News Walt Disney Imagineering Leaving California, Moving To Florida... EDIT: Never Mind!

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Did we already talk about this and I missed it? Or is this truly news that is just breaking or just now being admitted to by Burbank?

In short, Walt Disney Imagineering is joining the growing list of companies that are moving out of California.

WDI, originally WED, has been based at a campus in Glendale since 1953. Now it will be based at Disney's 60 acre Lake Nona campus near Orlando being built for $864 Million. Uh.... :oops:


The secretive creative lab started seven decades ago by Walt Disney for the construction of Disneyland will soon bid farewell to Southern California when the headquarters for Walt Disney Imagineering moves to Central Florida.

Walt Disney Imagineering will be based at the new Lake Nona campus in Orlando, Florida, near the Walt Disney World resort, according to a Disney Parks, Experiences and Products spokesperson.

An opening date has not been set for Disney’s Lake Nona campus. Imagineering’s relocation from California to Florida is expected to continue through the end of 2022.

Imagineering won’t relocate to Florida until the Lake Nona campus is ready due to the specialized space requirements necessary for Audio-Animatronics and other technological needs, according to a Disney Parks spokesperson.

Disney Parks, Experiences and Products chairman Josh D’Amaro wrote a letter to employees in July describing the upcoming Lake Nona relocation as a “catalyst that sparks growth, collaboration and new ideas for the future.”

The new 60-acre Lake Nona campus represents a $864 million investment by Disney, according to the Orlando Business Journal.


The Lake Nona campus will give Imagineering and other Disney Parks teams the opportunity to be more collaborative from a creative and operational standpoint, D’Amaro wrote in the letter.
 
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Disney Irish

Premium Member
Its being discussed over here -

 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
WDI's campus in Glendale had been growing and evolving since the late 1950's. Originally starting in just one big building, it expanded and morphed into a compact and very insular campus by the turn of the 21st century.

Here's the original WED (WDI) building on Flower Street in Glendale in the early 1960's.

image-asset.jpeg


And here's the main public entrance to the campus today, also on Flower Street....

122c0b74f73bf5283d4534b08947ad5a.jpg


But as anyone who has taken a tour of the facility through D23 or Adventures by Disney, it spans several major streets and uses over a dozen buildings around the area. It's really a meandering collection of buildings and warehouses and plazas once you get inside.
D6VmtY0UwAEF4hn.jpg
 
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TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Its being discussed over here -


Ah, okay. And I remember the announcement this past summer about Disney as a whole.

But I don't remember the entire moving of WDI out of Glendale as part of it. It was just supposed to be cubicle farms and adminstration people, as I remember discussing a few months ago.

Apparently they are moving the entire WDI Headquarters out of Glendale and packing it all up and setting up shop in Lake Nona. That seems like hugely important cultural news.

I do have to wonder how many Imagineers will opt out of that move and leave Disney because of it? The cost of living and taxes in Florida are dramatically lower, but the average middle-management to creative-executive Imagineer is a certain type of creative individual who thrives in SoCal. I can see a lot of those creative types saying "No thanks" to this move, and within a year leaving the Disney company because of it.

That's gonna leave a mark, don't you think?
 

Disney Irish

Premium Member
Ah, okay. And I remember the announcement this past summer.

But I don't remember the entire moving of WDI out of Glendale as part of it. It was just supposed to be cubicle farms and adminstration people, as I remember discussing a few months ago.

Apparently they are moving the entire WDI Headquarters out of Glendale and packing it all up and setting up shop in Lake Nona. That seems like hugely important cultural news.

I do have to wonder how many Imagineers will opt out of that move and leave Disney because of it? The cost of living and taxes in Florida are dramatically lower, but the average middle-management to creative-executive Imagineer is a certain type of creative individual who thrives in SoCal. I can see a lot of those creative types saying "No thanks" to this move, and within a year leaving the Disney company because of it.

