Disneyland Park

Disneyland Park is a theme park in Anaheim, California, United States. It is the first Disneyland. It was opened on July 17, 1955, by Walt Disney, the man who invented Mickey Mouse. It is one of the most popular theme parks in the world. Disneyland Park celebrated its diamond, or 60th, anniversary on July 17, 2015. In 2001, the area around the park expanded into a resort with three hotels, a shopping and dining area called Downtown Disney and a second theme park, Disney's California Adventure. The area is now called Disneyland Resort. The park offers its guests many ways of enjoying their visit. For instance, when visiting the park, guests can find "Hidden Mickeys" on each ride and all throughout the resort. "Hidden Mickeys" are shaped in the form of Mickey Mouse's head and ears, and displayed through various forms; such as a Hidden Mickey shaped cement, on the floor of the Daisy Level in the Mickey & Friends Parking Structure, or three speakers—in the shape of a circle—forming Mickey Mouse's head on the Space Mountain ride, in Tomorrowland. Hidden Mickeys provide guests an exciting way of discovering magic throughout the park.

Histoy

Walt Disney intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children. Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and construction began in 1954. In the summer of 1955, special invitations were sent out for the opening of Disneyland on July 17. Unfortunately, the pass was counterfeited and thousands of uninvited people were admitted into Disneyland on opening day. The park was not ready for the public: food and drink ran out, a women’s high-heel shoe got stuck in the wet asphalt of Main Street USA, and the Mark Twain Steamboat nearly capsized from too many passengers. Disneyland opens with 18 attractions, at a cost of $17.5 million. The five original lands are Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Main Street USA (the only entrance/exit for the park). Opening day ceremonies are overseen by Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and Robert Cummings. All three will return for Disneyland’s 35 in 1990, and Art Linkletter will be present for Disneyland’s 50th in 2005. Park crowds swell to 30,000 as more than double the invited number of guests enter as people climb fences and walls around the park to get in. Most attractions break down within the first few hours and many women lose the heels of their shoes (yes people dressed up for Disneyland back then) as the asphalt paving on Main Street USA had just been poured and was still soft. Disneyland is deemed a disaster in Anaheim, although the televised grand opening attracted the largest TV audience in history to that date – over 90 million viewers, which in 1955, was almost everyone that had the ability to view television. By September, Disneyland welcomes its 1,000,000th guest. Disneyland not only charged admission for attractions (which would later change to tickets), but there was also a general admission at the front gate, which kept out certain “undesirables.” Disneyland was also located off a major freeway, far from public transportation and the center of Los Angeles, again, limiting access to those able to afford automobiles. It clearly represented a shift in American entertainment from the city center to the surrounding suburbs.