Non-Disney Park Ownership For WDW & DLR

[Raineman]

From the information I've gleamed on this forum, most if not all of the foreign Disney parks are owned by a private corporation/entity, and Disney licenses their IPs/logos/etc to be used in those parks. Also, from what I have heard, in some ways, some of the foreign Disney parks are better than WDW and DLR. My question is: if Disney were to sell WDW and DLR to other ownership, would this lead to improved parks, or would there be a risk of maybe sliding the other way, and make the parks worse? IMO, it's almost sacrilegious to even think of someone other than Disney owning either Walt's original dream in California, or the Florida project he never lived to see realized-but, having said that, if it would be better in the long run, would it be a viable option? I realize that WDW and DLR are cash cows that Disney probably do not want to part with, but if it became an option for them, would it be good or bad for the millions of guests that visit every year?

 

[donsullivan]

From the information I've gleamed on this forum, most if not all of the foreign Disney parks are owned by a private corporation/entity, and Disney licenses their IPs/logos/etc to be used in those parks. Also, from what I have heard, in some ways, some of the foreign Disney parks are better than WDW and DLR. My question is: if Disney were to sell WDW and DLR to other ownership, would this lead to improved parks, or would there be a risk of maybe sliding the other way, and make the parks worse? IMO, it's almost sacrilegious to even think of someone other than Disney owning either Walt's original dream in California, or the Florida project he never lived to see realized-but, having said that, if it would be better in the long run, would it be a viable option? I realize that WDW and DLR are cash cows that Disney probably do not want to part with, but if it became an option for them, would it be good or bad for the millions of guests that visit every year?

There is a lot of confusion about ownership of the international parks and it's different for different resorts.
- Tokyo Disney Resort is the only one for which Disney has no direct ownership stake at all; that property is owned and operated by the Oriental Land Company (OLC) under license from Disney. They pay licensing fees, management fees and design fees to Imagineering fees for the development and creation of attractions.
- Most other countries do not allow a US company to own the property and the parks directly. As a result, they create corporations in that country and sometimes that corporation is publicly traded (DLP) and sometimes it's a corporation jointly owned by Disney Parks & Resorts and the government of the country the park is built in such as Honk Kong and Shanghai. In those cases Disney is a major shareholder and owner of the park and it's operations.

Attempting to sell off the parks at WDW for example is extremely complicated due to the governmental entity (RCID) that controls the land. There are a lot of folks in local government here in central FL that would jump at any chance they could to revoke the special status Disney has on that property and selling off the parks would be seen (by some) as an opportunity to nullify that charter. Removing that RCID land control would dramatically change the whole operation and development of WDW as everything they do would then be subject to local ordinance, public hearing and approval etc.. There is no way they could have accomplished what they have done so far without that governmental control and taking that away would have a very negative impact on future development.

There were rumors that Disney was evaluating this a couple of years ago but in the end decided against it.