namelessoracle
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2021
Sounds to me very much like a decision point.
With $1.8 billion in quarterly parks profits, Chapek will need to decide whether it’s smarter to continue to starve the parks (and watch them lose their luster) to more quickly amortize corporate debt, or to try to restore “the Magic” by retaining at least part of those profits in the parks division.
Disney has alot of bills coming up (look up the Hulu situation). Only way they can they can pay their bills is the loans they've taken out, some of those loans are set on them hitting certain profit levels Im willing to bet. I can guarantee you the current board has both chosen Chapek and are keeping him because of a focus on "fiscal discipline". Cheapek might be a slur to us, but to the Board its literally why they want him right now.
There isnt any actual tangible evidence that the parks have been impacted from a profitability for Disney perspective, they are all close to capacity and all the current problems with them can be blamed by Chapek on broader staffing issues every company is having right now. Now I agree that there is a potential Death spiral problem, once Parks DO get impacted and people stop going it might be too late to stop the bleeding. But there is no objective metric that what Chapek is doing to the parks is causing financial problems for the parks right now.
Everyone is talking up Universal. But look at what Universal is starting to do their annual pass holders, rising their hotel prices, and we may be seeing a broader trend towards more aggressive monetization. It may just be that the theme park industry has decided middle class families are less lucrative than Millienial DINCs.