At the Disney shareholders meeting today (March 3), Roy Disney and Stanley Gold were welcomed by a warm and rapturous applause as they took the stand for their 15 minutes allotted to them by the board to put their views across. While Gold spoke for exactly the 15 minute time allowed, Roy Disney spoke for an additional few minutes, with applause heard every time a call for new management was made. Eisner responded by saying “Thank you Roy, thank you Stanley…that was a joy”, before calling Gold and Disney’s claims “fundamentally wrong”.

The floor was then opened for comments, which backed both sides, with one thing being made very clear: everyone in the room was very “emotional”.

After “clearing the air” relatively early, the rest of the meeting was packed with glitzy presentations from various Disney department execs, which put the predicted, but rather strained, “we’re not in trouble” spin on current events. Whether the ploy worked has yet to be seen, though the crowd seemed none too easy to impress.

In a general Q&A session at the close of the meeting, one shareholder demanded her stock perform better or else, she claimed, she would “have to marry again, and I don’t want to marry again”, while another in support of the Save Disney campaign urged Mr Eisner to “do the right thing” and step down.

An early report on the voting, taken from a poll before the meeting showed that most of the board up for re-election had relatively minor withheld votes, while Eisner’s count showed over a third of shares were not in his favor. The figures have yet to be officially counted, verified and announced. The meeting ended with a play out, appropriately or not, of Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf, Following The Leader and A Spoon Full Of Sugar (to help the medicine go down?).

A re-play will be provided through Wednesday March 10, 2004 at 5:00 p.m. PST.