From everything I've read about Walt, though, he wanted to make money so that he could continue to explore and innovate and pursue his passions. The company came close to insolvency several times because, well, innovation is expensive and risky. Luckily, Walt was right more often than he was wrong and was a good judge of what would be popular with the masses. It was Roy's job to find the money to fund Walt's ambitions. It's a miracle Roy outlived Walt. It was a privately-held company while Walt was alive, so there wasn't the same kind of pressure to consistently increase the value of the company. It just turned out that Walt and Roy were really good at not only keeping the company going, but growing it along the way. Once it was no longer a family business and went public, it became all about creating things in the service of making money as opposed to the other way around.
I don't see that there was any way they could have avoided going public as Walt was the company and, once he was gone, the company started a downhill slide. The parks continued to make money, but by then Disneyland had been a success for over a decade and WDW was being built and would, in many ways, copy what had already been done out in Anaheim. The movies quickly began to lose money because they were not adapting to the changing culture and Walt wasn't there to help them evolve. EPCOT Center was amazing and successful, but expensive. Revenue from the films was no longer enough to shore up the foundation of the company. Love him or hate him, but Eisner (and Frank Wells) saved Disney. To do so, however, Disney had to become Disney®. There was no going back. I'm just glad I was able to experience WDW when the dreamers were still in charge, even if they were rapidly fragmenting and heading towards a brick wall. I just want the current company to actually care about what they're doing. It seems like fewer and fewer of those with any sort of power in the company do.
