We’ve Reached the End of Disney’s Worst Five Years Ever

Five years ago this week, The Walt Disney Company joined the rest of society in entering a downward spiral.

As word spread of a global pandemic, everyone locked their doors and stayed inside for at least a year.

Even now, we still face the lingering ramifications of this historically unprecedented event.

For Disney, March 2020 started a cycle of failure and chaos unlike any the company had ever faced.

Disney wouldn’t exit its vicious circle until 2024. At this point in 2025, I believe it’s finally safe to look ahead.

We’ve finally reached the end of Disney’s worst five years ever.

So, let’s look back on the trauma to appreciate how much Disney has overcome.

Doomsday

That’s the name of the next Avengers film: Doomsday. For Disney employees, they’ve already experienced their Doomsday, though.

On a seemingly innocuous day in March 2020, everyone at the company learned that Disney’s theme parks would close.

Few fully appreciated the implication at the time, as viral images showed tourists standing cheek to cheek on Main Street, U.S.A.

They gleefully celebrated the excitement of something new: Walt Disney World and Disney closing indefinitely.

You really had to be there…or at least paying attention to Disney at the time.

Alas, I fully understand why many of you weren’t. You had your own problems at the time.

Here’s how the story broke from Disney’s perspective. On March 10^th, the company indicated that the parks would remain open.

Disney stated, “Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort are welcoming guests as usual and we continue to implement preventive measures in line with the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies.”

Less than 24 hours later, the world had changed, and Disney knew it. The first sign was the delay of Black Widow.

At the time, nobody fully appreciated the movie industry would never be the same, but that article accidentally hinted at the change.

More importantly, Ruby Gobert touched some microphones, the NBA suffered a COVID outbreak, and the league shut down.

At the time, that was the early warning signal that North America couldn’t escape the pandemic.

By March 12^th, Disney confirmed the closures of Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

This is the all-time “you had to be there to understand” moment of my life, even over 9/11.

On that date, everyone realized they had to hide in their homes until the world reawakened.

For Disney, most of its businesses died overnight.

Welcome to the Job, Chapek!

Let’s rewind to February 25^th, 2020, the day when Bob Iger did the unthinkable by announcing his retirement.

Iger indicated that he would stay until the end of 2021, but he stopped being CEO immediately.

His replacement was Bob Chapek, and that’s obviously the next bullet point in Disney’s worst five years ever.

At the time, the move made little sense, even though I tried to reconcile it.

Nowadays, the conspiracy theory is that Iger knew Disney was about to collapse. So, Iger let Chapek take the fall.

I’m trying to be as informational as possible here, yet that theory is pervasive enough that some would complain if I didn’t mention it.

Coincidentally or not, Iger got out at the perfect time. Meanwhile, Chapek proved to be little more than a wartime consigliere.

I’m not one to defend Chapek, but I wouldn’t be doing my job unless I mentioned the truth.

He was brutally unlucky during his first 100 days on the job.

I mean, even if we ignore the pandemic, a Jungle Cruise boat with passengers onboard sank right after he got the job.

How often does that happen? But let’s be honest that the whole thing worked as a form of pre-karma.

Bob Chapek deserved his misfortunes. He NEVER should have been CEO as Disney, something we quickly learned.

Disney’s 2020 was like a waking nightmare, with this post of mine aging like milk.

Yes, I wrote about Coronavirus five weeks before anybody else, but I got it so very wrong. This one was a tad bit better.

I don’t want to trigger anyone and will avoid specifics…but you remember.

The virus came to the United States, and it was brutal. Disney suffered mightily, and Chapek simply wasn’t up to the task.

Disney in 2020 and 2021

As the Soundgarden song goes, Disney fell on black days during the pandemic.

Sure, we all did, but Disney took it the worst of any major corporation.

I detailed all the ways in a grim article, and the proof was in the revenue numbers.

In fiscal 2019, Disney’s net income was $10.4 billion. During the disaster year of 2020, Disney lost $2.8 billion.

Folks, that’s a revenue change of $13.2 billion in a calendar year.

Simultaneously, Disney lost revenue from theme parks, cruises, movie releases, and advertising revenue. It was a wipeout.

On the film side, Disney suffered some of its biggest bombs ever with Wish and The Marvels.

Chapek identified the one growth area as Disney streaming, and he threw all his capital into this medium.

The result was that Disney+ became a loss leader, growing its subscriber base by tens of millions but losing billions in the process.

When the parks finally reopened, it was a stop-and-start process internationally.

Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris all reopened, closed, and reopened again.

