Was Josh D'Amaro Chosen Using the 10th Anniversary Special Playbook? [Ep. 893]

Please stand clear of the doors, por favor.

Man.

Tengan se allijado de las cuertas.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we're entering the vacation kingdom of the world.

Today you'll be seeing what we call phase one, which stretches more than three miles east to west and two miles north to south.

But that's just the beginning.

We have many exciting plans for the future.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining in us.

I'm Tim Scott.

This is resortloop.com the Gateway to the magic.

We got some big news happening.

I thought we'd talk about that today.

Although I, I want to go into a little bit of a story.

I want to go into a little bit of a Disney special that aired.

Oh, geez.

In 1981.

It was a 10th year anniversary special for Walt Disney World.

One of the best, cheesiest Disney specials ever made.

Granted, Disney specials are always cheesy.

This one had a star studded cast, actually great musical numbers.

It's had several storylines in it.

It's better than most of the Disney specials have been up since then.

I mean, they're all kind of corny, but if you embrace the corniness of it and just enjoy it and all the scenery and this 10th anniversary show, it's such a time capsule.

If you go back and you watch it and I've only watched it a few times, by few, I mean three, four times.

But you're like, Tim, how can you remember something that you've only seen two or three times?

Maybe four times?

Well, one that's on YouTube now.

Back in the day when it came out during the 10 year anniversary in 1981, I recorded it on an audio tape.

We did not have a video recorder yet.

And our video recorder that we did have was a Betamax when we got it, but we didn't get it.

I think we actually got it like two months after this special aired.

Which is about timing, if you're familiar with Tim Scott, how timing works in his life.

But I had an audio tape of it that I would listen to constantly.

I would listen to it, you know, maybe on the way to Florida in the, in the car with like in the, in the Walkman type situation or I would actually listen to it getting ready to go to a trip for a couple weeks.

I know leading up to it, star studded cast.

But there's, let's go into the cast right now.

It had Disney legend Dean Jones.

Fantastic.

A little Ricky Schroeder, a little Dana Plato, Eileen Brennan, you might remember her from Private Benjamin.

Michelle Lee, I think she did a lot of TV stuff.

I know her when I see her.

I know I've seen her on the Love Boat.

But I guess who hasn't been on the Love Boat?

Did I say John Schneider from the Dukes of Hazzard?

This had a cast.

It was just lots of fun to watch.

And it had a very young Michael Keaton.

Now this is Michael, Young Michael Keaton.

This was before, before Johnny Dangerously, before Mr.

Mom and before Night Shift.

So young guys movie career.

I don't think it started much before then.

I kind of looked at IMDb.

It looked like lots of TV shows that might have been one offs or things I wasn't too familiar with.

But let's see here.

Let's go back.

I guess he's on a Tony Randall show.

Maybe Maude.

Oh, this looks like like Mary Hartman.

Mary Hartman.

No, I'm not stuttering, but this was a fantastic show.

What's it have to do with today?

Let's get into it now.

The show that's a time capsule.

I suggest it's on YouTube.

Go watch it, it'll be worth your time.

I think it was maybe 15 minutes because they had the commercials edited out of it.

But you're going to see like a lot of green space in front of Cinderella's castle.

You're going to see the original fantastic carpet from the Grand Canyon concourse of the Contemporary resort.

This was before the Grand Floridian was there.

This is before John Stamos was playing the bongos in front with the Beach Boys.

It was before all the Epcot resorts.

It was before Epcot.

Epcot, remember, opened October 1st of 1982.

So on the 11 year mark, at the conclusion of the 10th anniversary, they were opening Epcot.

So this is like old school Disney where you had one park to go to which if you want for a week you had plenty of time to do the Magic Kingdom.

Go to Fort Wilderness, go to River Country.

River Country's in there.

You see that a little bit.

Great special.

Suggest watching.

Anyway, so during this show the family's going down.

They're from going down from Evansville, Indiana.

They're going down to a Disney trip.

Who greets them at the Contemporary Resort?

Because if you're going down in 1971 on a Disney special, the flagship resort would probably be the Contemporary.

They rolled a red carpet up front.

And who comes out to the this family from Evansville, Indiana, who Dean Jones is the father of, but Michael Keaton.

That's right, he's the bellhop.

He takes the luggage.

You know, they Start sitting on the stage for the show, you meet the whole family.

It's, it's a great time.

