I get your point being on the monorail line but the bus transport s not that awful....sure 2 minutes vs 30 but what are you doing with an extra 28 minutes. (We do crazy planning and go on offseason) to achieve the same effect.

I also go during the offseason, but 28 minutes each way adds up, especially if you make multiple trips between the resort and park each day like I do. I would guess that on a 4 night trip to WDW I save myself about 5 hours by staying on the monorail line. To me (with the addition of a few other perks like a workout room in some of the deluxes and better restaurants), it's worth the much higher cost. To others, I'm sure it's not.

 

[marni1971]

Would the differences between the original plan and the built version start at load/unload?

The differences I saw were mainly artistic and show.

 

[Cesar R M]

Reminds me of the old 'Government Employees Creed' (back in the days when Govt employees made much less than private sector)

We the willing led by the unknowing have done so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

how times have changed.. in my country now they can embellish.. get ultra expensive houses.. and then move overseas with all the stolen money

 

[Cesar R M]

2014 to 2015 have been boon years for Orlando tourism.

Most hotels, onsite and offsite, have seen their occupancy rates climb.

Offsite hotels have used this opportunity to increase rack rates, in many cases at rates faster than onsite hotels.

This works in Disney's favor, allowing them to offer less dramatic discounts while seeing their occupancy rates rebound to pre-recession levels.

I wonder how long until they reach the critical levels where most people cant pay an hotel at all.
Reaching 200+ for a 3 star hotel.. is heavily overpriced..

 

[Cesar R M]

You like to complain about everything. It's your thing.

I will agree that a lot has been removed from the studios recently but the same cannot be said for all of WDW. Things have been removed at EPCOT but there have been new acts brought in to replace them.

The waiters in France have not been removed. Serveur Amusant is still there performing 6 shows a day 5 days a week. Your arguments are weakened by your misinformation.

I think he got confused, the one that was most missed.. was the candy show at Japan I think..
And the Singers at Canada.. which were replaced by.. a.. hu.. heavily limited lumberjack show.

 

[Cesar R M]

Fair enough. I only took 2 years of French, so my Spanish is a little rusty. . .

huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.. because you took "only" 2 years of french.. your spanish is rusty?
I'm wondering if its sarcasm/joke,trolling or being honest..

Something something something math = HALF-LIFE 3 CONFORMED!

Wait, what were we talking about?

silence you sinner..
The Gaben said that every time someone jokes about HL3.. he would delay it 3 months.

 

[Cesar R M]

In their financial reports, Disney discloses that typical Parks & Resorts capital expenditures are depreciated over 25 to 40 years using the straight line method.

There might be capex from DHS's original opening (1989) that are still being depreciated. Star Tours and Tower of Terror (which opened a bit later) are examples of attractions where at least some of their costs might still be being depreciated.

MyMagic+ was unusual because Disney warned that these expenditures would depreciate much more rapidly.

considering the growth and the needs of constant upgrades in networking, communication and systems.. no surprise.
I wonder how long until Disney will need another big update to their systems.. 4 years? 6?

Guys, fifth gate confirmed on The Onion!

http://www.theonion.com/article/disney-world-opens-new-ordeal-kingdom-family-meltd-52230

I wonder if they took the cue of Banksy's Dismaland.

 

[Cesar R M]

Personally thought it was crap, but visually pleasing crap.

I found it nice.. but it lacked one last drop..
The part after being...

Spoiler: spoilerific

being hit with the bellatrix's spell and you go down... was lacking, and it needed one final long drop. Because it kinda felt like both Spiderman (the web simulated fall) and transformer's (where you get sucked into Devastator's inners...

Im gonna start calling you Moses then.

Can you imagine doing the same Moses scene of "Bruce Almighty" but with beer instead of tomato soup?

oh btw.. I made a trip report and gave a few opinions about Universal.
It was nice to finally know the parks.

 

[ford91exploder]

I'm not surprised. The NFL trying to do things for making more money for the league. Roger Goodell has done stuff in the past like trying to expand the regular season the NFL Playoffs in the name making more money. The NFL matter of fact is moving team to LA due to Market and that means potential of more money for the NFL.

If LA is such a great football town why has EVERY team based in the area LEFT in the past?. The Chargers, Raiders and Rams ALL were at one time LA teams. Just another case of billionaires sucking up taxpayer provided goodies which would have been better spent encouraging small business (instead LA taxes them to extinction while offering up a FREE stadium to a billionaire)


http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/03/insert-football-team-name-is-moving-to-los-angeles/386878/

 

[peter11435]

I think he got confused, the one that was most missed.. was the candy show at Japan I think..
And the Singers at Canada.. which were replaced by.. a.. hu.. heavily limited lumberjack show.

