Disney

Alternate meanings: Disney (disambiguation)

The Walt Disney Company

Type	Public (NYSE: DIS (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=DIS))
Slogan	N/A
Founded	California (1923)
Location	Burbank, California
Key people	George J. Mitchell, Chairman Michael D. Eisner, CEO Robert A. Iger, President/COO
Employees	112,000 (2003)
Products	See full product listing.
Web site	www.disney.com	edit

The Walt Disney Company (also known as Disney Enterprises, Inc., or simply "Disney") (NYSE:DIS (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=DIS)) is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded in 1923 by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Oliver Disney as an animation studio, it is today the number two media company in the Untied States. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Burbank, California. Disney had revenues of 22 billion USD in 2002, and it is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company was originally named Walt Disney Productions; the name was changed on February 6, 1986.

Its movie studios include Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, and Dimension Films. Disney also owns the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network (since 1996), The Disney Channel, and ESPN's family of cable television networks. Disney's music division includes Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records, Lyric Street Records, and Hollywood Records. The company operates the Disney Vacation Club resorts and ESPN Zone restaurants. It owns Hyperion Books, Disney Publishing Worldwide and the Walt Disney Cruise Lines.

Disney operates many resorts and theme parks at Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort Paris, and Tokyo Disney Resort. Hong Kong Disneyland is under construction and set to open in 2005. Disney uses its own terminology at its theme parks: park customers are called guests, Disney employees are called cast members, any area which can be reached or seen by a customer is onstage, and employees-only areas are backstage. Newly-hired cast members go through a course named Traditions in which the four "keys" of the theme parks - Safety, Courtesy, Efficiency, and Show - are taught, along with instructions such as "When pointing out something to a guest, always use two fingers or your entire hand, never a single finger."

The company also owns the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team and owned the Anaheim Angels baseball team, which was later sold to businessman Arturo Moreno. It also handles licensing of Disney products and sales through the Disney Store, Disney Publishing, and Disney Interactive.

Disney stamps, issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2004

Associations of librarians have objected to Disney's lobbying of the world's major legislative bodies into passing repeated retroactive copyright term extensions, calling it "manipulative" and "absurd". As well as the general limitation on the public domain that this implies, critics are quick to point out that Disney has made much of its fortune from stories that have passed out of copyright, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.

One of the company's most successful subsidiaries is its animation studio, Walt Disney Feature Animation, responsible for producing a number of succesful and influential traditionally animated features. After witnessing the box office failures of some of its recent animated films and the stellar successes of computer-animated films from Pixar, Disney has decided to shift its production from "traditional" hand-drawn animated films (which in recent years have incorporated much work done on computer) entirely to computer-animated films. The last traditionally-animated film produced by Disney was Home on the Range. Its first computer-animated film will be Chicken Little. Disney has fallen under much criticism for this change in direction, especially as fans see the strength of a movie as its plot and its characters and not as the technology used to make it. Additionally, by laying off all of its hand-drawn animation staff, Disney has released into the job market a large number of skilled artists who have a grudge against their former company and who could be very attractive to Disney's competitors. Disney is becoming a direct competitor to Pixar in a market dominated by the latter. Disney has failed to renew its contract with Pixar to release Pixar's films under the Disney name, an arrangement which had been extremely profitable to Disney and whose termination means that Pixar is now free to pair up with a competing studio.

Walt Disney Studios, the company's main film and television production facility in Burbank, California, is the only major Hollywood film studio that has never offered tours to the public. A parital tour of the Orlando, Florida feature animation satellite studio was available to attendees of Disney-MGM Studios until 2003.

Contents

1 Timeline

1.1 1923-1939
1.2 1940-1966
1.3 1967-1984
1.4 1985-1999
1.5 2000-present

2 Notable feature films under the Disney label

2.1 1930s
2.2 1940s
2.3 1950s
2.4 1960s
2.5 1970s
2.6 1980s
2.7 1990s
2.8 2000s