Walt was the creative genius of the family, but he wasn't necessarily the business genius. Former
Disneyland president, Jack Lindquist, is quoted in several accounts as saying: “Everyone thinks Disney was a tremendous success right from day one. It was from a public standpoint, but not financially. For the first two-and-a-half years, we operated 34 weeks of the year in the red and 18 weeks in the black. Not a good business plan." If there is a financial genius in the early days, it was Roy Disney, who always echoed his brother's dreams in public but imposed the fiscal discipline in private. Without him, Disneyland would never have been built --and it certainly wouldn't have survived, and WDW would've never been completed. He is the one who channeled Walt's vision into profitability. After Roy's death, the company deteriorated quickly. The company was only keeping prices up with inflation, but it was falling apart.
By the 1980s, the company was in really bad shape.
Ticket prices had lagged seriously. The company was so timid about increasing prices that it wasn't generating enough cash to justify the land that Disneyland was built on. Corporate raiders set their sights on hostile takeovers, seeking to tear down the theme park and build tract housing. For a moment, the company was about to be broken up and sold off into pieces. The danger only passed when the Disney family brought (the oft hated, by fans) Michael Eisner into the company, who took a heavy hand in finally pricing Disney parks based on what guests were willing to pay. But it saved the company. It ensured that Comcast would not successfully take over in the 2000s. And now Disney is very strong and buying up other companies like ABC, Marvel, Lucasfilms, Fox (instead of being bought).