The history of Disneyland begins on July 17, 1955 and a 90-minute television program on ABC. Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States, was one of the three hosts of the program that introduced America to its most popular and influential theme park (an amusement park whose structure and features are based on a specific theme).
But the history of Disneyland begins before July 1955. Two years earlier, in July 1953, Walt Disney asked Harrison “Buzz” Price to consider a suitable location for a new type of theme park with a single entrance, hidden from nearby streets, featuring special amusement and thrill rides that It creates a different experience. Analyzing 40 years of population data, Price concluded that the best location would be a 160-acre site in the Los Angeles metro area, with interstate access, in Anaheim, California. Due to Price’s success locating Disneyland, Disney later hired Price to locate Walt Disney World, which Price found to be the best location southwest of Orlando, Florida. Harrison Price died in 2010, but during his lifetime he conducted research that led to the creation and development of Universal’s theme parks, Six Flags, Busch Gardens, and SeaWorld.
Walt’s brother and business partner, Roy Disney, C.V. Wood hired Price to build a park. Wood was an often flamboyant showman who could attract a lot of financial support and pumped $18 million into Disneyland, but Walt fired him soon after the park opened. But Wood went on to build Six Flags over Texas, and in the years following the opening of Disneyland, helped fuel a theme park boom across America.
Disney’s decision to build its park with amusement machines led to the development of a huge new industry. Arrow Dynamics, an American company in the amusement park industry, experienced a major failure in building many of the original game machines at Fantasyland Park. But in 1959, Arrow Matterhorn Bobsleds built the world’s first steel tube roller coaster, an innovation that marked a turning point in the development of modern roller coasters around the world.
In 1963, Walt Disney unveiled The Enchanted Tiki Room, the first use of sound animatronics in a theme park. The expansion of animation in films and animated mechanical characters became one of the main elements of Disneyland and other theme parks, and Disney introduced the first animated human character in “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” introduced at the 1964 New York exhibition. (The attraction was later moved to Disneyland.) Also at the New York Exposition, Disney introduced Small World, which after the Exposition was moved to Disneyland, where it is today.
Walt Disney died in December 1966, before completing the Pirates of the Caribbean, in 1967, and the Haunted Mansion, in 1969, two animatronic attractions that became icons for Walt Disney theme parks, but the multibillion-dollar Pirates of the Caribbean franchise And its success ensured Disneyland’s popularity even after Walt’s death.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Disney expanded by building new theme parks on the East Coast, at Walt Disney World Resort, and internationally with Tokyo Disneyland. During this time, Disney added two new roller coasters, Space Mountain in 1977 and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in 1979. In 1987, Disneyland started an industry trend in the development of motion-based simulators with the introduction of Star Tours.
The early 1990s brought many expansions, including the wildly popular nighttime show Fantasmic in 1992, and a new land called Mickey’s Toontown in 1993, inspired by the 1988 Touchstone (Disney)/Amblin movie Who Framed Roger? Rabbit” was made. Then Disney brought motion-based technology to “dark rides” with 1995’s Indiana Jones.
While the technology inspired similar big-budget attractions at other Disney theme parks (as well as Universal and Busch Gardens), the debut of Indiana Jones in 1995 was Disneyland’s landmark before it began its late decline. It was the 1990s. In 1997, the replacement of the Main Street Electrical Parade and Light Magic parks was met with severe criticism. The death of a Disneyland visitor at the Columbia cruise ship pier the following year, caused by a mistake by a Disneyland manager, led to changes in theme park safety regulations in the state of California. The main piece of Tommorowland’s 1998 update, Rocket Rods, failed repeatedly before it was closed for good in 2000. Disneyland’s sister park and California Adventure experienced low attendance when they opened in 2001, and Disneyland went into decline for five years starting in 1996.
But Disneyland was revived in the early 2000s, and in anticipation of its 50th anniversary in 2005, Disney invested in renovating amusements throughout the park. In 2011, Disney revamped Star Tours with a new version called Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, which includes 55 different story combinations. Park attendance (and prices) increased in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but finally began to decline in 2012, for the first time, as the multibillion-dollar renovation and expansion of California Adventure attracted more revenue.