Starting in the early 90's (right after the death of Frank Wells), Eisner became obsessed with short term profit. Maintenace budgets for the parks were slashed, hours were cut back way back, attractions were closed with no replacements (Tommorowland at
Disneyland is a ghosttown these days). Recent parks have been drastically under built (AK, California Adventure, Disney Studios Paris, DL Hong Kong which will have only 4 attractions and 1 e-ticket!!!) are all "half day experiences".
Look at Dino Rama in Animal Kingdom to see everything that is wrong with Eisners philosophy. He calls these carnival ride "lightly themed attractions". Walt would have had a bird if this sort of thing were even considered on his watch. Look at the decaying state of Disneyland and the deaths that resulted from his cutbacks of maintenance and safety, all in the name of the short term dollar.
Eisner also displayed no investment knowledge. He spent over 4 Billion on the Fox Family network. Most Analysts placed is value at around 1 billion at the time, making Eisner the laughing stock of the industry. He bought sports team that have nothing to do with the Disney mission and have been nothing but money sinks ever since. He pushed for the Disney stores to be way over built, then watched as they turned into huge money losers. And dont even talk to me about the fiasco that is the ABC network (though I will admit that the ESPN purchase worked out very well).
I would go into detail about his abondonment of animation (the thing that made the company great to begin with), but I don't want to lose my temper. Suffice it to say that he has ordered the firing of almost all of the company's animators and imagineers. He sold off the company's unique talant pool for the sake of saving a few bucks. He has declared traditional animation to be "dead".
Some would say that it is too much to lay this all at Eisner's door, that he cant be responsible for everything his company does However, I chose my examples careflully. Eisner is a known micro manager and every example I have sited came from either a direct edict from Eisner or resulted from a strict policy that he laid down.
For the last 10 years, Eisner has consistantly cut quality and safety while raising prices. The good news is that in the last year we have seen the trend reversing itself a bit in the parks. There have been some new e-tickets at WDW and the neglect the Disneyland has suffered is finally being repaired, but much more needs to be done. Also, the falling stock price and the failure of the movie, sports and TV (ESPN excepted) divisions of the company speak for themselves. Eisner may have been a good leader once, but its time for him to leave before his leadership damages the company beyond what it can survive.
Enough said.
