“The Tree of Life Awakens” at Animal Kingdom Park uses projections to make the tree appear to come to life at sunset and throughout the evening. (Credit: Ryan Pastorino / @disneyphotomagic)
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — During a media event on Wednesday (April 20), Walt Disney World offered a preview of several attractions opening this summer and a sneak peek at additional attractions expected to open over the new few years.
Credit: Walt Disney World
New ‘Frozen’ attractions set for summer
Disney can’t — and won’t – let it go.
The Frozen Ever After attraction currently under construction at the Norway Pavilion in Epcot will open this June, Disney revealed on Wedsday.
A new boat tour will take guests through Arendelle as they participate in a “Winter in Summer” celebration in a newly created story that takes place after the film.
Guests will then have the opportunity to meet Anna and Elsa in a newly opened “Royal Somerhaus” meet-and-greet location.
Disney brought back composers Bobby and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who worked on the original film, to help with new music for the attraction. Walt Disney Imagineers also traveled to Norway to research architecture, décor and artifacts used in the attraction.
‘Star Wars’ into the future
The “Symphony in the Star Fireworks” show currently at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The new “Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular” show premieres this summer. (Credit: Ryan Pastorino / @disneyphotomagic)
While Disney is celebrating Star Wars with a brand new fireworks show and other attractions this summer, most fans of the film are interested in what’s coming in a few years.
On Wednesday, Walt Disney World shared photos and videos from the upcoming Star Wars Land to be built at the current Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park.
While no date has been announced, it will be opening no sooner than 2018. Here are some of the photos and video shared during the sneak peek on Wednesday:
Woody and Buzz get their own land
In Toy Story Land, guests will be “shrunk to the size of a toy to explore the world of Andy’s backyard with favorite Toy Story characters.”
Two new attractions will be built in the land, including a kid-friendly roller coaster named Slinky Dog Dash. Here’s a sneak peek:
The other attraction that will open in Toy Story Land is Alien Swirling Saucers, a ride that looks like a toy set with “aliens flying around in their toy flying saucers and trying to capture your rocket toy vehicle with ‘The Claw.’”
Credit: Walt Disney World
On Memorial Day, a third track will open for the current Toy Story Mania track at Disney’s Hollywood Studios — which will help with long wait-times if you’re headed to Orlando this summer.
The new Toy Story-themed Land and attractions will open at a later date.
Animal Kingdom welcomes the night
Animal Kingdom Park introduces several new nighttime attractions including a new night safari, a nighttime show dedicated to The Jungle Book, and a new night version of The Tree of Life.
A photo from Tuesday’s preview of the not-quite-ready “Rivers of Light” show that was scheduled to debut at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park on April 22. When the show is ready for guests, the full show will make its debut. No date was provided. (Credit: Ryan Pastorino /@disneyphotomagic)
“The Tree of Life Awakens” uses projections to make the tree appear to come to life at sunset and throughout the evening. Animal spirits and fireflies are projected on the tree, in addition to some Disney favorites.
The “Jungle Book: Alive with Magic” Show will be limited-engagement show that will serve as a placeholder for the Rivers of Light nighttime show that has been delayed.
The safari, Jungle Book show, and night version of Tree of Life will all debut on Memorial Day.
The Rivers of Light show was scheduled to premiere on April 22, but the show was delayed due to technical issues.
When the show is ready for guests, the show featuring The Jungle Book will end its limited-run and the Rivers of Light show will make its debut. However, no timetable was provided.
Pandora – The World of ‘Avatar’
A new land dedicated to Avatar will open at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 2017. While not much new information was shared on Wednesday, Disney did provide a sneak peek of one of the animatronics:
Other happenings around Walt Disney World
Soarin’ Around the World is then next generation of the current Soarin’ attraction already at Epcot. The new film will feature The Great Wall of China, a bird’s-eye view of the Sydney Harbor in Australia, gliding around the Matterhorn in Switzerland, and other many other locations from “around the world.”
