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He Raised Disney Park Prices—and Fans Still Love Him. Now He’s on the CEO Shortlist.
Josh D’Amaro, head of the entertainment giant’s theme-park division, is in contention to succeed Bob Iger
By
Robbie Whelan
Aug. 29, 2024 - 5:30 am EDT
ANAHEIM, Calif.—Hours before taking the stage in front of 12,000 screaming fans for the biggest presentation of his career, Disney’s top parks executive flitted among a throng of Mickey devotees, shaking hands and smiling for selfies.
Josh D’Amaro, widely praised by fans and investors, is in the throes of a high-stakes audition for the top job at Disney when Chief Executive Bob Iger’s contract ends in 2026. At Disney’s
D23 fan event in early August, he needed to drum up excitement for billions of dollars in theme-park expansions after years with few new major attractions.
In four years as chairman of Disney’s Experiences division, which includes theme parks, cruises, consumer products and videogames, the 53-year-old has imposed price hikes and delivered new products that have added hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue. The unit has transformed from a drag on Disney during the pandemic to its main profit engine, thanks in large part to pricing and operational changes conceived by D’Amaro.
Now, he faces his biggest test yet: squeezing growth out of the parks when consumers are increasingly tapped out.
As the economy slows, the American families that form Disney’s core customer base are feeling the weight of inflation and a cooling job market. In the two most recent quarterly earnings reports, Disney reported that softening consumer demand had stalled growth in D’Amaro’s division, setting off alarm bells among investors.
"The next set of challenges will be very, very different. I don’t think you can really raise prices much more,” said Jim Shull, who worked as an Imagineer, one of Disney’s elite theme-park designers, for 33 years before retiring in 2020.
Marc Benioff, the CEO of software company Salesforce, said D’Amaro has become a regular presence at Iger’s side at big events like the Sun Valley media conference, a sign of the CEO’s trust.
“He’s become someone who has to be considered as a future CEO of Disney,” said Benioff, who counts both Iger and D’Amaro as friends.
Iger calls the parks chief “every day,” D’Amaro said in a recent interview with a Disney fan-radio show, to check on plans for new attractions, a level of attention to detail D’Amaro described as “special.”
“I think it’s so important that we have Bob here at this time,” D’Amaro said.
D’Amaro has told confidants in recent weeks that he’s interested in the CEO job and ready to take the reins if they’re offered. Insiders say he’s neck-and-neck with Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney’s Entertainment division, which includes its streaming business.
Privately, some of his supporters say they worry that if he’s passed over, he might be recruited to leave Disney and run a different company.
‘Chief’
Born and raised in Medfield, Mass., a middle-class suburb of Boston, D’Amaro grew up playing soccer and basketball. The yearbook from his graduating class at Medfield High School lists his nickname as “Chief.”
He studied painting and sculpture at Skidmore College in New York before transferring to Georgetown University to study business. He worked in the finance department of shaving-products maker Gillette before joining Disney in 1998, where he quickly rose through the ranks.
D’Amaro spent time in Hong Kong helping repair frayed commercial relationships and developed the travel-tour business Adventures By Disney. He was vice president of the Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida, overseeing the building of Pandora, the park’s “Avatar”-themed area, and later served as president of
Disneyland, in Southern California, and held several top management roles at Florida’s Walt Disney World.
“The minute I met the guy, I said, ‘Whoa, this guy is a hard-charger. He’s going to light this place up,’ ” said Jim MacPhee, a former Disney parks executive who spent nearly 43 years with the company before retiring in 2021.
Over the past year, D’Amaro has taken on a more prominent role in dealmaking while overseeing a capital-investment budget that doubled in size last year, to $60 billion over the next decade.
His observers note a paradox in his leadership: Disney fans seem to adore D’Amaro, even though starting in 2021, he repeatedly raised ticket prices, did away with beloved freebies and made changes that drove up the complexity and cost of visiting the theme parks.
Charismatic and affable, D’Amaro inspires loyalty in his subordinates and is a celebrity of sorts among fans, with 154,000 Instagram followers. During frequent strolls through Disney parks, fans and employees mob him for handshakes and selfies.
He’s known to doodle anime-like characters on notepads during meetings without missing a beat of the conversation, and friends say he’s a lover of the Boston Celtics and rock bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters. D’Amaro lives with his wife, Susan—they were high-school sweethearts—in Coto de Caza, Calif., a wealthy suburb about 30 minutes from Disneyland. Many other senior executives at Disney, including Iger and Walden, live in the tony enclaves of Los Angeles’s West Side, closer to the company’s headquarters.
Fast Pass
D’Amaro took the helm of the parks business after his predecessor, Bob Chapek, was promoted to CEO in February of 2020. Chapek, who was fired after just over 2½ years in the top job, was viewed primarily as an operator who struggled to build productive relationships with Hollywood talent, manage studio executives and connect with fans.
When the Covid-19 pandemic shut most movie theaters and Disney’s theme parks, Chapek asked D’Amaro’s team to come up with proposals to help maximize parks revenues and make up for shortfalls in other units, according to people familiar with the matter.
D’Amaro presented three main ideas, including
Genie+, a smartphone app feature that lets visitors skip some lines for about $20 a day, and individual Lightning Lanes that offer shorter waits for popular rides for an added fee. His third idea, a new online reservation system, limited crowds and restricted how often annual passholders could visit.
All three changes helped the company claw its way back to financial health after the pandemic. The line-skipping add-ons have added hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to Disney’s coffers.
As these changes rolled out, Chapek, then CEO, was pilloried by fans who felt they were being nickel-and-dimed, but D’Amaro largely escaped their ire.
D’Amaro’s top priority is improving the guest experience, a Disney spokesperson said, and the company credits him with helping the parks division recover from the disruptions of the pandemic. “He took the rare opportunity while the train was stopped at the station to implement substantial transformation,” the spokesperson said in a written response to questions. Disney declined to make D’Amaro available for an extended interview.
This year, D’Amaro angered some fans by putting new restrictions on a program that allows some visitors with disabilities to skip lines. Before, guests with a wider range of issues could qualify, but the system was widely abused. Now, the service is limited mainly to visitors with serious developmental disabilities like autism.
Regular Disney parks visitors have complained in recent years that the pace of new attractions at the U.S. theme parks seems to have slowed and that Disney isn’t keeping up with rivals.
On the Saturday night in August, onstage at Anaheim’s professional ice-hockey arena, D’Amaro did his best to reassure fans and investors that Disney is serious about bringing them new, exciting attractions.The Disney faithful gasped and leapt to their feet in cheers as D’Amaro rolled out plans that included a new “Monsters, Inc.” roller coaster and new theme-park areas based on Disney villains and the “Avatar” movies.
Asked by text message after the presentation how he felt it had gone, D’Amaro wrote back, “If the fans are happy, I’m happy.”
Write to Robbie Whelan at
robbie.whelan@wsj.com
