Who doesn’t know about Disneyland?
Well, Disneyland mostly known for their mickey mouse or Disney princesses, yes
they’re. But, what exactly Disneyland is?
Disneyland
Park, originally Disneyland, is the first of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, opened on July 17, 1955. It is the
only theme park designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. It
was originally the only attraction on the property; its name was changed to
Disneyland Park to distinguish it from the expanding complex in the 1990s.
Walt Disney came up with the concept of
Disneyland after visiting various amusement parks with his daughters in the
1930s and 1940s. He initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent
to his studios in Burbank to
entertain fans who wished to visit; however, he soon realized that the proposed
site was too small. After hiring a consultant to help him determine an
appropriate site for his project, Walt bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near
Anaheim in 1953. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a
special televised press event on the ABC Television Network on July 17, 1955.
Since its opening, Disneyland has
undergone a number of expansions and major renovations, including the addition
of New Orleans Square in
1966, Bear Country (now Critter
Country) in 1972, and Mickey's Toontown in
1993. Opened in 2001, Disney California Adventure Park was built on the
site of Disneyland's original parking lot.
Disneyland has a larger cumulative
attendance than any other theme park in the world, with over 650 million guests
since it opened. In 2013, the park hosted approximately 16.2 million guests,
making it the third most visited park in the world that calendar year.
According to a March 2005 Disney Company report, 65,700 jobs are supported by
the Disneyland Resort, including about 20,000 direct Disney employees and 3,800
third-party employees (independent contractors or their
employees).
History Origins
Walt Disney with
Orange County officials
Walt Disney
showing Orange County officials plans for Disneyland's layout, December 1954.
The concept for
Disneyland began when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park in Los Angeles
with his daughters Diane and Sharon. While watching them ride the merry-go-round,
he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go
and have fun together, though his dream lay dormant for many years.He may have
also been influenced by his father's memories of the World's Columbian
Exposition of 1893 in Chicago (his father worked at the Exposition). The Midway
Plaisance there included a set of attractions representing various countries
from around the world and others representing various periods of man; it also
included many rides including the first Ferris wheel, a "sky" ride, a
passenger train that circled the perimeter, and a Wild West Show. Another
likely influence was Benton Harbor, Michigan's nationally famous House of
David's Eden Springs Park. Disney visited the park and ultimately bought one of
the older miniature trains originally used there; the colony had the largest
miniature railway setup in the world at the time.The earliest documented draft
of Disney's plans was sent as a memo to studio production designer Dick Kelsey
on August 31, 1948, where it was referred to as a "Mickey Mouse
Park", based on notes Walt made during his and Ward Kimball's trip to
Chicago Railroad Fair the same month, with a two-day stop in Henry Ford's
Museum and Greenfield Village, a place with attractions like a Main Street and
steamboat rides, which he had visited eight years earlier.
While people wrote
letters to Disney about visiting the Walt Disney Studios, he realized that a
functional movie studio had little to offer to visiting fans, and began to
foster ideas of building a site near the Burbank studios for tourists to visit.
His ideas evolved to a small play park with a boat ride and other themed areas.
The initial concept, the Mickey Mouse Park, started with an 8-acre (3.2 ha)
plot across Riverside Drive. He started to visit other parks for inspiration
and ideas, including Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Efteling in the Netherlands,
and Greenfield Village, Playland, and Children's Fairyland in the United
States; and (according to the film director Ken Annakin, in his autobiography
'So You want to be a film director?'), Bekonscot Model Village & Railway,
Beaconsfield, England.[citation needed] His designers began working on
concepts, though the project grew much larger than the land could hold.Disney
hired Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute to gauge the proper area
to locate the theme park based on the area's potential growth. Based on Price's
analysis (for which he would be recognized as a Disney Legend in 2003), Disney
acquired 160 acres (65 ha) of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim,
southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County.The Burbank site
originally considered by Disney is now home to Walt Disney Animation Studios
and ABC Studios.
