Josh

Storytelling by Disney Josh D'Amaro is one of the frontrunners to be the next CEO of The Walt Disney World Company (1). I actually met Mr. D'Amaro on one of my first days off. He was just walking through one the of theme parks, and was a super nice guy. He was happy to take a selfie with me and asked how I liked the college program. Back in August, he gave a presentation at the INBOUND conference where he talked about Disney's six steps for storytelling. Cast members had a link to watch through the employee portal, but the video is not publicly available. However, Forbes author Megan duBois wrote a nice article summarizing the speech, and I'd like to quickly walk through the six steps D'Amaro described (2). 1. Emotional Connection.  I have seen this first hand as a cast member on Big Thunder Mountain. Parents will tell their kids about their first time riding the ride, or being in the park. I get to see kids that start off the ride pretty scared come off the ride el...

Epic News Week!   Back in September, I speculated about Universal's Epic Universe and a rumor about a new skip-the-line option at Disney. This week, news on both topics dominated the theme parks press and were topics of conversation behind-the-scenes as well. Universal announced they were going to open both Epic Universe (1) and their new signature, connected Universal Helios Grand Hotel (2) on May 22. Both will begin selling tickets and reservations this upcoming Tuesday, October 22nd. Universal is trying to control crowd levels by initially only offering multi-day tickets, and even then only one of the days can be used at Epic Universe. The news was big enough to make national outlets like the New York Times (3). The least expensive tickets will start at $352 for off-peak days, rising to $521 for peak days. For a family of four, that could be over $2,000 just for a single day in the new park. Staying onsite at the Helios will start around $300/night, and go way up from there, ...

What does Fortnite have to do with Hurricane Milton? As I hunkered down this week during Hurricane Milton (more on that shortly), I had time to reflect and read up on some news I first heard about back in February, Disney making an investment with Epic Games in the popular video game Fortnite. Just this week, Forbes reported some on some of the details, like how some Disney characters will not be allowed to hold guns in the game (1). The Verge reported Disney's investment with Epic Games was at least $1.5 billion (with a b). That's a staggering amount to invest in someone else's video game. So why is Disney investing so much, and what does it have to do with a hurricane? Well, certainly all of Florida was laser focused this week on Hurricane Milton. Making landfall late Wednesday night in Sarasota County, the hurricane came just weeks after Hurricane Helene and has caused extensive damage across the state (3). Both Disney World and Universal Studios closed mid-day Wednesday...

 Layoffs Just this week, Disney reported more layoffs, this time 75 people at ABC News (1). ABC Stations Chief Chad Matthews wrote "It’s no secret that our industry is undergoing a transformation unlike any other, and we’re seeing headlines every day about streamlining across every major media company." Matthews is correct that across the news media industry, there is a transformation underway. For example, back in February, the BBC reported how Vice Media also cut hundreds of media jobs after filing for bankruptcy (2).  But the layoffs at Disney are broader than just the news media roles at ABC. Earlier Hollywood Reporter (3) and Wall Street Journal (4) articles wrote about how Pixar was laying off about 175 people. They also referenced how last year CEO Bob Iger talked about a multiyear plan to cut over 7,000 employees across the company (of about 225,000 employees).  The layoffs haven't been as impactful on Walt Disney World cast member morale as I expected. Because I ...