Now, I'm not going to go through describing the whole show.

However, through the show, they keep running into Michael Keaton, who's known as Kevin in the show.

Now, though, we're not going to go into mentioning everything that happened in the show because it's more entertaining if you watch it.

But they keep running into Michael throughout the this one hour special and they find out, you know, first he comes out, he's the bellhop.

They run into him later, he says he lost his job or they talk about that and now he's working in retail.

He's a retail cast member.

From there, he's a waiter at Top of the World.

From there, they run into him again, he lost his job again, he's a tuba player.

And then finally at the end of the show, he's a valet.

Now you're thinking about this now, what's this guy do with what's going on now, Tim?

Well, it turns out that in the show, spoiler alert here, if you want to go see the show and see how it actually ends, I'll, I'll stop here and I'll wait for you while you go watch it.

Okay?

So hopefully you watch it, you enjoyed it.

And it turns out Michael Keaton was learning every job at Walt Disney World so he could become the vice president in charge of everything.

And as I'm watching things develop with Josh tomorrow, even looking back a few years, every time he was getting promoted, like every every year and a half, two years to a different major position, and I'm thinking this is, they're doing a Michael Keaton Kevin thing from Disney's 10th anniversary to train this guy what to do.

So when Michael Keaton took all the jobs we already talked about, Josh d', Amaro, he came in as the vice president of sales and travel and Trade Marketing in 1998-2008.

After that, business planning and strategy development for Disneyland from 2005 to 2006.

Chief financial officer for consumer products and licensing from 2008 to 2010.

Adventures by Disney 2010 to 2013 Disney's Animal Kingdom VP 2013 to 2015 it almost looks like he can't hold a job.

It's like he's masters all these in like a year or two.

Does a good job, makes an impact.

Because all these things were doing like Animal Kingdom was during the whole of no, we're going to build Pandora.

The expansion there and other expansions and Then senior vice president and resort transportation operations for Walt Disney World.

Now, that doesn't sound like a glamorous job, but you think about how important that is, moving all the people around at Walt Disney World.

You know, monorail buses.

I almost said motor coaches.

That's the same thing as buses.

They're just a little fancier.

Maybe they're the bendy buses.

And you learned how to move people in a massive environment as Walt Disney World because, you know, you always hear it's the size of Manhattan, four theme parks, two water parks, that kind of thing.

Then in 2017-2018, Chief Commercial Officer for Walt Disney World Resort.

That, and I did a little.

Had to do a little quick Google on this one, that puts them in charge of the pricing, tickets and revenue for Walt Disney World.

So that that's a major job right there.

And then president of Disneyland from 2018 to 2019.

Then right after that, president of Walt Disney World from 2019 to 2020, and then chairman of Disney Experiences 2020 to.

Just before we became CEO there, he was responsible for things like all the parks, the cruise lines, the resorts, imagineering consumer products.

So you can see they were actually grooming him, kind of like they were grooming Michael Keaton in the WALT Disney World 10th anniversary special.

And then on top of that, if you've paid any attention to any kind of social media, and I almost don't even care what the platform is, everybody has a great story about Josh tomorrow in the parks.

Whether it's Disneyland anywhere in Walt Disney World, a lot of people have run into him.

Friends of the show have had their picture taken with Josh tomorrow.

So this is a guy who loves the parks.

Seems like he really loves all the visitors that go to the parks.

Takes time to answer questions, talk to people, and he looks, always looks joyous.

I hope that's the case.

I don't think he can be that long in this company or any company if you're not happy there and going to make a big impact.

So I think if you watch the Walt Disney World 10th anniversary special and you take a look at Josh tomorrow's resume, you're going to kind of see where they kind of mashed up.

That's kind of like how I think maybe Disney likes to groom their people and promote from within.

Now, I will say I didn't know a whole lot about Dana Walden.

I think she would probably do a great job.

And I'll get on that real quick.

Just I don't know enough about her to talk to her about any length of time.

But I can't say she came from 20th Century Fox is well respected in the media world.

And if you recall, when Bob Iger came into the company, he was only with the company a short time before he became CEO because he came from the ABC side of things.

So when I look at that, her career is kind of paralleling Iger coming from another place, coming into Disney.

So I'm very happy Josh got the job with that long Disney history.

And we know he's a parks fan.

And I, I just, I always feel better if we have a good, strong parks guy fronting the Walt Disney Company.

