When a business wants an announcement spread far and wide, it’s made on Monday early in the afternoon. When a company doesn’t want to bring attention to it, it’s made on a Friday at 4:40 in the afternoon. When a company wants a piece of news buried six feet deep, with a layer of peat moss thrown on top, they announce it on a Saturday.
On Saturday afternoon, Barbara Bouza, the president of Walt Disney Imagineering, announced her departure.
They at least gave her a nice announcement to sign. Granted, they would have had her sign it on Friday after a short, unpleasant meeting with Bob Iger.
“Proudly building upon our extraordinary legacy, Imagineers are shaping a future that inspires humanity. As one global team of innovative creators and storytellers, we immerse our guests in experiences that make memories of a lifetime.
As a licensed architect, I was recruited by The Walt Disney Company to challenge the norm and bring a broader global industry perspective and expertise. Joining Walt Disney Imagineering in June 2020, I truly believed humanity needed Disney more than ever. The world was trying to understand the impact of a global pandemic, business disruption, stay-at-home orders, a reckoning on race, and the growing political divide. From there, Imagineers endured the pressures of talent reductions, unprecedented hyper-escalation on projects, political crosshairs, and the need to make life-changing decisions with their families around the relocation from California to Florida.
Through all of this, Imagineers relentlessly created and delivered some of the most impactful projects in the history of The Walt Disney Company. This success has fueled the turbocharged growth of Disney Experiences through $60 billion in investment over the next ten years, which Bob Iger and Josh D’Amaro speak of. So, I want to take this moment to personally thank all Imagineers, past, present, and future, for making the impossible possible.
It is bittersweet as I wrap up my work as President of Walt Disney Imagineering this month before I create an even bigger impact for the world. Stay tuned! WDI will be in excellent hands with my partner, Bruce Vaughn, Chief Creative Officer, who is an exceptional creative leader.
Yeah, there’s bitterness. Normally, when a major Wokling gets turfed, there is a flood of online support. Bouza has had nothing at all from the Pixie-dusters but shouts of joy at her departure. Her departure comes just days after the firing of the Disney Live Action, Sean Bailey.
Imagineering was once one of the cornerstones of the Walt Disney Company. It had its cult-like status within Disney. Eccentrics abounded. You would have a 1950s two-piece suit throwback working right next to a hippie. They had been writers, architects, set designers, and film directors.
When Walt was first getting obsessively serious about Disneyland and needed room to maneuver, his brother and partner Roy Disney told him he needed to create a new company so he wouldn’t constantly have to go to the board of directors for everything. Walter Elias Disney formed WED Enterprises. The group that met in seclusion after hours and on weekends to plan the new park christened themselves The Imagineers. They introduced a lot of concepts that helped fool the eye like forced perspective or easily ignored areas where Mickey, Minnie, and Donald could emerge from unseen by parkgoers. They were magicians working as architects and became so vital to the company that Roy demanded, much to Walt’s anger, that WED be sold to Disney proper. Once in the fold, its name was changed to Imagineering.
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It wasn’t just the Disney Company either. Do you need a World’s Fair, call Disney Imagineering. Want a really eye-catching pavilion? The Sons of Walt are expensive as hell, but they always deliver.
Or at least they used to.
Bob Wiess was the previous head of Imagineering, but in 2020, there was a massive kill sweep in Disney Imagineering. Legends like Joe Rohde were suddenly out of a job. Call it a Young Turks Rebellion or, if you are being accurate, an Untalented Young Turks Rebellion. If you were an old white guy, you were no longer wanted at Imagineering. Bob Wiess was suddenly out, and Bob Iger brought in Barbara Bouza from Genser. Genser is the biggest architecture firm in the United States and she was the number two at the company.
Since arriving in June 2020, Bouza has overseen a list of rolling disasters from Imagineering.
Bouza has mostly removed all of the characters from Disney Parks. The new DVC tower at the Polynesian looks like an airport hotel because that’s what Bouza knows how to build.
For reference, here’s the Aulani resort in Hawaii that got built ten years ago.
The refurbishments at the premium luxury Boardwalk Resort have eviscerated its Identity as a 1920s boardwalk resort. The theming is gone, and in its place is stuff that has been furnishings literally purchased from Etsy. It feels like a place that had a genuine genius loci has had that burned away.
Even the small Peaches and Cream ice cream parlor has not been spared from New Imagineering’s globalist approach to interior design.
All of this is done in the name of making these landmarks “Global.” Every one of the hotels that Bouza touched has been despoiled. She was clearly playing to what few strengths she had acquired while working for Genser. Building airport hotels. Her goal was apparently to turn every Disney resort into something sterile, generic, and lifeless. This is called having no taste.
