Honor Hunter on Jay

Honor Hunter responded to my note defending Jay Rasulo. Follow the link to the full note. Here's some excerpts...

"...as to the matter of Jay Rasulo, we are going to have to disagree on that one.

I know several execs and former execs or as you know I like to call them: Suits. These Suits really have become upset with Jay's global structure and I'm not just referring to his homoginizing of all the parks. I dislike this, but it is by no means the majority of my beef with Jay.

As for him championing the new makeover? Well, again, he had little to do with it and if it were up to him it wouldn't have been in the 800 milliion range, but more like 300 million range. Matt Ouimett was the one that started championing the need for it. He was met with a great deal of resistance by... you guessed it: Jay Rasulo. The Imagineers have had to fight very hard to get that money and Iger is more responsible than Jay. John Lasseter is the other person that gets kudos for presssing for a higher budget."

Like I said, I have tremendous respect for the Blue Sky Disney blog. Unlike Epcot Central, which I think unfairly and inaccurately attacks Disney and its management and paints a distorted and negative picture, Blue Sky Disney is generally a positive blog that focuses primarily on all the good things that are happening and is generally a force for good among Disney fans...except on this one topic of Jay. I think Honor Hunter is right that we will have to agree to disagree on this. What I would submit to Hunter is consider your sources. The kind of people who would leak you confidential information are the same kind of people who generally don't love management. So I think you are getting a one-sided view. If you think I am giving Jay too much credit, I think you are giving him too little...far too little. I see no evidence of your claims that Jay is on his way out the door. To the contrary, the Parks have been doing well and everyone seems really happy with the direction. And Jay deserves a lot of credit for that as do Bob and John no doubt about it. But to say that Jay has had nothing to with the changes at the Parks - or even that he is against them - is just plain wrong.