Disney Facing Furious Backlash Over $17 Billion Theme Park Investments

Forbes

02-04-2025

Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando has long been known as the most magical place on earth but fans and industry luminaries have warned that incoming changes could cast a dark spell on the historic theme park.
Understanding the cause of their concern requires looking back to 1955 when Walt Disney himself swung open the doors to Disneyland which was built on a former orange grove in California. Amongst its opening day attractions was the Rivers of America, a network of waterways which were navigated by an old-fashioned paddle steamer and and featured scenes from the frontier era on their shores. Over the years, other forms of transport were added giving guests the option of traveling on smaller keel boats and canoes.
They all combined to create a setting that looked like it had come straight out of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and there's good reason for that. Disneyland broke new ground because, unlike the amusement parks of its era, its rides and attractions were integrated into immersive environments.
As Walt himself said, "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world" and, testimony to this, in 1956 he themed an island in the middle of the river network to Finn's adventures. It is home to a network of caves complete with hidden treasure, a floating bridge formed from barrels, a fort, a shipwreck and a tree house.
In keeping with its theme, signs are scratched into driftwood and painted onto cave walls whilst the maps of the island look like they have been drawn on parchment paper. Called Tom Sawyer Island, it is accessible by rafts and still welcomes guests to this day.
Disneyland was an overnight success which led to a string of motels and restaurants springing up next door. Not only did they clash with the immaculate theming inside the park but some undercut Disney. A number of these satellite businesses were so successful they are still there to this day, including the wintry Alpine Inn motel which backs directly on to Disney's desert-themed land based on its computer-animated Cars movies.
Walt took steps to stop this trend repeating when he was developing his theme park outpost in Orlando in the 1960s. It is built on swamp land which Disney purchased using several shell companies with anonymous-sounding names such as Tomahawk Properties, M.T. Lott Co and Latin-American Development and Management Corp. If Disney had bought the land directly, the owners might have asked for more money safe in the knowledge that the buyer could afford it. In turn, this would have have made it more difficult for Disney to buy as much land as it did.
Instead, it got it for a good price and made the most of this by buying around 25,000 acres. The land was originally covered with swamps but is now prime real estate thanks to Disney's four theme parks and two water parks sitting on the site. The first to debut was the Magic Kingdom in 1971 and its opening day attractions included an expanded Rivers of America along with Tom Sawyer Island and an iconic paddle steamer. Sadly Walt wasn't there to see it as he passed away five years earlier. His vision paid off for decades to come.
Disney owns so much land at Walt Disney World in Orlando that it can lock out competitors and can control the standards in the area around its parks there. As anyone who has visited the sprawling site knows, the fantasy environment doesn't end when guests step out of the park gates. The resort is home to more than 25 hotels, compared to just three in California. In addition, there are three golf courses, a Mediterranean-themed youth sports complex and a shopping and dining district designed to look like an early 1900s town from central Florida. They are all connected by roads which run next to manicured grass verges with topiary trees scattered amongst the landscaping. The road signs are bespoke to Disney and even the fire station has an eye-catching artificial hose which wraps around the building and leads into a fountain.
It all contributes to what the Mouse refers to as the 'Disney Bubble' and it has been made possible thanks to Walt's game-changing realization that the caliber of the area surrounding the parks is just as important as the attractions in them. It also explains why the parks only represent a small fraction of the overall land at Disney World with a great deal of it earmarked for conservation.
A total of 2,825 acres are reportedly suitable for development with a further 2,256 acres described as being marginally suitable. It is one of the reasons why Disney's chief executive Bob Iger said last year that 'we have thousands of acres of lands to develop, we could actually build seven new full lands if we wanted to around the world.'
It reflects comments from Walt when he introduced his plans for Disney World on television in the 1960s and said "here in Florida we have something special which we never enjoyed at Disneyland – a blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all of the ideas and plans we could possibly imagine." Little did he know that his words would come back to haunt Disney's management six decades later.
The dark clouds began to gather in 2023 when Disney's studio division was suffering as the SAG-AFTRA strikes had delayed production and blockbuster spending on dedicated Disney+ streaming content had generated hefty losses in its direct to consumer division. It had driven Disney's stock price to under $100 which was around half of its $197.16 peak in 2021.
Disney's Experiences division, which includes its theme parks and cruise liners, accounted for just over a third of its $88.9 billion revenue but more than two thirds of its $12.9 billion operating income in the year to September 30, 2023 and it didn't go unnoticed.
