Should Walt Disney World Build Another Theme Park in Orlando?

20.02.2024 - 19:00 / travelpulse.com / Bob Iger / Ron Desantis / Rich Thomaselli

Long before a solid first quarter of earnings, the Walt Disney Company has become emboldened and has talked about a $60 billion expansion of its experiential offerings.

Presumably, a good portion of that would happen at the signature Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. 

But there’s a big difference between adding an attraction and adding an entire theme park, which would be the fifth in the Disney World complex. 

Yet a Florida television station is speculating that Disney is doing just that.

The addition of Universal Orlando's new park Epic Universe, arriving in 2025, plus the talk of the $60 billion expansion as led many to speculate what Disney's next moves will be. 

“We’re already hard at work, basically determining where we’re going to place our new investments and what they will be,” CEO Bob Iger said last week. “You can pretty much conclude that they will be all over, meaning every single one of our locations, will be the beneficiary of increased investment and thus increase capacity including on the high seas,” Iger said of Disney’s theme parks and their cruise line around the world.

Slow down.

There’s little debate that Disney is the unquestioned leader when it comes to entertainment companies. But it still has much to do before it becomes a sustainable force again.

First and foremost is to settle this beef with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Politics can be painfully unpredictable, but the governor seems hell-bent on taking down Disney. Shares in the stock have gone down dramatically in the last two years and the dispute with the governor is not the only reason, but it’s surely not coincidental.

Disney has to get its own house in order first and can no longer afford a precipitous drop in revenue. Iger has talked before about ending this feud with Gov. DeSantis. And it should do so. Regardless of a perception standpoint and how it would look, somebody has to be the bigger man.

And although inflation is a big part of the problem, Disney must address the growing concerns about the costs of visiting a theme park. Forgetting about the food and the souvenirs, it now costs between $109 and $159 a day depending on the day and time just to walk through the gates of the Magic Kingdom. That’s outrageous.

Iger said that in the last year, Disney has “turned a corner” toward profitability. I have no doubt. The man is a genius and has already turned the company around once. A growth strategy is important, no doubt. But I was once told that success comes from working on the business and not in the business.

Any growth should come incrementally.

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