He doesn't need defended. I don't see how you could confuse those acts as they are nothing like one another and in entirely different countries. This is just yet another example of him making things up.

I'll give you the candy lady. Although I was under the impression it was her decision to move on after nearly 20 years. As for off kilter... They were replaced. And now their replacement has been replaced. So that doesn't support his argument at all about entertainment being cut and not replaced.

 

[FullSailDan]

Iger is investing in the parks when it needs to be done. The parks simply aren't his passion. They're also not his focus; many of the changes came through others who fought for the money (e.g. Lasseter and even Staggs). Iger's babies are Pandora and MyMagic, and he largely doesn't understand what how the parks function when you aren't being whipped around by a tour guide.

A few years ago, he was legitimately looking at selling them off.

I'd argue Disney had more major crisis' than the parks during the first half of Iger's tenure as CEO. You can't analyze his actions without factoring in what was happening outside the parks at the time. They were really struggling to figure out the future. He HAD to focus on the complete acquisition of Pixar as the animation studio was floundering, and movies like chicken little were not going to cut it. Without a continuous flow of media offering World and Land die as the Disney name isn't kept in the public mind. The parks also had significant money invested in attractions that Disney had little control over. Once the Pixar acquisition completed, focused turned to Muppets, and finally to Marvel. Marvel is sort of the outlier as there weren't existing product offerings, but he saw the writing on the wall for the studios. Increasingly their product offerings were failing. That puts us at around 2008.

Financial crisis hits, the parks see massive decline in attendance, and investment comes to almost a complete halt. Universal had recently taken a big risk and invested in HP though. Arguably they were feeling the burn of the economy worse than WDW, and knew they needed to spend. Creative teams at Disney were pitching ideas though and it became clear, the attendance they had would be cut into if they didn't do something. NFL managed to get greenlit, and Pandora was stewing.

Fast forward a few years, economy is better, attendance is slightly improving, and surveys begin on how to improve. For the first time, the majority of respondents said they would not attend again within 5 years. They dug deeper for why, it was too complicated and hectic. Too many things to research, and compared to other travel offerings that made getting away super easy, Disney was a pain. Thats when Iger had the conversation with all the park heads and said: "Fix it, or leave". This is also when the exploration of selloff occurred, ultimately not happening, and in hindsight was only very exploratory in nature. MM+ was the solution the park heads came up with, and is controversial, so not looking to debate it, but it was their solution. It cost a lot, and ultimately belongs to parks budget so they didn't have much to work with for refurbs, refreshed offerings, and additions. But, with the recent crowd levels and almost no sign of things slowing down, investment had to begin to relieve the congestion. That's where we are today.

So yes, Iger has been focused on things other than the parks during his tenure, and when he has put an emphasis on it, he's not always built the big sparkly object some fans want. But he never forgot about them, he just knew the priorities of survival of the company and with it, the parks. I'm curious to see what happens to DHS if the economy tanks again this year. They may scale back, or they may pull a Uni and build it anyway.

 

[rael ramone]

Well, Looks like Ol' Meg is gonna start hosting Tupperware parties....

As an owner of $TUP that gives me a big frowny face...

 

[ford91exploder]

I'd argue Disney had more major crisis' than the parks during the first half of Iger's tenure as CEO. You can't analyze his actions without factoring in what was happening outside the parks at the time. They were really struggling to figure out the future. He HAD to focus on the complete acquisition of Pixar as the animation studio was floundering, and movies like chicken little were not going to cut it. Without a continuous flow of media offering World and Land die as the Disney name isn't kept in the public mind. The parks also had significant money invested in attractions that Disney had little control over. Once the Pixar acquisition completed, focused turned to Muppets, and finally to Marvel. Marvel is sort of the outlier as there weren't existing product offerings, but he saw the writing on the wall for the studios. Increasingly their product offerings were failing. That puts us at around 2008.

Financial crisis hits, the parks see massive decline in attendance, and investment comes to almost a complete halt. Universal had recently taken a big risk and invested in HP though. Arguably they were feeling the burn of the economy worse than WDW, and knew they needed to spend. Creative teams at Disney were pitching ideas though and it became clear, the attendance they had would be cut into if they didn't do something. NFL managed to get greenlit, and Pandora was stewing.