That's gonna leave a mark, don't you think?
I think we briefly discussed it here on the DL side this summer when announced in one of the COVID threads. But since its Orlando news its been discussed mostly on the WDW side.

I believe the rumor I heard is that a small group will stay here to work on DLR specific stuff with TDA. And I know on twitter some in WDI have been vocal about not moving. Will we see a mass exodus, I don't know. I'm sure we'll see more news come out of this as we get closer to Lake Nona opening.

Will it have an impact and leave a mark in a negative way, only time will tell. But a lot of posters here have been complaining about the bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects from WDI over the last 20 years. So maybe this will end up being a good thing and we'll start seeing better products coming out of the new hopefully streamlined WDI.
 

choco choco

Well-Known Member
But a lot of posters here have been complaining about the bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects from WDI over the last 20 years. So maybe this will end up being a good thing and we'll start seeing better products coming out of the new hopefully streamlined WDI.

I don't see how "bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects...over last 20 years" is going to change itself. The IP mandate started under Iger is still there and shows no sign of abating. That's not on WDI.

Bloated budgets are an organization/bureaucracy thing that can be controlled by management. It can be changed with enough know-how and is not tied to location.

Fresh blood can indeed induce fresh ideas in many situations, but Disney is not a company that welcomes fresh ideas, so there's no reason to be optimistic on that front.
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I think we briefly discussed it here on the DL side this summer when announced in one of the COVID threads. But since its Orlando news its been discussed mostly on the WDW side.

Okay. It's making more sense now on how I missed this news. I really don't think the enormity of a decision like WDI moving out of Glendale was part of that summer discussion. I would have remembered it.

But apparently as details and more news has come out, that's exactly what is happening in 2022? Wow.

I believe the rumor I heard is that a small group will stay here to work on DLR specific stuff with TDA. And I know on twitter some in WDI have been vocal about not moving. Will we see a mass exodus, I don't know. I'm sure we'll see more news come out of this as we get closer to Lake Nona opening.

Sure. They have a small WDI outpost in Anaheim a few blocks east of the Resort. It was explained how that little outpost used to be located behind Indiana Jones since the 1990's, but was moved to a nondescript office building in Anaheim several years ago. It's on Lewis Street, not far from The Ranch restaurant.

Will it have an impact and leave a mark in a negative way, only time will tell. But a lot of posters here have been complaining about the bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects from WDI over the last 20 years. So maybe this will end up being a good thing and we'll start seeing better products coming out of the new hopefully streamlined WDI.

True. The bugets that get blown on WDI projects are sometimes criminal.

The huge salaries, the endless perks and pufferies, the big expense accounts matched to big egos, the global "cultural research trips" that only seem able to research cultures that have an operating Ritz-Carlton, etc., etc.

But that's part of the reason why so many of those types of people won't be leaving their hillside mid-century-mod homes with the two-Tesla garages in tony Flintridge or Pasadena, for some bland yet sprawling McMansion in a drained swamp near an Applebee's and a Sam's Club. It's just two cultures colliding there, and I really think a lot of the current SoCal Imagineers will make their way to the exits.

Perhaps that's subversively part of the reason behind this corporate division move?

Still... WDI not being in Glendale any more. That's going to be huge.
 
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TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I don't see how "bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects...over last 20 years" is going to change itself. The IP mandate started under Iger is still there and shows no sign of abating. That's not on WDI.

Bloated budgets are an organization/bureaucracy thing that can be controlled by management. It can be changed with enough know-how and is not tied to location.

Fresh blood can indeed induce fresh ideas in many situations, but Disney is not a company that welcomes fresh ideas, so there's no reason to be optimistic on that front.

True. And I agree. It's entirely possible to change the culture there in Glendale.

But it's not going to be easy, and many Parks Chairmen have tried. And yet here we still are, with stuff like Incredicoaster and Pixar Pier.

