Why dislike for Iger?

[HauntedPirate]

What do you expect from someone holding over 1 million shares of TWDC stock? Everything is done with an eye to stock performance. He doesn't care one whit about "guests" except how much they're willing to fork over for the "Disney brand" and keeping the quarterlies looking good so his nest egg stays healthy. How do you expect the man to retire if the stock price drops below $80/share?? He'd be on food stamps!!!

I love it when people talk about how much they're spending now on the parks currently. How much did they spend domestically during the first 5-6 years of Iger's reign? It's basically playing catch-up at this point, nothing more. Same with Paris. DL was left in pretty damn good shape in 2006, courtesy of one Matt Ouimet.

That said... he's not personally responsible for some of the things he's been accused of in this thread, like Disco Yeti. But, at the same time, if he cared enough to want it fixed, it would have been done. DCA was a mess he inherited, and they made arguably the right move with Paradise Pier. Then they turned their backs on that with the brand-fest overlay.

 

[Ladybat]

damn bug just flew into my eye...

 

[Spike-in-Berlin]

Actually I don't know where to start with. To sum it up, Eisner at least had some good years as CEO, perhaps even saved the company in the 80ies and had some good (and some not so good) ideas until the Mid 90ies. Iger has been bad from the beginning on, hasn't got a sense what Disney is (Eisner at least for some time got the spirit) and destroyed what Eisner had left from the original soul of the company. Roy E.s save disney campaign came too late.

 

[Shouldigo12]

Exactly. Its come down to every minute of this expensive trip has to be accounted for or I loose big time. My youngest daughter lives in Florida so she and her twin boys can go more often than my husband, me, daughter and grandson, who live here in California. Air fare added to the cost of this trip was ghastly! And we loose a whole day because of flying. No flights into Orlando earlier than 10 PM. Unless I wanted to fly the night before and we sleep on the plane which I sure did not want to do. So by the time Magical Express gets us to the CB resort its going to be around midnight. I pay for a whole day's room booking that I don't even use till after 12 midnight. But at least my Florida daughter and grand kids will arrive early in the day and enjoy the pirate pool at CB and have loads of fun till we get there just in time to go to sleep. This is why I was so angry when I found out CB is going to charge us 19 bucks a night for my Florida daughter to park her car at CB.

I'll tell you what I did, I called Disney Travel and talked to them so sweet and sad explaining that even though it said in my confirmation email that there would be a parking fee I did not see it (a poster in here told me about it) and never had I ever had to pay it before and now that I know I have to I won't be able to afford dining reservations at BOG (also had bookings at Tusker House in AK, and Garden Grill in Epcot, and Mama Melrose in HS) or get the memory maker that I was planning to add. I asked is there any thing they could do for me to help me out. Now that I'm an old lady I am not to proud to barter. I used to be shy about that. But shyness and vanity left me years ago and I finally had to start relying on my brains. (grin) That, and my husband comes from a country that bartering is not only a way of life but its down right shameful if you don't at least try and watching him all these years get the best deals at car dealerships taught me a few things. I always felt so sorry for those poor car sales people when they had to deal with him. He is relentless. But it always paid off.

I GOT MEMORY MAKER FOR FREE! Yayee. I was so proud of myself for that. Its worth more than what the price of the parking fee is going to be. Any way, I thought that was so very nice of them for doing that. They said if they had it in their power they would wave the parking fee but only the resort can do that they can't. But they had the power to treat me to memory maker which suited me fine. I don't feel so cheated now. And between you and me.... I planned on booking BOG any way even if my bartering plan had not worked. But I still had to try.

It pays to spend time chatting with the Cast Members of the Travel Company. They bend over backwards and really try their best get you some deals. And I learned all sorts of things from them that would help me on this trip. And you can call them as often and as many times you want and ask any question no matter how silly you want. They encourage you to. I've had many long chats with them this whole past year. In the past years I've gone to WDW it was never like that with Disney employees over the phone. They were never that helpful or encouraging to me. I always had to drag information out of them. Not like that any more. A great improvement in that department.

