Soon after Bob Iger returned to Disney in late 2022, experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro went to the chief executive’s office with a book of data on the businesses he led.
Theme parks and cruise ships were constrained only by their size. Guests were spending ever more during their visits. At home, the next generation of Disney fans was abandoning traditional media to spend their time with video games and virtual worlds.
Within about a year, Disney had committed to nearly doubling its investment in its parks and cruise ships to $60 billion over the next decade. It also invested $1.5 billion in “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.
The moves were a coup for D’Amaro. But they were topped on Tuesday, when he was named the next CEO of the storied 102-year-old entertainment company.
The plan he successfully pitched three years ago gives a strong indication of where he will take America’s best known entertainment brand when he officially takes over next month, according to people close to him.
D’Amaro, 54 years old, won the top job over Disney entertainment co-chairman Dana Walden , who was named president and chief creative officer. People inside and close to the company saw their horse race as a contest for the soul of Disney, between real world vs. on-screen entertainment.
Experiences have accounted for most of Disney’s profits since 2022, but movies and television shows create the stories and characters that draw people to visit parks, sail on cruise ships and buy toys.
D’Amaro will have to learn the businesses Walden oversees as Disney’s first CEO since the early 1980s with no experience in television or film. Few power players in Hollywood know him well. He is also the first person in the top job who has run one of the company’s individual theme parks and worked overseas.
The newly appointed CEO, according to people who have worked with him, possesses the charisma and confidence of Iger and the hard-nosed, profit-oriented finance focus of Bob Chapek , who was CEO from 2020 to 2022. He is a competitive athlete who paddle boarded when based in Florida and plays basketball with colleagues at corporate off-sites.
“I’ve seen him move from a guest in the park to A-list Hollywood talent to a cast member in a restaurant and he has the ability to make them all feel special,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier , who left Disney in 2020 after serving as president of its international parks. Disney employs about 231,000 people known as cast members, most of whom work at the parks.
A potential downside of his people skills, some who have worked with him said, is that D’Amaro likes to be liked and can avoid taking unpopular stands.
Disney board chairman James Gorman said in an emailed statement that D’Amaro’s decisiveness and clear thinking were among the traits that impressed the board when it selected him as CEO.
Under his leadership , Disney has been criticized by fans for price increases and policy changes that make its theme parks less affordable for middle-class families. Behind the scenes, D’Amaro looked for ways to get more money from wealthier visitors and maintain cheaper options for people willing to come on weekdays or wait in longer lines, people who worked with him said.
Video screens above trading posts the floor of the New York Stock Exchange display a congratulatory message to Disney parks chief Josh D’Amaro named as its next CEO, succeeding Bob Iger, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
“The best word for what Josh does is ‘optimization,’” said Jim MacPhee , who retired as chief operating officer of Walt Disney World in 2021. “He focuses on how to extract the most value.”
Disney shareholders will be looking for D’Amaro to generate value for them after five years in which it has significantly underperformed the broader market. Among the headwinds it is facing is a decline in foreign visitors to its U.S. theme parks.
He will also have to navigate a difficult political environment for the company, which has clashed with the Trump administration over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel , Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over LGBTQ rights , and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , an independent, over employee wages. Unlike Iger and Walden, both Democrats, D’Amaro is a registered independent whose recent political donations have been to Disney’s corporate PAC.
The Massachusetts native studied art at Skidmore College before concluding it wouldn’t set him up for career success. He transferred to Georgetown, where he got a degree in business. After six years at razor company Gillette, he took a business planning job at Disneyland in 1998.
He quickly developed an expertise in the pricing, marketing, and logistics that make theme parks work. He got the attention of senior executives in 2010 when he took over a moribund, money-losing travel division called Adventures by Disney. When he moved on three years later, it was turning a profit.
Colleagues credit his success at Adventures and future postings running the Animal Kingdom theme park, Disneyland, and Walt Disney World to his ability to energize cast members and to get to know guests. He spoke to Walt Disney World visitors in their homes as part of a project to find out what changes they wanted to see. One result of the effort: improved service at the resort’s hotels.
At Animal Kingdom, many cast members were skeptical of plans to add a land based on the Avatar movies to a park focused on wildlife. “Josh didn’t just recognize the value of the new land, but of rallying the team around the ‘why’ behind it,” said MacPhee. “He cared about commitment, not compliance.”
Colleagues say D’Amaro has tried to increase profits by charging more on the busiest days and for shorter “lightning lanes,” in lieu of across-the-board price hikes. While the most expensive one day ticket at Disneyland has soared to $224, plus as much as $449 for a Lightning Lane Premiere Pass, D’Amaro has kept the lowest entry price at $104 since 2019.
“Josh was always very mindful and sensitive to having entry level affordability, especially for young families,” said Catherine Powell , who previously oversaw Disney’s theme parks in the U.S. and Europe and is now CEO of AmaWaterways River Cruises.
D’Amaro often returns to what business decisions mean for Disney’s customers. “The best finance people will realize you’re doing something for the brand, you’re doing something for the families and that ultimately will come back to you,” he told Georgetown University’s student newspaper The Hoya last year.
His reluctance to take decisive stands has at times caused tension with colleagues, according to people familiar with the matter.
After Iger returned, the CEO toured Disneyland and told D’Amaro Tomorrowland looked out of date and was hurting the company’s reputation. Disney’s Imagineers started whipping up designs, but Disneyland executives worried estimated costs ranging from $500 million to $1.5 billion weren’t worth it, some of the people said.
D’Amaro went back and forth on the issue for years, spending millions of dollars to develop different ideas. On past costly parks projects like an overhaul of California Adventure, Disney executives have had to decide whether to take a risk when the economic case wasn’t clear.
Tomorrowland still hasn’t been updated and there is no plan to do so as part of the $60 billion parks investment.
Imagineers, who design every ship, theme park, and restaurant for the company, have given D’Amaro his most direct experience managing creative talent. In 2023, he brought back a respected veteran to run Walt Disney Imagineering and revive morale battered by layoffs and budget scrutiny.
That team is the busiest it has been in decades, building new attractions based on Monsters, Inc. and The Lion King, designing a new theme park in Abu Dhabi, and nearly doubling the size of the company’s cruise line.
D’Amaro is a frequent visitor to Epic Games’ headquarters in North Carolina, where developers are working on a Disney virtual world. He championed using Epic’s Unreal Engine to speed development across the company, including an update to a Millennium Falcon ride based on the upcoming “Mandalorian and Grogu” Star Wars film.
Besides Iger and producers including Marvel’s Kevin Feige , D’Amaro is one of Disney’s best known public faces. He maintains a popular account on Instagram, where he gives his 173,000 followers a more casual look behind the scenes than they are used to from Disney’s tightly controlled publicity machine. When D’Amaro unveiled a slew of plans for the parks at the company’s D23 fan convention in 2024, he got a rock star-sized reception.
“Within a year of being at Disneyland, he became this pseudo-celebrity people stop and ask for selfies,” said Gavin Doyle, who runs the fan site MickeyVisit.com.
Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com
