A very logical argument and thanks for the honest answer.
The stock market often is wrong over the short term and a lot of money has been made by picking companies that have a bright future, but for whatever reason remain undiscovered by most investors. Think Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch as folks who could "see" the future.
With DIS, my thinking hasn't changed much. It is my contention that the parks, especially the domestic parks have been neglected to the point that they have been damaged. They have been starved of maintenance personnel and supplies and denied sufficient capex to keep up with demand. CM morale is noticeably stale.
For example, on our trip to WDW this past April, we were in MK for a noon lunch our last day. On Main Street, a entire box of popcorn had been spilled. No big, deal, I thought, happens all the time. But 1 1/2 hours later after our lunch, we were walking back along the same part of the street, and there was that popcorn, all mashed down and scattered halfway across the street.
To me, it was a horrifying sight - something I had never seen before at WDW. You have to know that dozens of CMs had seen the mess but no one made an effort to sweep it up. If CMs have lost the motivation to keep the place clean, then guest interactions are also sub-standard.
With content - sports, linear tv, streaming, movies, etc - I believe the explosion of digital availablity has made the product much cheaper. Everyone can make their own movies (
YouTube) and old stuff from Westerns to Drama is available somewhere on the cloud. Why bother tuning in to ABC prime-time for a TV show you've never seen, when you can watch an old movie or tv series that you would enjoy watching again?
True, DIS is a movie studio first and foremost, but they better come up with some high quality product to stand out and make customers want to buy. It can be done, as evidence by this year's blockbusters.
IMO, management has been derelict by neglecting the high-margin product (parks) and spending too much time focusing on a low-margin commodity product (content). I can't imagine DIS having the scale and volume of content to ever match the margins of the parks and cruises.
I hope I'm wrong, because I want the Disney that I grew old with will be there for future kids to enjoy.
.