Is Disney travel the phone number they have listed on their website? Because I think we had to have called different numbers haha. I had the worst time on their customer service line. By far, the only real negative of the trip.

 

[larryz]

Exactly. Its come down to every minute of this expensive trip has to be accounted for or I loose big time. My youngest daughter lives in Florida so she and her twin boys can go more often than my husband, me, daughter and grandson, who live here in California. Air fare added to the cost of this trip was ghastly! And we loose a whole day because of flying. No flights into Orlando earlier than 10 PM. Unless I wanted to fly the night before and we sleep on the plane which I sure did not want to do. So by the time Magical Express gets us to the CB resort its going to be around midnight. I pay for a whole day's room booking that I don't even use till after 12 midnight. But at least my Florida daughter and grand kids will arrive early in the day and enjoy the pirate pool at CB and have loads of fun till we get there just in time to go to sleep. This is why I was so angry when I found out CB is going to charge us 19 bucks a night for my Florida daughter to park her car at CB.

I'll tell you what I did, I called Disney Travel and talked to them so sweet and sad explaining that even though it said in my confirmation email that there would be a parking fee I did not see it (a poster in here told me about it) and never had I ever had to pay it before and now that I know I have to I won't be able to afford dining reservations at BOG (also had bookings at Tusker House in AK, and Garden Grill in Epcot, and Mama Melrose in HS) or get the memory maker that I was planning to add. I asked is there any thing they could do for me to help me out. Now that I'm an old lady I am not to proud to barter. I used to be shy about that. But shyness and vanity left me years ago and I finally had to start relying on my brains. (grin) That, and my husband comes from a country that bartering is not only a way of life but its down right shameful if you don't at least try and watching him all these years get the best deals at car dealerships taught me a few things. I always felt so sorry for those poor car sales people when they had to deal with him. He is relentless. But it always paid off.

I GOT MEMORY MAKER FOR FREE! Yayee. I was so proud of myself for that. Its worth more than what the price of the parking fee is going to be. Any way, I thought that was so very nice of them for doing that. They said if they had it in their power they would wave the parking fee but only the resort can do that they can't. But they had the power to treat me to memory maker which suited me fine. I don't feel so cheated now. And between you and me.... I planned on booking BOG any way even if my bartering plan had not worked. But I still had to try.

It pays to spend time chatting with the Cast Members of the Travel Company. They bend over backwards and really try their best get you some deals. And I learned all sorts of things from them that would help me on this trip. And you can call them as often and as many times you want and ask any question no matter how silly you want. They encourage you to. I've had many long chats with them this whole past year. In the past years I've gone to WDW it was never like that with Disney employees over the phone. They were never that helpful or encouraging to me. I always had to drag information out of them. Not like that any more. A great improvement in that department.

Good for you!

Of course, it costs Disney next to nothing to (a) take digital photos of you, (b) correlate them to your MDE account, and (c) post them to your online account for 90 days. Which should tell you that people who pay anywhere from $99 to $199 to use the service are getting royally Rogered.

 

[eliza61nyc]

Good for you!

Of course, it costs Disney next to nothing to (a) take digital photos of you, (b) correlate them to your MDE account, and (c) post them to your online account for 90 days. Which should tell you that people who pay anywhere from $99 to $199 to use the service are getting royally Rogered.

do they not get pictures with the service?? I never use it so I don't know

 

[larryz]

do they not get pictures with the service?? I never use it so I don't know

You can buy prints. It costs extra.

 

[rreading]

Don't care. I'm sick to death of remakes and sequels. Break some new ground already please. It's like they think all the new ideas have been taken or something.

