Josh D’Amaro Was Close To Quitting During Chapek’s Tenure

It has recently come to light that Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro was much more opposed to Bob Chapek then many fans realized.

Around a month ago, the Walt Disney Company announced that then-CEO Bob Chapek would be leaving the Mouse House and his predecessor Disney CEO Bob Iger, would be taking his place. This caused a dramatic upheaval at the time and left the Disney community in chaos, taking fans by surprise. Of course, many celebrated the return of Iger and Chapek’s exit. Over the last month, however, much has come to light about the realities of this situation.

For a start, we found out that Chapek and Iger had been at odds since the beginning of Chapek’s tenure. It came to light that the two had many creative differences in running the company, and some insiders mentioned Iger’s behavior set Chapek up to fail from the start.

However, a recent Wall Street Journal article has shed more light on the situation. The article highlighted that the “unanimous” decision to keep Chapek as CEO was not quite as smooth as was portrayed. It also revealed the many tensions between Disney CFO Christine McCarthy and Bob Chapek.

Along with all this surprising news, the article also shed light on Chapek’s tensions with more than one high-up executive. We now know that Disney insiders were worried that D’Amaro might have quit before Chapek was fired. Chapek was known to constantly take power away from creative executives, think like Peter Rice.

The article said,

As the environment inside Disney’s C-suite worsened, more executives voiced concerns in phone calls to Mr. Iger. Some worried Alan Bergman, the studio chief, and Josh D’Amaro, head of the parks division, might quit. In June, Mr. Chapek had abruptly fired Peter Rice, Disney’s highest-ranking TV content executive, a move that remained on the minds of many creative leaders at the company.

Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro has remained mum since Chapek’s firing. His only mention so far has been during Iger’s Town Hall meeting, where Iger said he was working closely with D’Amaro on examining things within the Parks, like the controversial reservation system. Reportedly, Chapek was planning to eliminate the reservation system, but Iger has not confirmed anything.

Disney has two Resorts in the United States, one in Central Florida—the Walt Disney World Resort and the other in Southern California—Disneyland Resort.

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