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The Imagineering Story

The Walt Disney Imagineering Documentary is worth the subscription alone.

The fact that they acknowledged and backhandedly praised Universal and SeaWorld for being unique and good offerings vs. the copy cat theme park chains that tried to rip Disneyland off blew me away. This show should could not and would not have existed 10-20 years ago. The culture has changed so much.
 

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I haven't started watching Imagineering Story yet. I guess I have to give Disney a lot of credit for such a seemingly transparent series on their own service.
At the same time, the docuseries is periodically having Iger in it basically throwing Eisner under the bus (deservingly so) for all the failures while Iger picks up the pieces.

I’m loving it so far, but it’s certainly not without being a tad self-serving.
 
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At the same time, the docuseries is periodically having Iger in it basically throwing Eisner under the bus (deservingly so) for all the bus for the failures while Iger picks up the pieces.

I’m loving it so far, but it’s certainly not without being a tad self-serving.

There is definitely a bias shown, after all its Disney on Disney but it doesn’t matter. It’s unprecedented access to a little shown world and the production value is fantastic.

Given its success, I fully expect Disney to start providing some upcharges around this. They already have lunch or dinner with an Imagineer, I can see them stepping it up to full park tours with behind the scenes access.

Disney has always been protective of ‘hiding the magic’ but there’s a whole money cow of people who want to peer behind the curtain and this show is going to grow that audience.
 
There is definitely a bias shown, after all its Disney on Disney but it doesn’t matter. It’s unprecedented access to a little shown world and the production value is fantastic.

Given its success, I fully expect Disney to start providing some upcharges around this. They already have lunch or dinner with an Imagineer, I can see them stepping it up to full park tours with behind the scenes access.

Disney has always been protective of ‘hiding the magic’ but there’s a whole money cow of people who want to peer behind the curtain and this show is going to grow that audience.
Something I’d be really interested in seeing is Comcast creating a similar series about Universal Creative. I feel like those behind Universal’s projects don’t get nearly as much credit as imagineers do (among the more casual fans).
 
Something I’d be really interested in seeing is Comcast creating a similar series about Universal Creative. I feel like those behind Universal’s projects don’t get nearly as much credit as imagineers do.

It would be an easy sell. The Harry Potter stuff alone would gather plenty of interest plus it will allow them to easily ignore the other crap they've produced during the same period.

Hell, SeaWorld should probably produce something as well but that could be risky.
 
He had a lots of hits and misses, didn't he? Was it personal? I guess I shouldn't confuse having fond memories of going to Disney World in the 90s and Eisner being good at his job.

On balance, I think that the reality is closer to Eisner and Wells being a great team, mostly with Wells being a filter for the crap that came with the good with Eisner.
 
To really over-simplify it, Wells was the Roy to Eisner's Walt. Wells reined Eisner in, and allowed him to strategically focus. Their partnership resulted in the greatest period of expansion in Walt Disney World's history, and I think their decision-making (in Florida) from roughly 1986 - 1994 was close to flawless. Getting gun-shy about the Disney Decade plans would be my only serious complaint.

In my personal ranking of Disney's leadership over the years, I still put Eisner well above Iger, primarily because Eisner's tenure resulted in far more things that I enjoy/enjoyed about Walt Disney World than Iger’s tenure has. I'll take the flawed but ambitious wannabe-creative type over the purely bottom-line suit any day (even though it has to be admitted that Iger has maintained that bottom line extremely well just from a numbers standpoint).

I'll be interested to see if THE IMAGINEERING STORY takes as frank a look at Iger's era as it appears to have with the eras preceding it.
 
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