Disney’s theme parks are the crown jewel of the entire company. They have become increasingly more important in recent years as cable TV subscribers and the money the company earns from them has declined. The company is currently in the middle of a massive investment in the expansion of its theme parks around the world.
Today, we received an update on The Walt Disney Company overall during their quarterly earnings call. There are a couple of different news items that are impactful to Disney fans. Let’s dive into what we learned today. At Mickey Visit, we bring you the latest Disney theme parks news and planning resources, including a look at a recent Disneyland milestone and new popcorn buckets. Here are the announcements from next quarter.
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Disney Parks Overall Success This Quarter
Revenue for the Disney Experiences segment, which includes the theme parks, cruises, and consumer products, rose 6% to $8.77 billion. Operating income for the segment, profit from the theme parks, was up 13% to $1.88 billion compared to the previous year. Operating income was up 8% over the previous year and was the most profit Disney has ever made from the theme parks.
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Record full year segment operating income was $10.0 billion, an increase of $723 million compared to the prior year. There was also record Q4 segment operating income of $1.9 billion, an increase of $219 million compared to the prior-year quarter.
Interestingly, International Parks & Experiences operating income grew 25% to $375 million and Domestic Parks & Experiences operating income grew 9% to $920 million.
The capital investments into the Disney Experiences segment were up this year but were largely focused on cruise expansion. They increased to $8.0 billion from $5.4 billion due to higher spending on cruise ship fleet expansion and, to a lesser extent, on new theme park attractions at the Experiences segment.
In addition to bookings being up, Disney also shared that spending per person at the theme parks was also up 5% in Disney’s fiscal first quarter. This is also the period when Disney implemented new theme park price increases at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
Disney Plus Connected to the Theme Parks
As Disney improves the product offering of Disney Plus, there is an opportunity for Disney to use the app to more deeply connect with consumers.
Disney CEO Bob Iger referenced their efforts to roll out the “biggest and most significant changes from a product perspective, from a technology perspective, since we launched the service in 2019”. He shared that he’s pleased with how the rollout is going and that it is improving the user experience.
He then went on to describe how the product could connect users more closely with Disney.
“We also see, particularly with the deployment of AI, the opportunity to use Disney Plus, as you suggested, as a portal to all things Disney. Clearly an opportunity for commerce, there is clearly an opportunity to use it as an engagement engine for people who want to go to our theme parks, want to stay at our hotels, and want to enjoy our cruises, our cruise ships.”
He said the opportunity is enormous here and that there is room for big expansions with game-like features. He also mentioned the continued partnership with Epic Games and Fortnite. Separately, he mentioned the ability for users to create short-form content using AI and to be able to pull in short-form user-generated content from others.
Disney also recently shared that they plan to further expand the Disney Plus perks program globally to offer more for subscribers beyond the service. This has previously brought theme park discounts, including a Disneyland ticket discount last year.
We have heard about this idea of a Disney super app before, which is interconnected with the theme parks to bring you one Disney experience. It still feels a long way off, but it is interesting to hear it is still on the road map.
Demand For Disney Parks is Up
Disney CFO Hugh Johnston shared that the bookings for the Q1 quarter of 2026 fiscal year, which is this current end-of-year quarter of 2025 are up. He said “Bookings are up 3% the first quarter. We feel good about that. They’re also up for the year. I feel good about where our demand is right now.”
He then turned to talking about demand for Disney Cruise Line. “In terms of demand for cruise, this is very strong, despite the fact that we have added as much capacity as we have. Our utilization rates are in line with what we have seen in the past.” In other words, they are still filling a similar percentage of the ships as they were even before a huge percentage increase in the amount of capacity on the fleet.
He also shared that Disney Cruise Line is a particularly great business. While they don’t disclose Disney Cruise Line’s margins, he gave some information on the popularity of the business and their ability to price the offering. “It is a very attractive business. We are capable of pricing it at a good level. The guest satisfaction scores are higher than basically anything else in the company. The margins in that business, as you would imagine are quite attractive.”
How Universal Epic Universe is Impacting Disney World
Johnston continued talking about theme parks and addressed the impact of Universal Epic Universe on Walt Disney World.
He shared – “We talked about Epic in the past in particular as something that we knew would be a factor in domestic parks, and in fact was very much in line with our expectations. If anything, it seems to be impacting the rest of the competition down in Florida more than it is impacting us from a consumer perspective, we certainly feel good about it.”
This is in line with our experience in the theme parks, but I would add one caveat. While it is largely impacting non-Walt Disney World parks, Disney’s Animal Kingdom is likely in a position to take a hit as construction for new rides temporarily reduces the amount of offerings available there for guests. It is the most skippable park at Walt Disney World right now, which will keep it a focus for continued investment and expansion.
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Disney Doesn’t Have an Interest in More Acquisitions
The media world is currently abuzz as different bidders descend to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. This likely prompted the analyst to question Disney on if they are interested in further mergers and acquisitions.