Disneyland from the air in 1956.
Difficulties in
obtaining funding prompted Disney to investigate new methods of fundraising,
and he decided to create a show named Disneyland. It was broadcast on
then-fledgling ABC. In return, the network agreed to help finance the park. For
its first five years of operation, Disneyland was owned by Disneyland, Inc.,
which was jointly owned by Walt Disney Productions, Walt Disney, Western
Publishing and ABC.In addition, Disney rented out many of the shops on Main
Street, U.S.A. to outside companies. By 1960, Walt Disney Productions bought
out all other shares, a partnership which would eventually lead to the Walt
Disney Corporation's acquisition of ABC in the mid-1990s. In 1952, the proposed
project had been called Disneylandia, but Disney followed ABC's advice and changed
it to Disneyland two years later, when excavation of the site began.Construction
began on July 16, 1954 and cost $17 million to complete. The park was opened
one year and one day later. U.S. Route 101 (later Interstate 5) was under
construction at the same time just north of the site; in preparation for the
traffic Disneyland was expected to bring, two more lanes were added to the
freeway before the park was finished.
Opening day
Disneyland was
dedicated at an "International Press Preview" event held on Sunday,
July 17, 1955, which was only open to invited guests and the media. Although
28,000 people attended the event, only about half of those were actual
invitees, the rest having purchased counterfeit tickets.The following day, it
opened to the public, featuring twenty attractions. The Special Sunday events,
including the dedication, were televised nationwide and anchored by three of
Walt Disney's friends from Hollywood: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald
Reagan. ABC broadcast the event live, during which many guests tripped over the
television camera cables.In Frontierland, a camera caught Cummings kissing a
dancer. When Disney started to read the plaque for Tomorrowland, he read
partway then stopped when a technician off-camera said something to him, and
after realizing he was on-air, said, "I thought I got a signal",and
began the dedication from the start. At one point, while in Fantasyland,
Linkletter tried to give coverage to Cummings, who was on the pirate ship. He
was not ready, and tried to give the coverage back to Linkletter, who had lost
his microphone. Cummings then did a play-by-play of him trying to find it in front
of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
Adventureland
Adventureland is
designed to recreate the feel of an exotic tropical place in a far-off region
of the world. "To create a land that would make this dream reality",
said Walt Disney, "we pictured ourselves far from civilization, in the
remote jungles of Asia and Africa." Attractions include opening day's
Jungle Cruise, the "Temple of the Forbidden Eye" in Indiana Jones
Adventure, and Tarzan's Treehouse, which is a conversion of Swiss Family
Treehouse from the Walt Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson. Walt Disney's
Enchanted Tiki Room which is located at the entrance to Adventureland is the
first feature attraction to employ Audio-Animatronics, a computer
synchronization of sound and robotics.
New Orleans Square
New Orleans Square
is based on 19th-century New Orleans, opened on July 24, 1966. It is very
popular with Disneyland guests, as it is home to some of the park's most
popular attractions: Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, with
nighttime entertainment in Fantasmic!. This area is the home of the famous Club
33.
Frontierland
Frontierland
recreates the setting of pioneer days along the American frontier. According to
Walt Disney, "All of us have cause to be proud of our country's history,
shaped by the pioneering spirit of our forefathers. Our adventures are designed
to give you the feeling of having lived, even for a short while, during our
country's pioneer days." Frontierland is home to the Pinewood Indians band
of animatronic Native Americans, who live on the banks of the Rivers of
America. Entertainment and attractions include Big Thunder Mountain Railroad,
the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Sailing Ship Columbia, Pirate's Lair on Tom
Sawyer Island, and Frontierland Shootin' Exposition. Frontierland is also home
to the Golden Horseshoe Saloon, an Old West-style show palace, where the
comedic troupe "Billy Hill and the Hillbillies" entertains guests.
