Disney shows strong financial results, despite oil prices
Disney this morning reported record revenue and operating income for its theme park segment in the most recent fiscal quarter.
In his first investors call since taking over as Disney CEO, Josh D'Amaro hailed the performance of his former segment.
"At Disney Experiences, we continue to demonstrate strength in the core business and make progress against our growth initiatives, with strong revenue growth of 7% and segment operating income growth of 5% in the quarter, revenue and segment operating income were ahead of our prior expectations and represent second quarter records," D'Amaro said. "Over the past few quarters, the team has successfully navigated known attendance headwinds. We are now starting to lap these headwinds and expect attendance trends at our domestic parks to improve in Q3 when compared to the results were reported for Q2."
Disney Experiences reported revenue of $9.487 billion for the three-month period ending March 28, 2026. Operating income was $2.615 billion. Theme park admissions worldwide hit $3.092 billion for the quarter, up 6% from the prior year.
"Global guests - which aggregates domestic and international parks attendance along with passenger cruise days — grew 2% compared to the prior-year quarter. Attendance at our domestic parks declined 1% when compared to the prior-year quarter, reflecting, in part, continued softness in international visitation."
Nevertheless, Disney reported that per capita spending at its domestic parks was up 5% in the quarter, driven by growth in admissions, food and beverage, and merchandise.
Disney also addressed plans for its new theme park in Abu Dhabi, a location that has felt substantial disruption in tourism and daily life following America's attack on Iran earlier this year.
"The strategic logic of our Abu Dhabi plans is unchanged," Disney's investors report letter said. "Major new theme parks are necessarily longterm in nature given the lead time of these projects, and this investment approach has consistently benefited our business."
CFO Hugh Johnston addresses questions about the war's resulting sharp increase in gas and fuel prices and its affect on Disney.
"We haven't seen any change in consumer behavior from elevated gas prices thus far, and aren't currently seeing a material impact on the remainder of the fiscal year. Based on forward bookings, Disney World bookings are pacing up strongly, and even with our 40% increase in cruise capacity booked occupancy remains in line with the prior year. However, we're mindful of the macro uncertainty consumers are facing, and we're not immune to the impacts, including how a significant further rise in fuel prices from current levels could eventually lead to changes in consumer behavior. If that possibility were to occur each business has levers in place to make adjustments in order to help offset those kinds of macro pressures."
Replies (4)
Small % decreases in attendance with an increase in per cap spending is...a good thing, actually? Guests pay a premium for a slightly better experience (fewer crowds, shorter waits, etc) while Disney makes more money. Everybody wins?
They made a little more money due to raising ticket prices, food prices, parking fees...
Make more with less is a losing game.
I was more puzzled with D'Amaro's insistence on harmonizing their online experience. We've seen some of this already with Disney providing various discounts and deals for essentially making Disney a part of your life by having a Disney+ subscription, Magic Key, DVC, buying movies/games and other products Disney sells. He was really doubling down on creating a Disney master-application that handles your park experience, movie collection, Disney+/ESPN subscription and various other currently stand-alone applications. It certainly makes some sense to do this since you already link these various services/applications through your MyDisney Account, but this really feels like a repeat of the Magic Band/MyMagic+ experiment that ultimately cost Disney billions for a system that was replaced after a decade.
I see other companies making similar moves as a way to drive loyalty and increased spending by tying various parts of their business under a single umbrella. However, these experiments do more to fracture a customer base between those that want to live within a single company's ecosystem and are willing to spend all of their money and time on it and those that just want certain services that feel like they're getting ripped off simply because they don't want to go "all in". I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there that eat, breathe, and sleep Disney and those customers would sell their first born male child for Disney to officially recognize them as the biggest fan. However, for as many of those people that exist in the world, there are millions more who are big fans, but not willing to go to the lengths of building their lives around a single entertainment company, and would quickly grow frustrated and annoyed to feel like they have to invest even more money into Disney's ecosystem just to maintain their current level of connection with the company. I just don't think there is a financial benefit to Disney to milk the superfans at the cost of potentially losing lucrative fans that don't want to plan their lives around Mickey Mouse.
This all goes back to making more from less, and further optimizes Disney's shift towards the luxury end of the spectrum and pitting fans against each other until us regular folks shrug, throw up our hands, and start weaning ourselves off Disney.
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Disney, Universal, and Sea World have hugely benefit from the population explosion in Florida (and the southeast US in general) over the past decade. And a lot of the people that moved to Florida were people with money.
When I worked at DLR (a long time ago) Friday nights and weekends were slammed no matter what because 25 million people lived within a 2 hour drive of the park and they have struggled for decades trying to limit annual pass sales because they would just overtake the park.
Now its become the same in Orlando where there are enough locals to overwhelm the parks. And not only that, there are 75,000+ people who work there who get their friends in for free. Orlando is not dependent on tourists from way out of the southeast region like we used to be.