Bob Chapek Says Disney Erased Him, but It's Too Bad We Can't Erase What He Did

As I write this, it’s October 1, which is almost a religious holiday for Disney fans. Not only is it Julie Andrews’ birthday, but it’s also the anniversary of the opening of the Walt Disney World Resort (1971), EPCOT Center (1982), and the late, lamented Horizons attraction (1983).

I’m a Disney fan for life, as much as the company has made that difficult for my family and me. One man carries the blame for most of the problems that he inflicted on Disney in less than three years at the helm: Bob Chapek.

Chapek, who served as CEO of The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) from February 2020 until November 2022, when the board lost confidence in him. It’s easy to see why Chapek lasted less than two years.

He forced the company to get political with his comments about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law. He tangled with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and Disney lost control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District as a result. (I wrote about it extensively.)

Under Chapek’s leadership, Disney increased the wokeness of its content. At the same time, he restructured the company to take distribution out of the hands of creatives and into the hands of the bean counters.

Worst of all, as head of Disney Parks and later CEO, Chapek raised prices, ended free FastPass, and introduced paid line-skipping. Fans and cast members blamed him for a more transactional Disney, even as parks profits were strong. Unfortunately, Disney hasn’t reversed course from this move.

Now Chapek claims that TWDC “removed” him from company history. I recently saw a clip of an interview that Yahoo Finance posted. He’s all “woe is me” about how the company treated him after it fired him.

Chapek: I think if there was a straw that broke the camel's back, it was being removed from the company history.

Interviewer: Didn't they wipe you off the website too? 

Chapek: And then they took my name off the company history. It's like it didn't exist.

“I asked to see the press release before it got released, and I got agreement to it, but then half an hour later, it's out,” Chapek continued. “The situation itself was not warranted, but even if it was, there's a way you do it with class and grace and respect. After 30 years, I did not receive that. I said, ‘Nope, nope, nope. It's not the Disney way. It's not the Disney way.’”

Then he carped, “I wasn't given an opportunity to write a goodbye note,” as if he had a right to it. Chapek revealed the reason why he felt compelled to write his book when he said, “And I felt like I had to set the record straight. Too many people wrote my epitaph with a material that wasn't, frankly, the real deal.”

Chapek sounds like he has a whole deck of martyr cards he wants to play, but Disney didn’t write his tenure completely out of existence the way he wants you to believe. Iger undid Chapek’s leadership structure, as a leader who replaces another one might do, because he understood that the creatives need to handle distribution.

Disney made more noticeable statements distancing the company from Chapek in public. The company edited him out of a 2023 video about the opening of the Avengers Campus at Disneyland Paris, even though he was there for the event. At Castaway Cay, the private island that Disney Cruise Line ships visit, a tribute sign that called Chapek a “Master Ship Builder” came down within days of his ouster.

Even though Disney hasn’t undone enough of Chapek’s damage, it could be easy to see why TWDC might be willing to downplay his tenure. But claiming that the company tried to erase him smacks of victimhood, when Disney fans everywhere paid the real price.