Each outbreak forced a safety-related closure. So, international guests never knew whether the parks would be open.

Locally, I speculated about the changes Disney needed to reopen safely.

Remarkably, when Walt Disney World returned, it operated without an outbreak throughout the pandemic.

Disney did it right and will always deserve credit for that. Despite this fact, Disneyland Resort wasn’t allowed to reopen in 2020.

Instead, the park waited until April 2021, which meant the parks were closed for a full calendar year.

Meanwhile, movie theater attendance remained sluggish bordering on non-existent in 2021.

Not coincidentally, Disney’s net income that year was just under $2 billion, meaning the company lost money in 2020/2021. That is NOT the way corporations are supposed to work.

Get Lost, Chapek

In 2022, Bob Chapek poured gasoline all over himself and then started playing with matches.

Chapek heard whispers that the Board of Directors wanted to replace him, which proved largely accurate.

As a measure of self-defense, the CEO fired his highest-profile underling, Peter Rice.

This ruthless, brutally self-serving maneuver achieved its main goal, with Chapek earning a contract extension later that month.

I wouldn’t describe the mood as joyous when the Board announced this move.

The tone was very much along the lines of, “What choice did we have?”

By August, I’d already heard that the Board had buyer’s remorse regarding the extension.

Chapek infamously stripped extensions of power, thereby consolidating his own.

The CEO closed ranks with a few trusted underlings, most notably the previously unknown Kareem Daniel, his own protégé.

Daniel became the head of all forms of Disney entertainment, a job for which he was woefully unprepared.

I’m not saying Daniel did anything wrong, but it’d be like naming your puppy as the VP of Food Distribution at your house.

Your puppy would eat great. Everyone else in the house would go hungry. If anything, Daniel overachieved relative to expectations.

Still, Disney’s streaming lost more than $1 billion in a quarter and $5 billion in fiscal 2022.

Along the way, Chapek found himself in a bare knuckles brawl with the state of Florida over the Don’t Say Gay bill.

Chapek found a way to alienate liberals and conservatives alike, which isn’t easy to do.

The misstep spoke to his underlying weakness as a leader. People just didn’t care for him.

On a random Sunday night in November 2022, I received a text that Chapek was out.

Disney’s Board restored Bob Iger as CEO. This move brought rejoicing among Disney fanatics.

The Wisdom of Thomas Wolfe

Here’s a bit of American Literature history for you. Famed author Thomas Wolfe died before the publication of his signature work.

Surely, you’ve heard the phrase, “You can’t go home again.”

That’s the title of Wolfe’s unpublished manuscript, which he’d called The October Fair.

The implication is that you AND your home change over time. So, home won’t be the place you remember from your youth.

In 2023, Bob Iger learned that the hard way. When he retired, the investor world mourned the loss.

To many, Iger was the best media CEO of the modern era. To some, he was the best of all-time.

When Iger came back to Disney, everyone expected great things.

A more realistic behavior would have been to hand the CEO a mop and broom.

Iger spent the first year cleaning up after Chapek’s messes. By this point, Disney had already lost Reedy Creek.

The CEO deftly laid a trap, outflanking Florida legislators. So, they literally had to rewrite laws to strike back.

Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed once election season ended. Walt Disney World got the developer agreement it desired.

Just as importantly, Iger stopped the bleeding on streaming, with the company finally turning a profit in fiscal 2024.

Still, saying all that glosses over the brutal 12 months leading up to it, which included not one but TWO activist investor fights.

Chapek foolishly befriended Nelson Peltz, who played the CEO for a patsy.

Once Iger returned, he temporarily dissuaded Peltz. The following year, the billionaire pushed back much harder.

So, Iger wasted months of his life trying to prevent the undeserving Peltz from joining Disney’s Board.

As a byproduct of this fight, Iger realized it’s not always easy going home.

The Wisdom of Bon Jovi

Jon Bon Jovi has countered with a song, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?”

The implication is that many people have no problem going home, as they find comfort in a familiar place.

During the latter half of 2024, Iger reached that place in his second Disney tenure.

By the end of the year, I happily reported that Disney had a phenomenal 2024.

In the process, the company finally ended its worst five-year period ever.

The parks are open and ready to expand exponentially. Disney Cruise Line, which once looked dead, will add several new ships.

Streaming isn’t just profitable but also producing exceptional programs like Shogun and The Bear.

Disney’s movie business claimed the top three releases of 2024.

In short, all is well again, but none of us will ever forget the trauma and absurdity of Disney’s 2020-2024.

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