Can We Fix Disney

Disney. A brand once upon a time synonymous with quality family entertainment. Whether it was going out to watch the brand new 2D animation on the big screen, or heading to one of their amazing parks and getting lost in the amazing technology, the innovative rides, the phenomenal parades, the cookie smell that they infuse throughout the parks just to keep you from remembering you have a miserable life outside of those gates. Yeah, once upon a time Disney was awesome. Fast forward to 2026, and here we are in an absolute cesspool of hell where to even appreciate the crumbs that the house of mouse gives you these days, you have to be in the upper class. Because this ----'s expensive friends. And even though I grew up as a Disney kid, I'm a middle-aged white guy so of course I did, that doesn't mean I can't call out the BS when I see it. This is already becoming a long-winded ranty intro and I can assure you there's plenty of ranting to go. I will just say welcome to Adam Does Movies if you're new here. I do movie reviews, live streams, sometimes I dip my toe in a TV show recraps, and this is a new, I guess, podcast series I started last week so there's not going to be a bunch of fancy images coming up, it's just going to be me talking. Well, mainly me giving you my brain dump along with people on my channel that I reached out to and said, hey, how would you fix Disney if you could? And that's the entire premise of this podcast revolving around the simple phrase, can we fix? In this week, it's can we fix Disney? And I don't mean financially because they seem to be doing just fine, but more the image they have cultivated over this last decade. Can we right the ship? Can we turn things around? Well, let's dig in and find out. Before I go all in on this, please think of subbing to the show Adam Does Movies if you find yourself enjoying the conversation as I go. Alright, let's begin. In the little introduction, I mentioned how Disney is now for the wealthy, and that goes for a lot of things. I can only speak for America, I guess, but things over here are ******* expensive with a lot of folks just trying to pay their bills. So going to theme parks or going to the movies is a luxury most of us don't have anymore. In fact, I'm a movie buff, I have a movie channel, and if it wasn't for the AMC Stubs Pass or the Regal thing that they have, it would be very financially difficult for me to go to this many movies and review them. Because I wouldn't be paying that $30 a month, I'd be paying like $30 a week just for the two movies. That suddenly becomes $120 a month just for some movie passes, and that's not counting taking my family, who unfortunately, I don't anymore. It's too damn expensive. And I'm gonna re-route this back to Disney. Back in the day, a movie ticket in 1992 averaged around $4. So you could take a family of four to a movie for $16. A soda, some popcorn, you might run around $24, $30 max. Again, for a family of four. Google tells me that $4 movie ticket today would run about $10. Except for a movie ticket today is not $10. A movie ticket is averaging $16. Meaning, that trip to the new Disney film with a family of four that used to be $16 is now $64. And you could go, bullshit, Adam, that's not true. ------- try it. I dare you. Take three other people to the movie theater and see how much that runs. Granted, I'm doing the average ticket price. Sure, you'll be lucky if you can find an $11 movie here or there. You'll be lucky if there's a deal going on, or there's a matinee price, or a kid's price. Although, they kind of got rid of those altogether in the theaters I attend. But overall, you're looking to spend $80 to $100 now to go see the new Disney movie with your family. And for a lot of families, that's just not gonna happen. So they're more likely to be checking things out on Disney Plus using their family's burner account. And I think that's what a lot of people are doing. Most kids have seen Moana like 800 times, which is why we have a live action Moana that looks like absolute donkey dick, but we'll get there. Oh, okay, so maybe they don't get the magical movie theater experience like I did growing up. That's fine. We have the Disney parks, right? How much have those tickets really changed since 1971 when it cost roughly $3.50 for an adult? There's a range, because Disney does variable pricing now, treating their parks like you're going on an airplane, which everybody loves. There's nothing more fun than variable pricing on an airplane. Oh, can I spend 75% more because it's a Saturday? Oh, my family gets to sit in random spots in the cabin unless I pay a premium so we can all sit together. The price to go to a Disney theme park in 2026 ranges between $110 to 230. