Can we trust WDWPro/That Park Place?

[Planogirl]

I trust them as much as most people on any website and they do backup a lot of their claims. Are they always right? Of course not.

 

[The Jackal]

I trust them as much as most people on any website and they do backup a lot of their claims. Are they always right? Of course not.

No one is always right. Except my DW of course. WDW Pro claims at the end of the year he checks his claims and he is well over 90% accuracy

 

[deedubb]

Even if he's accurate, I can't watch him. Everything is doom and gloom and I just can't watch something that is all about negativity. Does he post anything positive about Disney? I have seen a few videos where he says the parks are empty yet people who are actually there indicate otherwise.

 

[karen4546]

If you wish to be negative, have negative thoughts, or reinforce your own negative thoughts about something, there's a YouTube channel/outrage merchant/algorithm just for you. Anger and negativity sells a lot easier and generates more clicks.

Right! I stumbled on a group/forum that bashes a lot of Disney vloggers. The way they were bashing the Trackers was awful-pathetic in fact. People who are that hateful must be absolutely miserable.

 

[TsWade2]

No he is not to be trusted! He and his grifting cronies are just trying to get Disney to go bankrupt! He and his gang ruined Disney's 100th anniversary and Wish's chance to be a success. And now he's trying to make Moana 2 a box office flop! Somebody has to stop that grifter! He's evil!

 

[Leight19]

No he is not to be trusted! He and his grifting cronies are just trying to get Disney to go bankrupt! He and his gang ruined Disney's 100th anniversary and Wish's chance to be a success. And now he's trying to make Moana 2 a box office flop! Somebody has to stop that grifter! He's evil!

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or how you actually feel. Wdwpro/that park place and others in that network break a variety of behind the scenes news related to parks and upcoming movies/financials of previous ones. I think they tend to be pretty good on accuracy of predictions. They do some reviews of content that have come across negative but also have reviewed things positively. I happen to agree with a lot of their reviews on both the positive and negative side but I never felt they were overtly negative/grifting.

They have had times where they highlight negative financials of Disney with respect to budget-to-revenue on films or viewership in streaming but this is always backed up with solid data and usually seems on point with performance of Disney stock. They also had pretty good factual assessments with the whole reedy creek situation and fairly accurately predicted how that would turn out when many others mocked their viewpoint.

Id say the one thing that stood out to me I disagreed most with is they seemed to be more positive of chapek in their content then majority of the Disboard seems to be. However I’ve softened in that positon over time as I feel a lot of the stuff that chapek drew anger for with respect to nickel and diming have continued/gotten worse under iger/damaro. I will say they tend to avoid politics but when they do stray that direction they seem to lean more towards the right so I think that likely rubs some the wrong way but looking at factual data from them tends to be fairly down the middle from what I recall.

 

[PrincessJo]

No he is not to be trusted! He and his grifting cronies are just trying to get Disney to go bankrupt! He and his gang ruined Disney's 100th anniversary and Wish's chance to be a success. And now he's trying to make Moana 2 a box office flop! Somebody has to stop that grifter! He's evil!

Are you really blaming Disney's failures on a couple of guys on YouTube? Really?

Disney has lost a billion dollars on their last dozen movies because the movies suck. They need to do better.

Epic Universe is coming.

 

[BrianL]

Are you really blaming Disney's failures on a couple of guys on YouTube? Really?

Disney has lost a billion dollars on their last dozen movies because the movies suck. They need to do better.

Epic Universe is coming.

It's not just them, but they are part of a larger, and very vocal, group of "fans" who rail against certain types of movies, etc. They probably don't have as much of an impact as they think they do, but it's also not negligible.

 

[New Mouse]

It's not just them, but they are part of a larger, and very vocal, group of "fans" who rail against certain types of movies, etc. They probably don't have as much of an impact as they think they do, but it's also not negligible.

Their negativity is counterbalanced by the folks on these boards who think Disney is never wrong, so I'd argue that it probably is negligible.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

Disney has lost a billion dollars on their last dozen movies because the movies suck. They need to do better.

Haven't they been successful at the box office this year so far with Inside Out 2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Alien: Romulus?

 

[BrianL]

Their negativity is counterbalanced by the folks on these boards who think Disney is never wrong, so I'd argue that it probably is negligible.

That's hyperbole though. MOST people on these borads do not think that Disney can do no wrong. We all complain plenty about certian things they do - it just may not be the same things that some others complain about. Just because people don't think that Dinsey has completely ruined everything, doesn't mean we think they have done everything right either.

