The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (4 page)

Mainly,
Guests come to
Disneyland
to do what
Walt
intended them to do:
to be happy
.  Everything at Guest-centric
Disneyland
has always been calibrated to bring joy and inspiration to its Guests.

* * *

On a recent trip to
Disneyland
I was walking on the narrow path between
Snow White’s Grotto
and the
Hub
when none other than
Mickey Mouse
himself passed me; he was headed toward the grotto, and I was headed toward the
Hub
. 
Mickey
waved to me.  I waved to him.  Then
Pluto
passed me, and then the entire
Disneyland Band
walked past me.  “Good morning,” I said to the band leader.  “Good morning,” he said with a smile.

Sure—just another day at
Disneyland
, where you cross paths with
Mickey
and
Minnie
and pirates and the
Disney princesses
just about anywhere you turn.  We’re all, temporarily, “neighbors” in this fantastic shared space.  The
Disneyland Band
leader doesn’t know me, but he greets me like a neighbor.  Everyone at
Disneyland
is on a nodding-and-smiling, neighborly footing at this world-famous theme park with the small-town feel.

How did I get to this point in my life’s journey, where it seems as normal as apple pie to run into
Mickey
on a morning stroll?  How did the woman who used to turn down invitations to visit
Disneyland
become a
Disneyland
author and historian?

When it comes to
Disneyland
, I was one-thousand percent a late bloomer.

I’d lived in Southern California for fourteen years, almost to the day, before I even set foot in
Disneyland Park
.  Focused on career and personal life, I didn’t give much thought to amusement parks, except the odd trip to Universal Studios or Knott’s Berry Farm.  My interests tended to be literature, history, management, and art; by and large I seemed to have outgrown the fun-park experience.

Then i
n March 2006 I attended my niece’s seventh birthday party at the
Disneyland Resort
.  I expected
Disneyland
to be an insanely crowded, disorganized, and ridiculously expensive kiddie park. 
Only
to avoid disappointing my niece did I attend the party.

T
he festivities began in
Disney California Adventure Park (DCA)
, of which I knew little, other than having heard that it was disappointingly small and dull in comparison to elder sibling
Disneyland
.

Contrary to what I’d heard,
I was impressed by the scope and artistry of
DCA
, particularly the
Hollywood Pictures Backlot
(now
Hollywood Land
) and the
Paradise Pier
areas where we focused our visit.  I hadn’t expected to enjoy the event, but we had a heck of a good time.

Later
that day we crossed the plaza and entered
Disneyland Park
– the original, the
magical
land that
Walt
had built.  It was already late in the day, but we had time to visit
Main Street, U.S.A.
and
Tomorrowland
and shop for souvenirs before we departed.  As brief as the visit had been, a chord had been struck in me.

My most vivid memory of that first visit was leaving the park at night. 
It had been a great day, but it wasn’t until we left that I got my first little taste of
magic
.

We exited
Main Street
and walked under one of the large trees near the main turnstiles.  The branches twinkled with dozens of tiny white lights, an enchanting yet understated touch that impressed me.

There was something archetypal about th
e image, the boughs spread above us ablaze with starry light.  It reminded one of vast night skies and at the same time it brought to mind ethereal and transcendent things: holiday lights, fireflies, and faeries.

Those lights gave me the
first sensation of tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Eventually
I would learn that the enchanting tree was one of the resort’s signatures, one of those subtle, delightful touches that resonate on poetic, artistic, and even spiritual frequencies.

That was the first of many trips to the
Disneyland Resort
.  Living in Los Angeles, only 30 miles and change from the parks, I was able to visit frequently.  Investment in an
Annual Passport
meant that, like a member of a country club, I could enjoy the park without admission fees any time I liked.

O
ver time I was able to explore and appreciate all aspects of the resort, not only
Disneyland
, but also
Disney California Adventure Park
(
DCA
), the
Disneyland Resort Hotels
, and
Downtown Disney
, the resort’s relatively new dining and shopping district.

* * *

Southern California—California in general—has always attracted dreamers.  Up and down the length of what would eventually become the state of California, tribes like the Chumash or Tongva found their hunting and fishing grounds overrun by wave after wave of dreamers.

Priests built a network of missions
to foster a sort of religious nirvana on earth.  Seekers of gold panned creeks, dug mine shafts, and seized land left and right to make their fortunes.  Citrus growers and then real estate developers mined fortunes from the land in their own diverse ways.

Once film
makers discovered that California was better suited for year-round filming than New York was, a whole new crop of dreamers descended on sunny So Cal.

Then a
eronautic innovators swarmed California’s deserts—especially the
Mojave
—to design and test their flying creations.

By the late 1940’s, after World War II, Southern California was bustling with energy and industry.  Automobile and aerospace plants
that had helped win the war continued to produce transporation for peacetime use, as California’s car culture exploded and air passenger travel became so standard that it was almost ho-hum.

