28. Theme Park Insider Robert Niles Visits Let Me Adjust My Ears

I had the privilege of interviewing the amazing Robert Niles, founder and editor of Theme Park Insider!  He shares with us the latest scoop from the theme park world about construction delays, how streaming services and Hollywood Strikes are affecting the future of Disney, and his fascinating predictions about potential upcoming attractions. This is an episode that you don't want to miss!

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Michele:

So welcome to Let Me Adjust My Ears. I am so thrilled to have someone who I follow and who I'm kind of starstruck by. I can't even believe he agreed to be on my little podcast. So welcome to Robert Niles from Theme Park Insiders.

Robert Niles:

Hello. Thanks for having me.

Michele:

Oh, thank you so much. Now, I am a sucker for a good Disney origin story. So I have to hear your origin story. And, also, I was shocked that you're on the West Coast because you're always so up on the East Coast news. So I wanna know how that happened.

Robert Niles:

Well, I've I still have a lot of family back in the Orlando area, so they help keep me posted. Fit in. We've got readers all over the world as well who are constantly sending me information and tips and news, and so I always appreciate that type of feedback and participation as well. But I'm an LA native. I live in the LA area, but I worked at Walt Disney World for many years when I was in college and graduate school. So, yeah, I've been both coasts.

Michele:

So, what did you do when you were a cast member?

Robert Niles:

I was a Pirate of the Caribbean. I drove TomSora Island Drafts. I worked at Country Bear Jamboree and Thunder Mountain Railroad. And actually I did 1 summer And merchandise over in Tomorrowland, but I got out of there into Magic Kingdom West attractions as quickly as I could after that because That was a lot more fun than the polyester double knit of the time for the Tomorrowland. Although I discovered it's still polyester double knit on the other side but at least I don't know it wasn't quite as thick but thank goodness that there have been Great advancements in costuming technology over the years, and I don't think people are nearly as comfortable as we were back in the day.

Michele:

Amen to that. And they get to wear the water bottle pockets.

Robert Niles:

Yeah.

Michele:

That was something we didn't get. So how many years were you a cast member?

Robert Niles:

5 years.

Michele:

From when to when?

Robert Niles:

Way back in the, ages when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, Late eighties, early nineties.

Michele:

So we did overlap. I was there from 89 to 94.

Robert Niles:

Okay.

Michele:

On and off. I mean, I I finished 89 with college program, and then I finished school and went back full time. I bet I was in resorts. So I get lost in the Magic Kingdom utilidor, so working there was never an option for me.

Robert Niles:

I learned those utilidors. Mean, that was the nice thing about working on both sides of the park is you learn both halves of the utility door system because they're very different. I was a little surprised on how things were over on the west side because the utilitors are much more narrow over there. You can really get lost pretty easily. Whereas on the east side, it was just like this huge superhighway that, you know, no one was gonna get lost in.

Michele:

So then how did you decide to become the theme park insider? And just for me to, like, accentuate how much of a theme park insider you are. There was some very, very exciting Disney news that came out. I don't know, maybe late strayed or early this morning, but by 8 AM, I already had a newsletter from you in my inbox with, like, breaking this spig news, so I'm very curious.

Robert Niles:

This was one of those situations where Disney does reach out to a few people who are covering the industry, And they let us know about things in advance. So I have those stories written up last night before I went to bed, and they just tell us what an embargo time is, which was 7 AM on the East Coast, which is 4 AM on the West Coast. So that wasn't a whole lot of fun. But, Yeah. You can schedule a lot of things with publishing in advance, which was kinda nice. When I was wrapping up at Disney World, I was starting graduate school in journalism. And, so I worked in newspapers for a while. And then because I had some computer know how, got recruited to do newspaper websites because in the nineties, they were desperate for anyone who knew anything about a computer.

Robert Niles:

Hey. Run our website. So I was doing that for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, RIP. And just one of the things I was really interested in was the whole idea of user contributed content because I was active in some of the I'm gonna really, really date myself here. Usenet boards about Disneyland and Walt Disney World that were up. This is way before people had discussion boards and websites and that sort of thing. So I thought it'd be kind of cool. Could you build an entire website that was nothing but just user contributed content about something? And I said, well, I'm gonna pick theme parks because that's what I know.