 

[Leight19]

Haven't they been successful at the box office this year so far with Inside Out 2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Alien: Romulus?

So this is where the numbers matter to high extent and type of breakdowns the channels referenced make. Inside out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine were successful so will go no further on those.

For kingdom of planet of apes they made just shy of 400 million on a 160 million dollar production budget. People smarter then me would do breakdown of where that $400 million came from to know what split Disney actually gets from that. Some countries (China) it’s suggested they get 25% back; domestically it could be closer to 60% with rest of world 40% I believe. Most math can be done on average of 50% so Disney took in 200 million on 160 million production budget.

However there is also marketing costs which vary widely and could be anyway from a fraction of the production budget to equal to the production budget. Therefore, depending what you assume those costs were you could easily conclude Disney lost money on this film. Similar math can be done on aliens but since it had smaller production budget it’s likely profitable.

Where Disney really struggles lately is when they make movies with huge production budgets due to numerous reshoots and then add in huge marketing costs to where they need to break $1 billion just to break even.

 

[New Mouse]

That's hyperbole though. MOST people on these borads do not think that Disney can do no wrong. We all complain plenty about certian things they do - it just may not be the same things that some others complain about. Just because people don't think that Dinsey has completely ruined everything, doesn't mean we think they have done everything right either.

My point is for just as many people complaining there are equally as many praising. At least in the internet world. At the end of the day some one small YouTube personality is not going to have an impact on much in either direction.

 

[Giraffe_Zen]

 

[bryaalre]

Are you really blaming Disney's failures on a couple of guys on YouTube? Really?

Disney has lost a billion dollars on their last dozen movies because the movies suck. They need to do better.

Epic Universe is coming.

The original claim of Disney losing close to $1B was from a youtuber named Valliant. His video covered 8 films starting with the release of Lightyear and through Elemental. However, at the time of his video, Elemental was still in theatres and so, his calculations were not final and he also did not do every Disney movie released during that time frame. The 8 movies were Lightyear, Thor L&T, Strange World, BPWF, AMTWQ, GOTG3, The Little Mermaid & Elemental. His numbers found $890M loss from those 8 films (though it was probably closer $720M after calculating Elementals final numbers).

The above numbers don't include the bombs of Indiana Jones, The Haunted Mansion, The Marvels or Wish that were after Elemental in 2023 were also skewed towards the negative, as it included the production budget and marketing budgets but did not include any ancillary revenues like streaming or video sales.

An example of how this was skewed was the numbers on Lightyear. According to the youtuber, Lightyear lost about $190M but using Deadline's biggest flops calculations that include their estimates for ancillary revenues and other expenses like residuals, you get a loss of $106M. This result is still terrible just less so for this movie in particular.

Just to put how bad the second half of 2022 & 2023 were for Disney. According to Deadline, Disney occupied 4 of the top 5 biggest flops in 2023 and the top 3 flops in 2022.

Strange World - $197M loss
Amsterdam - $110M loss
Lightyear - $106M loss

The Marvels - $237M loss
Indiana Jones - $143M loss
Wish - $131M Loss
The Haunted Mansion - $117M loss

These add up to about a Billion in losses.

However, Disney did have some money makers in those years.

Avatar 2 - $530M
Doctor Strange 2 - $284M
BPWF - $259M
Thor - $103M

Guardians 3 - $124M

These movies add up to $1.3B in studio profit.

Even if we exclude Avatar 2, we still would only get a loss of about $300M for 2022 and 2023.

And we all know hoe good 2024 has been.

 

[Leight19]

The original claim of Disney losing close to $1B was from a youtuber named Valliant. His video covered 8 films starting with the release of Lightyear and through Elemental. However, at the time of his video, Elemental was still in theatres and so, his calculations were not final and he also did not do every Disney movie released during that time frame. The 8 movies were Lightyear, Thor L&T, Strange World, BPWF, AMTWQ, GOTG3, The Little Mermaid & Elemental. His numbers found $890M loss from those 8 films (though it was probably closer $720M after calculating Elementals final numbers).

The above numbers don't include the bombs of Indiana Jones, The Haunted Mansion, The Marvels or Wish that were after Elemental in 2023 were also skewed towards the negative, as it included the production budget and marketing budgets but did not include any ancillary revenues like streaming or video sales.

An example of how this was skewed was the numbers on Lightyear. According to the youtuber, Lightyear lost about $190M but using Deadline's biggest flops calculations that include their estimates for ancillary revenues and other expenses like residuals, you get a loss of $106M. This result is still terrible just less so for this movie in particular.

