Jeanne Alexander
Human Resources Management
May 27, 2012
Professor Marietta Lewis
Describe the business or organization.
For over 80 years, Walt Disney has been synonymous with family entertainment and animation. Walt Disney was born December 5, 1901 and had been in the entertainment business since the early 1920’s as a director, producer, screenwriter, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. In 1923, he co-founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios with his brother Roy. Later the name was changed to The Walt Disney Company. In 1928, Walt and Ub Lwerks created Mickey Mouse in which Walt was the voice of Mickey, and Mickey Mouse became the icon for the company (Gondo, 2012). Walt Disney came up with the idea of an amusement park that would allow his employees to bring their families and spend time together. In July 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California. Later, he wanted to build another park to supplement Disneyland. He did not like the businesses that had been built around Disneyland and wanted control of a much larger parcel of land. He secretively scouted out areas in Florida because he did not want businesses to purchase any of the land around the area he wanted, so he created dummy corporations. He also did not want the landowners to know that Walt Disney was bidding on their land, thus increasing the purchase price. He had bought up most of the land that he wanted when word leaked out about the identity of the buyer. He acquired more than 27,000 acres of land in Orlando, Florida. In the middle of the creation of a new amusement park, Walt Disney passed away on December 15, 1966 of lung cancer, but his vision lives on. In 1971, the new theme park opened, and it was named Disney World. It would be even more elaborate than Disneyland. Walt Disney wanted Disney World to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, known as EPCOT, their own city. This was to be a Utopian city
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