WDW Pro

The Death of Domestic Disney Parks Investment

Added 2024-03-12 02:31:11 +0000 UTC

The Walt Disney Company decided to release a counter white paper to take on Nelson Peltz. To say it isn't going well would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. In one of the most bizarre moves I've ever seen from the company, they actually said the quite part out loud. The thing that we've been discussing on the WDW Pro Channel for months, hated by the pixie dusters, is now out in the wide open.

Disney plans to kill domestic park investment.

Looking at the image attached to this story, straight from the Disney white paper, Disney plans to only invest half of the $60b "turbo charge" money into parks AND resorts. Notice the word "resorts" -- it's important. Assuming then that the 50% ($30b) is allocated ONLY for theme parks (which is ludicrously wrong), AT BEST the parks could hope for $300m per year in capital investment. That is so close to nothing in the world of theme parks that it's shocking. But it gets worse... because there's no way that's the real number.

We already know that Bob Iger wants to invest in China more than he does domestically. Somebody somewhere is making money from that, even if it isn't shareholders. We also know that Disney Parks will be building and buying resorts (hotels, water parks, cruise ship destinations). When you run all the numbers, it's more likely that the domestic parks are getting about $100m in capital expenditure investments per year for a decade. And for The Walt Disney Company, that's about enough money to build a single ride at each Disney World and Disneyland attraction every 3-4 years.

It's just so criminally stupid because they thing the parks are starving for more than anything in this world is... increased capacity.

But Bob is determined to chase the global elites, not increasing the middle class guests who can attend. Today, all four parks hit capacity at one point at Disney World -- not because there were more people than we've ever seen before in March... but rather because there are no longer enough rides to sustain large crowds.

Bring on Epic Universe. In Bob's world, someone else can deal with it. He wants profit margins now.