When did Disney start overpromising and under delivering?

[Miru]

Not to get political, but let's just say one side is moving faster to one side than the other. The people you mentioned would be considered probably centrists to maybe center/right 25 years ago, for good or worse.

Regardless, Disney needs to walk the tightrope of being neutral. We all buy products and want content. Pandering to one side or the other just upsets 50% of the people. It's one of the biggest jobs of the CEO to walk the fine line of making everyone happy. Iger has absolutely failed to do that.

Marvel/Pixar have not been abused as much as Lucas, but there is time. Iger needs to be gone yesterday and he's just the tip of the iceberg. The entire management team is objectively awful.

I’d argue the parks division is almost as bad as Lucasfilm, and the “main” live action studio might be even worse off at this point, the executives having had absolute and utter control for about a decade now. At least Lucasfilm has Dave Filoni and those people who made Andor… but maybe not for long. At this point I feel like it’s probably too late for the main live action studio (Walt Disney Pictures); better shut down the management and then lease the property to other companies (while keeping another portion available for studio tours); I know that some of the remakes have been successful but they’re clearly executive products and the core fans despise them savagely.

 

[Chef Mickey]

I’d argue the parks division is almost as bad as Lucasfilm, and the “main” live action studio might be even worse off at this point, the executives having had absolute and utter control for about a decade now. At least Lucasfilm has Dave Filoni and those people who made Andor… but maybe not for long. At this point I feel like it’s probably too late for the main live action studio (Walt Disney Pictures); better shut down the management and then lease the property to other companies (while keeping another portion available for studio tours); I know that some of the remakes have been successful but they’re clearly executive products and the core fans despise them savagely.

Agreed. Park performance has only been passable due to endless price increases.

 

[Jrb1979]

This is a good example of over promising and under delivering. IMO it's why using concept to hype the new project has been a bad idea. It's why we have threads like this.

Look at what they promised for Communicore and what we ended up with.

 

[TalkToEthan]

pound for pound, inch for inch walking any international airport wing or concourse makes for better architecture and overall interest

Communicore is beyond laughably absurd.

 

[John park hopper]

The pre art work of any Disney project always looks better than the finished product. Sad how Disney can screw things up time and again

 

[Miru]

The pre art work of any Disney project always looks better than the finished product. Sad how Disney can screw things up time and again

Eisner was also guilty of this, but the post-Lasseter era under Iger takes it to a whole new level. And no, it’s not likely bribing Lasseter back will bring back the spark, given the trailer to his latest movie.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

I don't like Iger either but it's really telling how much people's hatred for him guides their thinking because this is in no way an issue that started during his tenure. This is in every sense something that started with Eisner all the way back in the 90s. He has done a big fat nothing to help it, but this is one of a few key things whose cause we can't really lay at his feet.

 

[Miru]

I don't like Iger either but it's really telling how much people's hatred for him guides their thinking because this is in no way an issue that started during his tenure. This is in every sense something that started with Eisner all the way back in the 90s. He has done a big fat nothing to help it, but this is one of a few key things whose cause we can't really lay at his feet.

Eisner was able to keep it in check, and this mentality didn’t start until he lost Frank Wells (and the failure of EuroDisney). Pressler was the one that really amplified it. Again with Iger, unlike Eisner this was always the case for him, but he wasn’t as bad until he lost Roy, then Steve Jobs, then Lasseter, all of whom were holding him back from revealing his true colors, making him go from doing nothing to help it to actively making it much worse. Thankfully Jennifer Lee has been demoted recently, at least.

 

[Phroobar]

This is a good example of over promising and under delivering. IMO it's why using concept to hype the new project has been a bad idea. It's why we have threads like this.

Look at what they promised for Communicore and what we ended up with.
View attachment 812569View attachment 812573

Even the concept art is awful. Now it looks like a convention center hallway without an event going on.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

When they were theming Disney-MGM as a fictional Hollywood they seem to have stuck with the same idea when a movie was released in the same universe..Roger Rabbit, Dick Tracy, and Rocketeer for example wanted to stick with this idea for a loong time and then they gave up when In the mid 00's when the name was changed to DHS just to celebrate the movies rather than be in that "Fictional 30's" era of movies.

 

[thomas998]

I’ve been a Disney fan for close to 50 years, especially the theme parks, but over the past five years or more, in addition to the decline of service and quality, Disney seems to say they’re going to do one thing and then do something much less ambitious. Galaxy’s Edge may be the most egregious example of this. Promising a dinner show, roaming droids and aliens, guest reputation, etc. Even the Toy Story Land concepts were grander than what we got. I don’t get this same impression from Universal. Will Disney ever exhaust its good will and reputation capital with guests or should we just assume that when Disney shows introduces concepts they’re nothing more than ideas which may or may not actually happen with the amount of detail that was shown?

