Too Much TV Exclusive: Disney Experiences Facing Cancellations 'Worse Than COVID'

It's been a bad weekend for Disney resorts and cruises.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Saturday, September 20th, 2025:

WELCOME TO ALL THE NEW SUBSCRIBERS
My interview late Thursday/early Friday with a Kimmel staffer blew up on Friday and it received a lot of coverage, including in The Hollywood Reporter and Late Nighter. And you know it's been a strange day when you're mentioned in the NY Post.

All of that led to a lot of new subscribers and I wanted to give you an idea of what to expect.

Generally, I send out a daily newsletter five days a week (although this week it was six days) and in each newsletter, I try to accomplish a couple of things.

There is plenty of TV and media industry news, which includes pointing to other interesting reporting, as well as program listings, reviews and my own reporting. The second part involves highlighting something you won't see anywhere else: original reporting, exclusive interviews and industry analysis. And all of it is free.

But as you can imagine, it's a lot of work cranking out five or six 2,000-word newsletters a week. So if you would to support my independent journalism, you can upgrade to my paid subscription tier below. Or you can always buy me a cup of coffee. And please forward these newsletters to anyone you think might be interested in reading them. Cutting through the marketing glut from other, larger outlets is always my biggest challenge.

I'll be back with my regular newsletter early Monday evening, which will include an interview with TV writer William Lucas Walker, who worked on Roseanne, Frasier, Cybill and the first season of Will & Grace. His latest project is the comedy Dads Of DeWitt, which tells the story of two gay men who move to a small town deep in Trump country.

THE BOYCOTT THREAT THAT REALLY SCARES DISNEY
While most people understand in the abstract that the theme parks and cruise ship business is financially important to the Walt Disney Company, I don't think they realize just how vital it is to the financial success of the company. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products is one of three divisions at Disney and it includes a group of theme parks, including Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Paris, Disneyland Abu Dhabi, Shanghai Disney Resort and Hong Kong Disney Resort. The Experiences segment includes six Disney-themed cruise ships, with two more launching by the end of this year. The Disney Vacation Club is a timeshare program with an estimated 220,000 members that boasts twelve themed resorts within Walt Disney World Resort, three within Disneyland Resort, and three stand-alone locations. National Geographic Expeditions offer pricey, guided tours across the world that include guest scientists and local guides. Adventures by Disney is a program of all-inclusive, guided vacation tour packages that generally are offered at non Disney-owned resorts.

Disney is also getting into the planned-community business, with the 299 home Golden Oak at Walt Disney World Resort being the first project. Additional master-planned communities in Rancho Mirage, California and Pittsboro, North Carolina are in the planning stage.

It also includes Disney Consumer Products, Inc., which is the retailing and licensing subsidiary of Disney Experiences.

And the revenue from this division is massive. Disney Experiences reported $9 Billion in Revenue for Q3 2025. Domestically, the theme parks recorded $6.4 billion in revenue and $1.6 billion in income. International parks reported $1.69 billion in revenue and $422 million in income.

From Disney's corporate perspective, this revenue is arguably the most important stream in company. It has an extremely high return rate, with customers spending thousands if not tens of thousands each year on experiences.

And those customers are difficult to lure back once they change their vacation travel plans. So a lost customer can cost Disney not just the revenue from this year's experience, but the revenue from multiple years of experiences. Plus the marketing costs involved in acquiring a replacement customer.

If a serious Disney boycott expands to Disney Experiences, the hit to the company's bottom line will dwarf any impact from the cancellation of Disney+ or Hulu.

And based on what I've learned over the past day, Disney is facing a growing problem with cancellations in previously planned experiences as well as a drop in interest in booking new events. I received an email from someone who works at what was described as the "escalation retention" team at one of the U.S. Disney resorts and the picture that was painted was a grim one for Disney:

"The cancellations have been coming for 48 hours and they just keep increasing. A lot of times, you can turn it around by offering some extras, or a discount on the total. But these guests can't be talked out of it. The ones I talk to have mostly been nice, but just crushed. I keep hearing how disappointed they are and how they don't know if they'll ever see us the same way."

"It's worse than COVID, if that's possible. Because after we shut things down, guests couldn't wait to get back. Even later, when we were opening back up, guests would say 'I don't feel comfortable coming now, but I'll be back.' I haven't had one person tell me that this weekend."

There is no way of knowing from the outside how big of an impact these cancellations are having on Disney's bottom line. Given the extended timeframe of the bookings, it could take a couple of quarters of earnings numbers to get a handle on the depth of the problem.

