Being a Disney Parks fan isn’t always easy. On top of handling annual price hikes, disappearing perks, closing classics, reduced portion sizes, and merch resellers, following “Disney Parks” news can be… complicated! With retiring stars and new names coming in and out of the conversation every year, it can be hard to keep up with who’s who in the what’s what of the Mouse House.
We’re here to help! Today, we’ll take a look at six of the big name “who’s who” figures you’ve got to know if you stand a chance at understanding Disney Parks news… and the rumors, complaints, credit, and blame that’s always a part of the conversation… Hopefully this guide adds a little context to the next big story or must-follow figure you hear about!
Bob Iger
Bob Iger began his career in 1974, earning $150 a week as a go-fer for ABC. Gradually, he worked his way up to a Senior Program Executive at ABC in the ‘80s. Progressive positions with the entertainment broadcaster eventually saw Iger elevated to President and COO of Capital Cities – ABC’s parent company – in 1994… just in time for Michael Eisner’s Walt Disney Company to buy Capital Cities in a staggering media acquisition for the era.
Iger remained President of the acquired Capital Cities until 1999, when he took over Disney’s international business unit and became Chairman of ABC. In 2000, he was elevated to Chief Operating Officer of the entire Walt Disney Company – Eisner’s number two position, vacated by the infamous departure of Michael Ovitz after just 16 months in the role. When Michael Eisner left Disney in 2004 (before the end of his contract), Iger was elevated.
Mere months after assuming the Chief Executive Officer role, Iger announced that Disney would purchase Pixar for a staggering $7.4 billion – one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history, especially for a brand new leader. His tenure is marked by similarly massive intellectual property acquisitions of Marvel ($4 billion) and Lucasfilm ($4 billion), plus the once-unthinkable purchase of another of the “Big Six” film studios, 21st Century Fox ($71.3 billion). In other words, though Michael Eisner definitely began Disney’s growth into a global media company, Iger arguably oversaw that journey’s peak.
In the parks, Iger presided over an era of spectacular expansion during which the company’s theme parks were one battlefront in the “IP Wars.” The era of “Living Lands” – like Toy Story Land, Cars Land, Galaxy’s Edge, Pandora, and Avengers Campus – has been entirely contained within Iger’s tenure. Iger also oversaw the costly response to the decade of underfunded parks he inherited, greenlighting the remaking of Disney California Adventure (above, with Tom Staggs), Hong Kong Disneyland, and Walt Disney Studios Paris.
Famously tending toward the creative side of the business, Iger is largely viewed as a leader who went with his gut, making big, splashy acquisitions, empowering creators, and insisting on quality. A big believer in the danger of “brand withdrawals,” Iger is well regarded for insisting on quality across the Disney brand, maintaining consistency across the growing company. His legacy is enshrined forever by his acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, the opening of Shanghai Disneyland, the $70 billion purchase of 20th Century Fox, and the launch of Disney+.
Iger was initially set to retire at the end of his contract in 2016. Two candidates – Tom Staggs (Chairman of Parks & Resorts) and Jay Rasulo (Chief Financial Officer) – were believed to be Iger’s top picks to succeed him. He even had the two executives swap roles in the early 2010s, which industry commentators suspected was an attempt to broaden both candidates’ experience ahead of one of their selections. Ultimately, both Staggs and Rasulo left the company, leaving Iger without a successor. His contract was extended to 2018, then 2019, then 2021.
Iger unexpectedly announced that he was stepping down immediately (and 22 months before the end of his contract) from the CEO on February 25, 2020 – probably not coincidentally, just as the reality of the encroaching COVID-19 pandemic became headline news. He agreed to stay on in a custom-made role – Executive Chairman – until the end of 2021. One of his stated goals in the position was to handle the “creative” end of the business while coaching and mentoring his replacement, whose experience in the “creative” is… well… suspect…
Bob Chapek
Bob Chapek is a pretty stark contrast to Bob Iger. Chapek has been with Disney just as long – 26 years – but a bulk of his experience was actually in Disney’s home entertainment division. As President of Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Chapek oversaw Disney and ABC home media releases, navigating the transition from VHS to DVD.
