Disney’s Layoffs Hit Parks, with Imagineering Impacted

The Walt Disney Company’s theme parks division is laying off between 100 and 200 people, with most of those job cuts expected to impact employees in Imagineering’s offices in Glendale, California. Here’s what we know, along with how this could impact ongoing projects and the $60 billion ‘turbocharged’ investment plans.

According to reporting by Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times and journalist Scott Gustin, Disney Experiences is executing between 100 and 200 layoffs in the Disney Experiences segment. This includes Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, and Aulani Resort in Hawaii, as well as Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Live Entertainment. All impacted employees have been notified as of the end of business on Wednesday, October 28, 2026.

The cuts to the segment stem from a “regular evaluation of the division’s priorities, investments and project timelines,” a person familiar with the layoffs told the LAT (Disney declined to comment on the record). Most of the affected employees who have been laid off are Imagineers based out of WDI’s Glendale, California office.

When new CEO Josh D’Amaro succeeded Bob Iger, over 1,000 employees were laid off in April. Following that, hundreds of Pixar, ESPN, and National Geographic employees were laid off in July. The third round of layoffs hit in late September, impacting Disney’s human resources and technology teams, with an internal memo suggesting AI was the underlying reason for the cuts.

Disney also offered early retirement packages for older workers earlier this month. Those moves followed corporate restructuring, and consolidating operations to cut costs and coordinate efforts across its divisions. The totality of these changes is aimed at helping Disney respond faster to the changing entertainment industry landscape.

Beyond his plan for united the company as “One Disney,” D’Amaro hasn’t laid out specifics for reshaping the company. Those close to Disney said one of his priorities is having different divisions collaborate more quickly and efficiently, according to previous reporting. Unsurprisingly, employees have feared layoffs would be part of that equation.

Unfortunately, layoffs have become a brutal reality across the entertainment industry. Sony Pictures, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have already cut staff. Post-merger, Skydance is expected to undertake massive layoffs as the combined company looks to cut $6 billion in costs over three years. Even Netflix, once viewed as the future of the entertainment industry, is cutting jobs amidst stagnation.

Disney and these other studios have been adjusting to the ‘new normal’ of smaller profits from streaming as contrasted with linear television, as well as diminished box office, and intense competition from tech companies. Disney has also combining the staff of its Disney+ and Hulu as it merges the streaming services into one app, and redundancies will result from that.

However, none of that can explain away today’s cuts to Walt Disney Imagineering or Disney Experiences. Previously, one of the underlying motivations for layoffs in other segments was Disney’s desire to free up money from the studio and streaming side to invest in businesses where it sees growth potential. With at least $60 billion earmarked for Parks & Resorts expansion, it’s safe to assume Walt Disney World and Disneyland are such growth engines. Today’s layoffs cast some doubt on that.

Disney employed 231,000 people at the end of its 2025 fiscal year, some 80% working in the Experiences division, which includes the labor-heavy theme parks and cruise line (plus consumer products). Most layoffs since 2022 have occurred in Disney’s entertainment, ESPN and corporate side.

Disney has laid off more than 8,000 people since Bob Iger returned as CEO in 2022 and began a major restructuring. The big round of 7,000 layoffs under Iger concerned mostly the metaverse, streaming and studios. Disney specifically stated at the time that it would not impact frontline Cast Members at the parks.

Since the time those layoffs started under Iger, Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney Cruise Line have all seen their headcounts increase. Even with layoffs now hitting Disney Experiences, we do not expect frontline Cast Members to be impacted. If anything, Walt Disney World and Disneyland are still shorthanded in some roles.

What makes these layoffs newsworthy despite being “only” 100 to 200 employees (air quotes around “only” because any layoffs are obviously significant to the impacted individuals) is that they’re occurring in the Disney Experiences segment, and specifically, within Walt Disney Imagineering. Even if the number of job cuts is at the lower end of that spectrum, it could still be an entire project team and have a ripple effect on countless downstream jobs and economic opportunities.

As noted above, this occurs against the backdrop of massive investment for Disney Experiences, with Imagineering currently spending more on projects than at any time in its history. Layoffs feel incongruous with so much in active development and construction.

It’s common for a lot of employment at Walt Disney Imagineering to be project-based, with jobs added and shed as projects ramp up and wind down. That has happened on multiple occasions in the past when new parks or major expansion projects were nearing the finish line.

However, most of what Disney has in the works is in the earlier stages, as opposed to the later. This should be closer to the ‘ramp up’ than the ‘wind down’ phase. This raises the possibility of projects that are still in development but not yet under construction being cut or scaled back.

Between that and Walt Disney Imagineering’s layoffs affecting mostly Glendale-based employees, there are a few more likely possibilities as to the projects in question. The first is Shanghai Disneyland’s second gate. It seemed like a done deal that this was going to be announced during the gala 10th Anniversary celebration, but that didn’t happen.

It’s possible that the China’s economic woes and cautious consumer behavior, with households saving as opposed to spending, have put those plans on ice. In the last couple of earnings calls, Disney has mentioned softness at the Asia parks (Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland) dragging down the international numbers.

Given the comparative strength of Disneyland Paris, it’s possible these two parks are experiencing a double-digit decline. That alone would give Disney and its partner, Shanghai Shendi Group, reason to hit pause on a second gate–or all projects in the pipeline for Shanghai Disneyland that aren’t already under construction.

