Walt Disney Imagineering Explained – Theme Park Definition

Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) is the division that designs and builds Disney’s parks, from the master plan of a land down to the mechanism inside a single figure. Founded in 1952 as WED Enterprises to build Disneyland, it is unusual in the industry for combining show design, architecture, ride engineering and software under one roof — the same organisation that writes the story also builds the vehicle that tells it.

Its inventions define much of what other parks now take for granted: Audio-Animatronics, the Omnimover (a continuously moving car that rotates to point riders at each scene), the trackless ride system first used on Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, and the tubular steel coaster track that Arrow built for the Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1959 and that every steel coaster since has descended from. Where a Disney ride carries an outside manufacturer, WDI has usually still designed the show around it.