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, die. It's been a long time since 1971. I do feel, however, that spending upwards of $800 for a family of four just to get into the theme park seems a bit egregious. Seems a little unfair to the blue-collar bloke that Mr. Walt Disney himself said he was all about. He wanted people of all walks of life to be able to experience his theme park regardless of what was in their bank account. White-collar Wilmer gets in for $3.50. Blue-collar Bob gets in for $3.50. Now, white-collar's still going in. Blue-collar Bob, he's giving BJ's out back to Mickey Mouse in the hopes to get a little bit of that cheese, aka a ticket inside. But don't worry, everything inside the park costs money too. From the overpriced food, we're going to be spending like $9 for a Mickey pretzel, which is just a pretzel that they put a lot of salt on and shaped it in the ******* face of a mouse. And the rides that you thought were included with the ticket but didn't realize, each one of those rides comes with a bonus 45-minute to a three-hour wait depending on the ride quality. But if you're not some piece of ---- waste-of-life disappointment like blue-collar Bob, you can put down those hard-earned ruples and get yourself some lightning lane passes, allowing you to walk by the peasants that stand there for hours baking in the hot, hot heat, convincing themselves this was worth the trip across the country or across the world to experience. Eyes up front, Billy, don't look at them, they're lessers than us. Carl, I know him, I went to high school with Carl, we were on the same football team together. Hey man, how's it going? It's going to the front of the line. Eyes up front, Billy. Now because little Adam Cub grew up with Disney, I still, deep down in my bones, love them and will always love what they used to represent. They've given me amazing classics. I've taken my family to Disney several times, along with Universal. I prefer Universal. I love them both for different reasons. However, Bob Iger and the other CE-hoes at Disney are making it really difficult for me to even imagine a world where this company is back on top, putting out good content, making decisions for the park holders instead of the shareholders. And so that's where I turned to my audience and they had plenty to say on the matter, which I will get to in a second, but I'm not done bitching yet. No, I'm kind of just getting started. I'll try to keep it fast though. You see, Walt Disney was all about bringing us to new worlds. Sure, a lot of them were stories already. Nursery rhymes, old books, possibly a Japanese movie that already came out that we ripped off and retitled Lion King. It doesn't matter. In any case, it was for the most part original material that Disney took, really mainstreamed it, put a princess twist on things, and they would go on to produce amazing content that would touch the minds, the bodies, the souls, the swimsuit area of a young Adam who saw Ariel for the first time in The Little Mermaid. I was young, okay? I understand she's underage, but not for a 10-year-old she's not. This company was dropping banger after banger. We had Robin Hood, we had The Jungle Book, we had Bambi, we had The Little Mermaid, we had The Lion King, we had Aladdin, we had Pocahontas, we had Mulan. I'm not doing these in order, okay? I'm not that hardcore. And then they got a little bit creative with things, doing Lilo and Stitch, Emperor's New Groove, shaking things up, changing the formula. It didn't always work. In fact, those two movies were financially disappointing, but they went on to be massive hits after getting released on DVD and then going to streaming inevitably down the road. Hell, Lilo and Stitch came out with a shitty live-action version, generated over a billion dollars. That movie sucked dick, but it doesn't matter because the Disney adults remember it fondly and they wanted to bring their kids. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And that brings us to modern Disney, a nostalgic generator, feeding off of my generation, and they have remade everything under the sun, so much so, they're already caught up to movies that aren't even old. Moana, live-action coming out. You better believe a frozen live-action is gonna happen. I heard rumblings they were gonna do a live-action Toy Story, whatever the **** that means, and you could say that's not true, that's some online BS. I wouldn't put it past them. The wisest thing Disney did years ago was purchase Pixar, because Pixar would do that innovating that Disney didn't seem to want to anymore, producing brilliant movie after brilliant movie, with Toy Story, with Finding Nemo, with WALL-E, with Op, with Monsters Inc. I mean, you just look back on the catalog, it's staggering how many brilliant films they put out. And even though the newer runs have been very inconsistent, you still get a look up from time to time to let you know, hey, there's still some magic there. But Disney doesn't do 2D anymore, they also have an animation studio that does more by-the-number stuff, more of your Tangled, more of your Frozen, more of your Raya and the Last Dragon. That movie sucked. But