Another obvious candidate is Disneyland Abu Dhabi, which was a big talking point when D’Amaro was first announced as CEO. Since then, Disney has gone quiet on the Abu Dhabi park. No surprise, as tensions have risen in the Middle East (mild understatement) and there’s no end in sight to the conflict that began earlier this year. It wasn’t highlighted during D23, and was referenced indirectly as a park in a “new corner of the world” during the shareholder meeting.

Previously, we predicted that Disneyland Abu Dhabi would open in November 2033. With a broader range of sometime “between March 2032 and December 2036 (barring no global economic crises between now and then).” That was before the conflict in Iran, which qualifies as at least a “minor economic occurrence.” The Middle East has more announced-but-unbuilt theme parks than it does operational ones, and this is the type of climate that gave rise to the cancellation of parks in the past.

Disneyland Abu Dhabi is a licensing deal with no financial exposure for Disney, but this park is not without risk for the Walt Disney Company. If regional instability persists (or resumes at a later date), there is no more distinctly “American” target than a Disney theme park, and Iran has demonstrated no reluctance to strike allies in the region. I’m not the one who has to decide whether the financial reward and brand expansion are worth that risk, but I’d be hesitant to proceed if I were D’Amaro.

Finally, there’s Pandora or the Avatar Experience, or whatever we’re calling it these days, at Disneyland.

The Avatar destination feels fairly nebulous to me. I’ve already discussed the reasons for that at length elsewhere, but my personal read given the totality of the circumstances is that this project is now more likely to not happen. Even though a model was presented at D23, that’s not enough to sell me on this project being a real thing that Disney intends on building.

Even if they still plan on building it as of this moment, the passage of time is nevertheless working against Avatar. With the announcement of the Tomorrowland reimagining “cutting” Pandora in line, this now means that the Avatar project will almost certainly not start construction until 2029 at the absolute earliest. We might even be looking at a 2030 start date! That would put opening around 2032 or later, most likely.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the decision to cancel Avatar has already been made, but hasn’t been conveyed publicly because Disney doesn’t want to rock the boat with James Cameron. Disney is also only just starting to recover from the perception that they announce projects that never happen, so perhaps letting this one quietly fizzle out is the route they’ll go. Better to notch some wins first before announcing what’s actually coming to the Hollywood Backlot.

Other than that, I’m not sure which projects could be impacted. Imagineering is always working on ‘tech expo’ type stuff with robots and augmented reality glasses and other things that are unlikely to appear in the parks, and most of that is done out of Glendale.

Avengers Campus and Coco at Disneyland are happening, and as announced. The eventual scale and scope of Tomorrowland could vary considerably, meaning that could be hit by budget cuts…but no one has any idea what that entails in the first place.

All of Walt Disney World’s projects are safe. Villains Land could theoretically be hit by ‘austerity measures’ to keep its budget in check, but there’s no reason to believe that’s the case at this point. It’s Josh D’Amaro’s signature parks project, and there’s every reason to believe Disney will spend lavishly on it.

This also comes as Walt Disney Imagineering has shifted away from Glendale, and expanded its presence at local sites, including Walt Disney World. The expansion has happened despite the cancellation of the Lake Nona Creative Campus, which would’ve relocated Imagineering’s headquarters to Florida from California, or at least made Lake Nona their largest location as opposed to Glendale.

In the last couple of years, Florida has added an off-site office for Walt Disney Imagineering, as well as several project support sites adjacent to the parks. The most attention-grabbing of these was the building that formerly housed Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser being converted into offices for Walt Disney Imagineering. That’s essentially the field office for Monstropolis, and whatever else Imagineering has cooking up for Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

In addition to Starcruiser, there’s a new office compound in Animal Kingdom behind Kali River Rapids for Tropical Americas, as well as a recent expansion at the STOL Port field office and another trailer park complex being built behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in support of the Magic Kingdom expansion plans.

All of these are expansions to Imagineering’s presence at Walt Disney World in the last year, above and beyond longstanding field offices in Florida. Since so much of what WDI does is project-based and Walt Disney World is starting a massive new development cycle, it tracks that they’d need to scale up staff and office space at Walt Disney World.

In fact, Imagineering currently has its largest-ever presence in Florida, and the shift away from Glendale has already quietly occurred. Given that, we still expect a creative campus to be built in Central Florida at some point down the road, but for that to happen as Imagineering staffs up organically as opposed to a forced recollection.

That also means it’s not surprising to see even more downsizing in Glendale. While we don’t have visibility into the total headcount at WDI now versus one or two years ago, my strong suspicion is that it’s still higher today.

Nevertheless, these layoffs are not a bullish sign for Walt Disney Imagineering or the $60 turbocharged plans. Even so, it seems that they’re most likely related to projects that were either on thin ice previously or unlikely to happen once the CEO change happened. I would be surprised if any projects at Walt Disney World or anything other than Avatar at Disneyland is impacted at this time.

Emphasis on “at this time.” The same geopolitical and economic considerations that could be impacting the international projects could eventually have consequences for the domestic parks. Walt Disney World somehow has not yet been adversely affected by rising gas, airfare, and inflation, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And it’s also entirely possible that projects have been quietly killed before being revealed. After all, what’s announced thus far is only (roughly) the first half of what’s supposed to be a 10-year turbocharged plan.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of these layoffs impacting Walt Disney Imagineering and other California-based employees of Disney Experiences? Any projects you think have been axed that could’ve given rise to the layoffs? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!