Disneyland Resort
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Disneyland Resort

The Disneyland Resort is an entertainment resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division and is home to two theme parks (Disneyland and Disney California Adventure), three hotels, and the Downtown Disney shopping, dining, and entertainment district.

The resort was developed by Walt Disney in the 1950s. When it opened to guests on July 17, 1955, the property consisted of Disneyland, its 100-acre (40 ha) parking lot, and the Disneyland Hotel, owned and operated by Disney's business partner Jack Wrather.

After the success with the multi-park, multi-hotel business model at Walt Disney World in Florida, Disney acquired large parcels of land adjacent to Disneyland to apply the same business model in Anaheim. The company purchased the Disneyland Hotel from Wrather in 1988 and in 1995 purchased the Pan Pacific Hotel from the Tokyu Group to become today's Pixar Place Hotel. Land purchases continued through the 1990s and the company now owns 489 acres (198 ha) and has long-term lease rights to develop an additional 52 acres (21 ha). A major expansion came in 2001 when the property saw the addition of the Grand Californian Hotel, Disney California Adventure Park, and the Downtown Disney shopping, dining, and entertainment district.

Walt Disney's early concepts for an amusement park called for a "Mickey Mouse Park" located adjacent to the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank (presently the site of the West Coast headquarters of ABC). As new ideas emerged, Walt and his brother Roy realized that the Burbank location would be too small for the project, and hired a consultant from Stanford Research Institute to provide them with information on locations and economic feasibility. The consultant recommended a remote location in Anaheim, adjacent to the then-under-construction Santa Ana Freeway. The consultant correctly predicted that the location – covered by orange groves at the time – would become the population center of Southern California.

Since the location was far from Southern California population centers in the 1950s, Walt Disney wanted to build a hotel so that Disneyland visitors traveling long distances could stay overnight. However, the park had depleted his financial resources, so he negotiated a deal with Hollywood producer Jack Wrather in which he would build and operate a hotel called the Disneyland Hotel across the street from Disneyland.

In 1963, city planner James Rouse, in a commencement speech at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, called Disneyland "the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today."

Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, with a televised press preview event on ABC, and the inauguration drew nearly 30,000 guests on the first day. Despite the disastrous event, later dubbed "Black Sunday", during which several rides broke down, and other mishaps occurred, Disneyland became a huge success in its first year of operation. The hotel, which opened three months after the park, enjoyed similar success. Walt Disney wanted to build more facilities for Disneyland visitors to stay in Anaheim, but since his financial resources were drained, entrepreneurs established their own independent hotels in the area surrounding the park and hotel to capitalize on Disneyland's success.

To Walt Disney's dismay, the city of Anaheim was lax in restricting their construction, eager for the tax revenue generated by more hotels in the city. The area surrounding Disneyland became suffused with the kind of tacky atmosphere of colorful lights, flashy neon signs, and then-popular Googie architecture which he had wanted to avoid (and which years earlier had caused the city of Burbank to deny his initial request to build his project in Burbank). The Anaheim Convention Center was built across the street from Disneyland's original parking lot, and residences were constructed in the area as part of the city's growth in the late 20th century. Eventually, Disneyland was "boxed in", a factor which would later lead Walt Disney to acquire a significantly larger parcel of land for the construction of Walt Disney World. The Walt Disney Company gradually acquired the land west of the park, notably the Disneyland Hotel in 1988 following Jack Wrather's death in 1984, the Pan Pacific Hotel (known today as Pixar Place Hotel) in 1995, and several properties north of the Disneyland Hotel in the mid to late 1990s.[citation needed]

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