Disney Experiences

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Disney Experiences, commonly known as Disney Parks, is the theme parks, resorts, cruise, travel, and consumer products division of The Walt Disney Company. It is one of the company's three major business segments, alongside Disney Entertainment and ESPN. The division manages Disney's six theme park resort destinations — home to twelve theme parks — as well as its cruise ships, vacation ownership properties, guided travel businesses, and consumer products operations. Walt Disney Imagineering, which designs Disney's attractions, parks, resorts, and ships, is part of the division.

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History

The division dates its founding to April 1, 1971, exactly six months before Magic Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World in Florida, joining the original Disneyland Park in California, which had opened in 1955. For its first decade the parks were managed inside Walt Disney Productions without a separate division of their own.

That changed on June 3, 1980, when a reorganization created the Walt Disney Outdoor Recreation Division, with Dick Nunis as its president. On August 10, 1989, that division was incorporated as Walt Disney Attractions, Inc. Under the Attractions name the business oversaw the opening of Tokyo Disneyland's growth in Japan, Disneyland Paris in 1992, and Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998, as well as the launch of Disney Cruise Line, whose first ship, Disney Magic, entered service on July 30, 1998.

In the 2000s the division became known as Walt Disney Parks and Resorts — formally Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. from 2008. That era, covered in detail in the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts article, included the openings of Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005 and Shanghai Disneyland in 2016.

A major reorganization followed in March 2018, when Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media was merged into Parks and Resorts. The combined segment was first called Walt Disney Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products, then, from January 1, 2019, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. Bob Chapek, who had chaired Parks and Resorts, led the combined segment until he became chief executive of the whole company in 2020. Josh D'Amaro, previously president of Walt Disney World, succeeded him as chairman in May 2020.

On November 16, 2023, the division was renamed Disney Experiences, a shorter name adopted after chief executive Bob Iger reorganized the company into three segments. In September 2023 Disney announced plans to invest about $60 billion over approximately ten years across the division, expanding its domestic and international parks and increasing cruise line capacity. As of March 18, 2026, the division's chairman is Thomas Mazloum, who succeeded D'Amaro when D'Amaro became chief executive of The Walt Disney Company that same day; Mazloum had previously served as president of the Disneyland Resort.

What the division operates

Theme parks and resorts

Disney Experiences runs six resort destinations: the Disneyland Resort in California, Walt Disney World in Florida, Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, Disneyland Paris in France, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, and Shanghai Disney Resort in China. Together they contain twelve theme parks, including Disneyland Park, EPCOT, Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, and Shanghai Disneyland. A seventh destination, in Abu Dhabi, was announced in May 2025, to be funded and built by the Miral Group with creative design and operational oversight from Disney. The division also operates resort hotels, Disney Vacation Club vacation ownership properties, and standalone resorts without a theme park, notably Aulani, a Disney Resort & Spa at Ko Olina, Hawaii, which opened on August 29, 2011.

Cruise line and guided travel

Disney Cruise Line, created in the mid-1990s and operational from 1998, sails from ports in North America, Europe, and — with Disney Adventure, homeported in Singapore — Asia, and calls at Disney's private destinations in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point. Disney Signature Experiences groups the division's travel businesses beyond the parks, including Adventures by Disney, the guided group vacation business launched in 2005, whose Adventure Guides lead family itineraries across six continents.

Imagineering and consumer products

Walt Disney Imagineering — founded as the organization that designed Disneyland — researches and designs the division's parks, attractions, resorts, and ships, and works closely with the operating teams at each resort. Since the 2018 merger, the division has also included Disney Consumer Products, covering licensing, Disney stores and publishing, so that merchandise and books extend the same stories told in the parks and films.

References