Been doing that off and on for decades... Most recently 9/11 and the banking crisis smacked them hard enough that the actually started picking up a bit... but by 2010 they were starting to go the wrong way again... at first it was just little things here and there... but it just seemed to be getting worse exponentially to the point that we are no in a horrible place that is unlikely to get any better until the current management is shown the door and someone steps up that wants to make the parks successful and not just a cash cow to bleed dry.

 

[Ridge]

The sad part is all they really need is the service and quality.

 

[Mark Dunne]

I think you could begin to see a decline beginning towards the end of Eisner run when he started to lose focus on Dis and get more self focused. That began the fight to try to get him out. But the real fall started shortly into the Iger years when he tried ( and some will say succeeded ) to make Disney a global entity, reaching out to diversify the brand. At that point so much was ignored and put on the back burner because there were other major interests to focus on. The guest interest and pleasure was no longer the goal or primary thing that mattered.
A lot comes down with both Eisner and Iger putting their own reputation and interest first. They wanted to be seen as major players and fit in with other big wigs of industry.

I kinda agree with you, but Eisner really expanded WDW like no other, 2 parks, numerous resort hotels, golf courses, along with frank wells they took to bull by the horns and changed WDW to what it is today , for me the difference between Michael and Robert, is that Michael still used Imagineering, but he let them design with there own stories, splash mountain, T.O.T, E. Everest ,Dinosaur ,and Mr Igor doesn't, when Michael and frank were at the helm this seemed to be the seamless transition from Walt/Roy, in which the 4 of them along with Imagineering took Disney on a path to greatness, Sadly when Frank passed , Michael lost his right hand man, so of course he was going to change in himself, and i heard some cast members at the time were very much against M.E toward the end of his reign, but I'm more grateful to Him than R.I , they have taken to much away, messed up our beloved S.W's ( I'm 54, and 77 simple changed me into the S.W fan i am today ) To much I.P, no love for imagination pavilion, I'm looking forward to the next person to step in, hoping its someone with fresh ideas, or is that day long gone.

 

[JIMINYCR]

I kinda agree with you, but Eisner really expanded WDW like no other, 2 parks, numerous resort hotels, golf courses, along with frank wells they took to bull by the horns and changed WDW to what it is today , for me the difference between Michael and Robert, is that Michael still used Imagineering, but he let them design with there own stories, splash mountain, T.O.T, E. Everest ,Dinosaur ,and Mr Igor doesn't, when Michael and frank were at the helm this seemed to be the seamless transition from Walt/Roy, in which the 4 of them along with Imagineering took Disney on a path to greatness, Sadly when Frank passed , Michael lost his right hand man, so of course he was going to change in himself, and i heard some cast members at the time were very much against M.E toward the end of his reign, but I'm more grateful to Him than R.I , they have taken to much away, messed up our beloved S.W's ( I'm 54, and 77 simple changed me into the S.W fan i am today ) To much I.P, no love for imagination pavilion, I'm looking forward to the next person to step in, hoping its someone with fresh ideas, or is that day long gone.

Ive always been a fan of Michael... I have no argument with what you said. Michael was good for Dis.... until the end. Eisners decline was at the end of his tenure when he saw the writing on the wall and knew his time was up. Then he became self focused instead of Dis focused. Iger had potential but made too many missteps and couldnt reverse the trend. .

 

[JD80]

It's bit hit and miss since the day Disneyland opened. People just get riled because of personal biases, nostalgia and recency bias.

 

[JoeCamel]

When you have control for 20 years pretty much everything is due to your action or inaction and you can't say the guy before me did that.

I don't like Iger either but it's really telling how much people's hatred for him guides their thinking because this is in no way an issue that started during his tenure. This is in every sense something that started with Eisner all the way back in the 90s. He has done a big fat nothing to help it, but this is one of a few key things whose cause we can't really lay at his feet.

 

[Walt Disney1955]

I would say post-Eisner for sure. Whether that is the rise of the internet and social media where we discuss it more is up for debate. But you can't deny what Eisner did. Imagination still was promoted within the company, and they tended to let those types thrive. A ride like Splash Mountain was a classic example of how Eisner-era attractions are compared to Iger. Iger took away that masterpiece and replaced it with an inferior ride. Eisner's era they built a lot. They utilized the space more. Two parks came during his time. There is pretty much nothing that WDW ever has to close. They could have put a Tiana ride in without taking out a masterpiece. They could add Carsland without taking the core of Frontierland out. Like it or not the parks thrived under Eisner. Iger had every opportunity to do this but hasn't.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

When you have control for 20 years pretty much everything is due to your action or inaction and you can't say the guy before me did that.

But that’s literally what happened. Most of what Disney fans hated today started with Eisner. I’m not saying Iger doesn’t deserve blame for continuing them but it’d be a lie to say they were his follies from the start, especially being budget obsessed (I would argue later year Eisner was actually even worse about this). We can criticize Iger without doing revisionist history on the years before him because people are nostalgic for it. We can hyperbolically say Iger killed the parks all day long but that doesn’t change that Eisner actually, really almost did.