then they did Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6, two great ones. So animation-wise, it's a mixed bag, but it's not bad. What is bad is their live-action offerings, which are just embarrassing, they ruin the brand identity, and it comes off as a lazy cash grab, because that's exactly what it is. You'll never go to a theme park and see a live-action reworking of anything, outside of maybe The Lion King somewhere, because that movie generated a stupid amount of money. Otherwise, everything else, still the animated classic. But Disney's really not interested in innovating or bringing new stories to the table, which is why they're just nostalgia-baiting everything. They're interested in growing and growing and growing, to the point where I don't know how anyone will be able to afford a park ticket in like five years from now. They'll just go further in debt trying to make the magic happen. So how does a studio grow when it doesn't really have anything to say, doesn't seem to know what it wants to be anymore? Well, it just buys other ----. So they acquired Pixar years ago. Then they acquired the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When that wasn't enough, they purchased Star Wars. When that still wasn't enough, they got the entirety of Fox Studios. From your die-hards, to your aliens, to your predators, to your avatars. And that came with the X-Men as well. Because the mantra over at Disney is, if you can't beat them, buy them. Michael says, Disney, invest less into milk-the-cow dry reboots, sequels, prequels, and more into original stories. That's where the frustration comes into me. A lot of people are like, who cares? Let them do their live-action movies. They make a billion dollars. It's so easy for them. What does it matter? Number one, it tarnishes the legacy. Number two, it takes away resources and energy that could go into developing something new. Instead, we're going to spend a year rebooting something that didn't need it. Number three, it's dumbed down the audience to now expect everything to get a live-action treatment. Instead of pumping them up for the possibility of something new coming out, they just get to experience the same thing they already experienced, but worse. Number four, you're not actually building anything new. You're not making anything new. The last time I remember kids being so incredibly pumped for anything Disney was Frozen. That took over the internet. That took over the world for like a year. Everybody was singing that song. Kids were dressed up as Elsa all the time, and the argument here is that Disney doesn't know how to make money. They do. Again, the live-action Lilo and Bitch made over a billion dollars. I have no doubt in my mind that Moana is going to make probably a billion dollars for that live-action crap. The difference is, it doesn't do anything long-term. It doesn't mean anything to the kids even that watch it. Look at K-Pop Demon Hunters. That means something. That is building a brand. Kids were dressing up as the characters for Halloween. Kids dress up as them just every day. It was a phenomenon. That used to be Disney every time they came out with a movie. Now, there's people that don't even know when a new Disney movie comes out. This comment says, Back to 2D animation. Pause all Star Wars projects for five-ish years and reboot. Lower prices at the park. Few things there. All of them, I agree with. Disney got cold feet off of 2D animation, especially after a few of them did not financially hit the target they wanted. Princess and the Frog underperformed. Emperor's New Groove underperformed. Lilo and Stitch, I believe, underperformed. There was that terrible Roseanne Barr cow movie. And with the massive success of Toy Story, Disney got the wrong impression that they should shutter all 2D animation work, outside of like maybe some Mickey Mouse stuff on Disney Plus now, and go all in on 3D animation. We have seen plenty of success stories recently of 2D, 3D animated hybrid films, like Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse, the Ninja Turtles film that's got a sequel coming out as well. And it's just sad that Disney is not the one that's shepherding this stuff anymore. As for Star Wars, what a **** job. I've complained about Star Wars enough, I don't need to relitigate that, but yeah, not having a plan for that franchise that you spent billions of dollars on getting, making a theme park that is so remarkably unremarkable, and somehow impressively turning off one of the biggest fan bases ever to exist, over the course of a decade, is quite the rap sheet. How do they fix what they have broken though? Well, I agree with the post. Pump the brakes. Stop shitting out unremarkable Disney Plus Star Wars content. Please have a plan for your movie franchise. Take some time off. Time has the ability to heal all wounds. I know there's plenty of fans of the George Lucas Star Wars prequel movies, I still hate them, I will