Walt Disney Imagineering
Walt Disney Imagineering (often shortened to Imagineering or WDI) is the research, design and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for creating and building Disney theme parks, resorts, cruise ships and other entertainment venues worldwide. Founded by Walt Disney on December 16, 1952, as a private company to design Disneyland Park, it was first called Walt Disney, Inc., then WED Enterprises, and took its present name in January 1986. Its headquarters are in Glendale, California. Its staff are known as Imagineers.
History
Walt Disney formed the company in 1952 after the board of the film studio declined to pursue his theme park idea. He funded and owned it personally, separate from Walt Disney Productions, and staffed it largely with artists and animators borrowed from the studio — among the first were Harriet Burns, Fred Joerger and Wathel Rogers — reasoning that film designers understood how to build convincing environments for an audience moving through them. The name WED Enterprises, adopted in 1953, came from Walt Disney's initials: Walter Elias Disney.
The initials WDI were abandoned for the new name partly to avoid confusion with the studio company. Under the name WED Enterprises, the organisation designed Disneyland, which opened in 1955, contributed to the 1964 New York World's Fair attractions, and began work on the Florida project that became Walt Disney World. Its design group had become so central to the studio's business that Walt Disney Productions bought the company outright on February 5, 1965, acquiring the WED name with it.
In January 1986 the division was renamed Walt Disney Imagineering, and in 1996 it absorbed the Disney Development Company, broadening its remit from park design to real-estate development across the resorts. The word "Imagineering" itself is a portmanteau of imagination and engineering; the term predates Disney, having been used by the aluminium company Alcoa in the 1940s, and Disney applied for a trademark in 1967 claiming first use in 1962.
What Imagineers do
Imagineering is organised as a collection of more than a hundred disciplines under one roof — a structure often summarised as roughly 140 different job titles, spanning concept artists, architects, engineers, writers, sculptors, painters, programmers, landscape designers, audio specialists and project managers. Projects typically move from concept and feasibility work, through detailed design and model-building, to construction oversight and installation, with Imagineering acting as both designer and client-side supervisor rather than as the building contractor.
The division's best-known technical contributions include Audio-Animatronics, the synchronised robotic figure technology developed for Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room and refined in figures such as Abraham Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair; the practice of forced perspective used on buildings from Sleeping Beauty Castle to Main Street; and the "weenie" principle — Walt Disney's own term for a large visual landmark, such as Cinderella Castle or Space Mountain, that draws guests through a park and keeps them oriented. Its Glendale campus includes the model shop and sculpting facilities where figures and rockwork are prototyped before being reproduced on site.
Scope
Since 1952, Imagineering has created the Disney parks on three continents — from Disneyland and EPCOT to the resorts in Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai — together with dozens of resort hotels, water parks, shopping and entertainment districts, sports complexes, the town of Celebration, Florida, and the ships of the Disney Cruise Line. Site teams based at the individual resorts handle expansions and refurbishments, while long-range concepts are developed in Glendale.