But some of this money is revenue Disney will never be able to replace. If someone cancels a one-time event such as a wedding, that money is gone forever. And with some wedding packages costing more than $50,000 all-in, this is a serious issue for the company.

If you have any information you'd like to share anonymously, email me at rick@allyourscreens.com or message me on Signal at allyourscreens.24.

PMC'S RETREAT FROM ATX, EXPLAINED
Back in May I broke the news that Penske Media Corporation (PMC) had parted ways with Austin's ATX festival just a couple of years after acquiring it.

This week, The Ankler's Lesley Goldberg posted an interview with ATX's Emily Gipson and Caitlin McFarland, who told her how they managed to retrieve ownership back from PMC:

After ATX’s smallest festival in 2024 since its early days, the duo knew what they needed to reboot — they made a pitch to PMC to hire staffers outside the company to assist the festival with revenue-generating roles in marketing and sponsorship sales. “We had to answer for this budget; we were the presidents of the company, and we were in a deficit,” McFarland recalls. “We had not hit our numbers. We needed to make a change, so we presented what that would look like. The response to that was a conversation about [us] getting the company back.”

PMC’s offer to sell back the festival came as a surprise to Gipson and McFarland, who said executives with the media company did not provide a lot of insight about why they were suddenly ready to be out of the ATX business. Post-strike, though, the end of the Peak TV era meant belt-tightening across the industry. PMC brands — like all major entertainment conglomerates and entities — have weathered rounds of layoffs since the strikes concluded. (I was among those impacted in 2024, and PMC continues to shed staffers and assets, with layoffs this week at Rolling Stone following a decision to sell TV Line in August.)

And speaking of cutbacks at PMC, I have heard that The Hollywood Reporter has had another round of layoffs: two social media managers, two video staffers and a marketing person. I reached out to PMC for a comment and as almost always the case with them, received no response.

FACTOID OF THE DAY
I am generally skeptical of reading too much into Google Search trends, because they are incredibly easy to misunderstand. But I do think this chart of interest in the search term "cancel Disney+" is amusing.

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* If you thought the animated spoof of Disney on Thursday night's Late Show With Stephen Colbert was brutal, you need to check out this segment from a Dutch late night talk show that is one hundred harder. It's something that could never air in the United States.

* The Racket's Jay Boller was not impressed by the Guy Fieri-branded line of convenience store sandwiches. Hard to believe.

* Kiswe Mobile is a company best known for building direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming channels for professional sports teams including the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz, as well as major K-pop entities including Big Hit Entertainment. And it wants to build a Jimmy Kimmel-branded D2C app, which it claims it can have up-and-running within a week.

* Andor writer Dan Gilroy wrote a guest column for Deadline on Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, in which he argues that everyone in Hollywood is going to have to pick a side: "If you’re on the sidelines you’ve made a choice and must live with it." Along those lines, Mon Mothma's Senate speech from season two of Andor resonates a lot stronger with me than I am comfortable with right now.

* Sonny Curtis, a vintage rock 'n' roller who wrote the raw classic "I Fought the Law" and posed the enduring question "Who can turn the world on with her smile?" as the writer-singer of the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died at 88.

* Defense Secretary Hegseth requires new "pledge" for reporters at the Pentagon. Going forward, journalists must sign a pledge not to gather any information, including unclassified reports, that hasn't been authorized for release. So, state-approved media coverage?

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Proving once again that no job is too small to be hosted by Mario Lopez, here is Lopez at the Thursday evening launch party for the unveiling of the new name for the L.A. Dodgers single-A team Ontario Tower Buzzers. And in true Hollywood fashion, the team's name is a vague reference to the nearby airport in which Maverick (Tom Cruise) caused a military air traffic controller to spill his coffee when he buzzed the tower in the movie Top Gun.

In the photo below, Lopez is standing next to the team's new mascot, a goofball bee named....wait for it....Maverick.

WHAT'S COMING TONIGHT AND THIS WEEKEND

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20TH:
* Bad Bunny: No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí: Una Más (Prime Video)
* The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story (Lifetime)
* WWE Wrestlepalooza (ESPN)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST:
* A Grammy Salute To Earth, Wind & Fire Live: The 21st Night Of September (CBS)
* Halloween Wars Season Fifteen Premiere (Food Network)
* Inside USA Series Premiere (Netflix)
* Let the Devil In Finale (MGM+)
* Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery - The Untold Story (Disney+/Hulu)
* 99 To Beat Series Premiere (Fox)
* No One Believed Me (Lifetime)
* The Happiest Story On Earth: 70 Years Of Disneyland (ABC)
* Tulsa King Season Three Premiere (Paramount+)

SEE YOU EARLY MONDAY MORNING!