Walt Disney Parks & Resorts

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Type	Wholly owned subsidiary of a public corporation
Industry	Travel
Founded	1971; 46 years ago (1971)
Headquarters	Burbank, California, United States
Key people	Bob Chapek (Chairman)
Services	Theme parks Hotel lodging Cruises Timeshares Guided tours Travel packages Attraction design
Number of employees	130,000 (2015)
Parent	The Walt Disney Company
Divisions	Disneyland Resort
Subsidiaries	Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S., Inc. Euro Disney Investments, Inc. Disneyland International
Website	disneyparks.disney.go.com corporate

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, officially Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and informally known as Disney Parks, is one of The Walt Disney Company's four major business segments and a subsidiary. The company is responsible for the conception, building, and managing of its theme parks and vacation resorts, as well as a variety of family-oriented leisure enterprises. It was founded in 1971, following the opening of Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida.

Originally, the company was known as Walt Disney Outdoor Recreation Division and later as Walt Disney Attractions. The chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is Bob Chapek, formerly president of Disney Consumer Products. Chapek reports to Disney CEO Bob Iger. In 2016, the company's theme parks hosted over 140.4 million guests, making Disney Parks the world's most visited theme park company worldwide, ahead of the second-most visited rival Merlin Entertainments. It is by far Disney's largest business segment according to employee headcount, with approximately 130,000 of the company's 180,000 employees as of 2015.

In 1949, Ice Capades added a Disney segment to its performances. Costumes from those shows were used at the opening of Disneyland in 1955 with some performers hired away for Disney.

Originally, entry into the theme park and travel business was a side project of Walt Disney himself. As the Disneylandia project started to become a reality, Walt Disney Productions at Walt's request set up Disneyland, Inc. (DLI) in 1951 and agreed to a design deal in March 1953 with WED Enterprises (WED), Walt's personal corporation, which then included what would now be called Disney Imagineering. With the WED concept designs and prospectus for Disneylandia, Roy Disney in September 1953 met with TV networks in a deal for Disney-produced TV show and Disneyland investment. American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres (AB-PT) agreed to the Disneyland, Inc. investment. Joining AB-PT as Disneyland investors were Walt Disney Productions (WDP), Western Publishing and Walt Disney. Walt Disney Productions had the option to repurchase the Walt Disney, WED and Western Publishing shares (31%) by May 1, 1959, for $562,500.