Thanks for this informative thread. I just got done reading Disneywar, a crazy book about Disney in the Eisner years, its an excellent book and I definitely recommend it. The weirdest thing I did not know about Disneyland not mentioned here is that before one can become an executive, they work in a Disney costume in a park interacting with people to understand the "Disney Magic".
Well, that's interesting. We had several friends who worked at Disneyland, and the ones who worked in costume were, for the most part, shall we say..."creative".