The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (8 page)


        
Photographs and illustrations within are all the work of the author.
  In the course of researching this book I took thousands of photos and made dozens of illustrations.  Any photos or illustrations that might appear in this book are mine unless otherwise noted.

Wishing you a safe and joyful journey in 2014, dear Reader!

Leslie Jane Le Mon
, Los Angeles, September, 2013

              Twitter: 
https://twitter.com/leslemonauthor

              Email: 
[email protected]

              Website: 
www.leslielemonauthor.com

Disneyland:  The Origin and the Spirit

To all who come to this happy place, welcome.

Disneyland is your land.

Here age relives fond memories of the past,

and youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.

Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and

the hard facts that have created America,

with the hope that it will be

a source of joy and inspiration

to all the world.

Thank you.

Walter Elias Disney, July 17, 1955

Can you imagine living just down the street from
Disneyland
?  Thousands of people
do
live just down the street from
the happiest place on earth
, because “once upon a time” visionary storyteller
Walt Disney
decided (with input from
Stanford Research Institute
) to build
Disneyland
in a quiet, largely agricultural community in the northern reaches of
Orange County
.

In
July of 1955 the world’s first “theme park” opened in the bucolic town of
Anaheim
, California.  The creation of
Walt Disney
and his talented
Imagineers
,
Disneyland
was a success from the start, despite a cavalcade of
Opening Day
problems that included a power outage, insufficient food and beverages, and incidents of ladies’ high heels sinking into the fresh asphalt.  That the ladies visiting the park were wearing high heels tells us something about how casual our world has become in the last fifty-eight years, and how formal it was then.

Guests who miss that formality
attend
Dapper Days
twice each year (once in the fall, and once in the spring).  On
Dapper Days
, stylish suits and dresses and heels and hats are once again in evidence throughout
Disneyland
.  It’s a living time capsule that carries us back to days gone by.  (See the “Guest-O-Pedia” if you’d like more details about
Dapper Days
.)

An eight-year-old child who attended the opening in 1955,
who bounded merrily across the drawbridge into
Fantasyland
, will be 67 years old in 2014.  And in all likelihood, that “child” has returned to the park numerous times over the intervening years, probably with children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, in tow.  What changes that person has seen over the years!  And no one has ever been a bigger proponent of positive changes than
Walt
was–from the very beginning.

Like Mich
elangelo seeing a finished sculpture in a block of marble,
Disney
saw his magnificent theme park in a patchwork of rural California farm and orchard parcels, and willed
Disneyland
into being with the support of his creative associates and his brother
Roy Disney
.

Walt
loved
Disneyland
.  In later years he spent less and less time at his studio, more and more time at his park.  While the park was under construction he had an apartment built above the
Disneyland Fire Station
, and frequently stayed there, alone or with his wife, children, and grandchildren.  He loved to slide down the fire pole in the early morning, bounding out onto the
Main Street
modeled in part on his boyhood home town of
Marceline
,
Missouri
.

Walt
would drive the fire engine or milk truck up and down
Main Street
.  He would walk the park, greeting Guests and employees (called Cast Members, one of the many signs of
Walt
’s show business roots) and checking on the park’s condition.  No detail escaped his gaze. 
Disneyland Tour Guides
were instructed not to point him out to Guests, or in any way impede his travels through the park. 
Walt
was friendly, but he was an energetic man on a mission.

Disneyland
Cast Members, like his studio employees, called him
Walt
, at his request.  He was
Walt
, a regular guy, for all his visionary genius.  He was, like his creation
Mickey Mouse
, an ingenious American everyman, both commoner and king, walking the streets and lanes of his quintessential kingdom.  If he saw a piece of litter, he would pick it up, and all of his staffers, including his executive team, were to do the same.  No one was above helping to keep the beloved kingdom clean.  That practice continues to this day. 
Walt
was a regular guy–but he was in charge.  When encouraged to run for political office,
Walt
demurred, asking why he would want to run for office when he was “already the king of
Disneyland
”?

Walt
was an idea man, so conceiving of
Disneyland
had been a walk in the park (so to speak) compared to actually building and opening it. No one had ever created such an enterprise before; potential financial backers didn’t comprehend it, and weren’t sure the paying public would get it either.  Amusement park experts warned
Walt
that his business model and park model were hopelessly flawed.  People wouldn’t pay an admission fee in addition to separate attraction fees, they cautioned, and attendance figures would suffer if there was only one entrance-and-exit channel as planned.