never like them, but I don't knock anyone that has fond memories. I was pretty much done with Star Wars after that trilogy finished. So that long period of time where we had silence, followed by The Force Awakens, it awoke something in me. The Force was strong once again. I was all in on Disney Star Wars after that first film. Sure, a regurgitated soft reboot, fine. Right the ship, and then knock it out of the park with The Last Jedi. **** my life, The Last Jedi sucks. And after that, it was pretty much a string of bad decision after bad decision with a Rogue One thrown in to kind of make me think, ah, they can still do it once in a while. But I don't even know what the buzz is for The Mandalorian Grogu movie coming out. It does not seem very high-spirited, which is insane to think. Spoiler-ish unfiltered agrees with me about the theme park experience. The theme park experience is ridiculous now. The prices of tickets food, etc. You can't even enjoy the park without a financial headache unless you're well off these days. Just for a family of four to enter the damn park is close to a thousand dollars, and that's per park. The change, that will never happen, is lower the damn cost. Disney isn't going to lose money. A price drop would attract more average people with average wallets. Jim Powers just says it's too far gone. Let it burn. Ryan Powell says bring back traditional hand-drawn 2D animation for films and series. With every single one of the films being CG, I can't tell what's supposed to be Disney and what's supposed to be a Pixar movie anymore. It's true, stylistically, these movies all kind of are starting to blend together. Doesn't seem to be any sort of uniqueness to the art style anymore. I mean, if you look at all the ---- Disney is doing all the time, it seems like maybe it's a tad too much for one company to handle. Between the Avatars, the Star Wars, the Marvels, the animated stuff, all of it's kind of falling apart. No one seems to be near as hyped about Doomsday as they were for, say, Infinity War and Endgame. Certainly no one's hyped for Star Wars like they were. And the announcement of a new Pixar movie falls on deaf ears most of the time. Jesse White had a bunch of great points, I'm gonna give you one though. Embrace 20th century studios. I'm glad Disney is finally utilizing those 20th century IPs with Predator Badlands, Alien Romulus, The World of Avatar, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. But what happened to the 20th century that put out movies like Bohemian Rhapsody, The Martian, Cleopatra, Gone Girl? And while Disney utilizes the Disney library on streaming, why am I always finding 20th century content missing on the platform? And even to your point, those movies that you mentioned that Disney is utilizing, they all feel very Disneyfied. Predator Badlands was a fine kidzbop version of a Predator movie. It felt like a family affair, complete with a ragtag Guardians of the Galaxy crew for our Predator to go on his adventure with. What? Where's the gritty R-rated badassery? Even Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes felt like it was missing its cojones. It was a fine movie, entertaining enough, but nowhere near the level of the Caesar trilogy. Porch Man simply says hire Johnny Depp back. Porch Man, I love you of course, but I think I disagree with this statement. This is falling back on the problem, which is the nostalgia angle. Johnny Depp was fantastic as Captain Jack Sparrow, no one's gonna deny that. But that black pearl has sailed. Johnny Depp's no spring chicken, and that franchise spanned like five movies, I think? The last couple spurting out like a fart in the wind. I do not want to see old man Jack Sparrow going along for one last sail. Pirates of the Caribbean, however, is a massive franchise. I have no doubt Disney will bring it back somehow. There has been rumors several times over. I would not reboot. I would play off a totally different aspect of that franchise if need be. Or, crazy idea I know, ******* leave it. You don't always have to go back to the well. Pirates of the Caribbean gave us some great movies. They have that classic janky-ass ride that smells like some sort of weird toxin has been spilled inside, and I love it every time I get high off of that ----. Really, nothing needs to be changed there. Uh, hey, Adam here. This is awkward, but as I was editing this long video, I completely forgot I have to mention the sponsor, someone that we love. Roll the tape. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Hose, the world's number one expandable hose. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. 