Fast forward a few years, economy is better, attendance is slightly improving, and surveys begin on how to improve. For the first time, the majority of respondents said they would not attend again within 5 years. They dug deeper for why, it was too complicated and hectic. Too many things to research, and compared to other travel offerings that made getting away super easy, Disney was a pain. Thats when Iger had the conversation with all the park heads and said: "Fix it, or leave". This is also when the exploration of selloff occurred, ultimately not happening, and in hindsight was only very exploratory in nature. MM+ was the solution the park heads came up with, and is controversial, so not looking to debate it, but it was their solution. It cost a lot, and ultimately belongs to parks budget so they didn't have much to work with for refurbs, refreshed offerings, and additions. But, with the recent crowd levels and almost no sign of things slowing down, investment had to begin to relieve the congestion. That's where we are today.

So yes, Iger has been focused on things other than the parks during his tenure, and when he has put an emphasis on it, he's not always built the big sparkly object some fans want. But he never forgot about them, he just knew the priorities of survival of the company and with it, the parks. I'm curious to see what happens to DHS if the economy tanks again this year. They may scale back, or they may pull a Uni and build it anyway.

Disagree entirely with that premise, Iger has concentrated on artificially inflating EPS numbers by massive stock buybacks, This makes DIS year over year numbers look far better than the actual financial performance of the company. Iger has built a nice shiny object for Wall St however at the parks attractions and infrastructure are crumbling and now Iger is FORCED to invest to keep the P&R ATM running.

IF the economy goes south DIS basically blows up as EVERYTHING about DIS is tied to a artificially high stock price maintained by funneling billions into buybacks so EPS is higher without any material change in the companies peformance based on there being fewer shares in circulation at the END of the quarter vs the beginning of the quarter.

 

[jakeman]

Disagree entirely with that premise, Iger has concentrated on artificially inflating EPS numbers by massive stock buybacks, This makes DIS year over year numbers look far better than the actual financial performance of the company. Iger has built a nice shiny object for Wall St however at the parks attractions and infrastructure are crumbling and now Iger is FORCED to invest to keep the P&R ATM running.

IF the economy goes south DIS basically blows up as EVERYTHING about DIS is tied to a artificially high stock price maintained by funneling billions into buybacks so EPS is higher without any material change in the companies peformance based on there being fewer shares in circulation at the END of the quarter vs the beginning of the quarter.

I've never heard you take this position before. Please tell me more...

Also, do you have any opinions on ESPN you would like to share?

 

[FullSailDan]

Disagree entirely with that premise, Iger has concentrated on artificially inflating EPS numbers by massive stock buybacks, This makes DIS year over year numbers look far better than the actual financial performance of the company. Iger has built a nice shiny object for Wall St however at the parks attractions and infrastructure are crumbling and now Iger is FORCED to invest to keep the P&R ATM running.

IF the economy goes south DIS basically blows up as EVERYTHING about DIS is tied to a artificially high stock price maintained by funneling billions into buybacks so EPS is higher without any material change in the companies peformance based on there being fewer shares in circulation at the END of the quarter vs the beginning of the quarter.

Stock price strategy is very different from corporate longevity. You can manipulate the stock as you said, and not invest in the business lines and fail. Revenue and cash flow are considered when planning expenditures, but stock isn't everything. Ultimately, if the market doesn't see products that will generate said revenue then the stock collapses. See Apple right now. They haven't done anything exciting since Iphone 3 and investors are scared. However, you're right, manipulating your EPS does allow you to make the stock more attractive. The CFO can manage that however and just requires they use the right amortization schedule for the expenditures the CEO approves.

 

[ford91exploder]

Stock price strategy is very different from corporate longevity. You can manipulate the stock as you said, and not invest in the business lines and fail. Revenue and cash flow are considered when planning expenditures, but stock isn't everything. Ultimately, if the market doesn't see products that will generate said revenue then the stock collapses. See Apple right now. They haven't done anything exciting since Iphone 3 and investors are scared. However, you're right, manipulating your EPS does allow you to make the stock more attractive. The CFO can manage that however and just requires they use the right amortization schedule for the expenditures the CEO approves.

Stock price is everything when Mahogany Row's bonuses depend on increasing EPS, Do you really think the current management really cares what happens to Disney or the parks when they float off on their golden parachutes and retirement packages. At DIS you have a management team hell bent on increasing the stock price at the expense of everything else.

Disney barely has a month of cash on hand - hardly the mark of a healthy organization while it's competitors have far more cash on hand to buffer them through rough spots.