Luckily
for everyone who’s ever visited
Disneyland
–or ever plans to visit–
Walt
never let naysayers discourage him when he was confident about his vision.  He listened to the objections, and then was all the more determined to make his dream a reality.

No money to build the park?  No
thing the
Disney
brothers couldn’t handle.
Walt
, who always grasped the benefits of media synergy (he was well ahead of his time in this and many other insights), decided to enlist backers in television and launch a TV program to promote the park.

Roy
was tasked with reaching out to prospective financial backers on the East Coast—TV networks.
Walt
knew investors would want to see what they were investing in, so he called talented artist
Herb Ryman
. In one whirling dervish of a weekend,
Walt
explained his vision of the park and
Ryman
(who felt sandbagged, and was initially reluctant to help) translated that dream into a detailed and engaging park illustration meant to convince the TV money-men that something truly new and profitable was on the table.  That historic pencil sketch is preserved in the
Disney archives
.

Walt
took
Ryman
’s finished sketch and a six-page, detailed park description written by
Bill Walsh
, and handed them off to
Roy
, who dashed to the East coast.  Even with the illustration and description, the networks passed, except for the
American Broadcasting Company
. 
ABC
sensed a hit, not only with the park, but with a
Disney
television program, and decided to invest to the tune of $500,000 and millions in credit.

The rest is history.
Walsh
, who penned the early park description, wrote and produced early
Disneyland
TV episodes and the popular
Mickey Mouse Club
show.  The
Disneyland
program launched in October of 1954 and was a huge hit, particularly the
Davy Crockett
programs and their catchy title ballad. 
Disney
broke ground on
Disneyland Park
in August 1954, and under the masterful direction of
Admiral Joe Fowler
, the park was ready on schedule in less than a year.  On July 17, 1955
Disneyland
threw open its gate on its televised, invitation-only
Opening Day
, to instant and long-lasting success.  And these days,
Disney
is the parent company of
ABC
.

Ryman
’s illustration, which helped to sell the project to
ABC
, is a treasured piece of
Disneyana
, preserved in many
Disneyland
books.  Until 2011 it was even etched onto the doors of the television cabinets in the
Disneyland Hotel
rooms. The uncanny resemblance between the original map and the final park is a testament to how detailed and complete
Walt
’s vision was from the start.

Walt
’s brother
Roy
is always (and quite rightly) credited with being the financial genius of the team, but
Walt
was no business slouch.  His inspired idea to film and broadcast the popular 1954
Disneyland
television series before the park opened was just one example of
Walt
’s business acumen.

He used
the program not only to entertain viewers, but also to create near-hysterical anticipation for the park’s opening, ensuring high turnouts (thousands of counterfeit tickets, even!) when
Disneyland
eventually opened.

ABC
’s investment and credit line also gave the
Disney
organization plenty of money for park construction and payroll,
and
a foundation from which to enlist additional partners and sponsors. 
Walt
was looking ahead.  It wasn’t enough to finance the park’s construction.  There had to be enough funding to cover ongoing daily operational costs once the park was completed, and to bankroll
Disneyland
’s continued growth and development.

* * *

As any
Disneyphile
knows, one of the incidents that inspired
Walt
to build a clean, friendly amusement park that would be fun for the entire family was his experience taking his young daughters to Southern California parks that were less than cleanly, and where there was nothing for adults to do but sit on a bench and eat peanuts while their children spun around on the kiddie rides.

One of th
ose parks—one of the nicer venues—was LA’s famed Griffith Park.  The
Disneyland Opera House
on
Main Street
now showcases in its foyer an ordinary, green-painted bench that is presented as the very bench on which
Walt
sat while his daughters
Diane
and
Sharon
spun around the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round.  (The merry-go-round has been a Griffith Park staple since 1937, and is still in operation today from 11am to 5pm; call (323) 665-3051 for details.)

Already extremely successful
when he decided to design and build a better amusement park, one at least as clean and lovely as the Tivoli Gardens he had seen and admired in Copenhagen, the creator of
Mickey Mouse
could draw upon not only traditional experts, but also formidable resources such as his Burbank studio and a large staff of technical and artistic geniuses.

Walt
’s team members were superlatively imaginative and committed to high-quality entertainment.  They shared Walt’s values of hard work, attention to detail, innovation, and audience-focus.  These were the talents who had crafted the early
Disney
cartoons, groundbreaking masterpieces both technically and artistically, and
Disney
’s animated features, beginning with
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
in 1937.