2021 – 2023 – The World’s Most Magical Celebration

Disneyland celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2005 with an international Happiest Celebration on Earth campaign and a golden promotion built around nostalgia, restoration, invitation, and the legacy of Walt Disney himself. Sixteen years later, its younger sister in Florida went… a different direction.

The Most Magical Celebration is just as elaborate in design, with a shimmering, oil-slicked “EARidescence” adorning marketing, park icons, and merchandise across Walt Disney World. But whereas Disneyland’s 50th leaned heavily on the park’s history, music, rides, and founder, Disney World’s 50th is a celebration planned by a very different Walt Disney Company. To that end, it’s really no surprise that the Most Magical Celebration practically avoids any commentary on the parks, their history, or their founder.

Instead, the celebration’s emphasis is almost entirely on post-2010 Disney media franchises. The two nighttime spectaculars that launched as part of the campaign (Magic Kingdom’s “Enchantment” and EPCOT’s “Harmonious”) make no mention of the parks they’re found within, much less their 50th and 40th anniversaries, respectively. (Only after immense fan backlash – and in the latter half of the 18-month celebration – did Disney retcon a Walt tribute into the “Enchantment” projection show.)

Likewise, fifty golden statues distributed across the parks aren’t of Imagineer-made characters or landmark rides from across the resort’s first five decades, but of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars characters. (Of the fifty, only one – Figment – represents a park-specific character, and he was replaced in the associated Happy Meal toy line with a movie character.)

Sure, undoubtedly, some of what Disney had planned for the 50th was scaled back thanks to the 2020 pandemic and its two-fold fallout: the downturn in tourism and attendance, and the slow-down on high-profile projects that saw Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, TRON Lightcycle Run, and EPCOT’s reimagining all come untethered from their timelines and lose their connection to the promotion.

But more damningly, the “Most Magical Celebration on Earth” will likely also remain synonymous with its poorly-timed launch of the ill-received Genie+ paid-for line-skipping system, additional-cost “Individual Lightning Lane” add-ons for in-demand E-Tickets, record-breaking “Stand-by” waits for guests who don’t pay extra, the end of Disney’s Magical Express airport transportation, immensely complex tech-based planning with daily 6:55 AM wakeups, and a host of other cancelled perks and new upcharges that Disney used the pandemic as an excuse to monetize, to say nothing of new CEO Bob Chapek’s stated interest in downsizing portions, upping prices, and attracting fewer customers who spend more.

In other words, the Most Magical Celebration has fallen frustratingly flat both in its forgetting to celebrate Walt Disney World and coinciding with nearly all guest-facing perks evaporating into thin air. If the global ad-campaign was meant to bring travel-hungry guests back to a post-pandemic Walt Disney World, it clearly succeeded based on crowd levels and staggering waits. But if it was meant to leave those guests so impressed that they want to come back year after year? Well… we’ll have to see.

2023 – 100 Years of Wonder

Announced at the 2022 D23 Expo, “100 Years of Wonder” is meant to be Disney’s company-wide, all-in, across-the-board marketing campaign for 2023. Not to be confused with 2001’s 100 Years of Magic (which, you’ll remember commemorated 100 years since Walt Disney’s 1901 birth), 100 Years of Wonder harkens back to the 1923 founding of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio – the earliest iteration of what would become the modern Walt Disney Company. (It’s sort of wild to have lived 2001 to 2023 as the 21st century, 22-year equivalent of the time span that separated Walt’s birth and the founding of his studio.)

It’s not often that the entire Walt Disney Company and its dozens of gigantic sub-divisions all gather under one promotion, but that’s exactly what “100 Years of Wonder” is supposed to imply. From a refreshed “Disney 100” production vanity logo at the studio to world-touring Disney 100: The Exhibition, it’s clear that the company is going big.

At Disney Parks alone, the “Disney 100” celebration will see Disneyland decked out in the promo’s aesthetic: platinum irridescence. It’ll launch two new nighttime shows – “Wondrous” at Disneyland and “World of Color – One” at California Adventure, plus the opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and the return of the “Magic Happens” parade. (Pairs of associated platinum-dripping Mouse Ears were pulled when fans mocked the uncomfortably biological appearance.)

Meanwhile, at Disney World, the “Disney 100” campaign will overlap with the tail end of the Most Magical Celebration on Earth. But Disney has already announced that the two shows that launched for the resort in 2021 – “Enchantment” and “Harmonious” – will both disappear in favor of Disney 100-themed offerings. (It’s a staggeringly short life for both shows, especially since their franchise-focused, sing-along styles would actually be better suited for the “Disney 100” campaign than they were for the 50th Anniversary.)

Like all things modern Disney, it’s hard to know what will come of the Disney 100 celebration. Despite the pomp and circumstance surrounding it, fans have their expectations tempered. This is, after all, a Walt Disney Company led by Bob Chapek. And while a franchise-focused, merchandisable centennial is well-suited for his interests, Chapek’s laser focus on the company as a “synergy machine” and the any-economist-will-tell-you-is-impossible goal of making the content black hole of Disney+ profitable has seen the year kick off with ominous news.

In November 2022 – a month before the campaign’s launch – leaked memos show that Chapek allegedly announced to Disney’s 190,000 Cast Members a “targeted hiring freeze” at the company, forbidding hiring except for “a small subset of the most critical, business-driving positions.” Even more foreboding, Chapek is instituting an evaluation process that will “look at every avenue of operations and labor to find savings” including “some staff reductions” and “tough and uncomfortable decisions” to come. Chapek (who earned over $30 million in cash, bonuses, and stock in 2021) will institute a “cost structure task force” that echoes the darkest days of the end of Eisner’s run, sure to diminish Disney Parks’ standing and double down on upcharges and slashed perks yet again. (“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”)

Does that make “Disney 100” sound like a compelling campaign to you?