In 2011, Chapek moved into his most often-discussed role as President of Disney Consumer Products (DCP). The DCP division was, of course, responsible for the manufacturing of Disney merchandise (think: toys, games, costumes, and other accessories) but – more importantly – licensing Disney’s characters and likenesses (think: Star Wars LEGO sets, Frozen Vitamins, Mattel Disney Princess dolls, Finding Nemo Crayola coloring books, Indiana Jones Funko Pops, and seemingly about ten trillion other licensing deals). After Disney purchased Lucasfilm, Chapek’s DCP division became the most profitable merchandise licensor in the world. Given that DCP was a highly, highly important – but fairly un-sexy – division of Disney, Chapek didn’t register on many fans’ radar…
Then, in 2015, Tom Staggs announced his exit from the company (allegedly because the Board signaled he was not a shoo-in to replace Iger as CEO like he’d believed) and “effective immediately,” Chapek was named the new Chairman of Parks & Resorts. Given that Staggs had overseen the development of Disney’s Avatar and Star Wars lands plus Shanghai Disney, Chapek saw them through to completion. But among fans, the “numbers guy” from Consumer Products started his term on “thin ice.”
In 2018, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts was “fused” with Disney Consumer Products, leaving Chapek as the lead of a vaguely-nefarious, late-stage-capitalism-sounding combined division – Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products (DPEP). Explicitly painting the theme parks as part of Disney’s retail strategy is a pretty perfect representation of Chapek’s M.O. – overseeing an era defined by “cheap and cheerful” additions, an emphasis on retail and upcharges, the end of many longtime Parks perks, and wedging in lots and lots of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars.
Even when he represented Disney Parks at celebratory D23 Expos, there was never really a sense that Chapek specifically cared about the Parks, knew anything about them, or had a long-term vision for them. Instead, it felt like Chapek was dutifully trying to optimize the area of the company he’d been assigned to in the way he knew how – maximizing revenues and minimizing expenses while leveraging Disney’s brands, characters, partnerships, and products.
Chapek was unexpectedly named Chief Executive Officer, “effectively immediately,” when Bob Iger stepped down in February 2020 – long envisioned as a “code red,” “worst case scenario” by many fans. Insiders allege that rather than sticking to the status quo as many (maybe including Bob Iger) hoped, Chapek allegedly raced headlong into the role by cutting off many “Iger-loyalist” creatives, surrounding himself in financial advisors, and restructuring the entire company with content, licensing, and streaming as its core business.
There’s no denying that Chapek is a very different leader and personality than Iger. Clearly much less comfortable in the spotlight, Chapek comes off as much less self-assured and even defensive in interviews. He definitely drew the ire of fans when, at the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, an awkward, somewhat artificial, and almost-indignant Chapek infamously responded to gathered fans’ questions about Disney’s IP obsession by insisting “We don’t want to do anything that anybody else can do. A lot of times, people say ‘Why don’t you do something – why does everything have to be franchise-oriented?’ […] Because if any of our competitors had our intellectual property, guess what they’d be doing? The same thing we’re doing. But they don’t have it. And we do.”
He’s also ruffled feathers in Hollywood and made several significant PR faux pas (Scarlet Johannsen) given his lack of experience with the studio side of the business. In what many suggest is a thinly viewed repudiation of his own successor, Iger allegedly urged Disney’s leadership not “to use data to answer all of our questions, including creative questions.”
Putting a “numbers guy” in charge of a fundamentally creative business will certainly be an interesting story to follow…
Josh D’Amaro
Josh D’Amaro has been at Disney since 1998, and has held a whole lot of positions in both Disney Consumer Products and Disney Parks & Resorts. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, he held roles as the Vice President of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Vice President of Resort and Transportation Operations at Walt Disney World, and Chief Commercial Officer of Walt Disney World.
