The Rebellion didn’t win the Galactic Civil War by idly sitting on its hands. It rolled its sleeves up and did the hard graft that made the war effort a machine for victory, and Disney Parks are doing the same, prioritising Avengers Campus, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and most pertinently Galactic Starcruiser as priority construction projects.
Speaking this week Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Walt Disney Company Christine McCarthy discussed these priority projects.
McCarthy confirmed that the company will continue to invest in its theme parks, given the high returns they get on these projects. That being said, investment spending will be “prioritized” to continue select projects already underway. Among the projects she listed were Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World, plus Avengers Campus and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland Resort.
While other major projects, like the EPCOT reimagining, were not mentioned, it is worth noting that active construction is still ongoing throughout the park, with work well underway at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, the Play! Pavilion, the park’s entrance, and the gutting of Innoventions. However, in July, it was confirmed that both the large-scale refurbishment of Spaceship Earth and the Mary Poppins-themed section of the United Kingdom Pavilion at EPCOT had been postponed indefinitely.
Bob Weis, president of Walt Disney Imagineering, recently disclosed that many projects would be moving forward in “stages”:
“While several projects, like Avengers Campus—at both Disney California Adventure and Disneyland Paris—are able to surge forward based on where we were in development, there are others that will be picked back up in stages—like Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and TRON—and some that are longer-term that we will need more time to assess.”
With a $700 million decrease in CAPEX spending and COVID-19 pushing opening dates back significantly – remember, Galactic Starcruiser was meant to open in 2021, a date now looking unlikely – and other builds held back it will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in '81 and has been a presence online since webpage Fanta War in 1996. He is the EiC and Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and currently contributes to ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, Star Wars – Das Offizielle Magazin, Journal of the Whills and Starburst Magazine, having previously contributed to magazines Star Wars Insider, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, partworks Build Darth Vader, Star Wars Encyclopedia, and Build The Millennium Falcon, and websites Jedi.net, Jedi News, StarWars.com, Lightsabre.co.uk, and Wirezone.
He is the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since it began in 2015 (hosting it four times), is part of the team behind Thank The Maker events, and is the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
The Rebellion didn’t win the Galactic Civil War by idly sitting on its hands. It rolled its sleeves up and did the hard graft that made the war effort a machine for victory, and Disney Parks are doing the same, prioritising Avengers Campus, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and most pertinently Galactic Starcruiser as priority construction projects.
Speaking this week Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Walt Disney Company Christine McCarthy discussed these priority projects.
McCarthy confirmed that the company will continue to invest in its theme parks, given the high returns they get on these projects. That being said, investment spending will be “prioritized” to continue select projects already underway. Among the projects she listed were Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World, plus Avengers Campus and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland Resort.
While other major projects, like the EPCOT reimagining, were not mentioned, it is worth noting that active construction is still ongoing throughout the park, with work well underway at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, the Play! Pavilion, the park’s entrance, and the gutting of Innoventions. However, in July, it was confirmed that both the large-scale refurbishment of Spaceship Earth and the Mary Poppins-themed section of the United Kingdom Pavilion at EPCOT had been postponed indefinitely.
Bob Weis, president of Walt Disney Imagineering, recently disclosed that many projects would be moving forward in “stages”:
“While several projects, like Avengers Campus—at both Disney California Adventure and Disneyland Paris—are able to surge forward based on where we were in development, there are others that will be picked back up in stages—like Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and TRON—and some that are longer-term that we will need more time to assess.”
With a $700 million decrease in CAPEX spending and COVID-19 pushing opening dates back significantly – remember, Galactic Starcruiser was meant to open in 2021, a date now looking unlikely – and other builds held back it will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in '81 and has been a presence online since webpage Fanta War in 1996. He is the EiC and Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and currently contributes to ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, Star Wars – Das Offizielle Magazin, Journal of the Whills and Starburst Magazine, having previously contributed to magazines Star Wars Insider, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, partworks Build Darth Vader, Star Wars Encyclopedia, and Build The Millennium Falcon, and websites Jedi.net, Jedi News, StarWars.com, Lightsabre.co.uk, and Wirezone.
He is the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since it began in 2015 (hosting it four times), is part of the team behind Thank The Maker events, and is the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.
For performance reasons we use OneSignal as a notification service. This saves a number of cookies in order to apply notifcation services on a per-client basis. These cookies are strictly necessary for OneSignal's notification features. It is essential to the service that these are not turned off.