Robert Niles:

I worked at Disney World, so the website that we had in Denver was called Inside Denver. And I thought, well, you know, I've worked at a theme park, so I just wanted to pay tribute to that with something that had the word inside in it. So I decided Theme Park Insider would be a good name for it, And that's what I did Been doing this now for a couple of decades

Michele:

Wow That's so cool Okay So going back to one of the very first times I ever heard you on a podcast. Mhmm. You talked about, and I think this was also coming out of the pandemic. You talked about how Universal's actually just killing it. In that because of the contracts and the construction and having that tied up, that it's gonna take a while for Disney to get caught up. S would you please explain that so much better than I just did? Because I found it fascinating, and I think my listeners would be like, that's some true inside information.

Robert Niles:

Yeah. I think fans we all have wish lists of things that we would love to see the parks do. People at Disney have wishlists too, and their wishlist is longer even than ours. But there is that clog in the machine there, that narrow gap you've gotta get through, which is construction. And, you can design a great thing, but if it doesn't get built, it's Obviously not happening. And there are a limited number of companies and people that can do the type of construction that big companies like Disney and Universal need. And you're not just putting up some design build office park like everybody's got in every city in America. These are very bespoke, specialized designs where you need people who are you know, obviously, Disney and Universal have craftspeople who can do things like rock work and stuff like that, but You still need general contractors who are familiar with this sort of thing.

Robert Niles:

Now, obviously, because of the demand of Disney and Universal, There are such people on both coasts that have a habit of working with the companies on this, but it's not an inexhaustible supply. I mean, You couldn't start a new general contracting business specializing in theme park attractions today And be ready tomorrow. You you just couldn't recruit the people. You couldn't develop the contacts necessary. The lead time to get into this business is huge. So Disney and Universal have to work with who they've got at this point. And when the pandemic and the lockdowns hit, All the construction stopped. Lots of people got laid off.

Robert Niles:

Not all of them came back when construction restarted And companies were really eager to accelerate their work because they'd taken a year or so off. So now they're trying to accelerate, which means more people, more resources. At the same time, the companies don't have the people and the resources. So now all of a sudden, the time frame to get something from blue sky to real world has extended where it might have been 2 or 3 years before. Now it's 4 to 5 years. Universal with Epic Universe, that was the biggest project going in Orlando. And when they brought that back, that sucked up a lot of the air in the room for development. And Universal's got that through the middle of 2025, which makes it really hard for Disney to come back and do something of not even that scale, but large scale until they can get general contractors and people freed up.

Robert Niles:

Where Disney has prioritized has been DVC construction. That's the thing they've really worked on. So we see the project over the Polynesian. They're getting ready to restart Reflections, which is on the old river country site. The idea there being, we're gonna put our resources into doing these things that are big moneymakers for us, so they will generate the income that we need To pay perhaps a premium price to get people to come work for us when we're ready to go with the attraction. So that's kind of what's happening In Central Florida right now with the theme park construction business.

Michele:

So I read an article about the quote Disney decade, unquote heard that before. I think maybe the nineties were the Disney decade.

Robert Niles:

Yeah.

Michele:

If that is true, and I certainly agree that Universal Studios is killing it.

Robert Niles:

Mhmm.

Michele:

And I personally can't wait for Epic Universe and the Ministry of Magic is the rumor that I keep hearing.

Robert Niles:

Yes. That's real. Robot arms. I didn't say that.

Michele:

I have friends still in Orlando, too. So how is Disney going to effectively have this big decade if they can't really even start anything until 2024.

Robert Niles:

Okay. That's when the decade starts, to be honest with you. It's like, there's gonna be one. It's not yet right now, But give us a couple years, and we'll get started. They're trying to get everything lined up. They've got to make some decisions about what they're going to prioritize. And I think they clearly communicated at destination D23 that Animal Kingdom has moved ahead of Magic Kingdom on the priority list simply because the land in Animal Kingdom, that's basically a refurbished of an existing area. It's not expanding the footprint of the park like they need to do at Magic Kingdom.