Just to put how bad the second half of 2022 & 2023 were for Disney. According to Deadline, Disney occupied 4 of the top 5 biggest flops in 2023 and the top 3 flops in 2022.

Strange World - $197M loss
Amsterdam - $110M loss
Lightyear - $106M loss

The Marvels - $237M loss
Indiana Jones - $143M loss
Wish - $131M Loss
The Haunted Mansion - $117M loss

These add up to about a Billion in losses.

However, Disney did have some money makers in those years.

Avatar 2 - $530M
Doctor Strange 2 - $284M
BPWF - $259M
Thor - $103M

Guardians 3 - $124M

These movies add up to $1.3B in studio profit.

Even if we exclude Avatar 2, we still would only get a loss of about $300M for 2022 and 2023.

And we all know hoe good 2024 has been.

I agree with most of this but just to confirm didn’t the ancillary revenue deadline included mainly consist of revenue Disney wrote to itself from Disney plus loses moving money from one pocket to the other? I believe it was and if so this could make sense if Disney plus was raking in Netflix profits but at time of those additions Disney plus was bleeding money (and likely currently is if you don’t net out with Hulu).

 

[bryaalre]

I agree with most of this but just to confirm didn’t the ancillary revenue deadline included mainly consist of revenue Disney wrote to itself from Disney plus loses moving money from one pocket to the other? I believe it was and if so this could make sense if Disney plus was raking in Netflix profits but at time of those additions Disney plus was bleeding money (and likely currently is if you don’t net out with Hulu).

Revenue is revenue, it doesn't matter that it comes Disney itself. They have to file specific accounting regulations in terms of the amount it writes on the books. If Disney Plus did not exist, the money would have come from someone else.

 

[Leight19]

Revenue is revenue, it doesn't matter that it comes Disney itself. They have to file specific accounting regulations in terms of the amount it writes on the books. If Disney Plus did not exist, the money would have come from someone else.

I don’t agree with this, if the revenue is being paid by a division that’s not just losing money but hemmoraging it, it is showing the content is not actually worth what it’s being paid. This is especially true when you compare profit to total revenue for Netflix vs Disney. Netflix operates at a much higher profit margin which shows the numbers Disney plus “pays” to itself for content are not financially justified. You can’t say a movie is profitable just because the company moves its losses to another division where it’s losing even more money.

 

[bryaalre]

I don’t agree with this, if the revenue is being paid by a division that’s not just losing money but hemmoraging it, it is showing the content is not actually worth what it’s being paid. This is especially true when you compare profit to total revenue for Netflix vs Disney. Netflix operates at a much higher profit margin which shows the numbers Disney plus “pays” to itself for content are not financially justified. You can’t say a movie is profitable just because the company moves its losses to another division where it’s losing even more money.

The content needs to be paid for, whether you agree with it or not. The content has value and the laws and regulations that govern accounting state this as such. It's not like this is the only time a company has multiple divisions that have interdepartmental transactions that shift money from one to another. One such example is Disney showing the trailer during a commercial spot on any of it's own channels. By your logic the movie shouldn't count those as expenses because Disney is just paying itself.

Also, before streaming Disney would have to book revenues and pay itself from linear cable runs on its own channels or physical media sales to said movie. The only difference is now it is coming from their DTC unit vs linear unit. It makes no difference that one was more profitable, especially sense the streaming unit will pass the linear unit in profits eventually.

 

[Leight19]

The content needs to be paid for, whether you agree with it or not. The content has value and the laws and regulations that govern accounting state this as such. It's not like this is the only time a company has multiple divisions that have interdepartmental transactions that shift money from one to another. One such example is Disney showing the trailer during a commercial spot on any of it's own channels. By your logic the movie shouldn't count those as expenses because Disney is just paying itself.

Also, before streaming Disney would have to book revenues and pay itself from linear cable runs on its own channels or physical media sales to said movie. The only difference is now it is coming from their DTC unit vs linear unit. It makes no difference that one was more profitable, especially sense the streaming unit will pass the linear unit in profits eventually.

To clarify I’m not saying they shouldn’t pay themselves anything, I’m saying the value stated on paper is overinflated given the division that pays them operates at devastating loses. I’ve not done the research about whether the numbers they transfer are in line with what they would get from a Netflix or Amazon on open market but the point of all these is to say Disney studios lately has been a failure with tons of loses lately. Whether the movie loses the money in theaters or it loses the money on Disney plus the end result is the same. Disney is making content at a production and marketing cost above what they are able to recoup via theatres or streaming revenues.