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My listeners can get a free Pocket Pivot and their 10-pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead. Just text Adam, A-D-A-M, to 64000. That's A-D-A-M to 64000 for your two free gifts with purchase. A-D-A-M to 64000. Messages and data rates may apply. See terms for details. Jason says, I think there are a couple ways to do this. Number one, they need to go back to storytelling. Number two, build more capacity without lazy and soulless IP slapped onto it. That could be done by adding more parks, perhaps, considering the last park they built was in Orlando in 1998. And even that did not have all they promised. Three, lower the prices of everything in the park to make it where reasonable people can go to the park again without a massive flex to shell out money. Number four, actually make good movies again and abandon remaking movies. They do not need live action remakes. Disney has a kabillion miles of land still available. It's insane to me that 25% of the Magic Kingdom in Orlando is currently out of commission. It's being leveled and turned into Cars Land and the Villains Area. I do not believe, however, they're offering a 25% discount at the park. You're still paying full price and getting half the experience. It might actually be less than half the experience because if you have 25% of the park out of commission, that means all the people still going to the park have to now go in this area. Congesting ride time, making more traffic to the food stalls. Keep in mind, once again, they have all sorts of land available to expand Magic Kingdom. They could build a fifth park if they wanted to. They just don't want to, and they have a brilliant thing now where if capacity is a little lower, they will actually have less of their staff on call that day, meaning they will have less ride operators and less carts going, so you're always guaranteed to wait no matter what. What an experience! Listen, I have my own one-man show here. I enjoy capitalism to an extent, but could we pump the ******* brakes a little bit and maybe realize CEOs and upper management do not need to make $50 million a year. They do not need to go up every quarter a percentage point in revenue. It's insane. It always comes at the cost of the customer. Could Disney slash ticket prices? Could they get rid of the ******* terrible Lightning Lane experience and the Genie Pass or Plus Pass or Magic Carpet or whatever it's called? Yeah, they could. Could they open a new park? Could they have more workers on staff? Could they run more rides? Could they expand? They could do all of it and still be profitable, but why the hell would they when us sheep are still going to these parks, paying them for these miserable experiences now at a premium rate, going into debt? We can bitch up a storm how lazy and soulless it is to keep making these live-action garbage films, but they're making tons of money. They would be stupid not to keep doing it because the people keep going to them. We can complain about how unfair it is that it costs $200 to get into one park, but people keep paying it. It is also very clear this is a company that doesn't care about making a product they stand behind and are proud of. It's all about profit, and so when you have a company like that and you have a customer base that blindly will support whatever they do, it makes for a very grim future. One that unfortunately I don't believe our suggestions are going to fix. I feel like I've been talking a long time and I have so much more I could rant on and on about. I probably should have made this more of a movie one, a Disney Plus one, a parks one separately, but it is what it is. Maybe I'll do a part two down the road. Let me know your thoughts on the whole Disney kerfuffle. Are you like, no Adam, everything's great. I like what they put out. I'm still a huge fan. Nothing's changed in terms of quality. It's just now instead of making Little Mermaid 2 or the Hunchback of Notre Dame Christmas special or some crap that used to go straight to VHS, they're now turning them into live-action abominations. They go on the big screen and they make a ton of money off of them. It's the same thing. To me, those sequel releases that never had the voice actors from the movies and had worse animation were always this kind of like sad little cash grab microcosm of Disney that no one really talked about. They just kind of existed over there on the target shelves. But anyway, I digress. I could keep going, but I won't. Let me know your thoughts. Please think of liking this video, subbing to the show Adam Does Movies, and hopefully I see you next time. Take care. Would you look at that? You made it to the end of the video. Congrats. Which means you might be looking for more content from me. Head over to patreon.com slash adamdoesmovies like these amazing supporters have. You can get access to over 350 exclusive videos. More importantly, you're helping this one man band keep his dreams a reality. Believe it or not, this takes a lot of work and I already have a full-time job, so getting that support on Patreon helps way more than you can even imagine. So if you've ever liked my content in the past and you wanted to show some thanks, that's the place to do it. Take care.