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Disneyland
Disneyland is a theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, and opened on July 17, 1955.
Disney 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 for the ideas that he had. After hiring the Stanford Research Institute to perform a feasibility study determining an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near Anaheim in 1953. The park was designed by a creative team hand-picked by Walt from internal and outside talent. They founded WED Enterprises, the precursor to today's Walt Disney Imagineering. 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 many expansions and major renovations, including the addition of New Orleans Square in 1966, Bear Country in 1972 (known today as Bayou Country), Mickey's Toontown in 1993, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in 2019. Additionally, Disney California Adventure Park opened in 2001 on the site of Disneyland's original parking lot.
Disneyland has had a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with 757 million visits since it opened (as of December 2021). In 2024, the park saw 17.33 million visitors, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind only Magic Kingdom, the very park it inspired.
To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.
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 this idea lay dormant for many years. 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 Disney made during his and Ward Kimball's trip to the 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.
When people wrote letters to Disney to inquire about visiting the Walt Disney Studios, he realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to visiting fans, and began to foster various ideas about 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 park concept, the Mickey Mouse Park, was originally planned for a sixteen-acre (6.5 ha) plot to the south, across Riverside Drive from the studio. Besides Greenfield Village and the Chicago Railroad Fair, Disney was also inspired by Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Knott's Berry Farm, Colonial Williamsburg, the Century of Progress in Chicago, and the New York's World Fair of 1939.
His designers began working on concepts, though the project grew much larger than the land could hold. Disney hired C. V. Wood and Harrison Price of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to identify the proper area in which to position the planned theme park based on future population 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 small Burbank site originally considered by Disney is now home to Walt Disney Animation Studios and ABC Studios.
Roy O. Disney hired Wood away from SRI as executive vice president to undertake the task of actually building Disneyland. When Walt told Wood that he wanted a paddle steamer in Disneyland, it was Wood who introduced Walt to his good friend Joe Fowler, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. Fowler was then hired by Walt to "make engineering realities out of" all of Walt's ideas, not just a paddle wheeler—in other words, Fowler became the actual "construction boss" of Disneyland, charged with turning Disneyland from plans into reality in one year.
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Disneyland
Disneyland is a theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, and opened on July 17, 1955.
Disney 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 for the ideas that he had. After hiring the Stanford Research Institute to perform a feasibility study determining an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near Anaheim in 1953. The park was designed by a creative team hand-picked by Walt from internal and outside talent. They founded WED Enterprises, the precursor to today's Walt Disney Imagineering. 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 many expansions and major renovations, including the addition of New Orleans Square in 1966, Bear Country in 1972 (known today as Bayou Country), Mickey's Toontown in 1993, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in 2019. Additionally, Disney California Adventure Park opened in 2001 on the site of Disneyland's original parking lot.
Disneyland has had a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with 757 million visits since it opened (as of December 2021). In 2024, the park saw 17.33 million visitors, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind only Magic Kingdom, the very park it inspired.
To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.
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 this idea lay dormant for many years. 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 Disney made during his and Ward Kimball's trip to the 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.
When people wrote letters to Disney to inquire about visiting the Walt Disney Studios, he realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to visiting fans, and began to foster various ideas about 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 park concept, the Mickey Mouse Park, was originally planned for a sixteen-acre (6.5 ha) plot to the south, across Riverside Drive from the studio. Besides Greenfield Village and the Chicago Railroad Fair, Disney was also inspired by Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Knott's Berry Farm, Colonial Williamsburg, the Century of Progress in Chicago, and the New York's World Fair of 1939.
His designers began working on concepts, though the project grew much larger than the land could hold. Disney hired C. V. Wood and Harrison Price of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to identify the proper area in which to position the planned theme park based on future population 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 small Burbank site originally considered by Disney is now home to Walt Disney Animation Studios and ABC Studios.
Roy O. Disney hired Wood away from SRI as executive vice president to undertake the task of actually building Disneyland. When Walt told Wood that he wanted a paddle steamer in Disneyland, it was Wood who introduced Walt to his good friend Joe Fowler, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. Fowler was then hired by Walt to "make engineering realities out of" all of Walt's ideas, not just a paddle wheeler—in other words, Fowler became the actual "construction boss" of Disneyland, charged with turning Disneyland from plans into reality in one year.