In a bid to boost Disney's stock price, its chief executive Bob Iger and Josh D'Amaro, chairman of its Experiences division, got out their magic wands. In September 2023 they revealed that over the next decade, Disney's investment in Experiences would nearly double to roughly $60 billion. As this report explained, it failed to enchant investors. On the day that Disney announced the investment, its stock crashed by 2.35% to close at $81.94. It didn't stop there and just 15 days later it fell again, closing at $79.32, its lowest price in almost a decade. Disney wasn't deterred.
In June last year, it got approval for a $17 billion 15-year plan to develop Disney World. Again, investors weren't convinced and its stock price plummeted 1.46% to close at $101.50 on the day that approval was given. The development plan needed a final vote from Orlando's local district and when they signed it off on June 12 Disney's share price dropped 0.4% to $100.80.
By then, theme park fans were eagerly awaiting news of what new attractions were in store for Disney World and they got it in August last year at the media giant's biennial D23 convention. Disney announced new attractions for all its theme parks around the world including new lands in Orlando themed to Indiana Jones, its villains and Cars. The latter two were announced for the Magic Kingdom in the park's biggest-ever expansion project. It came at quite a cost in more ways than one.
Concept art showed that the Cars land would be located in the Frontierland section of the Magic Kingdom and would feature two completely new attractions. Both feature ride vehicles which resemble the colorful cars from the eponymous movie series so they have oversized eyes in their windshields and mouths for front ventilation grilles.
One ride looks like it is aimed at children as it seems to have smaller cars whereas the other is a high-speed rally race on a track which weaves through a mountainous dirt track past geysers and waterfalls.
The theme was no surprise as Cars is one of Disney's most successful film franchises, thanks in part to its merchandise which generated $10 billion of sales in just the five years after the release of the first movie.
Indeed, in May last year Iger revealed the commercial impact that the Cars franchise has had on Disney's theme parks when he said 'if you analyze carefully how we achieve those returns on invested capital in the parks, it was all about the IP. So, for quite a long time, new attractions in lands at the parks were based on essentially either very old IP or no IP, just an attraction. And starting really with Cars Land and Toy Story and there are a few others, I can't remember this, all the specifics, we decided that almost all of our investment in the parks in terms of attractions and lands would be using that IP. And it's very, very clear what that delivers.'
Although the theme wasn't a surprise, the location of the Cars land was. Based on the concept art, the dirt track of the flagship attraction appeared to be replacing the beloved Rivers of America along with its island and steamboat. It left fans in a state of shock and it wasn't until February this year that it started to get real. The catalyst was Disney receiving official approval from the South Florida Water Management District to make fundamental changes to the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island.
It was clear that the plans were moving forward but the theme park community still seemed to harbor hopes that Disney could do a U-Turn or that the replacement would be a worthy successor to such an historic attraction. The final straw only came when Disney posted a video of the new attraction on social media last month.
Far from looking majestic like the riverboat or an oasis of nature like Tom Sawyer Island, the video showed a ride vehicle resembling an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) racing around a dusty dirt track. It fueled an almighty uproar on social media.
"Nobody wants this to replace Rivers of America," wrote the incisive theme park industry commentator WDWPro. Another observer called Jon replied to Disney's post saying "no one wants this", a sentiment which was echoed widely with Kate Fisher adding 'I don't know how we can make this any clearer to you: We. Don't. Want. This.'
Many of the comments revealed how strong the sentiment is to the original attractions. The Jimmyandfam account posted photos of the river and the island accompanied with the words that Disney is "ripping the heart out of Magic Kingdom." David Demarke put it another way by pleading with Disney not to "take away the ambiance and nature the island and riverboat bring." Giving further insight into the motivation for the objections, Buzz Bradley explained that 'anyone under 45 years old, has probably never seen a turn of the century style working riverboat once in their lives, unless they live in a river city with a waterfront district.'
Many of the comments acknowledged the deep irony of Disney draining such an iconic location and replacing it with a dirt track just months after the company's chief executive boasted that it has free space all over the world to build entirely new lands. Indeed, a number of the comments noted that the Cars attractions would be better-suited to the Fantasyland area of the Magic Kingdom due to their whimsical theme or even Disney World's Hollywood Studios park as they are based on a movie.
"Put it somewhere that isn't Rivers of America," wrote the astute MickeyCentral account with its comment reflected by Disney Magic Mike who added that it's 'not worth sacrificing rivers of America. Can't you put this in Hollywood studios?'