Now, I will say this reminded me of another story.

I just want to go into this.

If you're familiar with the name George Caligridis.

He was a longtime Disney executive.

He got his start in 1971 at Walt Disney World, busing tables and being a waiter at the Contemporary Resort.

He worked his way up to become the president of the Walt Disney World Resort and then eventually an executive for Disney Parks.

And this is a guy who started off busing tables and waiting tables at the Contemporary Resort.

If you're an old time Disney guy, Walt Disney World guy, he might have bust your table or served you at the Contemporary Resort.

And I love these stories of cast members who were at what we say at the grassroots level of the company and through everything they have learned and all of the interactions they've had with guests have probably helped form their ideas of what the park should be and what direction it should go.

So I'm so excited about this.

I'm excited.

Dana Walton's the number two.

I'm really excited.

Josh is the CEO and I will say, who knew when I was a young, young buck back in 1981, 82, that a cassette recording of a TV show would come in handy here in 2026.

And you know, I even know where that cassette is.

I'm gonna grab it, get a picture of it.

I'll put it in the show notes or on the website resortloop.com I don't.

Yeah, I don't even know if it has the name on it.

I just remember what it looks like.

But I will say the first time I rewatched the Walt Disney World 10th anniversary special on YouTube just a couple years ago because I didn't even think to search for until I came across the Pick a Bat cassette.

I remembered so many scenes in the John Schneider is laying on a lawn in front of the castle with no female cast members around, getting ready to sing.

I'm Like, I totally remember that and I'd only seen it back in 1981, so.

Good times.

Good times.

Another side tangent, for fear of oversharing.

The special is sponsored by Kraft in the TV Guide at the time.

I might have the TV Guide somewhere.

I'm not sure about that one.

But there was a.

There was a banana bread recipe in it that I used for years.

It was a big thing in the TV Guide.

It was like a whole little center section had like a few different recipes in there.

It was good times.

And for some reason they all were synagogue on craft products.

So I guess Disney and sponsors, who knew that would be a thing down the road.

I think this post Iger regime is going to do very well.

Something tells me with the Bob Chapek era that Iger told him, here's what you're going to do.

All these people know what they're doing.

Just keep the course.

We're going to do fine.

We'll be great.

And then he got in there.

I was like, nope, nope.

I've been having this idea in my mind for a long time.

And he did a bunch of Crazy Ivans out there.

So if you ever saw.

Was it Crimson Tide, I think that's what the Crazy Ivan's game from just It's a Sudden Turn didn't make any sense.

But I'm expecting this year's D23, the big one in the.

In the.

Was it summer?

Fall?

Coming out, the next one in Anaheim.

I think we're going to see some amazing announcements because these are going to be the ones under Josh tomorrow, Dana Walden Regime.

Because, you know, we got the next five years already charted out from Bob Iger.

I mean, there's going to be other stuff coming after that.

I can't wait.

I honestly can't wait to see what's going to be announced.

So that's all I got.

I want to make sure I got this one out before.

Before something happened.

And it wouldn't.

Wouldn't make any sense.

Anyway, I've been wanting to talk about this Walt Disney World 10th anniversary special for a long time.

Like I said, good watch.

Give it a try.

It parallels Josh tomorrow in my opinion.

If you happen to watch it or scan through it, the Gatlin Brothers are in it.

They actually perform songs.

Did I say Eileen Brennan?

It was actually a good cast for Back in the Day.

It was like a Love Boat plus episode.

I wonder how many of those people are on the Love Boat.

Hang on a second.

I'm gonna do a quick search.

Breaking news I just did a couple searches online.

Michael Keaton.

Not on the Love Boat.

On the Love Boat.

Dean Jones.

Eileen Brennan.

Michelle Lee.

Ricky Schroeder.

I couldn't find Dana Plato on there.

I don't think.

Did I find Dana Plato?

Is she on there?

No, Dana Plato was not on the lowboat, according to what I found.

Although I feel like I saw her on there, but crazy.

So it was a pretty decent cast for back in the day.

I don't know where the show left the top.

I'm just gonna wrap it up right here because we got other shows to do, but I want to get the CEO one out while it was kind of fresh before he.

Before he became a Disney legend.

Everybody.

Thanks for joining us.

This has been Tim Scott, resort loop.com the Gateway to the magic.

You can find everything over@resort loop.com we're on Facebook.

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