I think it’s an interesting topic for here and what I’m about to say isn’t meant to be dismissive, but the reality is that practically nobody outside of a fan forum cares about the amount of time it takes to build an attraction except when there is a noticeable impact when parks turn into construction wall mazes (looking at you Epcot). The cash flow argument is not incorrect (describing it as artificially inflating quarters is a stretch though), but a few things that cash flow frankly is equal to in the “why are things so slow” pecking order are:
1) Genuine resource bottlenecks in WDI - they generally don’t substantially staff up and down as projects come and go, and a lot of the individual work is extremely specialized because practically nothing is off the shelf. For example, trying to open four trackless rides at roughly the same time (Rise x2, MMRR, and the BatB ride in Tokyo) caused…… issues. $1M per year doesn’t really buy you a lot of experienced full time people like project managers, art directors etc. - probably about 6 max.
2) Marketing - They have legitimate reasons (aka their targets) for advocating to space out new attractions.
3) Global investment - Disney is aggressively investing in its parks……. in countries not named the United States. The same thing happened from 2013-2016 when people got antsy and said nothing was being built at WDW / Disneyland Park. They’re building things that most of us will never ride because those ideas were approved on the back of domestic parks getting a ton of new rides. Disney has 10 parks to sustain plus two in Tokyo that use WDI resources, Universal has 6 and none that come close to touching the scale of a DL Park or Magic Kingdom. Same with the number of hotel rooms.
4) Mundane structural differences between Disney and Universal - Laundry facilities are not cheap. Roadwork is not cheap. Additional parking garages are not cheap. Maintaining or replacing bespoke technology platforms is not cheap (WDW cannot just buy Galaxy to run its ticketing). One of them has to build those and the other generally doesn’t, or gets funding from Orange County (thanks taxpayers!) when they do. All of this stuff soaks up capital dollars that could be going to building rides faster.
5) Managing depreciation - I’m not an accountant, but this does actually matter a bit.
Not planning ahead to have this Frozen land open by the 2024 Olympics is an epic fail.
Marketing would not view it this way - in 2024 the city will have scores of international visitors who will go to Disneyland irrespective of whether a new land is open and domestic visitation is probably hit or miss since everyone will be focused on the Olympics or travel will be more expensive that summer. Frozen can’t compete against a once in a lifetime sporting event, so you would absolutely tee that up for 2025 to reel everyone back in the next year.