Robert Niles:

And the way the Magic Kingdom is designed, expanding the footprint of that park, even though there's a ton of space around it, accessing that space is really difficult because of the way the railroad and the rivers and the wetlands and everything there, one of the things that I put out, which Was I think it was kind of a trial balloon from Imagineering to see how people would feel about it was, do they get rid of Tom Sawyer Island and just kind of fill all that in for expansion space? I would hate that but I mean that just goes to illustrate how difficult it is to access land in the Magic Kingdom. Animal Kingdom, piece of cake. Go in there to DinoLand. The dinosaur ride is basically the same type of track and ride system as Indiana Jones at Disneyland. Make it Indiana Jones. Boom. Now all of a sudden, you've got tropical Central South America as the theme for Dinoland, perfect place to put in an Encanto ride. They've got the space for the dark ride building that they would need for that.

Robert Niles:

Easy peasy. So that's something that they could get going on. And, I mean, I haven't heard time frames, but just thinking about it, that's 2027, 2028. They could have that done. That would be a huge gift for them, and that gives them time to figure out what they're doing with Magic Kingdom and any other projects that they might want to work on to extend the decade At the Walt Disney World Resort.

Michele:

Do you think we'll ever see some of the projects that were pulled out of Epcot, like Mary Poppins and the universe of play.

Robert Niles:

Yeah. The, play pavilion kinda came back there for a little while and then got shut down again, Which was a little bit frustrating to a lot of people involved there, but I think they were just kind of working out the numbers on what it would cost. And that was supposed to really be kind of the Skunk Works for Imagineering, where they were showing you the latest and greatest of what they had. Trouble with the latest and the greatest is it's really expensive until you figure out how to scale that up. So the idea of doing that out in public was something they thought about and said, maybe that's not the best idea, putting it into the most popular theme park resort in the entire world. So that's something that, they're going to retool that idea maybe it'll come back, but the Mary Poppins one, they never really told us what they were thinking about it. I've got some ideas in the back of my head if anyone would like to call me, what I would like to see there, but they definitely need the big dark ride capacity in World Showcase, and you see the demand that they've had For Ratatouille, and it just shows that there is so much demand for really accessible family friendly dark rides in the Walt Disney World Resort, and they just cannot build enough of them. So if they could do something like that in the UK Pavilion with Mary Poppins or any other UK adjacent theme that they've got.

Robert Niles:

That would be wonderful, and I think the fans would love it.

Michele:

And they have the space to do that already?

Robert Niles:

Yeah that's not terribly inaccessible space that they've got back behind the UK pavilion they could do some stuff there. Epcot isn't really kind of hemmed in all around it the way the Magic Kingdom is. Magic Kingdom really is. That's a tough, tight space to work in, Whereas they've got Hollywood Studios, frankly, is pretty hemmed in as well, but Epcot and Animal Kingdom are the ones where they've got some space to expand the footprint of the park that they don't have at the other 2 parks.

Michele:

So you mentioned that dinosaur could become Indiana Jones, which I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan and not a dinosaur fan. So for me, that would be ideal. Are we ever gonna see Cars Land replace Test Track?

Robert Niles:

Yeah. That was long, long ago before the original concept that became Toy Story Land at Hollywood Studios was for that to be Cars Land. And then they just decided that that was too expensive and it was easier for them to do Toy Story Land. That gave them the opportunity to flip the queue for Toy Story mania, West Coast. I wanna say Midway Mania because that's what the name is out here. But to flip the queue and increase the capacity for that, and then just go ahead and make that the whole Toy Story But that was originally gonna be Cars Land. And I've not heard anything about Disney World wanting to bring back Cars Land as a concept, But I think it would be a huge hit, like I said. The thing is they've got a pretty good partner at Chevrolet with Test Track, and they're Paying for a test track to be revamped yet again.