But if you got rid of a lot of the tenured and politically powerful Imagineers, it would be a great deal easier to change the culture and reset expectations with some of those overly babied Imagineers.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories or grand plans crafted in sinister conference rooms, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn moving WDI from California to Florida is a way to help that process along. No one in Burbank probably had the cojones to tackle it while all those creative execs with tenure and pull were firmly entrenched in Glendale.

Getting a bunch of the tenured Imagineers to quit because they don't want to live in Orlando is going to make it easier to change WDI.
 

Disney Irish

Premium Member
I don't see how "bloated budgets and lack of original inspired projects...over last 20 years" is going to change itself. The IP mandate started under Iger is still there and shows no sign of abating. That's not on WDI.

Bloated budgets are an organization/bureaucracy thing that can be controlled by management. It can be changed with enough know-how and is not tied to location.

Fresh blood can indeed induce fresh ideas in many situations, but Disney is not a company that welcomes fresh ideas, so there's no reason to be optimistic on that front.
Well with a move like this comes smaller human capital over time, as the cost of living in FL is lower than CA, which causes pay scales to change. As such the more senior WDI CMs with the bloated salaries will likely leave, being replace by younger WDI CMs who have a smaller salary due to being hired in FL. So over time this will trim down the human capital side of budgets that go into projects.

So will it change overnight, no. But over time you'll likely see a positive change to how much projects cost. So there is reason to think this change might end up being a positive one overall.
 

Disney Irish

Premium Member
Okay. It's making more sense now on how I missed this news. I really don't think the enormity of a decision like WDI moving out of Glendale was part of that summer discussion. I would have remembered it.

But apparently as details and more news has come out, that's exactly what is happening in 2022? Wow.



Sure. They have a small WDI outpost in Anaheim a few blocks east of the Resort. It was explained how that little outpost used to be located behind Indiana Jones since the 1990's, but was moved to a nondescript office building in Anaheim several years ago. It's on Lewis Street, not far from The Ranch restaurant.



True. The bugets that get blown on WDI projects are sometimes criminal.

The huge salaries, the endless perks and pufferies, the big expense accounts matched to big egos, the global "cultural research trips" that only seem able to research cultures that have an operating Ritz-Carlton, etc., etc.

But that's part of the reason why so many of those types of people won't be leaving their hillside mid-century-mod homes with the two-Tesla garages in tony Flintridge or Pasadena, for some bland yet sprawling McMansion in a drained swamp near an Applebee's and a Sam's Club. It's just two cultures colliding there, and I really think a lot of the current SoCal Imagineers will make their way to the exits.

Perhaps that's subversively part of the reason behind this corporate division move?

Still... WDI not being in Glendale any more. That's going to be huge.
To me this is really Disney taking an opportunity for a reset in WDI. And honestly I applaud them for it.
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
What's interesting here is that about 15 years ago Disney invested heavily in Glendale, not just for WDI. Disney moved a bunch of staff and departments to the Grand Central Creative Campus, or GC3 for short, located just south of the WDI campus itself.

It was a big deal at the time. Glendale was growing in corporate power and influence. GC3 is a series of mid-rise office buildings connected by parks and plazas. GC3 is nothing special, just another pleasant enough office development in suburban LA that Disney kept growing for about a decade.

Grand-Central-Creative-Campus-Jonnu-Singleton-2197.jpg



photo2%2B(1).jpg


Grand_Central_Creative_Campus_map.png


So what happens to GC3, besides the WDI part of it at the northern end? They're all moving to Lake Nona too? And Glendale is left with this sprawling office park to lease out?

It's interesting how quickly Disney soured on doing business in Southern California. GC3 was only developed in the 2000's and early 2010's.
 
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choco choco

Well-Known Member
And yet here we still are, with stuff like Incredicoaster and Pixar Pier.

To me this is really Disney taking an opportunity for a reset in WDI. And honestly I applaud them for it.

I guess I'm not seeing what you two are seeing. I am not against resetting WDI, but I foresee that this move will result in more Incredicoasters and Pixar Piers, not less.
 