Critter Country
Critter Country
opened in 1972 as "Bear Country", and was renamed in 1988. Formerly
the area was home to Indian Village, where indigenous tribespeople demonstrated
their dances and other customs. Today, the main draw of the area is Splash
Mountain, a log-flume journey inspired by the Uncle Remus stories of Joel
Chandler Harris and the animated segments of Disney's Academy Award-winning
1946 film, Song of the South. In 2003, a dark ride called The Many Adventures
of Winnie the Pooh replaced the Country Bear Jamboree, which closed in 2001.
The attraction is still open in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.
Fantasyland
Fantasyland is the
area of Disneyland of which Walt Disney said, "What youngster has not
dreamed of flying with Peter Pan over moonlit London, or tumbling into Alice's
nonsensical Wonderland? In Fantasyland, these classic stories of everyone's
youth have become realities for youngsters – of all ages – to participate
in." Fantasyland was originally styled in a medieval European fairground
fashion, but its 1983 refurbishment turned it into a Bavarian village.
Attractions include several dark rides, the King Arthur Carousel, and various
family attractions. Fantasyland has the most fiber optics in the park; more
than half of them are in Peter Pan's Flight.Sleeping Beauty's Castle features a
walk-through story telling of Briar Rose's adventure as Sleeping Beauty. The
attraction opened in 1959, was redesigned in 1972, closed in 1992 for reasons
of security and the new installation of pneumatic ram firework shell mortars
for "Believe, There's Magic in the Stars", and reopened 2008 with new
renditions and methods of storytelling and the restored work of Eyvind Earle.
Mickey's Toontown
Mickey's Toontown
opened in 1993 and was partly inspired by the fictional Los Angeles suburb of
Toontown in the Touchstone Pictures' 1988 release Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Mickey's Toontown is based on a 1930s cartoon aesthetic and is home to Disney's
most popular cartoon characters. Toontown features two main attractions:
Gadget's Go Coaster and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. The "city" is
also home to cartoon character's houses such as the house of Mickey Mouse,
Minnie Mouse and Goofy, as well as Donald Duck's boat. The 3 ft (914 mm) gauge
Jolly Trolley can also be found in this area, though it closed as an attraction
in 2003 and is now present only for display purposes.
Tomorrowland
During the 1955
inauguration Walt Disney dedicated Tomorrowland with these words:
"Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are opening the
doors of the Space Age to achievements that will benefit our children and
generations to come. The Tomorrowland attractions have been designed to give
you an opportunity to participate in adventures that are a living blueprint of
our future."
Disneyland
producer Ward Kimball had rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and
Heinz Haber serve as technical consultants during the original design of
Tomorrowland.Initial attractions included Rocket to the Moon, Astro-Jets and
Autopia; later, the first incarnation of the Submarine Voyage was added. The
area underwent a major transformation in 1967 to become New Tomorrowland, and
then again in 1998 when its focus was changed to present a
"retro-future" theme reminiscent of the illustrations of Jules Verne.Current
attractions include Space Mountain, Innoventions, Captain EO Tribute, Autopia,
the Disneyland Monorail Tomorrowland Station, Astro Orbitor, and Buzz Lightyear
Astro Blasters. Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage opened on June 11, 2007,
resurrecting the original Submarine Voyage which closed in 1998. Star Tours was
closed in July 2010, and replaced with Star Tours–The Adventures Continue in
June 2011.
Future expansion
A 14-acre Star
Wars themed land is expected to be constructed at an unspecified date. Disney
CEO Bob Iger formally announced the expansion at the D23 Expo in August 2015.
The land—which will also be duplicated at Disney's Hollywood Studios—will
include two new attractions; a Millennium Falcon-inspired attraction that will
allow guests in control of a "customized secret mission and a second
attraction that places guests in "a climactic battle between the First Order
and the resistance".The land will reportedly be constructed north of
Frontierland, on the site of the present Big Thunder Ranch and backstage areas.An
opening date has not been announced.
Attendance
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