Barbara Bouza’s primary skillset would appear to be politics.
Michael Eisner built the Disney resorts to be a source of fun and whimsy in and of themselves. Bouza has deftly extracted all of that entertainment.
Then, there were the horrors inflicted on the park rides. During her reign of terror.
The Tron coaster’s list of troubles began during construction; the tracks were installed upside down. The ride was basically a clone of the Shanghai original Tron coaster. The problem is that the average American is taller than the average Chinese. Consequently, the Tron cycles were drastically too small. If you’re taller than five, you are going to have your head sticking out way in front of the handlebars. Worse still was just how obvious the standards had slipped. You could see the backs of the facades of the Magic Kingdom. This destruction of immersion would never have been allowed in Michael Eisner’s day and would have been a stoning offense when Walt was running the company.
You have the exact same issue when you are riding the Skyliner (the suspended tram cars). You can clearly see the backs of the facade at Epcot, plus the forced perspective is utterly demolished. It was unbelievably slipshod.
Journey of Waters, inspired by Moana, was closed within days because of a high-pressure water leak. Passersby complained about the smell of sewage. The new splash pad failed within two months, and the paint was chipping, too.
Spaceship Earth, the Epcot geosphere, is the commanding showpiece at that park. What Cinderalla’s Castles is to Fantasy Land, Spaceship Earth is to Epcot. Imagineering had twinkling multicolored LED lights installed in the entranceway to this center of attention, and the lights failed within days. The Many Colors of the World Celebration Garden, as it was briefly called, was destroyed by the pressure water used to clean it. This was apparently never tested.
It took Imagineering six months to build the Hat Box Ghost animatronics and insert them into the Haunted Mansions. This was in support of a movie that failed badly, by the way.
And finally, we reach Bouza’s crown jewel—Tianna’s Bayou Adventure. The ridiculous priority of obliterating what was unquestionably the most popular ride at all of the Disney Parks, Splash Mountain, in the name of Woke, is the crowning non-achievement of Bouza’s tenure at Imagineering. While a refurbishment was indeed needed at Splash Mountain, the complete ablation of the theming was utterly pointless. Song of the South was never offensive except to white liberals. And that was forty years ago. It hasn’t been out of the vault since Splash Mountain was opened. The only connection that 95% of parkgoers have with Brer Rabbit is the ride itself. I think my favorite complaint about Song of the South is that the dialect in the cartoons is offensive. When I pointed out that Southern rural black folks do indeed talk like that, I was called a lying racist, despite the fact that I have heard them talk like that. Apparently, claiming there are southern rural black people is profoundly racist to the Woke.
This beloved ride was gutted, and in defiance of decades-long company traditions started by Walt himself, all of the props were destroyed. Nothing was sent to the Disney Archive. There was a complete Stalinesque airbrushing away of Disney history. It is as if Splash Moutain never existed. (Unless you go to Tokyo Disneyland because it’s still there and boy is Woke Imagineering mad about it).
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It was replaced with girl-boss Tianna’s Bayou Adventure. A living tribute to Bouza’s tenure as the head of Imagineering. First of all, it’s cheap, and it looks cheap. Very few animatronics were installed, and the background design looks like Dollar Store Rainforest Cafe. They got the size of the trees wrong, so the forced perspective is completely screwed up. They based it on a slave-operated salt mine, but don’t worry because Tianna has turned it into a worker’s collective, which I assume means it’s a communist salt mine, which is not an improvement over slavery in any serious way. And finally, the water was dyed turd-brown. It now looks like an outdoor sewer.*
Let’s be clear: most of this is Iger’s fault, although a lot of it was Chapek’s as well. Chapek had decided to move Imagineering From Glendale, California to Lake Nona in Florida. The Imagineers didn’t want to move; in truth, a forced relocation is never an easy one. Guys that were close to retirement bailed out rather than move to hot and muggy Florida. There was also the matter of Blue Staters not wanting to become Florida Man. Bottom line, the relocation plan created a huge hole in Imagineering’s staff.
This was when Chapek hired Carmen Smith to be Imagineering’s Diversity Chief and head of HR. Consequently, she hired in her image. There was a massive loss of corporate knowledge, and it was replaced with diversity hires, where checkboxes were drastically more important than basic competence.
I had expected her to be promoted to head of Imagineering, but shockingly, Carmen Smith has not been promoted.
The new and very quietly inaugurated head of Imagineering is Bruce Vaugn, a thirty-year veteran who was lured back after leaving in 2016. In short, Disney has hired an old white man in what can only be described as desperation.
In case you’re wondering about Bob Wiess, he was hired by Genser Architecture in 2023. That’s right, Barbara Bouza’s old company will be pimping out Bob Wiess to Disney’s competitors.
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