Yeah, I think Disney being in charge is a really strong indicator of success here. They literally engineer every inch of their parks to ensure maximum enjoyment (like, to brainwash-y levels), so you can be sure the same painstaking efforts go into their movies as well.
And having just returned last night from a Disneyland trip, I will say once again that I LOVE them for that.
And I think with Disney in charge, you no longer have a situation of one producer making all of the decisions surrounded by yes men, which is another reason the prequels were so weak. George Lucas was more concerned with doing what he wanted rather than what fans wanted.
Yeah, that has been a huge problem. And even where people did speak up, Lucas would often still overrule them and make bad decisions. And while I recognize that the person in charge sometimes does have to overrule dissenting voices and make unpopular decisions at times, Lucas seems to have frequently done so to the detriment of the overall product. Case in point, I remember getting a pretty bad taste in my mouth after listening to the director/producer commentaries for the prequels. I remember a couple of different times, there was dialog that basically went along the lines of: [slightly exaggerated but not far from the truth parody for effect]
-Producer #1: I remember having a bit of a disagreement about this particular scene. We had an earlier scene that had a great character-building moment that really provided a lot of context and character development that gave this scene a much deeper meaning and significance, but that got cut.
-Producer #2: Yeah, it really makes this scene seem random and out of place without that earlier scene. I was kinda bummed about that too.
-Lucas: Yeah, I decided to cut that in place of this other great CGI shot that adds nothing to the story or characters, but it looks friggin' cool! And, hey, I'm George friggin' Lucas, so I'll do whatever I want.
[/slightly exaggerated but not far from the truth parody for effect]
Again, I realize it's his creative vision. But he just doesn't see that, while he had a framework for a really cool story, the execution in storytelling suffered greatly at his hands.