WSJ Imagineering Article

[dmc493]

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disney-cruise-rides-characters-imagineers-adventure-b5c03c1d?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Don’t have a subscription myself so I’m blocked out of the article but there’s at least a couple blogger summaries floating out there.

WSJ Offers Rare Look Inside Disney Imagineering as $60 Billion Expansion Accelerates

WSJ Offers Rare Look Inside Disney Imagineering as $60 Billion Expansion Accelerates

www.wdwmagic.com

Doesn’t seem like anything stated is something that would catch anyone by surprise but it’s noteworthy I guess when it gets published by the Wall Street journal. Any thoughts?

 

[TheRealSkull]

An overhaul of Disneyland's Tomorrowland being shelved has to be the one that pains the most.

 

[Nubs70]

Preparing the field for the unveiling of the heir apparent.

"Here's the new guy, he can't possibly F it up like the last guy"

This is an article used to heap all the failures of the past 6 years, including tenure and post tenure periods, on Chapek. This leaves Bob I smelling like a rose (smelling urinal cake).

 

[monothingie]

Some salty imagineers past and present.

In summary:

Disney corporate wanted WDI to push brand synergy. WDI want it to be creative. Disney corporate felt WDI was bloated, wasted money and was slow. WDI did not like Disney corporate and tensions flared at times.

In conclusion, both sides were right about each other at the exact same time.

 

[James Alucobond]

 

[larryz]

Don’t have a subscription myself so I’m blocked out of the article but there’s at least a couple blogger summaries floating out there.
...
Any thoughts?

why did you post an article that's stuck behind a paywall?

 

[Architectural Guinea Pig]

There may or may not be some paywall removers online that are totally legal

 

[flyerjab]

Any paywall that I encounter when I try to access an article, I just ask ChatGPT to provide a detailed summary of the article. It always works for me.

 

[dmc493]

why did you post an article that's stuck behind a paywall?

It’s why I posted the main article and the one that summarizes it, and because I wanted to point people to the article I was referencing?

 

[Tha Realest]

Pretty damning stuff. The Adventure costing $1.8bn by Disney to retrofit it is really astonishing. It wipes out Chapek’s cleanest win.

And then it goes on to say Disney management (Chapek era) is mean because they didn’t trust Imagineering to not blow through budgets.

The imagineer tasked with the Adventure project is now at Sea World.

Nothing on Tiana, PatF, Epcot. Really about WDI leadership and their tensions with TWDC corporate.

 

[Tha Realest]

If you want to read it legally many public libraries confer WSJ access through their websites. Though the summaries really pull most of the relevant stuff.

 

[BrianLo]

Preparing the field for the unveiling of the heir apparent.

"Here's the new guy, he can't possibly F it up like the last guy"

This is an article used to heap all the failures of the past 6 years, including tenure and post tenure periods, on Chapek. This leaves Bob I smelling like a rose (smelling urinal cake).

Pretty damning stuff. The Adventure costing $1.8bn by Disney to retrofit it is really astonishing. It wipes out Chapek’s cleanest win.

And then it goes on to say Disney management (Chapek era) is mean because they didn’t trust Imagineering to not blow through budgets.

The imagineer tasked with the Adventure project is now at Sea World.

Nothing on Tiana, PatF, Epcot. Really about WDI leadership and their tensions with TWDC corporate.

It’s interesting because I’m not sure who it is written for. While it seems to mostly be a tear down of Chapek, it’s not a puff piece for Bob or Josh, the latter who is mentioned just once. It seems to be mostly a puff piece for Bruce Vaughn, sort of?

The DCL adventure was also the thing I found most interesting. Chapek thrown under the bus one last time for what I agree seemed to be his really only clear remaining win. Albeit Bruce does defend it as saying the real benefit was the speed in which they could operationalize it versus scratch, which is true. Other than just pumping out another Triton/Wish class.

 

[Tha Realest]

It’s interesting because I’m not sure who it is written for. While it seems to mostly be a tear down of Chapek, it’s not a puff piece for Bob or Josh, the latter who is mentioned just once. It seems to be mostly a puff piece for Bruce Vaughn, sort of?

The DCL adventure was also the thing I found most interesting. Chapek thrown under the bus one last time for what I agree seemed to be his really only clear remaining win. Albeit Bruce does defend it as saying the real benefit was the speed in which they could operationalize it versus scratch, which is true. Other than just pumping out another Triton/Wish class.

Yes. It is interesting in that you can usually tell who leaked or had a broader objective to serve in getting the story told. It does read first as a decidedly anti-Chapek piece, but does also show how the early Iger era wasn’t great either.

My read on it is it is supposed to cast Vaughn (and presumptively Josh by proxy) as the ones who have righted the ship.

Speaking of ships, it is scant on mentioning wins and losses rather than the Adventure. It talks about the budget cutting to MFSR*, but really misses context by not discussing how much else of SWGE was cut (or paywalled behind the Starcruiser, which is likewise omitted, a huge money drain, and the Parks cleanest “loss” in - forever?). As I said, nothing about the reception for Spider-Man, EPCOT, etc.

Honestly? Especially after the Avengers Campus discussion? Management made the right call then.

*(Toy Story Midway Mania likewise was built for frequent updates or overlays but has been untouched since 2008, so it’s not a recent or just Star Wars thing)

 

[monothingie]

The only thing I take issue with this is that for marquee projects, such as New Epcot or Tianna’s or Pandora or Star Wars as the latest examples of it, is that it more over, falls to the side of going over budget and scaling back.

That makes it one of two possibilities: either no one can properly budget a project and account for overruns, or the process for green lighting projects is so convoluted that the only way to push something through is to play with the numbers with the understanding that something will be chopped.

Perhaps now that there is a massive financial incentive to bring to market, large scale, attractions, or lands to rake in that lightning lane revenue, things may change.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

It’s interesting because I’m not sure who it is written for.

I guess it's in part to get fans excited and to give investors confidence that this long term parks plan will pay off?

It's January 2026 and most of the big projects being built now are still years away from completion.

 

[BrianLo]

I guess it's in part to get fans excited and to give investors confidence that this long term parks plan will pay off?

It's January 2026 and most of the big projects being built now are still years away from completion.

Maybe a bit for investor confidence in parks. The full article doesn’t really focus on the future that much and the one thing it does (Adventure) it sort of tears down.

It’s not totally uninteresting, but they didn’t exactly have a clear thesis they were working towards. It seems like a couple of disconnected creative interviews cobbled together into an article.

And one of those interviews is an ex-employee maybe from lake Nona incident who tore down Chapek.

 

[ManicMillennial]

And one of those interviews is an ex-employee maybe from lake Nona incident who tore down Chapek.

I was thinking the same thing.

 

[HauntedPirate]

Can’t see the WSJ article but… $1.8 billion for the Adventure build-out?

 

[Disney Analyst]

Rohde’s commentary is certainly interesting.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

The article reads to me almost more like gossip than something you’d expect from a business publication. That is not to say there isn’t accurate information in there as I am sure there is, but as others have said above, it seems to lack any clear purpose to do anything other than air out information that seemed to come from scattered, unconnected sources.

Rhode’s input too shows me that whoever they spoke to, or the author who condensed the information, was far from an expert on the subject and seemingly was more interested in throwing out bits of information without really explaining why those bits of information mattered or what picture they painted.

WDI and TWDC management have friction. Duh, we know. This doesn’t really expand upon that in any meaningful way. It’s not a bad read, but I agree with others above that its overall purpose seems really confused.