Sailor310

Well-Known Member
In my limited understanding, the hotbeds for design and creativity are in New York and LA. Orlando is a long way. This move may limit the talent you get there.
 

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Well with a move like this comes smaller human capital over time, as the cost of living in FL is lower than CA, which causes pay scales to change. As such the more senior WDI CMs with the bloated salaries will likely leave, being replace by younger WDI CMs who have a smaller salary due to being hired in FL. So over time this will trim down the human capital side of budgets that go into projects.

So will it change overnight, no. But over time you'll likely see a positive change to how much projects cost. So there is reason to think this change might end up being a positive one overall.
The problem is processes, not salaries. Disney is indecisive and micromanages. Universal Creative is rapidly catching up to Disney in terms of high costs and falling into the same problems despite already being in Orlando.
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I guess I'm not seeing what you two are seeing. I am not against resetting WDI, but I foresee that this move will result in more Incredicoasters and Pixar Piers, not less.

Yikes. That won't be good.

We may be reading too much into this. It could be the simple act of a business moving personnel and infrastructure out of California to a different state with lower business taxes and lower costs of living that will lower labor costs for the company.

Many Californian companies, or formerly Californian companies, are doing this. It's a phenomenon that is only increasing rapidly in 2021 and into next year. And those companies don't have the niche cultural issues and ego-driven careers of Walt Disney Imagineering to deal with, but they did it because it's cheaper and running a business in California is no fun anymore.



It really could be as simple as that, not some secret attempt to bend Imagineers to Burbank's will. But how that translates into the new rides and park experiences built beyond 2024 after the full move to Orlando is a year old is yet to be seen. I guess it could go either way.
 
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TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Just Googled. Florida also gave Disney a bunch of tax breaks. They really wanted the business out there.


And in that article came this little nugget...

"Relocating employees will be offered moving assistance, but the average wage of workers in the facility will be $120,000 a year, according to Disney’s credit application."

Wow! 2,000 brand new Floridians making an average of $120,000 per year. That's an extremely enviable demographic of new workers Florida is getting.

The median household income in Florida is currently $56,000. In California the median household income is $75,000. Getting 2,000 brand new jobs delivered to your state with an average income of $120,000 is hugely significant. An impressive win for Florida, and a loss for California.

And then also this nugget, which shows that Florida played hardball with the other locations and won these 2,000 high paying jobs...

"Other sites that Disney considered for this regional campus included the Burbank-Glendale area, near its current Southern California holdings; New York City; and Bristol, Conn."
 
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TP2000

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
And also this ending statement from that LA Business Journal article from this past summer...

While the application acknowledged the potential risk of losing key executives to competitors as well as “critical talent unwilling to relocate,” the state incentives eventually swayed the company to pursue Florida, in addition to the state's affordable housing, low or no state income tax, and solid educational and transportation infrastructure for employees to use while commuting.

So Disney knows there's a group of current employees that will simply leave the company instead of move to Orlando. I think the "critical talent" phrase is directly related to Imagineers, especially the ones with tenure and lots of experience in building theme parks.

 

Disney Irish

Premium Member
The problem is processes, not salaries. Disney is indecisive and micromanages. Universal Creative is rapidly catching up to Disney in terms of high costs and falling into the same problems despite already being in Orlando.
Bloated salaries go into the cost of projects as well though, as labor. So while the overall problem might be process, which would be helped by a streamlined workforce, a lower labor cost would also help reign in costs and is a place to start.
 

Sailor310

Well-Known Member
Loved to visit Cocoa Beach (about an hour east of Orlando) for a month at a time for launches during my working days, but the humidity and all the bugs, especially mosquitoes when you're trying to have dinner outdoors, made me happy to be back in California when the launch was over. I thought about retiring there for no state income tax, but decided I rather pay state income tax and live in California.
I imagine many imagineers will come to the same conclusion.
 

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