How Disney has lost its magic

By Zion P. and Jahmarcus W.

Disney: a corporation famous for giving us magical movie experiences like the 90’s with movies like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. If  you're possibly an early 2000’s fan and are more into Lilo and Stitch or The Emperor's New Groove. Even here at AHS almost everyone knows and grew up with the original Disney movies either in theaters, on Disney channel reruns, or more recently on Disney +. No matter what kind of fan you are, new or old, Disney has shaped how we view entertainment and the industry itself for decades.  However, with the 2020’s, something has changed with the mouse corporation. Disney Land has hit a new low, and there have been more sequels and live action remakes than ever before. Most egregious of all, Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney himself, has admitted that soon Disney Plus is gonna be using generative AI for short form content from the same company that took pride in  its unique and magical animated record winning movies. It seems as if Disney has finally lost its magic.

The first reason as to why we think that Disney has lost its magic is because back in the early days during when Disney was in its prime and visitors were flowing into all sorts of their new resorts, a popular named theme park was created back in the mid 1900’s, more specifically 1955, that was called Disneyland. Disneyland was a resort theme park that was visited by all kinds of group ages. No matter how old nor how small, Disneyland was always the most popular topic of a conversation when it came to birthday parties, celebrations, or even, in very low cases, a burial place for ashes. But even so, the once popular theme park was soon being turned into a huge cash grab. The once affordable prices of the tickets to go to Disneyland soon began to rise high in prices. The once fun rides that were always recommended to go on back in the days, they soon became fearful places for people to even walk towards due to the following deaths that had occurred near those same rides. It got so bad to the point where a vacation towards Disneyland was not even the first thing to come up in conversations about celebrations any longer like it used to. Even one user stated something on a site that reviews the state of Disneyland, the following about his opinion relating to Disneyland’s state: “I tolerated a lot of pandemic changes on the guest-facing side even though I disagreed with them. I've personally witnessed their worsening treatment of CMs who were left with no other option than to take their skilled labor across state lines when they refused to hire back half their Disneyland CMs. And as each day passes, it seems like some Disney executive is in the press trying to justify why things aren't the same anymore, rather than telling us how they're better than they've ever been. This isn't the same Disney Walt and Mickey started, but it's not even the same company it was two years ago. And until it gets back there, I'm afraid this is how I will feel for the foreseeable future.” That same comment above states the user's opinion as to why Disneyland is not a place of enjoyment for him like it was before. This goes to show how Disneyland is no longer a topic of discussion that’s brought up in conversations about fun, enjoyment, and an overall relaxing vacation for a family to enjoy, showing that Disneyland is slowly losing the magic and enjoyment of the people who once used to visit the resort for fun.

The second reason we believe that Disney has lost it’s magic is how they treat the backbone of their brand as in their movies for example Strange World an animated adventuring animated movie was a flop in the box office but strangely it wasn’t because the movie itself was bad most critiques and reviewers thought it was a pretty good time. Nothing mind blowing sure, but still quality art but Disney barely marketed the movie at the time causing people to not even know about it which is the exact same thing they did to Elio this same year with this familiar pattern of not getting enough marketing from Disney with the movie ending up good quality but not successful in the box office but it’s not like Disney is bad at marketing now no because just these past Disney has released Moana 2, the live action Lilo and Stitch, and Inside Out 2 with ALL of them being box office successes with even Lilo and Stitch Live action and Inside Out 2 making billions in the box office alone. This is a calculated move, as stated by Bob Iger, the Ceo of Disney himself. He stated, 

“We’re going to balance sequels with originals, particularly in animation. We had gone through a period where our original films in animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels. And so we’ve talked, as you know, about Toy Story and obviously Inside Out this summer. I just think that right now, given the competition in the overall movie marketplace that actually there’s a lot of value in the sequels obviously because they’re known and it takes less in terms of marketing.” Click here to read the context in which this quote occurs.

With this quote It may seem that Disney is trying to focus on both original content and sequels however the only latest Disney movies we’ve gotten that were an actual original IP was Strange World in 2022,Wish in 2023,and Elio in 2025 all of which got little marketing from Disney while sequels or live action movies got tons of marketing from them because they know nostalgic fans buy it up as seen with the Lilo and Stitch live action remake even though it missed the point of the original movie turning Jumba evil for no good reason while also making the ending with Nani leaving to go to college to be a marine biologist when not only was her original dream in the movie to be a pro surfer but also even if she always wanted to be a marine biologist Hawaii has the best universities for that exact study but the general audience didn’t seem to care because the movie made over 1 billion dollars in the box office and that’s not even factoring in the toys or merch sales they made bank on.

And our final and quite possibly the most reprehensible reason for why Disney lost its magic is its plans to use generative Sora 2 ai on DIsney plus. This news occurred when Disney released a statement saying they were using AI fans didn’t take the news well being deeply disappointed with how disney was giving up their magical art style to a cold unfeeling algorithm. Link to info

And there’s another example how using generative ai on a once beloved thing absolutely ruined it’s quality and tainted it’s reputation possibly forever Aumsum was a popular educational youtuber whose videos were used to teach and shown around schools worldwide pulling in millions of views a video but recently he switched to using generative ai to make his videos and got massive backlash from his community from what used to be millions of views each video turned into a couple hundred to a thousand if he’s lucky and we may be seeing the same thing happening again just on a MUCH larger scale with Disney. Link to info

Now with all of that being said a counterargument could be made that Disney is just trying to adapt to the modern day and is just trying their best to not fall behind all the other big movie,animation or streaming companies. And while you can agree by saying that,what people want was the magic that Disney once held. They were the ones who started animation in the movie business and seeing them in the current state they are relying on people’s nostalgia throwing their original IP’s under the bus and now just throwing away the last bit of goodwill they had by using generative ai It’s clear that Disney stopped being it’s original magical self and just became another corporate money hungry company.

In conclusion, Disney hasn’t just stumbled, it's drifted so far from what made it special that even long-time fans barely recognize it anymore. From the shrinking joy of Disneyland to the neglect of fresh original stories, and now the willingness to hand creative work over to generative AI,the company feels less like a dream factory and more like a boardroom calculator. Sure, adapting to new eras is necessary, but adaptation shouldn’t mean abandoning the very spark that made Disney the gold standard of imagination in the first place. If it wants to regain the trust and love it once commanded effortlessly, Disney will have to remember what made its magic magical and actually fight for it, instead of cashing in on the past while short-changing the future.