The ride will open at Epcot and Disney’s California Adventure on June 17, the day after it makes its world premiere at Shanghai Disneyland. Here’s a sneak peek:
A new stage show at Magic Kingdom Park titled “Mickey’s Royal Friendship Fare” will begin performances in June. The show replaces the “Dream Along with Mickey” show which ended its run earlier this month after premiering in 2006.
Starting early next month, characters from the upcoming film “Finding Dory” will make appearances in the current “Turtle Talk with Crush” attraction at Epcot. The film hits theaters on June 17.
Princess Elena, Disney’s first princess inspired by diverse Latin cultures, will make her debut at Magic Kingdom park in August.
And last but not least, Disney Springs, formerly known as Downtown Disney, will open 30 new shops and restaurants when its new “Town Center” opens to guests in mid-May.
The Shanghai Disney Resort, Disney’s first theme park in the Chinese mainland, released a special Shanghai cuisine menu for visitors on Wednesday.
Photo taken on April 20 shows the Peking Duck Pizza on the cuisine menu for visitors to Shanghai Disney Resort. [Photo: Xinhua]
The resort is expected to open to the public on June 16, consisting of two themed hotels and six different “lands” with 600 to 1,000 canteens and restaurants providing food and drinks for tourists. The food offered in the resort will include special Shanghai cuisine incorporating elements of Disney, said Paul Chandler, director of the Food and Beverage Department of the resort.
The menu includes a Mickey Chocolate Tart, Mickey Pork Cake, Donald Duck Waffle and Braised Pork Knuckle in Dark Soy sauce and so on, he said.
“Shanghai Disney Resort will respect the Chinese traditional diet,” Chandler said.
In addition to Shanghai cuisine, the menu provided by the resort will also include other different regional cuisine from across the nation, for example, Sichuan, Shandong, Cantonese and Hunan cuisine.
Food supplied in Shanghai Disney Resort will cover China’s eight major regional cuisines. These flavors will be placed in plates printed with Disney cartoon images or be made into the shape of famous Disney cartoon characters such as Mickey and Minnie, according to Chandler.
Benny Dong, Executive Chef of the resort, said that they have exchanged experience with chefs from different places of China and invited some excellent chefs to join them.
The food provided in the resort will combine both Chinese and Western elements and will be of high-quality, Dong added.
The Shanghai Disney Resort is Disney’s sixth resort worldwide. Construction began in 2011 in Pudong New District.
Walt Disney World previewed its “Rivers of Light” show created for Disney’s Animal Kingdom — and then announced another show for the theme park based on “The Jungle Book” late Tuesday night.
“Jungle Book: Alive With Magic” production will take advantage of the popularity of the new film, a photorealistic remake of the 1967 animated movie, which made $103 million at the box office on its opening weekend. It could also be seen as filling a gap in the Animal Kingdom schedule. “Rivers of Light” originally was planned to debut this Friday, but Disney recently postponed the opening of the show.
The new Jungle Book show will debut Memorial Day weekend. It is a limited-time engagement, Disney officials said, although a post on the official Disney Parks Blog indicates a summer-long run.
“We’re really excited about the Jungle Book,” said creative executive Michael Jung. “The film is remarkable, and it’s such a great fit for Disney’s Animal Kingdom – the morals of the story, the idea of nature, embracing it, all of it is such a great fit.”
“For us, it’s a long cycle before another film like that comes by … so we want to find everything we can in that property that we can find a place for at Animal Kingdom,” Rohde said. “This is our first opportunity.”
A new premiere date for “Rivers” has not been announced.
“We try not to declare opening days for things until we’re really sure we’re opening them, right?” Rohde said. “It’s a challenging, technical and aesthetic thing to work on. … You want this to be beautiful, meaningful, perfect, when it’s open. In our business, you’re open. You open, you’re open. So, we’re perfecting it. It has many, many pieces that we’re working to get it perfect. But that’s our thing. We don’t sell junk.”
“There’s a lot more in that show. There’s many, many elements in that show. It’s an exceedingly complicated job to assemble and balance them with each other,” Rohde said. “The grandeur of the show is fantastically more than what you saw.”
