Walk Time: Cooling off at Disney, as Six Flags heats up
In theme parks and entertainment, "walk time" is the name for the final paid minutes of your shift, when you gather your stuff and start heading home. At Theme Park Insider, "Walk Time" is our weekend look back at the past seven days in theme park news.
Happy birthday today to SeaWorld San Diego, which opened on March 21, 1964. Today also is the day for the start of 2026's Halloween Horror Nights announcements from Universal Studios Florida. Watch the Theme Park Insider homepage later today for news about that. Also watch the home page later today for my coverage of the new Bluey's Best Day Ever production, which officially starts tomorrow at Disneyland.
In this week's theme park news, Josh D'Amaro officially started at CEO of The Walt Disney Company this week: D'Amaro takes over as Disney begins next chapter. That means that Thomas Mazloum officially has moved up to Chairman, Disney Experiences and Jill Estorino has become the new President at the Disneyland Resort.
The management change became official at Disney's annual shareholders meeting, which saw Bob Iger retire from the company. In other news from the meeting, D'Amaro announced the name of the next Wish-class ship from the Disney Cruise Line: Disney hopes fans will 'Believe' in its next cruise ship.
In other Disney news this week, Walt Disney Imagineering invited me back to its R&D lab for a little on-on-one time with its coolest new character, the walking, talking Olaf animatronic. Let's meet Disney's new Olaf and find out how he works. When I was there, Imagineers teased creating more characters using the same tech that they developed for Olaf. So of course we are going to speculate about that: Which Disney character should get the Olaf treatment?
Also, fans of fine dining at the Disneyland Resort will want to know that Andrew Sutton has left Disney, as of last weekend. The culinary director of signature dining for the Disneyland Resort has been with the resort for more than 25 years and most recently oversaw the revamp and reopening of Napa Rose at Disney's Grand Californian Resort.
Finally, in "news" from Six Flags - and I use the quote marks there because this is just more of the same-old, same-old - a Hedge fund pushes for changes at Six Flags. This time, they want the chairman of the board gone so that Six Flags can engage with a "known" potential buyer.
I dove into Six Flags' problems a little in the post linked just above. But I addressed the bigger challenge for theme parks trying to make an extra buck in How much is Disneyland or Six Flags really worth?.
And Theme Park Insider readers on our Discussion Forum took a less subtle approach to the issue in Six Flags is pissing me off.
As always, thank you for reading and being a part of the Theme Park Insider community. Have a great weekend!
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