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When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme . . . - JIMINY CRICKET
Even Walt Disney, the king of the dreamers, might have had a hard time imagining the enormity to which his dream has grown.
It was 25 years ago this week when Disney forever made Florida a part of it, throwing open the gates to a place called the Magic Kingdom and extending an open invitation to the world.
In doing so, as every Floridian knows, Disney almost singlehandedly spurred the evolution of the state's tourism industry. Walt Disney World is Central Florida's biggest employer, with more than 36,000 workers. The number of tourist attractions it spawned is immeasurable. And Disney's Magic Kingdom, with its memorable spire-tipped castle, is one of the best-known landmarks in the world.
"There is no question Walt Disney World was the biggest thing ever to hit Florida tourism," said Barry Kenney, chief operating officer of the Florida Tourist Industry Marketing Corp. "Until their arrival, Orlando was a sleepy town and Central Florida tourism was Cypress Gardens and Gatorland."
Yet the Magic Kingdom, in all its make-believe grandeur, is but a tiny grain in the pixie dust of profitable businesses that make up Walt Disney Co.
Based in Burbank, Calif., the company that began as a second-rate film studio founded by brothers Walt and Roy Disney in 1923 today is nothing less than a corporate Goliath.
Last year, Walt Disney Co. raked in some $12-billion in revenues - equivalent to about half the total sales of every retail business in the Tampa Bay area in a year. Its assets, spread around the globe, are worth an estimated $14.6-billion. It has 71,000 employees - or "cast members," as Disney calls them - about the same number as residents in the city of Largo.
And that's all before adding in Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which Disney purchased for $19-billion in February. The purchase of the company, which owns the ABC television network, seven daily newspapers and more than 100 periodicals, has doubled Disney's size for the second time in the 1990s.
Indeed, this proprietor of the...