Members of the media gathered for a Disney showcase also saw the Tree of Life Awakens – elaborate projections upon the park’s centerpiece – and a version of the park’s safari, presented in perpetual sunset mode. Those attractions, originally set to debut Friday, will now be available to guests as of Memorial Day weekend. The new offerings are designed to give Animal Kingdom some after-dark offerings and extend the amount of time visitors spend there.
The additions have been considered for some time, said Rohde, one of the masterminds behind the park, which opened in 1998. Changes in lighting technology for the savanna are making it possible in 2016, he said.
“Without that being possible, you could not pull these other triggers,” he said.
And ‘Frozen’ fever continues! With Disney World’s newest themed ride set to open this summer, the amusement park shared a special sneak peek at what Elsa and Anna’s breathtaking attraction currently looks like. And we have to say — it’s going to be SUPER enchanting!
Disney World is about to make Frozencome alive, and we could not be more excited! The animated flick will get its own ride as well as a meet-and-greet area in Epcot, and so far the attraction looks beautiful! Disney even treated fans to a behind-the-scenes tour of what theFrozen site currently looks like and you HAVE to see it for yourselves! Seriously, this attraction is going to be incredible!
Get ready to join Anna, Elsa, Olaf, and the rest of the Frozen gang in Walt Disney World by way of the Norway section in the Epcot theme park! This new Frozen world, which is still just a construction site and is set to open this summer, consists of two main attractions: a meet-and-greet area with Elsa and Anna called “Royal Sommerhus” and a ride, “Frozen Ever After.” Intrigued yet?
The rest of the world certainly has been, which prompted Disney to provide us with an amazing first-look at what Elsa and Anna’s unfinished world looks like. And so far we are LOVING what we see! “It’s truly an extension of the Norway Pavilion,” revealed Lauren Niederhiser, Assistant Project Manager at Disney Imagineering. Lauren even said in the clip that the area is based on REAL places in Norway that the Imagineers got to travel to. How authentic is THAT?
“Their story takes place after the film,” Lauren added. “Now that true love has conquered all, we are able to open up the summer cabin, invite guests in, and that’s where Anna and Elsa will meet you.” Doesn’t that sound amazing? Frozen fans will FINALLY be able to meet their favorite characters in the world they were created in!
The new ride is where the Maelstrom ride once took guests – traveling by boat – through the mythological history of Norway. And like the old attraction, riders on Frozen Ever After will also board a boat. Except this time, riders will now get an epic tour of Arendelle, the kingdom ruled by Elsa and Anna.
“You’ll float through this beautiful river and see all the magical landscapes from the movie,” revealed Michel den Dulk, executive creative director for Disney Imagineering. The ride will even include audio-animatronic figures and lots of special effects, which is so exciting! The song “Let It Go” will also make an appearance during the ride during a “key scene,” — we can’t wait!
A dedicated legion of ‘Star Wars’ fans are pleading with Disney and Lucasfilm to bring back the space saga’s ‘expanded universe’.
Such is the seriousness of their passion that yesterday a billboard ad went up in San Francisco as a direct request to the filmmakers.
It reads: “Dear Lucasfilm, Please continue THE ORIGINAL EXPANDED UNIVERSE — The epic story that existed from 1976-2014. Thank you.”
View photos
Some background – the ‘expanded universe’ has existed since around the time of the first movie back in 1977, comprising spin-off novels, comics, role-playing games and suchlike.
The first notable text was the novel ‘Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’ from 1978 by Alan Dean Foster, taking place between the action of the first ‘Star Wars’ movie ‘A New Hope’ and ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.
Since then, it had flourished, introducing new worlds and new villains aside from the Empire.
However, in 2014, two years after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.06 billion, it was announced that the expanded universe material was to be declared ‘non-canon’, thus not officially part of the new ‘Star Wars’ universe.
Instead, it would be re-branded as ‘Star Wars Legends’, with the new Disney division ‘Lucasfilm Story Group’ taking control of the new ‘Star Wars’ universe to ensure there is no contradictory storytelling going on.
View photos
Delving into the SWEU, as it’s known, it’s something of a minefield, with various levels of ‘canon’ and sub-series texts having been established over the years.