Robert Niles:

So I think any hope that maybe at one point, maybe test track would become Cars Land. It's the same basic ride system, but it's a completely different setting. They would essentially have to rebuild the entire thing. There's no chance of that happening at that point. This is gonna continue to be a showcase Chevrolet brands and products. Sorry. Lightning McQueen, I don't know what make or model he is, but It ain't Chevrolet. They don't have big eyes on the windshields, and they're not sentient creatures, so that ain't gonna happen.

Michele:

Yeah. I love radiator springs racers. I would love to see that instead of test track. So what other scoops might we get excited about at Universal or at Disney.

Robert Niles:

Well, I think, you know, like you said, the big thing is for the entire Orlando market is everybody's waiting on Epic Universe and just to see how that's going to affect the entire marketplace. It's such a potential game changer for everything that's happening at this point. Honestly, I don't think Disney fans should be worried in any way about Epic Universe. All Epic Universe is gonna do is inspire Disney To do more, and we've already seen it. They're talking about major changes in Animal Kingdom. They're talking about how can we expand Magic Kingdom. They're talking about Bringing new attractions to all of their parks. Huge investment that they're talking about in Florida.

Robert Niles:

The fans that should be worried are, you know, SeaWorld Busch Gardens fans because Wizarding World of Harry Potter came around. That's what dethroned SeaWorld from there. Number 2 also ran in the Orlando market and just Help put that company into a bit of a spiral from which they've not really recovered. But as far as what's happening at Disney, I mean, right now, like I said before, there's huge focus on getting DDC built out. I think that's also one of the reasons why they're telling us about all this stuff they're doing way in advance is because they wanna encourage people to make an investment to keep coming back to Disney Resorts 5, 10, 15 years from now saying, hey. You know, we're not gonna leave you hanging and leave you without any new attractions for 10 years like we did back in the eighties nineties. We're gonna have a constant flow of new stuff coming. You're gonna wanna come back every year, so go ahead and buy into those DVC points right now.

Robert Niles:

And we're gonna have these nice new big hotels for you so we've got the inventory to accommodate you. That's the business plan at this point, and we'll see how it goes. It seems to be going pretty well. They've got that big new DVC wing that they just built out in California that just opened last month. Like I said, you've got that huge construction happy at the Pali right now. Reflections is going to happen on the river countryside. They didn't come out and say it, but I think the project that they talked about at d 23 in animal kingdom is pretty much good to go at this point. We don't have the official word on it, but I think we'll get that.

Robert Niles:

I think that's really a matter of just locking down who general contractors on that are going to be, and that's something that might take me a year or so to do. But I think at the next st d 23 Expo that we have back here in Anaheim next year, I think we're gonna be getting the details on the, tropical America's plan, At Animal Kingdom and maybe some news about some additional stuff at EPCOT. I'm not completely convinced at this point that stuff is gonna happen, but I've heard enough chatter about projects coming into EPCOT that I'm pretty certain something else is gonna be going there by the end of the decade as well.

Michele:

I was excited when I heard they were gonna do something new with, spaceship Earth. It's outdated now. The technology has gone beyond what they could do when they built it in 1980.

Robert Niles:

Yeah. That's simply finding some time on a refurb schedule and getting a new script in place and deciding Who's gonna be the narrator of the script as well. That was a project that was go before the pandemic, and then it was sidelined. I think they decided they needed to work on things that were a little bit more splashy, a little bit bigger headline, but I would not be surprised to see A Spaceship Earth rewrite be the next thing that happens at EPCOT even though it's not necessarily the next construction, but that would be a project they could put together pretty easily within a year or so. Now, obviously, they've got to finish up everything that they've got now. Moana, that's opening officially in the next week or so, They're still tidying up some construction. They say they'll have everything done by December. So take a little bit of breather.

Robert Niles:

So maybe for late 2024, early 2025, we looking at that for a spaceship Earth refurb.

Michele:

Hey, that would be very exciting to me. So you talked a lot about the money and that it all really starts there. So I know I'm a geek and I follow this, and I'm sure that you do too. How is this new push to potentially sell off some of their ABCIP and the new board member who's pushing a corporate take over. I forget his name Pels. Is it Pels?

