Disneyland, marketed as the happiest place on Earth, is an American theme park in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company. It opened on July 17, 1955, in ceremonies led by Walt Disney. Disneyland holds the distinction of being the only theme park to be designed, built, opened, and operated by Walt Disney.
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Disneyland, marketed as the happiest place on Earth, is an American theme park in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company. It opened on July 17, 1955, in ceremonies led by Walt Disney. Disneyland holds the distinction of being the only theme park to be designed, built, opened, and operated by Walt Disney.
Currently the park has been visited by more than 515 million guests since it opened, including presidents, royalty and other heads of state. In 1998, the theme park was re-branded Disneyland Park to distinguish it from the larger Disneyland Resort complex. In 2007, over 14,800,000 people visited the park making it the second most visited park in the world, behind the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.
Dedication
The dedication to all Disney Parks, begins with the phrase "To all who come to this happy place welcome..." with the exception of the Magic Kingdom park in Florida. The dedication there begins, "Walt Disney World is a tribute to the philosophy and life of Walter Elias Disney..."
Concept and construction
While many people had written letters to Walt Disney about visiting the Disney Studio Walt realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to the visiting fans. He then began to foster ideas of building a site near his Burbank studios for tourists to visit. His ideas then evolved to a small play park with a boat ride and other themed areas. Walt's initial concept, his "Mickey Mouse Park", started with an plot across Riverside Drive.
Walt started to visit other parks for inspiration and ideas, including Tivoli Gardens, Greenfield Village, Playland, Children's Fairyland, and Republica de los niños. He started his designers working on concepts, but these would grow into a project much larger than could be contained in eight acres.
Walt hired a consultant, Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute, to gauge the area's potential growth. With the report from Price, Disney acquired of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County.
Difficulties in obtaining funding prompted Disney to investigate new methods of fund raising. He decided to use television to get the ideas into people's homes, and so he created a show named Disneyland which was broadcast on the then fledgling ABC television network. In return, the network agreed to help finance the new park. For the first five years of its operation, Disneyland was owned by Disneyland, Inc., which was jointly owned by Walt Disney Productions and ABC. In 1960 Walt Disney Productions purchased ABC's share. In addition, many of the shops on Main Street, U.S.A. were owned and operated by other companies who rented space from Disney.
