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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2025-03-28 15:47:02+00:00.

Getting back into writing posts! I am always looking for more weird hobby-related things to write about, so if you have any suggestions- please tell me about them! Hope you all enjoy reading this!

I don’t know much about theme parks, but I’ve watched a ton of Defunctland videos, so let’s do this!

Who is Walt Disney?

Wait- what am I doing? Everyone knows who Walt Disney is. Well…err…

Who is Walt Disney? Walt Disney – The relevant bits.

Before he created Disneyland, Walt Disney worked in animation. His career started in Kansas City, Missouri where he made cartoons for advertisements. He moved to Hollywood, California, in 1923, where he and his brother Roy created a studio and started making animated shorts. In 1928, Walt created Mickey Mouse with fellow animator Ub Iwerks, and in 1937, he created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The rest is history. He became known as an animation pioneer and legend.

But at the same time, Walt experienced a revelation while at the local park one day with his two daughters:

While Diane and her sister, Sharon, were whirling around on the carousel, Walt’s mind was elsewhere. He was dreaming of a place where children and their parents could enjoy a safe, clean, entertaining experience together; where parents wouldn’t be relegated to uncomfortable park benches, trying to make the time pass with a bag of peanuts. As Walt recalled, “The idea of Disneyland lay dormant for years, but it came along when I was taking my kids around to these kiddie parks. I’d take them out…every Saturday and Sunday. Those were some of the happiest days of my life. They were in love with their dad…And while they were on the merry-go-round riding around 40 times or something, I’d be sitting there trying to figure out what you could do.”

That idea did indeed lie dormant for years.

The troubled road to Disneyland

In 1939, he asked two of his animators to draw up plans for an amusement park. The task took them six weeks. In the end their design would have many of the features that would be in Disneyland years later: “including a carousel, a Main Street promenade, a train circling the park’s perimeter and a Snow White ride.”.

Then, err, Walt’s attention became devoted to a little event called World War 2. 90% of the output of his animation studio shifted to producing USA army propaganda. He was too busy to work on the theme park thing. In 1948, three years after the war ended, Disney wrote a letter to Dick Kelsey, one of his production designers, outlining his ideas for a theme park. He finally had the time and energy to devote himself to his new calling.

Creating the park would still take many years, as first of all, he had to find a place to build it. In 1952, he approached the city council of Burbank, California (the location of his animation studio) and asked if he could buy some land from them to build a theme park. They rejected him on the basis of not wanting the city to cultivate a “carny” atmosphere. But Walt, undeterred, started looking for other, bigger, better locations for his park.

He found it in Anaheim, where in May 1954 he purchased a 160 acres of land, consisting mainly of orange groves. Step one: check. Step two: find money to build the theme park.

Walt needed many millions to make his dream a reality. He sent his brother, Roy, to New York to take out a 9 million dollar loan, but it still wasn’t enough. So, he took money from his life insurance policy and sold vacation properties. Even this wasn’t enough. The ABC network came to his rescue, offering him 5 million dollars if he made a program for them about the creation of Disneyland. Walt accepted, realising that the program would let him advertise his park directly to consumers. It also let him introduce the four areas that would be open on opening day: Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.

In the end, the budget rose to over 17 million dollars. Most in the entertainment industry, and even his own brother, thought the plan was crazy and that the park would fail. It was dubbed “Walt’s Folly”.

However, Walt had a few tricks up his sleeve. He announced that he would charge people a dollar to enter Disneyland, and that it would have more than one entrance. Although these things sound mundane now, back in the 1950s they were revolutionary, as at the time, theme parks would let people enter for free, through a single entrance.

Production on Disneyland started in July 1954. Walt did another crazy thing: he pledged that the park would be open within a year. This rushed schedule would be responsible for many of the problems on opening day…but not all of them.

Opening Day. July 17, 1955

ABC transmitted a telecast for the opening of the park. The hosts were: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and…Ronald Reagan. It would have an audience of 70 million people. Even before the park opened, things went wrong. Walt Disney locked himself into his private apartment on main street. It didn’t take long for him to be freed, but it foreshadowed the chaos to come.

After being introduced by Reagan, Walt delivered his opening speech:

“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 which have created America … with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

As the park opened, one ginormous issue quickly became apparent.

There were too many damn people.

July 17 wasn’t the official opening day. It was meant to be an invitation-only press event, for journalists, celebrities, local dignitaries, corporate sponsors and other figures to visit the park before the real opening day, July 18.

Walt and park staff expected 20,000 people- about 28-35,000 showed up (figures vary- third party vs the accounts of Disney imagineers.) Many of these ‘extra guests’ bought counterfeit tickets and strolled through the park’s gates unchallenged. Some scaled a fence after someone set up a ladder, charging $5 per person. Others simply climbed over a wall into in a heavily wooded area- the background for Jungle Cruise.

Of course, this made the ticket system completely redundant:

“I was a Ticker Taker. Opening Day was a hectic day. The plan was to invite people at different hours so that we could spread out all of the arrivals. But it didn’t work out that way. Everyone wanted to come out early to see the stars.” Unfortunately, overcrowding wasn’t the only problem Walt faced, and it compounded many other issues.

Rides

Due to Walt rushing construction, many rides weren’t operational by opening day. For example, Peter Pan’s Flight kept breaking down, so Walt shuttered it and had the ride operator, 18-year-old Bob Penfield, run the King Arthur Carousel instead.

“Oh, everything broke down; you know new attractions,” Penfield said. “I was supposed to start on the Peter Pan attraction, but it wouldn’t run, so I went over to the carousel.”

In the end, only 20 rides were open on July 17.

Issues extended to ride management. There were so many people that operators were overwhelmed. At Autopia, children jumped the lines and grabbed cars. By far the worst example of th…

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