Robert Niles:

Yeah. Pels has been a thorn in Iger's side for quite some time. You thought he got rid of him, but he's back now. The interesting thing here is between Disney and Universal is Hulu, which is jointly owned Buy Disney and Universal, but they have a deal that Disney needs to buy Universal out By the end of the year or allow Universal to buy Disney out. But the deal is that based on valuation, that we're talking about a huge amount of money, 1,000,000,000 of dollars. If that deal goes through, essentially, you could look at it this way. Disney is paying for Epic Universe because it's that kind of money that Disney's gonna have to pay Comcast, NBC Universal to buy out Hulu. And that's enough money to pay for Epic Universe, which I'm sure that makes Disney Parks fans sick to their stomach, the idea that Universal's building this 5,000,000,000 or whatever it is dollar park, and Disney's gonna pay for it.

Robert Niles:

But that's a huge deal right now. So, Disney's got to come up with that cash. So, one of the things they're looking at is, Okay, what are underperforming assets That are at the peak of their value right now, that we could unload, get top dollar for, because they ain't going to be worth as much 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the road. And if you're looking at your linear broadcast properties, you're probably not seeing those things escalating in value at this point. They've got a buyer out there in Byron Allen that ABC wants the ABC owned affiliates. Does it make sense to go ahead and sell those right now at what potentially could be the highest price they could ever get for it? Used that money to get all of Hulu, which is a very powerful streaming brand that they've been selling into with the Disney World, that they could do a lot of stuff with And pin their hopes on streaming like Iger has been intent on doing for the past half decade or so. A lot of analysts think that move makes a lot of sense so that they anticipate Disney doing it. But, of course, Disney hasn't officially said that they're gonna do that at this point because those are deals so big that you don't announce them until they're done and they're not done yet, But I would not be surprised to see Disney selling off ABC a lot of the broadcast properties to really focus more on what it can do completely under control in the streaming world.

Michele:

I also heard rumors that they might actually spin off the theme park business that Apple's interested in that. You're rolling your eyes, so I'm glad to see that that's not really maybe where this is all headed.

Robert Niles:

Theme parks, with the exception of the year of the lockdowns, theme parks have been the safety net for the Walt Disney Company since 1955. The studio comes and goes based on the hits, if they've got a big hit or if they don't. Theme parks are always there. Theme parks are the thing, and Universal learned this. Universal's previous owners, the Vendi, didn't understand it, but Comcast, they understand it, especially since Potter, That theme parks provide great financial stability to a company, particularly a company whose business is IP. They provide great cross promotional opportunities. If you start selling things off, you start renting land, you start licensing IP, that just sucks money out of what can be a cash cow for a company. So it makes no sense financially for Disney in the long term to sell off the theme parks to somebody else.

Robert Niles:

It makes more sense To sell off a lot of the stuff that doesn't have a long term future, such as the broadcast networks, even some of the cable networks that can't be converted to streaming. But the movie studio, television productions, streaming productions, streaming delivery, theme parks, that's a solid core for the Walt Disney Company and, frankly, for NBCUniversal as well. And I think Paramount did themselves dirty by getting out of the theme park business when they did that nearly, oh, it's almost 20 years ago now. So does Apple buy the whole thing, including theme parks? I don't know. I mean, they've got the money to do it. Apple's got more money than anyone on the universe right now. I don't know that that's a great strategic fit for Apple, but separating the theme parks from the rest of the Walt Disney Company just doesn't make good long term financial sense for anyone.

Michele:

That's great to hear.

Robert Niles:

Now that said, people do stuff that makes no financial sense all of the time. So we cannot expect Wall Street to be rational actors. They don't do that sort of thing. Executives make dumb decisions all the time. Like I said, paranoid, got out of the theme park business. They ever should have done that. So people can be idiots. But if they're not gonna be idiots, they're gonna hold on to the theme parks at Disney.

Michele:

I hope so. Those need to remain under the Disney name. It would just change the environment so much. I can't even imagine.

Robert Niles:

Think about what SeaWorld's got down with Busch Gardens. They have to license that name. Busch doesn't own the parks anymore, So they're licensing their brand name. That's ridiculous. That's just a terrible situation to be in. And I think Universal, they're not out there trying to license everybody else's IP. They're trying to develop their own. I mean, that's why we're seeing more work on DreamWorks and stuff like that that's in Ontario.

