The Walt Disney Company is in trouble. The largest and most successful entertainment conglomerate in the world is taking a political and financial hit for its decision to cater to a more “woke” audience.
It would be incorrect to blame all of Disney’s problems on its decisions to challenge Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) over its “special” governmental status or side with the radical left on gender issues. Disney is in deep trouble, and they got there the old-fashioned way: hubris and incompetence.
Touring Plans, a company that collects waiting time data from information provided by the mobile apps from Disney and measures it against average wait times in the past, discovered that over the Fourth of July, the average wait time at the Magic Kingdom was 27 minutes, down from 31 minutes in 2022 and 47 minutes in 2019.
“It’s something that nobody would have predicted — just unfathomable,” Len Testa, a computer scientist who runs Touring Plans, told the Wall Street Journal.
You have to wonder what kind of damage has been done to the Disney brand over the past few years. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the new live-action “The Little Mermaid,” and “Elemental” have lost tens of millions of dollars. And perhaps the biggest and most surprising failure of all — the fifth installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise — is projected to gross only $248 million. That won’t even cover its $300 million budget or the $150 million in marketing costs.
The slower period at parks could extend beyond summer, says A.J. Wolfe, the owner of Disney Food Blog, a website focused on the company’s theme parks. Disney doesn’t have major new U.S. attractions opening soon, apart from a reimagination of the Splash Mountain ride at its Florida and California parks. Attractions based on “Frozen” are being built in Disney’s Paris and Hong Kong resorts, and a “Zootopia” attraction is due to open soon at Disney’s park in Shanghai.
Given that vacationers often visit both Disney World and the nearby Universal theme parks, Testa says some families may be holding off on visiting Central Florida in anticipation of a third theme park expected to open in 2025 at Universal Orlando Resort.
No, it’s not all politics. But many American families are now seeing the Walt Disney Company as being hostile to their values. And they’re letting the company know this by staying away from their properties and refusing to attend their “family films” that have been the mainstay of the company’s image for 100 years.
At Disneyland, the company increased the cost of multiday tickets by 9% or more in October, with the price of a two-day ticket rising from $255 per adult to $285.
To attract more visitors to Main Street U.S.A., Disney has rolled out promotions, including discounts for return visits and savings of up to 40% on rooms at some Disney World hotels for annual passholders on certain days in December near Christmas, which is typically one of the busiest and most expensive times to visit. (Disney has offered discounts to passholders during that time period in the past.)
That doesn’t repair Disney’s battered image. Nor does it help retrieve some incredibly bad choices like casting decisions in the live-action “The Little Mermaid.” Disney’s problems are self-inflicted, and unless it can make a turn back to the center, it isn’t likely to recover anytime soon.
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