Four years after being ousted from Disney after a turbulent two years as its CEO, Bob Chapek is sticking to his guns in his new memoir, in which he stands by his controversial decision to hike prices at the company’s popular theme parks and blames his predecessor and successor, Bob Iger, for his downfall.
“My abrupt dismissal hurt my reputation, leaving those close to me, outsiders and some within the kingdom trying to figure out what I did wrong,” Chapek writes. “The answer, again, is nothing.”
In the upcoming book, “Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth,” Chapek claims in excerpts first printed by The New York Times that Iger had told people in Hollywood that Chapek was shutting him out and had “an intentional and preconceived role in abruptly ending my ride as Disney CEO.” Iger had remained at Disney as an executive chairman after handing over leadership to Chapek.
“I didn’t get a chance to finish what I started,” Mr. Chapek writes. “In truth, it pisses me off.”
Chapek remains an unpopular figure among Disney fans for the changes he made to the theme parks as head of the Parks & Experiences division and as CEO, including significant price increases for food and annual passes, discontinuing a popular free shuttle between Orlando International Airport and the Disney World Resort, and charging for previously free services such as the once popular Fastpass line-skipping system, which has since been replaced by a tiered “Lightning Lane” system at various price points.
While the changes have led to a revenue boost for Disney and further cemented the theme parks as a vital core of the company’s overall business, it led to growing dissatisfaction among the parks’ most devoted fans and accusations of pricing out families and once-in-a-lifetime vacationers and overall creative stagnation compared to competitors like Universal Orlando, the latter of which Disney is only just now starting to turn around.
“We’d been, at a minimum, leaving revenue opportunities on the table to avoid stirring the hornet’s nest,” he writes.
Chapek also takes credit for the rise of the current Disney CEO, Josh D’Amaro, who worked under him at the Parks division. “I consistently suggested the idea of promoting him,” he said. “He had been a relative unknown in the corporate hierarchy before I singled him out.”
Chapek has laid low since leaving Disney, aside from a brief stint on the board of the medical tech company Masimo. The same can’t be said of Iger, who after ending his second run as Disney CEO earlier this year has rejoined Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, through which he now has a controlling stake in the Los Angeles Lakers after a record $12.5 billion purchase of the NBA franchise from Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter.
“Behind the Castle Walls” will be published by Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books on Sept. 29.
The post Bob Chapek Blames Bob Iger for His Disney Downfall, Stands by Theme Park Price Hikes in Memoir appeared first on TheWrap.