Robert Niles:

I mean, they've still got Potter, but depending on how weakened things are. After all these strikes out here in Hollywood, I think NBCUniversal would love to spy Warner Brothers and own Harry Potter for itself. And I think there are a lot of people in this town who would love to see Warner Brothers leadership replaced by NBC Universal. But, you know, Who knows? We'll see what happens.

Michele:

I forgot all the ways the strike might be impacting the theme park business. It's all so intertwined.

Robert Niles:

Oh, yeah. Everybody thinks there's gonna be consolidation in the streaming business. There are too many streaming services right now. People aren't willing to pay the money for all of these streaming services. They're all doing the thing. Don't know what you do. I do is that when there's a show I wanna watch, I'll sign up to that streaming service for a month or two, finish off the show, cancel it, and then I'll come back 6 months later. That level of churn is not a good business model for anyone.

Robert Niles:

So, somebody's going to lose. And the way that's going to happen is Stuff like Disney buys out NBCUniversal, they take over Hulu, Hulu somehow gets combined with Disney plus 1 of the other studios, Somebody gets bought out. Maybe it's Paramount Plus. Maybe it's Max. They get bought out, and it gets folded into something else. So, you know, if you get NBCUniversal buying out Warner Brothers, then you've got Max and Peacock, which gives the potential for a name that's just not going to be family friendly we're all going to make that joke forever but yeah we'll see what happens but I think the economics of Hollywood are changing because of these strikes, because labor said you're not gonna be able to push us over anymore. We want a taste of this action, And that's gonna cause everyone to have to kinda change some formulas and see what happens, and that affects the theme park industry ultimately because Disney and Universal Are the leaders in theme parks and are the leaders in entertainment as well.

Michele:

So real quick before I let you go. I know you've given me the amount of time I asked for. But real quick, anything on the international parks that we might, even in 10 years, see come here. I mean, anything crossover in that way?

Robert Niles:

Yeah. All the fun stuff. It just needs happening in Asia right now. We've got Zootopia coming into Shanghai. We've got Frozen coming into Hong Kong, and then I'll go to Paris as well. Tomorrow is pretty much telegraphed of the Disneyland the expansion plan gets approved By Anaheim, there's gonna be a frozen land as part of that, the Disneyland Resort. I would love, love, love, love, love to see Zootopia at Animal Kingdom. I think everyone would love see that Magic King desperately needs something like Tokyo's Beauty and the Beast ride just as a people eater that they could put someplace like They already have the Beast's castle on one side of the Adventureland, but I keep looking at that space that's used by the Tomorrowland Speedway going, that could be a huge dark ride building right there that could do a And they've got the design with it already with Beauty and the Beast, something like that could slot in right there.

Robert Niles:

But there's so much interesting Stuff happening in Asia right now. But, yeah, I think many of us outside and inside the Walt Disney Company would love to see come to the United States at some point.

Michele:

Yeah, I keep saying I'm gonna have to make a trip to Asia just to go to the Disney parks. Yes. Yeah. Well, I am so appreciative of your time. Before I let you go, tell everyone how they can follow you and get your insider information in their email inbox by 8 AM. I'm telling you. Soft. I smiled to myself when I saw that this morning.

Michele:

So give us all your contact information.

Robert Niles:

It's theme park insider.com. Just fire up whatever web browser you've got on computer on your phone. Go to theme park insider.com and from there, you can find the links to sign up for our weekly newsletter that's completely free. Also, you can follow us on all of our social media. I posted all this stuff right when it broke on TikTok and on Instagram as well. We're also on YouTube, Facebook, x, Or whatever they're calling it these days. You name it, you can find us there, but all of those links are on theme park insider.com.

Michele:

Awesome. And we will definitely add them to our show notes as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Robert Niles:

My pleasure.

Michele:

I just can't tell you how amazing this conversation was, and I would love, love, love to invite you back sometime in the next 6 months from now for a recap of all the news. This has just been incredible. So thank you so much.

Robert Niles:

Thanks for having me.