The Walt Disney Company has been going through a lot of “Big Changes” as of late thanks in part to the newest CEO of the company Bob Chapek. In 2020 the former CEO, Bob Iger, was seemingly forced to resign and Bob Chapek was put in place as his successor.

Bob Iger was a CEO known for spending vast amounts of money on theme parks, movies and of course buying other companies. Chapek on the other hand is quite the opposite, being called a penny pincher while he was the head of Parks and Resorts.

Chapek’s reign as CEO has been somewhat mixed. With prices at the parks being increased, the focus on Disney Plus’ Premium Access/Same Day Releases, closing the Disney Stores in favor of online shopping and most recently the Genie App. Not to mention the disappointing 50th Anniversary Celebration at Walt Disney World. Both former employees and guests have been shown to somewhat dislike the new CEO and his way of business.

Recently a group of former Imagineers started sharing petition, created by an anonymous user on change.org, asking for the newly appointed CEO to be fired from his position by the company investors.

The Petition reads:

Bob Chapek became the Chairman of Parks and Resorts for Disney in 2015. He has consistently made decisions that decrease the quality of what is put into the parks, and also ones that favor using Intellectual properties instead of original attractions. He consistently put himself and money above the product, and quality of the company.

In early 2020 he became the CEO of the Walt Disney Company which was extremely concerning. Bob Chapek has made an excessive amount of budget cuts, even with the Covid-19 pandemic being considered. Budget cuts began before the pandemic began, and increased. He recently reinstated full executive salaries at Disney, and also has laid off over 28,000 employees throughout the company. And now he is moving the focus to Disney plus, the current big money maker, instead of keeping the parks at high quality.

Normally you would think to keep the quality of the parks during a time of decreased revenue, but he is concerned about what will make him the most money quickest. Maintenance at the parks has also gotten its worst under Chapek, and is not getting better. Chapek has proven he doesn’t care about the quality and legacy of Disney.

The petition also goes on to show support for current Chairman of the Parks and successor to Chapek, Josh D’Amaro. Possibly suggesting that he should be named the CEO of the company instead of Chapek.

Whomever created this petition clearly don’t like Chapek, and since then the petition has managed to gain over 26,000 as of the writing of this article. 

You can find the petition here 

Will this at all have any impact on Chapek? Probably not. If corporations truly cared about petitions we would have seen Amber Heard fired from Aquaman 2. The only way he’d leave Disney is if he lost a lot of money for the company (Similarly to Iger) or by his own choosing.

Do you think Chapek should step down?