The custodians of the campaign, known as Give Us Legends, initiated a crowd-funding push to raise money for the advert, with just under $5000 coming in donations to pay for the billboard, found on the corner of Steiner and Lombard in San Francisco.
Whether it make the slightest bit of difference, however, is unlikely.
More than ever, Disney is likely to be much more stringent on who is penning ‘canon’ and ‘non-canon’ stories in the Star Wars universe, particularly with many more films in the offing.
A valiant effort from fans, then, but one more than likely to fall on deaf ears at Disney.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) –Shares of The Walt Disney Co. (DIS – Get Report) are higher by 0.30% to $98.89 in pre-market trading Monday morning, following the successful opening weekend for its latest film, “The Jungle Book.”
The live-action remake of the classic Disney cartoon feature, based on the book by Rudyard Kipling, brought in an estimated $103.6 million from U.S. and Canadian theaters on its debut this weekend, Bloomberg reports. Some analysts are looking at 2016 as being one of Disney’s best years ever in theaters.
Disney is hitting the ground running in 2016 as all five of its film units, including Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm, are pumping out pictures.
Some analysts are predicting that the family entertainment and media giant will release a record of billion-dollar movies in just one year, Bloomberg added.
Additionally, Pivotal Research has upgraded its rating on Disney stock to “buy” from “hold.” The firm believes that investor concerns are already priced into the stock.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings has set a “buy” rating and a score of A- on Walt Disney stock. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that TheStreet Ratings covers.
The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, notable return on equity and expanding profit margins. TheStreet Ratings feels its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had lackluster performance in the stock itself.
TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its “risk-adjusted” total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer’s view or that of this articles’s author.
You can view the full analysis from the report here: DIS
Closer ties between Walt Disney and Hasbro led the toy maker to report a big 16% increase in first-quarter sales, aided by still-strong demand for Star Wars and the inclusion of a new license tied to the studio’s popular princesses.
Hasbro’s HAS-0.16% investors cheered the results, sending shares up around 5% in recent trading as results were better than expected. Growth was broad for the first quarter, with sales of “boys” toys up 24% and the “girls” category increasing an even more impressive 41%. Overall, revenue grew to $831.2 million from $713.5 million.
That increase is far more drastic than Hasbro typically reports in the first quarter, traditionally a lean period for toy makers that often see their strongest sales in the final three months of the year. Hasbro is benefiting from the late 2015 release of a new Star Wars film. It also benefited from winning the Disney Princess fashion doll licensing business from rival Mattel MAT-0.06%, a loss that was so severe that Mattel executives had to outline a detailed explanationas to how they would fill the $440 million revenue gap.
“Retail and consumer demand for Star Wars remained very high,” CEO Brian Goldner told analysts during a conference call. He said the initial consumer response to Hasbro’s line of Disney Princess characters was “very positive.”
The Princess line will see some added diversity this year in the form of two new properties. An upcoming Disney Junior TV show called Elena of Avalor is centered around a Hispanic protagonist, while Moana is a feature film due from Disney later this year that’s set in ancient Oceania.
The Hasbro-Disney relationship is also tied to some future movies planned for Disney’s Marvel properties, including the upcoming Captain America Civil War film and a movie that’s planned for Spider-Man next year. Goldner said that Hasbro can also aim to build excitement about the Star Wars property when the film is released on home video later this year.
Those words, spoken by director Jon Favreau, were meant to sum up the technological wizardry on display in his hyperrealistic remake of The Jungle Book, which was largely created with computers. But Favreau could also have been describing the way Walt Disney Studios used marketing sleight of hand to fill seats on opening weekend. The Jungle Book took in an astounding $103.6 million in North America, according to Disney.
