Starting from scratch

Shanghai Disney Resort is more than a theme park for Andrew Bolstein.

He remembers when it was nothing more than a possibility. It was a blank sheet of paper with a team tasked with figuring out what a Disney resort could look like in China’s most populous city.

Today, Bolstein (MBA ’01) is the president and general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort, leading a business that employs more than 15,000 people. He has watched it grow from an idea into one of the most ambitious chapters of his career, navigating its opening, a global pandemic, new attractions and the challenges of building a Disney experience that feels at home in Shanghai.

And yet, when Bolstein looks back to how it all started, the path to Shanghai wasn’t nearly as obvious. It started more than 30 years ago in Orlando when a University of Florida student took a co-op at Walt Disney World.

Bolstein grew up in Orlando viewing Disney as an entertainment company without a need for a kid who loved math and science. When he discovered industrial engineering at UF, Bolstein found a great blend of engineering, business and leadership.

“I read some reports from previous UF students who did a co-op at Walt Disney World, and it opened my mind back in 1992,” Bolstein said. “I learned that Disney roles were more than exclusively service positions. You could work with math and science there, but I also wanted to understand how and why businesses run, not just be a technical expert.”

Bolstein accepted a job as an industrial engineer with Disney after his co-op ended. He then joined the team that opened Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 1998, a unique opportunity to work and more importantly learn from seasoned theme park leaders. With that drive to be more than a technical expert, Bolstein was offered a finance role that focused on revenue management and pricing for tickets and promotions for all of Walt Disney World.

The new role put him in the finance department working closely with sales and marketing. He was fascinated by that side of the business, and it connected him to Disney’s senior leaders that helped him plan the next steps of his career. All the conversations circled back to an MBA.

“I knew it was important to work first before pursuing a graduate degree,” Bolstein said. “I felt it would be more applicable if I had real-world experience and understood why I’m getting my MBA and what I wanted to apply it to.”

With experience under his belt, Bolstein enrolled in Warrington’s Weekend Part-Time MBA program. He loved the deep dives into every sector of a business, even when they were areas he never planned to work in. If his career continued to grow the way he planned, Bolstein knew he would need a broad understanding of every area of the business.

“It’s always with you,” Bolstein said of his MBA experience. “Once you learn, it’s embedded in your base toolbox and DNA. I loved learning about how to build teams, lead and understand different ways organizations are run and operated. I still use that every day—there’s no doubt.”

After graduating with his MBA, Bolstein’s career took off and Disney soon gave him an opportunity to use his operations background in a new way. When the company signed a deal to build Hong Kong Disneyland, Bolstein was asked to use his operations background to help plan the new resort. He said yes and was on a plane to Hong Kong days later.

Bolstein fell in love with the city and split his time between it and Disney’s California office, where the early development of Hong Kong Disneyland was taking place. He became a student of Hong Kong’s culture, ensuring that everything Disney planned fit seamlessly into a new market.

“I had this opportunity to be a part of designing a Disney resort from the ground up,” Bolstein said. “My job was to get input from attractions, merchandise, food and beverage, human resources, and finance. It was everything. Disney doesn’t build parks very often, so how could I say no to that opportunity?”

With the park designed and under construction, Bolstein was charged with a new challenge—operating it. He became the director of park operations and industrial engineering and spent four years working through the construction phase, preparing for the park’s opening and leading park operations.

After being involved in the opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Hong Kong Disneyland, Bolstein was building a reputation inside the company as an opener.

“You’re exposed to what that whole process looks like and I learned a lot,” Bolstein said. “I started to build a brand for myself as an opener for businesses, and Disney creates a lot of new businesses.”

The next one was Adventures by Disney, a guided group travel service that offers curated family vacations to destinations across the globe with the same storytelling and quality that define the Disney experience. It was a new business that leadership believed had potential, and the company wanted to build a team to scale it. Bolstein was named vice president of operations and development in 2007.

His international experience made him a great fit for the role, and his MBA experience gave him the background to stand out in it.

“You’re negotiating and building business relationships with vendors and service providers around the world,” Bolstein said. “It was another good application of my MBA. I was always in negotiation mode to run the business. I was focused on how to scale it, create our go-to-market plans and promote it.”

While Bolstein helped Adventures by Disney get off to a strong start from his California office, something was missing. He fell in love with Asia during his stint in Hong Kong and wanted to go back. In 2009, Disney was deep in negotiations to build the Shanghai Disney Resort, and it was time for someone with Bolstein’s expertise to dive into operations and development to design the park.

When the deal was signed in 2010, Bolstein officially became the vice president of operations in Shanghai. He was charged with operating all areas of the new resort—the park, hotels, retail, dining, entertainment, transportation and everything back of house. The resort opened in June 2016, and after it was open for 18 months, Bolstein saw an opening in Tokyo.

Tokyo Disney Resort is the oldest Disney resort in Asia and operates differently than others because Oriental Land Co. owns and operates it under license from Disney. Bolstein became the resort’s executive managing director and one of the few Disney operations leaders with experience at all three Asia resorts.

After one year in Tokyo, the pull to Shanghai returned. He moved back to Shanghai as senior vice president of operations in 2019 and was promoted to president and general manager in March 2025.

After being one of the first Disney employees in Shanghai, he led the resort through its 10th anniversary in June. From highlights like the resort’s opening and the recently added land themed to Zootopia to low points like navigating the COVID pandemic, Bolstein has watched the resort he played an integral part in building become a vital part of Shanghai’s economy.

“It’s very rare you get the opportunity to be somebody who spans a business from a blank sheet of paper to this point,” Bolstein said. “Very few get the chance to ride through the ups and downs, but every day, I’m still excited to do the work.”

For someone who has spent more than three decades helping build Disney businesses around the world, Bolstein has developed a genuine love for exploring the places in between.

He travels whenever he gets the chance, sometimes taking a train to a nearby city simply to try the food and see something new. He has become a theme park enthusiast beyond his work at Disney, visiting parks whenever his travels allow. He runs and cycles, goes to the movies and enjoys the time those hobbies give him to slow down.

And when he makes it back to Florida, some of his favorite traditions remain close to home. He tries to attend a Florida football game when he returns to Orlando each November for an industry conference.

Those moments away from work often give him a chance to return to it with a fresh perspective. And while he does the work, he’s often reminded of his MBA experience. After coming to Warrington as an industrial engineer with a strong technical background, Bolstein found the business principles and soft skills necessary to move into executive roles at Disney.

“We are constantly evaluating the business returns in everything we do,” Bolstein said. “From something like a new attraction to our ticket offerings—it’s a constant financial evaluation. My role is to ask the right questions and challenge the assumptions, and I learned through business school how to evaluate that. Every day I’m in a business meeting that I can relate back to my MBA experience.”

In more than 31 years at Disney, Bolstein has led teams and companies on different continents and played an integral role in creating some of the most recognizable theme parks in the world. It’s what keeps him showing up to work every day looking forward to the future.

“We always say we’re creating happiness,” Bolstein said. “What better job is there than that?”