During a seven-year span as leader of the Walt Disney Co.’s parks-and-resorts business, Jay Rasulo presided over the opening of just a single new theme park — yet he boosted sales from less than $6.5 billion when he arrived to nearly $11 billion this past fiscal year.

The results reflect Rasulo’s emphasis on growing by tweaking Disney’s existing theme parks rather than building new ones and by expanding into new businesses entirely, transforming Walt Disney Parks and Resorts from a theme-park operator into a “family vacation” company.

Rasulo’s tenure as Disney parks chairman ended this week as he traded jobs with the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Tom Staggs, in an executive shuffle designed by Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger. In a recent interview, the 53-year-old Rasulo looked back on his time as parks chief.

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Picture from Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

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