Summarizing the key issue, Jeff Teravainen said "please just stop. You have enough land to build this somewhere else, don't ruin another beautiful reason why people go to Disney World." Brett added 'you have 25,000 acres at your disposal and you have to fill in Rivers of America to do this?'
The disenchanted fans seemed genuinely confused and astonished in equal measure by Disney promoting that they will replace the Rivers of America with an attraction that looks little different to ones which can be found in adventure parks all over the world. 'We don't want this, What are you thinking?!' wrote Geoffrey Riccio. 'Every comment on every post across all social platforms is pleading with you to stop this insanity, but you don't listen. How has it become this bad? Put this somewhere else.'
It was hardly an exaggeration to say that the antipathy was almost uniform and, most worryingly for Disney, it wasn't just from keyboard warriors and traditionalists. Venerable travel guide Frommer's posted to its 187,000 followers 'Is this Disney? We could do this by renting an off-roader anywhere in America.'
In its defence, the attraction is in keeping with Disney's ethos of creating thrilling experiences with cutting-edge technology which is invisible to guests. The ATVs are trackless so they don't appear to be restricted to a particular path and can pull off maneuvers which look precarious but are actually perfectly safe as they are computer controlled.
Technology like this was showcased in 2017 by Dynamic Attractions, a longtime Disney collaborator as this report explained. The Cars ride is undoubtedly groundbreaking technology but this doesn't resolve the question of why it has to replace an iconic opening day attraction when there is so much other space at Disney World. Theme park design luminaries couldn't get their heads around it.
"CARSland is fantasy and belongs in #Fantasyland in #MagicKingdom," wrote Jim Shull, one of the world's most talented and experienced themed entertainment designers. Known in the trade as Imagineers due to their imaginative use of engineering, Shull worked on multiple Disney parks during a career which spanned three decades. It gives him incredible insight into Disney park expansions like the Cars land and he added that 'what is being taken away is not being replaced by what is being added. Off road vehicle racing vs the Rivers of America. Not equal experiences.'
Crucially, Shull posted a map showing that the Cars land could be integrated into Frontierland without removing the Rivers of America, the island and the steamer along with it. "This is my concept to keep Rivers of America while adding CARS Land," he explained.
It followed a similar proposal from Eddie Sotto who isn't just one of the world's most talented theme park designers but also runs a leading experiential design firm which applies his experience to other industries as outlined in this report. Like Shull, Sotto is also a former Disney Imagineer and was the architect of the turn-of-the-century themed Main Street at Disneyland Paris which is widely acclaimed as one of the most elaborate, ornate and immersive theme park lands that has ever been built.
It was signed off by Disney's visionary former chief executive Michael Eisner who spearheaded developments which put the company on the theme park map in a way which Walt himself couldn't do. They stretch from launching Disney's Hollywood Studios, its neighboring Animal Kingdom park, Hong Kong Disneyland and Disneyland Paris right down to giving the green light to technologically groundbreaking attractions. They included Pooh's Honey Hunt, which opened at Tokyo Disneyland in 2000 and was the world's first trackless theme park ride. Sotto was the brainchild behind it which gives him unique insight into attractions like the flagship of the Cars land.
He wrote that his map of the area showed that "you can keep the river and have the cars." Importantly, he added "that losing the river is not just about nostalgia, it's a subconscious contrast that gives the other 'lands' their immersive impact. Sleek metal future, vs vast untamed nature. (Chocolate and Peanut Butter) Stepping from one into another makes the immersion experience fun and 'impossible.' Even in energy level. Parks are now adding 'decompression lawns', but the river and TSI played that role for decades. Parks should be designed holistically and emotionally."
There is no doubt that the river, boat and island present a peaceful contrast to rest of the park with its cuddly characters and bustling rides based on movies. WDWPro and the other expert pundits at ThatParkPlace concur and described the Rivers of America as 'offering a peaceful break from the increasingly commercialized park landscape. These areas — originally inspired by Walt Disney's vision for Disneyland — are some of the last remnants of Disney's storytelling-driven approach to theme parks.'
Testimony to this, Sotto also posted a photo of Walt pointing at a map of his then-upcoming park in Orlando along with a comment from him at the time saying 'so folks, my entire park is woven together by water...feeding streams, wishing wells, canals...finally, as a grand finale, it gathers into this big, spectacular river.'
Another former Imagineer, Jim Clark even went so far as to create and post a video showing scenes of the Rivers of America accompanied by comments from Walt saying "we know how to build a theme park. The new one will be no different from Disneyland except we'll have more water." The comments didn't fall on deaf ears.