Studios hate to discuss their marketing for fear of coming across as corporate versions of Kaa, the slippery “Jungle Book” python who hypnotises prey. (“Trusssst in me.”) But movies – especially ones as tricky as The Jungle Book, a stylised film based on a cartoon musical, based on a classic book – do not sell themselves. Here are some of the tricks that Disney, who declined to comment, used to move the masses:
TOSS RED MEAT TO THE BASE
In August, Favreau bounded onto a 7800-seat arena at a Disney fan convention in Anaheim, California, and showed sneak-peek footage from his film. He hobnobbed with three of the stars on stage, including Neel Sethi, who plays the man-cub Mowgli. Thousands of movie posters were handed out.
This was the first marketing stunt for The Jungle Book, which cost roughly $175 million to make. By going to happy, peppy Disneyphiles first, Disney ensured that the movie’s initial blast on social media would be a positive one.
“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! High fives from the cast, audience on their feet. #JungleBook looks wonderful!!! #D23Expo,” @SuburbanMomClub posted on Twitter.
And @osteoferocious tweeted, “‘Bare Necessities’ was reimagined as a rollicking orchestral theme. Very, very cool. #JungleBook #D23Expo.”
TALKING ANIMALS GROW UP: NOT JUST FOR BABIES
When animals talk in a movie, unless it’s a comedy, older moviegoers tend to skip it. Most of Favreau’s animals are not cartoonish and cuddly (not by a long shot), but Disney could not rely on trailers and TV spots to convey that message.
So Disney turned to bloggers and entertainment news sites to hammer home a point: Favreau used sophisticated filmmaking techniques to create the animal characters.
In part to make The Jungle Book appeal to a finicky high school crowd – older siblings tend to influence younger brothers and sisters – Disney packed the first trailer with scary moments (pouncing panther, snarling tiger, stampeding buffalo) while hiding the musical numbers and keeping Baloo’s goofier moments to a minimum.
Stars are another way to make adults pay attention. To elevate The Jungle Book in the minds of grown-ups, Disney in March circulated dramatic photographs that paired voice actors with their on-screen characters; Idris Elba with the tiger Shere Khan, Ben Kingsley with the panther Bagheera, Lupita Nyong’o with the wolf Raksha.
MEN AND BOYS, BOYS AND MEN
Generally speaking, women and girls see Disney’s magic castle logo on a trailer and are pulled closer. The opposite can be true with guys. So Disney aggressively and repeatedly pitched The Jungle Book to male audiences.
Commercials on ESPN portrayed the movie as coming not from the studio that made Cinderella but “from the studio that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean. An extended 3-D trailer for The Jungle Book was attached to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which had an audience that was 58 per cent male.
And Disney rolled out an action-oriented trailer during the Super Bowl.
REACHING OUT IN SPANISH
Studio marketers have learned that Hispanic moviegoers tend to buy tickets in particularly large groups; if you hook one family member, you can get an exponential result. To achieve that goal, Disney teamed with (American Spanish language network) Univision for a five-week stunt that brought The Jungle Book characters and clips to telenovelas, talk shows and sports coverage. Disney even built a tool to allow Univision personalities to appear in scenes.
MORE THAN A FILM
If moviegoers believe that, they are more likely to spend $3 to $5 more a ticket to see The Jungle Book in 3-D, which can lift opening-weekend sales considerably. To emphasise the scope and scale of this movie, Disney introduced a maze like Law of the Jungle website in partnership with the female-leaning Tumblr; ran special promos at IMAX theatres focusing on the snake Kaa; and created a touring virtual-reality experience and 360-degree Facebook video emphasising the Avatar-like world of its jungle.
THEME PARK ARMIES, ACTIVATE
Various corners of the Disney empire pitched in to promote The Jungle Book. A New Year’s Day stunt on the Disney Channel, for instance, was used to portray the film as one of the year’s first blockbuster offerings for families and children.
But the synergistic heavy lifting was done by Disney theme parks. During the jam-packed spring break weeks, park theatres in Florida and California offered sneak-peek footage of the movie, with Favreau providing introductions.
The many (many) theme park stores that sell Disney merchandise had The Jungle Book sections. And Disney built photogenic sand sculptures at its Animal Kingdom and Epcot parks in Florida.
The runner from Oakdale, N.Y., thought for the longest time Sunday morning she would cross the finish line of the inaugural Star Wars Half Marathon: The Dark Side atDisney World in second place.
