It’s been an absolutely wild few months for the Walt Disney Company. Last fall, CEO Bob Chapek was fired and he was replaced by the man who preceded him, Bob Iger. In the time since, the massive entertainment company has been cutting costs left and right, with 7,000 Disney Cast Members getting laid off, content getting pulled from Disney+, and Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser being closed. Iger has even suggested that Disney could sell off a significant portion of its linear network holdings. All the cost-cutting has resulted in many financial analysts suggesting that Disney could be getting itself ready for purchase, specifically by Apple.
The rumor that Apple could buy The Walt Disney Company has been around for quite some time. Bob Iger himself is one of the reasons it exists, as he suggested in his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, that had Apple founder and massive Disney shareholder Steve Jobs not passed away, such a merger might have happened. While the rumor persists, nobody is claiming any knowledge of any real discussions to that end. Still, if Apple did buy Disney, it could lead to the realization of one of Walt Disney’s dreams for Disney World that never happened.
Why Apple Might Not Want To Buy Disney
The existence of Walt Disney World itself is one of the major arguments that people are making against the idea of purchase by Apple. Why in the world would Apple want to own a bunch of theme parks and hotels? It’s an argument worth making. Apple is in the consumer product business, and even the filmmaking and streaming business, just like Disney. But Apple would be adding a division, one core to Disney’s success, that it knows nothing about by buying Disney Parks.
It’s hard to imagine that Apple would be that interested in taking on this massive chunk of Disney that has nothing to do with Apple's current business model. Apple sells lifestyle technology products. Why would it want to run two dozen hotels in Florida? Well, there actually might be a reason, and it goes back to something Walt Disney wanted to do with his original plans for Epcot.
Technology Was Key To Walt Disney’s Epcot
When Walt Disney first conceived his Project Winter, one of the code names for what became Disney World, a theme park was only a small part of his plan. Magic Kingdom was essentially designed to be a financial instrument to fund the design and construction of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, Epcot. This would be a fully functioning city where people would live and work that would utilize creative new ideas for mass transit and urban planning.
Another major element of Epcot was cutting-edge technology. Walt conceived that numerous companies would have offices and factories within Disney World, and that new products created there would use the citizens of Epcot as a test market. If General Electric built new appliances, they would first be installed at Epcot homes where residents could test them, and feedback could be used to improve them before they were released to the general public.
Epcot never happened, so this concept never materialized. There are numerous reasons why it would have been difficult for this Epcot idea to have worked, even if the city had been built. However, this is one place where Disney World and Disneyland’s existing structure could be a benefit to Apple if it purchased Disney, because it could do exactly this.
Apple Could Use Disney World And Disneyland As A Place To Showcase New Technology
Seeing Apple use Disneyland or Disney World as a place to test out unfinished technology seems unlikely, but seeing Disney hotels or theme parks becoming the first place that we could see new Apple products seems quite a bit more likely. Digital assistants are making their way into Disney World hotels right now. Apple has a new AR headset on the way, and we’re seeing AR used in new theme park attractions, like the new MarioKart: Bowser’s Challenge at Universal Studios Hollywood. Imagine what Walt Disney Imagineering could design if it had knowledge of and access to Apple's next big thing.
There’s potential value for Apple in doing a small rollout of a new product in a controlled environment, like a deluxe hotel that it actually owns. It would help make sure the product is displayed in optimum conditions, and it would give an opportunity for feedback before a global rollout that could impact future updates to the product. Maybe we could see the return of something like the House of the Future at Disneyland, but with Apple running the show.
There’s also the marketing side of things. Apple is ultimately a lifestyle brand, and it has fans and followers just like Disney does, but those two groups don’t entirely overlap. If Apple announced that people visiting Disneyland would be among the first to experience some new product, there would be people booking stays for that reason alone, which ultimately puts even more money in Apple’s pocket since it owns the resort too.
Walt Disney was a futurist who believed in the power of technology to improve the world. His entire concept for Epcot was based on that idea. It’s not exactly “What Walt would have wanted,” of course, but much like Epcot itself, it would be something that owes a lot to Walt’s vision, even if what we got wasn’t exactly what he envisioned.
But Would Apple Really Buy Disney?
A deal like this wouldn’t necessarily require Apple to buy Disney. A partnership program would be enough to make something like this happen, but certainly, a merger of some form would make it all a lot easier. That brings us back to the question of whether such a merger is truly possible.
It certainly is, anything is possible. Apple is one of the few companies that’s in a financial position to buy Disney, so if anybody is going to do it, that's a reasonable guess. While there are reasons Apple might not want to do so, there are a lot of elements of Disney that must be appealing as well.
None of the rumors about such a merger indicate knowledge of any actual talks taking place, so it largely seems to be a lot of conversation without much behind it. I don’t personally think it’s going to happen, at least not as things currently stand. Bob Iger’s contract was just extended by two years, which is not the sort of thing you tend to see when a company doesn’t expect to need a CEO at all soon.
I don't really think Apple will buy Disney. I don't really want to see Apple buy Disney. But there are reasons that they might. And if it happened, it doesn’t mean the end of Disney as we know it, and maybe it means there’s a chance that some of Walt’s forgotten dreams could still come true.