In 2018, he was named President of Disneyland Park, during which time he gained a reputation for actually spending time in the park (something that you wouldn’t think would make headlines, but alas…) D’Amaro gained a “cult following” among Parks fans for being visible and accessible around the resort. Still, he held the Anaheim position for only a year and a half before relocating back to Orlando as President of Walt Disney World Resort, during which time he was known for actively improving Cast Member support facilities. He held that position for only six months since Bob Chapek’s surprise ascension to CEO left the Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products role open and the rapidly-ascending D’Amaro moved in.
For better or worse, D’Amaro can be a divisive figure among fans. On one hand, he’s a young, tall, handsome, friendly executive who – again – actually seems to know something about Disney’s theme parks, and even spends time there! You can find shirts with his face on Etsy, and taking selfies with him in the Parks is as popular among Parks fans as many character meet-and-greets. In sometimes sweet, sometimes cringey ways, D’Amaro seems to revel in his “fame” and is perhaps more public-facing than Chapek ever was or will be. (It’s hard to imagine Bob Chapek having an Instagram, for example, whereas D’Amaro’s commands 137,000 followers.)
Cynics, though, might remind us that D’Amaro’s greatest asset is probably Bob Chapek, who – even elevated to CEO – serves as a convenient scapegoat for issues with the parks. (Frankly, it’s not entirely fair that “the buck stopped” with the Chairman of Parks when it was Chapek in the role, but now that he’s risen, so has the blame, with D’Amaro cast as faultless in Parks issues.) It’ll be interesting to see how D’Amaro owns the role of Chairman going forward, and in the meantime, we ought to remind ourselves that what does or doesn’t happen at Disney Parks ultimately falls to him, for better or worse…
Bob Weis
Bob Weis is a well-known name around Walt Disney Imagineering circles. Starting with the company in 1980, Weis contributed to the design of Tokyo Disneyland, then served as a pivotal figure and project manager for the Disney-MGM Studios and particularly, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. He’s also cited with adding early design work to Tokyo DisneySea, though that must be through his contributions to the never-built California version of the park. After all, Weis actually exited Disney in 1994 to begin his own design firm, Design Island, which created CSI: The Experience, Top of the Rock in New York, and helped develop Disney’s PhotoPass software and website.
Weis returned to Disney Imagineering in 2007, just in time to lead the five-year redevelopment of Disney California Adventure. Once the project was complete, he took the lead on the design of Shanghai Disneyland. In 2016, Weis was named President of Walt Disney Imagineering.
In 2021, a leadership organization at Walt Disney Imagineering saw Weis’ role expand to President of Creative and New Experiences for WDI, meaning he’s the guy to send your armchair Imagineering ideas to. (But really, don’t… Disney doesn’t accept unsolicited outside submissions.)
Charita Carter
An Imagineer with over 20 years of experience, Charita Carter is a Senior Creative Producer and Manager at Walt Disney Imagineering. Best known for her leading role alongside recently-retired Imagineering legend Kevin Rafferty in developing Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, she’s no doubt going to build onto her legacy as the lead designer of the new Princess and the Frog redevelopment of Splash Mountain. Clearly, Charita is a star on the rise whose involvement with projects will become a very good omen.
Zach Riddley
Riddley’s entered the cast of recurring characters in the Disney Parks story since the 2019 D23 Expo. As the Creative Portfolio Executive currently focused on Disney’s ambitious, long-term evolution of EPCOT, he’s nothing short of a pivotal figure. Fans have been eagerly tuned to his Instagram, where he shares details of the park’s ongoing transformation that are unlikely to mean much to the general public, but give fans a (PR friendly) look behind-the-scenes.
Riddley might best be understood as Disney’s public-facing follow-up to the artistic and academic Joe Rohde (who recently left the company for Virgin Galactic). It remains to be seen if Riddley develops the same cult following Rohde did, but at least it’s clear that he cares a whole lot about EPCOT and its reimagining.