I'm sure someone has said this but Wreck it Ralph, Frozen and Moana were all great. Sure they have done sequels but that's just printing money (and we're looking forward to Frozen 2)

 

[rreading]

I believe he honestly couldn't care less what Walt's vision was whatsoever. Walt was a man of artistic integrity. Iger is a man of no integrity. The dude managed to puke out more Star Wars films in 3 years than George Lucas did in 40 it seems like. I mean people can hate on Lucas for all the choices he made in regarding the prequels and certainly Star Wars has been a milked franchise since 1977 but that's mostly from things BESIDES the films. Toys, games, merch, etc. But when Iger got his hands on it we got two main films pretty quickly and then a Han Solo and Rogue One spinoff. Not to mention the Boba Fett movie and another Star Wars film as well. Not only that but I'd say he couldn't care less if the Avengers replaced Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, and Goofy as the main characters of the Magic Kingdom as well. I could see him replacing Cinderella's Castle with Stark Tower if he thought it would turn a quick buck. I can't stand him. Can not and will not. Ever.

I'm truly sorry that you haven't liked the Star Wars movies. They have all been well done and have received good reviews from objective observers (critics) even though some of the SW fanatics didn't like the direction of The Last Jedi. TLJ and Rogue One did well in the box office and Solo was released at a horrible time (I didn't get a chance to see it for weeks after release though I really enjoy SW films). It too was a good movie.

I expect that the thought was that they could maintain the momentum that the MCU was able to produce and that there was a similar market for the SW universe. Apparently they were wrong

 

[DuckTalesWooHoo1987]

I'm truly sorry that you haven't liked the Star Wars movies. They have all been well done and have received good reviews from objective observers (critics) even though some of the SW fanatics didn't like the direction of The Last Jedi. TLJ and Rogue One did well in the box office and Solo was released at a horrible time (I didn't get a chance to see it for weeks after release though I really enjoy SW films). It too was a good movie.

I expect that the thought was that they could maintain the momentum that the MCU was able to produce and that there was a similar market for the SW universe. Apparently they were wrong

Don't get me wrong. I liked the new Star Wars movies and really think Rogue One is probably the best one. I was just saying that he will flood the market with things for just the almighty dollar and I don't think he really cares about the actual quality of the product as much as the quantity of the product. He just cares that it's profitable. Walt was all about quality and that's the difference between an artist and a salesman.

 

[Smiley/OCD]

Ok, just to be clear: you don't like screen rides or "cheap" coasters. And you don't want more resorts built. Okay....



...or parking fees at hotels....



Some of us greatly prefer MSEP to Spectromagic. To each their own (MK should have a light parade though, I'd agree).



Imagination was destroyed under Eisner. Just sayin' The current incarnation has actually been around since all the way back in 2002, well before Iger became head of the company.



You do realize that Universal has been charging parking at their resorts for decades, right?

If you argument is that Universal is going to surpass WDW because Disney is doing "screen rides", "lightly themed coasters" and "charging parking fees at hotels", well you just might want to reassess your debate skills.

Katiebug, paging Katiebug...

 

[drizgirl]

I'm sure someone has said this but Wreck it Ralph, Frozen and Moana were all great. Sure they have done sequels but that's just printing money (and we're looking forward to Frozen 2)

That's sort of damning with faint praise when you consider the quantity of material Disney puts out every year.

 

[Brer Panther]

You know, whenever I hear the excuse "People visiting the parks WANT only IP-based attractions!", it makes me think you're implying that casual parkgoers are idiots who only like things that they're familiar with, which I think is kind of insulting. Me and my family, personally, have ALWAYS loved the non-IP rides in addition to the IP-based rides. And as others have pointed out, rides that aren't based on IPs (such as Soarin', Test Track, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad) still get long lines despite their not being based on IPs.

As for Iger, I'm sure he's a nice guy and lot of the things he did for the company are good (buying PIXAR, for example), but he does have his problems: the live-action remakes, the fact that every ride MUST be based on an IP (though that might be more Chapek's fault than Iger's)...