“I saw someone, when we started, with a long ponytail in first — in front of all of the guys,” McGrath said. “I never saw her. I heard people say I was first, but then I thought, ‘Maybe she is so far ahead, they didn’t see her.”’
The long ponytail that McGrath saw belonged to Jason Ryf, the top finisher among 19,500 registered runners in the 13.1-mile race. Ryf finished in 1 hour, 13 minutes, 39 seconds. McGrath won the women’s division in 1:24:05.
“You never know who is going to be here and what sort of competition you’re going to have,” said Ryf, a high-school art teacher from Oshkosh, Wis. “Plus I’m 45, so I am at the end of my fast time. My hyper speed doesn’t really work anymore, so I just have to go with what I can do on that day.”
Ryf, a two-time Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier, topped runner-up Marc Burget (1:14:38) of Jacksonville by nearly a minute. Chris Trebilcock of Tampa finished third in 1:15:27.
Ryf placed second in the inaugural Star Wars Half Marathon at Disneyland last year.
“It is surreal I won, but I don’t know that I should have because I didn’t think I ran that fast,” Ryf said. “On this day, I was, so I will take it. Someone else will come and beat my time, but I get to be the first one.”
McGrath, 31, topped Elizabeth Meadows-Harland (1:26:36) of Nashville, Tenn., by 2 1/2 minutes. Bridget Dawes (1:28:56) of Antelope, Calif., was third.
“My pace was faster than I thought, but I felt good,” McGrath said. “It got a little tough in the middle, and I tried to conserve energy, just maintain [my] pace and it felt good. Everyone out there was so supportive. I felt like I was smiling the whole time.”
Charisse Winter (1:32:31, 10th) of Apopka, Kelly Howell (1:35:59, 14th) and Stefanie Shimansky (1:38:13, 18th) of Winter Springs placed among the top 20 women’s finishers.
The race weekend drew more than 43,000 entrants. The Star Wars race was the first half-marathon to debut at Disney World since the 2009 Princess Half Marathon.
The derailing of Thomas Staggs’s drive to the top job at Walt Disney Co. sheds light on what some say is a culture shift at the entertainment giant, where cost-cutting is in vogue and value is placed on shaking up the business model.
A group of leaders on the rise — including Bob Chapek, who oversees theme parks; Jimmy Pitaro, in charge of consumer and digital products; and TV networks honcho Ben Sherwood — have restructured their divisions, fired longtime executives or sought to wring more revenue out of the business. Their strategy is in line with that of Ike Perlmutter, who came to Disney with the Marvel Entertainment acquisition seven years ago and built a reputation for controlling costs.
The change in tone is subtle, and in some cases is being led by managers who have been at the company for many years but have been promoted in the past 14 months. Their rising influence provides context for a number of recent executive changes under the watch of Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger, including the surprise departure of his top lieutenant, Staggs, according to current and former executives.
It also gives investors clues to Disney’s priorities and strategy during a period of contemplation at the company about the future, with no obvious successor to Iger waiting in the wings.
“Staggs is a phenomenal operations guy, but not somebody who is going to be able to remodel Disney’s non-physical assets into a 21st century,” said Porter Bibb, managing partner of the New York-based Mediatech Capital Inc., who has been an investment banker in media for 40 years. “Everything is in flux.”
Executive Search
Since the group of executives hold some of the highest positions at Disney, it’s likely they’ll be considered along with outside candidates in the search for a successor to Iger, 64, whose contract expires in June 2018 unless the board asks him to stay and he accepts. The company has said it is undertaking a wider search now that Staggs is leaving.
Burbank, Calif.-based Disney shocked investors when it announced April 4 that Staggs was departing the company in September. As chief financial officer, the 26-year-company veteran had spearheaded acquisitions, such as the $7 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006. And when running the theme park business for five years, he supervised major expansions such as the $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort scheduled to open in June and a $1 billion upgrade of the technology at Florida’s Walt Disney World.
He didn’t have the same reputation for tearing up the company’s business model and slashing costs. For years as CFO he put off eliminating car allowances for executives that amounted to hundreds of dollars a month. That perk was eliminated after he left the CFO spot.