Comfortable
middle-class suburbs spread out from city centers like Los Angeles and San Diego.  Everything seemed to be booming.  Everyone seemed to have money to burn, and they wanted places to burn it—especially as families.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that at one time or another, a visitor to Southern California could probably find any type of amusement their heart might desire and their imagination
could conjur.  Becasue So Cal has always attracted tourists as well as dreamers, and tourists dream of relaxing and being entertained.

Visitors to
California could drive through a redwood tree, discover the old world in Solvang, tour a Hollywood movie studio, visit a valley citrus grove, ride an ostrich in Pasadena, and glide along Abbot Kinney’s Venetian canals.  A tourist could do
anything
in So Cal, because it seemed that anything one dreamed of doing, someone else in So Cal had done first—not only done, but created a place for others to experience it too.

Dreamers kept building their dreams in Southern California.  Over the years they have taken on many forms.  What seems to one person like a ludicrous obsession might seem to another to be peerless entertainment.  You never knew what someone might build next door.  It might be a lion preserve, a whole safari land, or a reproduction of an old western town.  It might be an alligator farm, or a seaside amusement park.

By the late 1940’s, as the California suburbs expanded, and more and more Californians were out and about in their cars, and more and more tourists were coming to the Golden state,
Walt Disney
began dreaming a very special, very complicated, and very expensive dream—a dream that combined many dreams, if you will.

And the genius folks at the
Stanford Research Institute
told
Walt
just where to build his dream:  Thirty miles south of Los Angeles, in
Orange County
, in a quilt of orange and walnut groves and strawberry fields.  Though
Anaheim
was still very small, and very sleepy, it was about to become the population center of California, smack-dab near a convergence of freeway interchanges that would make it exceptionally convenient for locals and tourists in those restlessly prowling cars.

Anaheim
itself had been something of a dream, the utopian fantasy of Bavarian vintners and grape growers who settled
Anaheim
in the late 1850’s.  When the grapes were annihilated by insects thirty years later, the resilient residents regrouped and began growing citrus fruits and nuts. 
Anaheim
’s bucolic beauty attracted dreamers like the brilliant actress Helena Modjeska; in the late 1800’s she settled in
Anaheim
and built her own dream-like residential compound, Arden, in what is now Modjeska Canyon.

Orange County
has been the site of vast cattle ranches, vast citrus groves, and vast oil fields, of Modjeska’s Arden, and Reverend Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, of Friedrich Conrad’s interpretation of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, of seaside Fun and Joy Zones, of
Knott’s Berry Farm
among many, many,
many
other eclectic attractions large and small.

So
when
Walt Disney
built his dream—some would say it’s still among the greatest dreams ever conceived and realized—he built it in a territory already well known for its utopias and fantasies.

* * *

Today’s
Anaheim
and
Orange County
have negative reputations in some quarters.

Beyond tourist attractions like
Disneyland
and
Knott’s Berry Farm
, the
OC
is often portrayed as an enclave of conservative elitists with a great deal of wealth and very little taste on one hand, and as a lawless, crime-riddled wild west on the other.  Recent reality shows and prime time dramas have done nothing to rehabilitate the negative image and have, for the most part, increased it.

There’s a concept that the
OC
is a balmy resort for a suntanned, wealthy upper class with dazzling perma-grins who live in villas overlooking the sea, oppressing the
OC
’s middle-class, poor, and immigrant residents, often through police action.

Critics
of the
OC
decry both the criminal element that has given its communities nicknames like “Anacrime” and “Stabba Ana,” and the civic leaders that approve the use of dogs, pepper balls, tear gas, and rubber bullets to disperse protesting citizens.

In reality,
Anaheim
is an increasingly diverse, very complicated community.  A large middle-class Latino population has fought long and hard and won civil rights battles over many decades to pave the way for better integrated schools, businesses, and neighborhoods.  In 1946-1947, for example,
Mendez v. Westminster
was a landmark segregation case in which it was declared unconstitutional to send Mexican-American children to separate schools.

Anaheim
and the
OC
truly have come a long way.

However,
very real tensions still simmer just under the surface, periodically boiling over, as in the summer of 2012.  Two police-officer-related shootings in July 2012 led to protests outside
Anaheim
’s City Hall.  When a handful of troublemakers in a crowd of mostly peaceful protestors threw bottles at police, dogs were turned on the crowd.  Rubber bullets were fired.  Men and women were hit.  Women and children scattered.

Video clips of the incident went viral. 
Anaheim
residents continued to protest over the next few days, some peacefully, some venting their anger by breaking the windows of a local
Starbucks
, and lighting trash cans on fire.  The peaceful protesters and their message got lost in the melees.

And then the
chaos fizzled as suddenly as it had begun.  The story faded from the media.  Out of the spotlight, police leadership and citizen groups worked to build bridges and avoid future incidents.