The Walt Disney Co. (DIS -0.21%) has been very good at maintaining an air of wonder around its businesses.

That's important when a large chunk of your operations involve entertaining people. Disney has cultivated that sense of magic around its movies and especially at its theme parks. It's not a tangible effect, more a subtle branding that creator Walt Disney cultivated and that current management has built back.

But just because we know more about Disney and the company has to disclose some things because it's a publicly traded company, that doesn't means all its secrets are well known. There are still a number of things you may not know about Walt Disney Co., and here are 12 of them.

1. Instead of blaming Yoko, it may be time to blame Walt for The Beatles' breakup. John Lennon signed the legal papers officially ending the band while on vacation at Disney's Polynesian Resort in Florida on Dec. 29, 1974, according to Travel & Leisure.

2. Planning to upload your vacation videos on Alphabet's YouTube? You might not be allowed to, because the company has a legal right to stop you from doing so.

"Disney theme parks are tremendously popular as places where guests create lasting memories with family and friends using media such as videos," a spokesperson for Disney Parks told Daily Finance. "In instances when uploaded video violates our intellectual-property rights we have options to protect it."

Disney has not done this one any broad level, but it could.

Disney's Magic Kingdom theme park. Source: Walt Disney Co.

3. When Disneyland, the company's first theme park was built in the early 1950s for a 1955 opening, founder Walt Disney wanted to be on-scene as much as possible, To do that, according to Empire Online, he built an apartment for his family over the faux Fire Department on Main Street. "A lamp in the window signaled to staff that he was in residence, and this is now always alight in his honor," reported the website.

4. Disney paid George Lucas $4 billion for the rights to the Star Wars franchise nd the rest of LucasFilms. In addition to having that purchase pay off at the box office with the massive success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it also paid off in terms of generating social-media buzz. The term "Star Wars" made Google's list of most-searched terms in 2015. In December alone it had more than 155 million searches, less than the more 439 million Adele generated in November, but more than the Kansas City Royals got (144 million) for winning the World Series.

5. Founder Walt Disney changed his name from his French family name D'Isigny. 

6. In 2014, the most recent full year Disney has reported on, Disney's Hollywood Studios was the least visited of the company's four Orlando theme parks. It pulled in slightly fewer visitors than Disney's Animal Kingdom. That, however, should change in the next few years as the park adds its biggest single-themed expansion ever, when the company opens the Star Wars land it has already announced. 

7. When Disney let football announcer Al Michaels out of his contract so he could go to NBC as the lead voice on Sunday Night Football, he was traded in part for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a predecessor to Mickey Mouse. The character, whose rights were owned by Universal, was the the star of 26 cartoons beginning in 1927, according to ESPN.

"As the forerunner to Mickey Mouse and an important part of Walt Disney's creative legacy, the fun and mischievous Oswald is back where he belongs, at the home of his creator and among the
stable of beloved characters created by Walt himself," Disney President Robert Iger said after the deal was made, the sports network reported.

8. Mickey Mouse was not always named that, according to Time. The famous character began life as "Mortimer Mouse," but Walt Disney's wife, Lillian, didn't think that name was marketable and persuaded her husband to change it. The Mortimer character was later brought back as "Mickey's Brooklyn-accented rival, vying for Minnie Mouse's affection," the news magazine reported.

9. Walt Disney was involved with the creation of the school that is now known as CalArts and left 25% of his estate to the institution.

10. The company started its licensing business in 1929 with a writing tablet carrying the image of Mickey Mouse.

11. Before his death, Walt Disney had been working on developing a ski resort. Had it happened, it would have been near California's Sequoia National Park. Upon his death, however, the company scrapped the plan, believing it could only work on one major project at a time and electing to go with Disney World as its next effort.

12. When Walt Disney World first opened in 1971, a single-day ticket cost $3.50. Now, a single-day ticket to the Magic Kingdom park starts at $105.