Contrast that approach with Chapek, a 20-year Disney veteran who replaced Staggs as leader of the parks division in February of last year and has ushered in a series of pricing changes at Disney’s U.S. theme parks. Going to Disneyland during the busiest times of the year now costs as much as 20 percent more. People can now pay up to $35 a day to park closer to entrances at Walt Disney World. A $69 premium gets a patron in 75 minutes before others, and Disney throws in breakfast.
“This combination of surge pricing, after-hours parties, preferred parking — all of it coming in just a six-week window — this is not how Disney typically does business,” said Jim Hill, a blogger in New Hampshire who has written about Disney for about 30 years.
Disney declined to make any of the executives available for comment. Staggs, who will remain with the company as an adviser until September, referred questions to Disney’s press office. His departure came because some members of the board weren’t confident he was the best choice to succeed Iger, according to people familiar with the matter.
Disney’s operating margins have climbed to a record under the CEO’s tenure
Iger and his team boosted Disney’s operating profit margin to 25 percent in the fiscal year that ended Oct. 3, the highest of his tenure as CEO and an increase from 20 percent just two years earlier. But through last week, Disney shares had dropped 6.2 percent this year on concern that changes in the cable industry will hurt Disney’s TV unit, its biggest division.
The stock gained 2.6 percent to $101.12 at 1:32 p.m. in New York after Disney’s latest film, “The Jungle Book,” topped box-office estimates in its first weekend, raking in $103.6 million in the U.S. and Canada and putting the movie studio on course for one of its best years ever.
Unlike Staggs, Disney’s current roster of division chiefs has known to wield a hatchet to costs. Jimmy Pitaro, as president of Disney’s interactive unit, led the business to profitability by closing video-game studios, licensing the making of “Star Wars” games to Electronic Arts Inc. rather than making them in-house and supervising the elimination of 700 jobs in March 2014 alone. His strategy included emphasizing mobile games rather than slower-growing console products.
The unit shot from a $308 million loss in 2011 to a $132 million profit in 2015. Last year the interactive business was merged with the $4.5 billion consumer products business, and in February Iger named Pitaro as sole chairman of the combined operation.
Consumer Products
Before he moved to the parks division, Chapek had put his stamp on the consumer products unit. His predecessor, Andy Mooney, employed a variety of specialists in food, apparel and toys who worked with manufacturers on product designs. Chapek scrapped that approach to focus on franchises such as “Frozen” and “Star Wars.” Profits at the consumer products division have doubled to $1.7 billion since 2011.
Sherwood, who previously led ABC’s “Good Morning America” to the lead over NBC’s “Today,” fired longtime ABC entertainment chief Paul Lee in February over a ratings decline. Sherwood has been trying to develop ways to make TV viewing more personalized, hiring executives from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and AOL Inc. to collect customer data and create more short-form video content. On Monday he announcedplans to accelerate the distribution of programming from local ABC stations onto new Web-based platforms.
Both Chapek and Pitaro are close to Perlmutter, who is famous for pinching pennies, current and former Disney executives said, and who took an active interest in the consumer products business after the 2009 Marvel acquisition.
“Marvel was certainly culturally very different,” said Bob Boyd, a portfolio manager with Pacific Asset Management, which doesn’t own Disney shares. “We’ve heard many times that he is very opinionated and provided input across Disney.”
Perlmutter made a fortune taking over and flipping distressed companies and now owns a stake of about 1.6 percent in Disney, making him one of the company’s largest shareholders. Tales of his cost-cutting are legion, including pushing to serve potato chips instead of more expensive spreads at Marvel premieres and seeking to lower the pay of stars such as Robert Downey Jr. of “Iron Man.”
Perlmutter’s influence has its limits. Last year he had responsibility for the Marvel film business taken away from him.
Cost controls are necessary, even as Disney invests more in its theme parks, its cruise line and creative output, said Robin Diedrich, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. in Des Peres, Missouri, who advises buying the shares. “It’s got to be a balance.”