They caught the eye of theme park historian Joshua Harris who noted that 'retired Imagineers are a lot like former Presidents — they almost never come out and publicly denounce the current administration's efforts. In just the last week, three 'old' masters have come out against what's happening at the Magic Kingdom.'
Disney could face a deep-rooted difficulty in any attempt to try and quell this criticism. That's because the Rivers of America, and especially the steamboat and Tom Sawyer Island are quintessentially American attractions so they are likely to resonate with a great deal of visitors. Indeed, an animatronic model of Tom Sawyer's creator Mark Twain even hosts the American Adventure review of the country's history in the futuristic Epcot park at Disney World.
To many Americans, Twain's stories, and the attractions based on them, evoke memories of lazy days and childhood stories. They have been part of the Magic Kingdom for so long that not only do many guests' parents remember visiting them but their parents do too. It makes the removal of the attractions a potential financial risk for Disney because after all, it is the parents who pay for the visits to its theme parks.
This kind of backlash is the last thing the company needs right now as its stock has lost 20.5% of its value over the past year alone and is still sub-$100, closing yesterday at $97.68. Moreover, the expansions to its parks in Orlando should help to combat the imminent threat of arch-rival Universal's cutting-edge new Epic Universe theme park which opens in May.
Mindful of this, fans are piling on the pressure in an attempt to get Disney to overturn its decision to demolish the Rivers of America. There is some precedent for this as severely negative feedback to the Magic Kingdom's Disney Enchantment fireworks show led to it being replaced by its predecessor in 2023, just two years after it debuted. The same goes for the Harmonious night time show at Epcot which opened in 2021 to lukewarm reviews and was replaced with an entirely new show two years later.
Disney declined to comment on the backlash and whether it could cause the company to revise its plans, either before or after the Cars land opens.
Fans haven't always got what they wanted. In 2008 Disney closed the Adventurers Club, a beloved immersive nightclub in its shopping and dining district in Orlando. Fans deluged Iger with maps showing arrows pointing to the location of the club in an attempt to get him to reconsider. It failed and the club has yet to return to this day.
Likewise, fans were incensed when Disney announced that it would change Epcot's iconic Norwegian-themed Maelstrom ride into one based on hit animated film Frozen. It opened in 2016 and is now one of the park's most popular attractions. The ride is even being built from scratch at Disneyland Paris following its debut at Hong Kong Disneyland in November 2023. Its opening helped the Asian park return to the black for the first time in a decade with a net profit of $107 million for the year-ending 28 September 2024. Attendance reached a record high of 7.7 million guests driving up revenue by 54% to $1.1 billion.
Changes to monolithic freefall ride The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney's outpost in California followed a similar pattern. Fans were initially outraged that the classic Twilight Zone theme was being replaced with one connected to the much more modern superhero team, the Guardians of the Galaxy. However, just weeks after Mission: Breakout!, as it is now known, opened in 2017, Disney announced that it had become the highest-rated thrill ride in the whole of its California resort. Queues of nearly three hours were not uncommon in its first summer. Indeed, it has been so popular that it even spawned a Halloween overlay which plays seasonally to this day.
Changes will always anger traditionalists and purists as any sports league manager is all too aware. When the MLB extended the designated hitter rule into the national league in 2022 traditionalists were up in arms. Similarly, when the NBA adopted the three-point line for the 1979-80 season many saw it as a gimmick.
Perhaps the difference with the removal of Rivers of America is that isn't in isolation and instead is part of broader changes to Disney's parks which have been met with widespread disapproval from fans. Right next door to Rivers of America is the Tiana's Bayou Adventure drop ride which opened last year and replaced the historic Splash Mountain on the same site. As this report explained, the replacement was not met with open arms and since its launch it has continued to attract critics, partly due to frequently malfunctioning effects on the ride.
More recently, Emporium, one of the biggest shops in the Magic Kingdom, reopened after a remodel which has left part of it looking functional with few of the design flourishes that make it fit into the turn-of-the-century theme in that area of the park. Shull likened it to a service stop whilst Sotto sketched some design details on a photo of it to show that with a bit of additional attention, the space could be completely transformed.
The issue isn't restricted to the Magic Kingdom as Epcot opened a new festival center last year as part of a remodel involving the removal of the centerpiece Fountain of Nations which had been in the park since it opened in 1982. Echoing many fans, Shull wrote that "the results are not good". One can only but wonder what Walt would think.