Walt Disney is set to take its magic kingdom into cyberspace with the signing of a letter of intent to aquire a $300 million minority stake in Web design company Starwave.

The deal, which should be formalised by the end of this month, is intended to accelerate the Disney corporations plans to produce a family-oriented online service. Disney would only acquire one third of Starwave, but its executives would assume managerial control of the company, owned by Paul Allen.

To date, Disney?s cyberspace ventures have been limited to a Web site - disney.com - which carries corporate information. It wants to extend this to accommodate a complete games, music and entertainmetn online offering.