The latest Disney Experiences cuts landed hardest on Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, the same month Disney lined up about $180 million to bring on Character.AI’s engineers.
The people who dream up Disney rides took the biggest hit in this week’s layoffs.
Disney cut between 100 and 200 jobs in its Disney Experiences division on Wednesday, Oct. 28, Deadline reported. Most of those cuts landed at Walt Disney Imagineering’s campus in Glendale, California. A source told Deadline the cuts were “mostly project-based,” since the division regularly reshuffles work between projects.
BlogMickey followed up Thursday with more detail. Its reporting says project priorities shifted, and some projects were pushed back in the near term. That left Disney with teams it no longer needed, or needed fewer people on.
Disney hasn’t put out a public statement on the layoffs.
Which Disney projects are affected by the layoffs?
Disney hasn’t named any, and BlogMickey says it couldn’t learn which ones were hit. It did say the cuts touched more than one project, at different stages, plus some reorganizing.
The good news for fans, per BlogMickey, is that the big announced projects are expected to stay on track. That includes Monstropolis phase one at Hollywood Studios and Tropical Americas at Animal Kingdom. It also covers Piston Peak National Park, Villains Land, the new Disney Cruise Line ships and the Tomorrowland makeover at Disneyland.
Imagineering works this way all the time. Teams grow as a project ramps up and shrink when it wraps or gets paused. That doesn’t make it any easier for the people walking out the door.
How much is Disney spending on Character.AI engineers?
This next bit is raising eyebrows online. Disney is hiring dozens of engineers from Character.AI, the chatbot startup that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on Oct. 12.
Court filings show 66 Character.AI employees accepted Disney offers, Business Insider and Forbes reported. Disney estimates about $60 million a year in pay for the group, plus a $30 million retention pool, for roughly $180 million over three years.
Disney is not buying the company. Instead, Disney is the lead bidder, at $20 million, for a non-exclusive license to some of the startup’s technology and patents. Forbes reports the license doesn’t cover user data, the brand or the chatbot app. A bankruptcy court is set to consider bidding procedures Friday, Oct. 30, with an auction planned for Nov. 23.
Character.AI’s former CEO, Karandeep Anand, became Disney’s chief technology officer on Oct. 2, Forbes reported.
If that company name sounds familiar, it should. In September 2025, Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter over Disney characters on its platform, Axios reported. The letter called the startup’s conduct “egregious.”
Is Disney cutting back on its parks?
The numbers say no. Disney Experiences brought in $36.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025, up 6%, according to Disney’s earnings release. Disney has also said it plans to spend about $60 billion on parks and cruises over roughly 10 years.
Some fans on X wondered whether the cuts are tied to Disney’s planned Abu Dhabi resort. No outlet we checked has made that link. Miral is paying to build and run that park, with Disney handling the creative side. Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro said in May that “the strategic logic of our Abu Dhabi plans is unchanged.”
How many Disney layoffs have there been in 2026?
This is at least the fourth round this year, according to Deadline:
April: about 1,000 positions.
July: several hundred, mostly at Pixar and National Geographic.
September: a couple hundred in tech and HR.
October: 100 to 200 in Disney Experiences, mostly Imagineering.
Disney also offered early retirement to some longtime directors and above earlier this year.
What happens next?
Watch the Character.AI auction calendar. Bids are due Nov. 20, with a sale hearing set for Nov. 24, according to the case schedule. If nobody tops Disney’s bid, its license deal moves ahead.
For the Imagineers who lost their jobs this week, the timing stings. They build the rides, and the company is spending big on code. Now we wait to see whether those announced lands open on time.
Article compiled and written by Kambrea Pratt (editor-in-chief), Derek Gibbs (beat editor) and the Pirates & Princesses newsroom. Pirates & Princesses is part of WebReef Media.
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Hat Tips:
Deadline (Oct. 28), layoff numbers, Glendale and prior 2026 rounds
BlogMickey (Oct. 29), project priorities and announced projects
Forbes (Oct. 19), Character.AI license, hires and Anand
Business Insider, Character.AI pay figures from court filings
Axios (Sept. 30, 2025), cease-and-desist letter
The National (May 7, 2026), D’Amaro Abu Dhabi quote
Disney Fanatic (Oct. 29), tied the layoffs to the AI hiring
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