I just need to add this: On one of my backstage tours I learned that Walt Disney used to say “put the money where the guests can see it.” And…yeah…if you took one of those tours you saw right away the difference between the guest areas and the backstage work areas which were pretty functional. Here’s a shot of the Expedition Everest ride that really brings it home…

The part the guests don’t see doesn’t need to look like anything more than what it is…the building that houses the ride. Everywhere in this shot you see the mountain peeking around the sides of this structure is where it can be seen from the guest area. All the ride structures look like this away from where the guests can see them.

So…my point: this is what Chapec forgot in his single minded pursuit of bigger and bigger profit margins; Put the money where the guests can see it. The guests don’t see money that only makes the executive suite richer.

This came across my Facebook stream just now, in a post about an Orange County Register article about Disneyland Magic Key holders…

From the post: “The top-tier Disneyland annual pass cost $699 when Chapek became Disney parks boss in 2015 and $1,599 when he was fired as CEO in 2022 — a 128% increase. Today, the most expensive Disneyland Magic Key pass costs $1,899.”

Chapec ruined the parks even more than I’d realized at the time. I was commenting in the previous post about how massively the cost of the annual passes had risen, and how now it seems like they don’t even want anyone who isn’t wealthy going to the parks on a regular basis at all.

The New Yorker ran this last May about how your average Disney goers are going into debt rather than giving up their park time as the costs have exploded.

In 2023, Ashley, a freshman at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut, had fifteen thousand dollars in her bank account. Excited by her newfound freedom as a college student, she decided to start going on solo trips. Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida—a place she had fallen in love with as a child, after visiting for the first time when she was four—seemed like an obvious choice. She went during her winter break. Then she returned, six times, in two years. “It’s just so magical,” she explained. “It keeps drawing me back.” Soon enough, her account balance had dwindled to just five dollars.

(you will probably need a subscription to read this) She ended up going to work for Disney and also having a thousand dollar credit card debt she needed her parents to help her pay off.

This is not sustainable. At some point attendance is going decline, but I think they’re baking that into the plan. If you have fewer guests but they’re wealthier you can still turn a tidy profit and your operating costs have gone down.

It’s a total betrayal of Walt Disney’s vision of what his parks should be, but his part of the company’s history just a small fragment of the total, and the people running it now see him as a marketing gimmick not a standard bearer.

I’m glad I got to visit for a few years before Chapek got his hands on it. In retrospect I started noticing the changes in tenor almost immediately; the big screen TV breaking the theming of the Belle Vue lounge, turning the Sid Cahuenga bungalow at the entrance to Hollywood Studios from a place to buy actual Hollywood memorabilia (where I got my autographed photo of Tommy Kirk in Old Yeller) into a photo-pass sales place because the profit margins on photo passes were higher, and finally, and most infuriatingly, turning The Writer’s Stop into a tap room because selling beer to adults made them more money than selling books to kids and adults.

I’m thinking now it wasn’t just having to wear a face shield in Biergarten during COVID that made a certain someone decide to retire early. He would have seen what Chapec was doing to the parks from the inside.