The Disney CFO, Hugh Johnston, said that while Disney doesn’t comment on any plans for mergers and acquisitions, they are watching what is happening in the industry. They are happy with the assets that they have. He complimented “Bob and the team” on how they built the portfolio of brands and intellectual property over the past decade-plus period, with the acquisitions including Pixar, Marvel, and 20th Century Fox.
He said that they will be watching how the moves play out and that they like the hand that they have right now. He feels like they have a great portfolio.
Disney Theme Park Expansion Globally
Disney CEO Bob Iger shared the following –
“We are looking forward to two new Disney Cruise ships launching in the coming months, the Disney Destiny, which sets sail next week, and the Disney Adventure, which will become our first ship homeported in Asia when it launches in March. This will bring our fleet to a total of 8 cruise ships.”
He continued, “In the spring, we are excited to open World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris. We have expansion projects underway at every one of our theme parks, five additional cruise ships scheduled for launch beyond fiscal 2026, and a new theme park planned for Abu Dhabi, the strategic investments we are making now will help ensure our offerings remain best in class and appeal to audiences worldwide well in the future.”
The mention of investment at each of the theme parks partially references all of the new rides at Disneyland and new rides at Disney World under construction.
Disney Movie Slate Next Year Will Be Big
Bob Iger emphasized that the 2026 calendar year movie slate is set up for success. He acknowledged that there is always the possibility of a lower performance than expected but said that the franchise films coming next year should be big.
Iger said that the movie slate is as strong as it’s been in a while and that he is very bullish for movies next calendar year in 2026.
He specifically called out Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash coming this year, and The Devil Wears Prada 2, Toy Story 5, the live-action Moana, and Avengers: Doomsday in next year.
Look to see integrations of these movies into the theme parks in big ways. It’s exciting to note that the new Avengers movie will come out and should drive further interest in the new Marvel movie ahead of the two new Avengers rides opening at Disney California Adventure.
Lilo and Stitch is a Major Disney Franchise
In our last quarter round up of news, we discussed how much Disney was emphasizing the success of the live-action Lilo and Stitch movie. This quarter is no different.
Lilo and Stitch continues to be a major driver of success for the company this quarter. The film had 14.3 million views during its first five days on Disney Plus. This was the second-biggest Disney live-action premiere on the platform ever. The character also drove $4 billion in merchandise sales in fiscal 2025.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said that this underscores the effectiveness of Disney’s strategy to invest in popular stories and characters. This still has us wondering whether we will see an increase in Stitch in the theme parks beyond some of the smaller additions made this year. We also know that they are working on a sequel for the live-action film.
Disney Still Drives Big Cultural Moments
On the call, they recapped some of the biggest moments from the quarter. They specifically called out the success of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. The show has grown in popularity throughout this season and just made history.
It is the only fall show to increase its overall audience for six straight weeks following a season premiere. This hasn’t been achieved by any show since Nielsen began electronic measurement in 1991.
We watched Disney night on Dancing With the Stars which heavily promoted the Disneyland 70th anniversary. It’s important to Disney’s business overall that they are still able to be a driving force in culture broadly. Dancing With the Stars has become a cultural phenomenon that extends beyond the linear TV asset into digital also. As Disney looks to influencers and YouTube personalities more and more to promote their theme park products, it’s interesting to note that they can still create personalities and formats that connect in the same way with their owned channels.
Other Big Disney Company News
Generally, it is important to understand how the rest of the Walt Disney Company is performing beyond the theme parks. It gives us a better understanding of where investments will be made in the future.
For instance, understanding that shifts in the linear TV business led the Disney theme parks to become the main profit driver for the entire company explains why Disney is increasing theme park prices and investing so much more in this area.
Disney’s overall revenue for the quarter was nearly $22.5 billion, slightly less than the same quarter last year. Net income or profit for the quarter was $1.44 billion, more than double the $564 million they reported last year.
Disney also said it plans to increase its dividend for shareholders in 2026.
ESPN and Disney Streaming Launch Success
As I mentioned in the introduction of this article, for a long time, the cable business was the biggest driver of growth and profits for The Walt Disney Company. This largely anchored on the success of ESPN. Analysts would quip, “as goes ESPN, so goes Disney”. That saying has largely changed to “as goes Disney theme parks, so goes Disney” today, but the TV assets are still important to the business.
The ESPN standalone app, which includes live TV streams, launched at the end of the quarter and has already achieved significant success. That’s important for Disney as a company and thus the theme parks.
Iger said that the service was meant to attract new users who wanted to engage more with ESPN, whether they were already cable subscribers or did not subscribe to cable. They also wanted to give people who wanted to stay in a linear bundle a chance to use the app because the app has so many more users than the linear channels do. They said that the authentication rate has been very promising among people with cable and that the product is attracting lots of people who never subscribed to cable.
People have found the new features in the app and are using them. He was proud of the algorithm experience that would customize certain content in your feed based on the teams and content you interacted with.
Iger acknowledged that nothing can future-proof the cable businesses, but this helps to solidify ESPN’s future. This product also fits into the broader Disney streaming strategy. 80% of those who have signed up for the service have the trio bundle, which includes ESPN, Disney Plus, and Hulu.
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