A Hogwarts Express Adventure will include a Platform 9¾- themed preboarding experience as well as House competitions and chants, spell-casting challenges and other interactive activities aboard the train.
Originally called Treasure Island, it opened on April 8, 1974, three years after Walt Disney World first welcomed visitors. The theme was based on the 1950 Disney pirate adventure film "Treasure Island," with a wrecked ship visible on the shore. Its name was changed to Discovery Island in the late 1970s, and the 11.5-acre nature preserve-accessible by boat-operated until April 8, 1999.
The Disney Experiences segment just delivered record quarterly revenue of $10.006 billion, and D'Amaro built that machine. The segment generated $9.99 billion in full-year operating income for FY2025, making it the company's most profitable division. A CEO whose fingerprints are all over that result is not a liability.
Mickey Mouse is more than a simple animated character. He represents a particular emotion that most people experience before they have a chance to process what they've seen. From Mickey Mouse's two black dots for his ears, his round-shaped head, his big doe-like eyes, and his expressionless smile, it is clear that one can understand Mickey Mouse without being told anything about him.
A man fell asleep underneath an oak tree in Placerita Canyon, in what's now the Newhall area of Santa Clarita. As he slept, he dreamed of finding gold. When Francisco López awoke, he pulled up wild onions growing nearby and discovered gold clinging to their roots. The legend is real - or at least parts of it. We'll never know if López really dreamed of gold, but we know he found it and that it was the first recorded discovery of gold in the state.
Disneyland's Haunted Mansion will soon serve as an eerie new wedding venue for brooding brides looking for a morbid place dripping with tales of mourning, dread and murder to exchange their wedding vows and begin their happily ever after. Disneyland will begin offering weddings in July for the first time in front of the Haunted Mansion starting at $25,000 to $40,000, according to the official Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings and Honeymoons website.
Josh D'Amaro appears to be the frontrunner in the race to be Disney's next CEO, and the Mouse House's latest quarterly earnings showed why. Disney's experiences business, which D'Amaro oversees, is the backbone of a company that's being weighed down by the struggling pay-TV business and isn't yet lifted up by its streaming profits. And when that part of the business sneezes, the stock catches a cold.
D'Amaro, 54, has been serving as chairman of Disney's theme parks and experiences division, the unit that generates the majority of the company's operating income through its parks, cruises, and consumer products. He will succeed longtime CEO Bob Iger, who returned to the role in 2022 after previously leading Disney from 2005 to 2020. The move caps a multiyear succession process closely watched by Wall Street, Hollywood, and fans of the company around the world.