Be sure to check out Part 1 about the history of Walt Disney!
In a past episode, we learned about the life of Walt Disney. We started with his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, then learned about his early days as an animator. Next, he created Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willy, along with other short movies and characters until eventually creating his first full-length animated movie Snow White, which was a huge success. Disney Studios went on to make many more animated and live-action movies, but Walt wasn’t content to just make movies, he wanted to bring his fairytales to life! This is the story about the making of Walt’s next big dream, Disneyland!
So now back to our story about Walt and the making of Disneyland…
Before Walt was born his father was a carpenter for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition. Millions of people came from all over the world to visit the fair. Because Walt’s father was there, he may have told Walt about it. This may have been one of his first inspirations in building his own park.
After Disney Studios became famous and Walt was a parent, on Sundays, he liked to take his daughters to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. At Griffith Park, they bought treats and rode the merry-go-round. During one visit, while his daughters were riding the merry-go-round Walt thought to himself “wouldn’t it be fun to build an even bigger park like this — and one that kids AND adults could enjoy.”
Walt was a kid at heart and one of his hobbies was building model train cars. He became interested in larger train cars and liked to visit places with trains and ride the trains around. Eventually, Walt built a miniature train track in his own backyard. It had train cars which were about the size of wagons, and Walt and his friends rode the train cars around the backyard!
With the popularity of their movies, Disney Studios had a lot of extra money to try new things. Walt decided his next big project would be the theme park he had been dreaming about! In 1948 Walt sent a note to an employee at his studio with his plans for what he called the “Mickey Mouse Park.” The next step would be to design the park and decide where to build it. The first version of the park was very small, only about 8 acres, but as his designers visited other parks and gathered more ideas, the size of the park began to grow in size. Eventually, Walt and his team decided to buy 160 acres of land in Anaheim, California. At the time this land was mostly Orange Groves.
When Walt first shared his idea, many of the people around Walt discouraged him from creating the park. Even Walt’s brother, Roy, worried about how they would ever pay for all of his grand ideas. Roy and many others thought that if the park failed, it may hurt the rest of the studio. In some ways, we can’t blame them. It was a very big risk!
Walt’s park was going to cost more money than he had, so he needed to find investors. An investor is someone who would share their money to help build the park. Then when the park started making money, they would get paid back and some extra for letting him borrow their money. But sadly at first Walt couldn’t find enough investors. So his next idea was to create a TV show about what he was now calling “Disneylandia.”
The TV network, ABC, began showing his TV series with an agreement that they would be an investor in his park. To Walt, the idea of Disneyland was a real-life fantasy — like his favorite fairy tales brought to life. When people visited Disneyland they would become the characters in his movie — and it would feel like they were actually in a fantasy world.
In the summer of 1953, they began the construction of Disneyland. Because Walt loved trains so much, the front of Disneyland included a train station, with a train that visitors could ride around the park. Past the train station, visitors would walk down Main Street, U.S.A., a make-believe town that reminded Walt of his childhood in Marcelina, Missouri. Disneyland was designed in a wheel shape, where visitors entered through Main Street, U.S.A. then journey off into the “spokes” of the wheel into different lands — with names such as Fantasyland, Adventure Land, Tomorrow Land, and Frontier Land. Each land had a different theme and rides to match the theme.
At the center of Disneyland was a gigantic castle patterned after Sleeping Beauty’s castle — which interestingly was designed after the late 19th century Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany. This means if you ever Germany, you can tour a castle that looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. (Check out our episode about Neuschwanstein Castle)
The construction of Disneyland was completed in 1955. If you’ve ever visited Disneyland it looked very different then than it does now, which was over 50 years ago. When it opened there were only a few rides, such as Peter Pan, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, the Jungle Cruise, the carousel, and the Mark Twain Riverboat.
People from all over came to Disneyland on opening day. Walt was very excited himself, but also very nervous. Unfortunately, like many things in life, the opening day didn’t go as planned! It was actually quite a mess!
The first problem was how many visitors showed up. Disney only gave out 15,000 tickets, but someone figured out a way to make fake tickets and 30,000 visitors showed up!
On the way to the park, there was a huge traffic jam. It was also one of the hottest days of the year!
Another problem is the restaurants weren’t ready so people were hungry and thirsty, and many of the bathrooms didn’t work right. If that wasn’t enough, many of the rides broke down.
After opening day, many people thought Disneyland was going to be a complete failure. But after the first day, Walt and his team fixed what needed to be fixed, made changes that needed changing, and opened the park the next day! This is what you do when things don’t work out right. With any failure in life, you can say “That was a bummer! But failure is ok! Let’s stand up and try it again!”
When the first version of the park was done, Walt said “Disneyland will never be complete.” Unlike his movies, he loved that he could continually change the park and add to it, always making it better year by year. And he did just that.
Because Walt liked to be at the park, to supervise its operation, he had an apartment built in the Firestation on Main Street, U.S.A. In the mornings when he stayed there, he would slide down the firepole, then walk out onto the street and greet visitors. After staying in the fire station one night, he woke up the next morning to a child, a visitor to the park, climbing up the firepole! That was a surprise!
Over time, the park grew in popularity and Walt continued to have new ideas and add new rides and other attractions to the park. Later came the Dumbo ride and the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Later Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and Thunder Mountain railroad. The Imagineers at Disneyland are always coming up with new ways to make the park more exciting. At Disneyland, they call the engineers “Imagineers”, a combination of the words “imagination” and “engineer.”
By 1966 Walt still had many ideas for his Disneyland, but sadly he passed away, leaving it in the hands of his brother, Roy, and the “Imagineers.” When you visit Disneyland if you look in the upper story of the Firestation in Main Street, USA, you’ll see a lamp that always burns to honor Walt. To the parents: if you visit our Instagram page, you’ll see photos of the Fire station, the fire pole, and the burning lamp.
Not long after Walt’s death, Disneyworld was constructed in Orlando, Florida. Did you know there are a total of six Disney parks across the world? They are also in Paris, France, Shanghai China, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, Japan. And later California Adventure was added to Disneyland, California. When we visited recently we saw the construction of the new Star Wars park called Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, which should be ready in a few months.
Like Walt Disney, you can dream big and make your dreams a reality through practice and persistence. His ideas for Disneyland didn’t come to life in a day. First, he practiced drawing, then he became an animator, failing many times as he went along. But Walt always got back up, put his failures behind him, and continued on. At one time he lost his favorite cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; but he put that behind him and created an even more popular character, Mickey Mouse. If you were to create your own theme park what would it look like? What would it be called? What kind of rides would it have? Next time you have a pencil and paper in hand, draw your own theme park and share it with others. It’s amazing what incredible things can be accomplished that start with a dream.