For what it's worth... I have a close friend who works in the area and apparently what happened is the owner of the company that operates PUSH also owns the IP for the concept was looking to retire. He offered all of the contract holders he operates for in the various attractions around the area a buyout option so they could retain the acts they were using and, depending on various circumstances, the employees that ran/maintained/whatever the act. Most took these deals.
Disney had initially also accepted the buyout, hence the "PUSH isn't going anywhere" statements they started making towards the end of Jan, even as late as this last Friday, but at the 11th hour, an undisclosed issue caused the deal to fall apart. They operated on a contract extension for 7 days to try to work out the issues, but they ran out of time and neither the contractor or Disney were confident they could work out the issues within a reasonable amount of time. Therefore PUSH left the park this weekend, 7 days after the expiration of his contract.
Maybe he'll come back, maybe he won't, but that's what the word on the street is right now. I'm not sure if they're still trying to work things out.
The funny thing is this company also holds contracts to other Disney acts and Disney agreed to buyout the company contracts and retain the rights to the acts and employees, in some cases months before the contracts were said to expire. Just, for some reason, it didn't work out for PUSH.
People are wondering if it had to do with the employee or employees that ran or maintained PUSH and disagreements about carrying over benefits, retirement, pay, hours, or maybe even union issues. Back in the early 2000's, there was an act/show, I can't remember the name of it, but Disney tried to absorb the employees and the show/act and had significant issues due to conflicting unions, or the contractors were union and the Disney's weren't, or Disney's were and the contractors weren't and didn't want to be... I can't remember. I'm sure somebody here remembers.
But, this is not an issue of greedy Disney or Disney letting go of acts to save a dollar... They very much wanted PUSH, and the contractor very much wanted to give over PUSH, but then... Nobody is really exactly sure. The last day PUSH was there was apparently quite emotional for a few people related to the act as they were clearly under the impression that they weren't going anywhere and they thought it'd work out. My friend said that it was so fast that they started the day that everything was everything, but 3/4 of the way through the day the PUSH people got word that PUSH was done and leaving that night and somebody was coming down to take him apart and remove him that evening. And that was it.
And apparently the reason behind the removal so quickly and with little notice after things fell through is they didn't want people to cause a scene in the park or over-run what was intended to be a low-key, subtle attraction with people getting their "one last's" if it got out that he was leaving. Apparently since word had gotten out about the possibility of his leaving, they had been having problems with people being unintentionally disruptive... Asking PUSH's operator what the scoop was. They'd actually had a CM in the area recently to help the operator if he was in a jam.
So... There's the word as I heard it from somebody who works the area. Take it for what it's worth. The information this contact has given me has been pretty accurate so far, but as everybody can tell you, the biggest experts on Disney politics are the bus drivers. LoL!
