Griffith Park carousels sparked 757 million park visits
Disneyland in Anaheim opened as Walt Disney's first theme park and the only one built under his direct supervision. A merry-go-round outing with daughters Diane and Sharon planted the idea. By December 2021 cumulative visits hit 757 million; 2024 alone drew about 17.33 million guests.
The first written plan was a 1948 memo to designer Dick Kelsey describing a Mickey Mouse Park, drafted after Walt and Ward Kimball toured the Chicago Railroad Fair and Henry Ford's Greenfield Village with its Main Street and steamboat. Tivoli Gardens, Knott's Berry Farm, Colonial Williamsburg and the 1939 New York World's Fair also fed the idea. Fan letters asking to tour the studio convinced Disney a working lot had little to show visitors, but the planned 16-acre plot across Riverside Drive in Burbank proved far too small. Harrison Price's growth analysis led him to buy 160 acres of orange and walnut groves in Anaheim in 1953.
Money was scarce, so Disney made a television series called Disneyland for the young ABC network, which helped fund the park in return; ABC co-owned it until Walt Disney Productions bought out the partners by 1960. Retired Navy rear admiral Joe Fowler, introduced by Wood, served as construction boss. Building started on 16 July 1954 and cost $17 million, and a hand-picked design team formed WED Enterprises, forerunner of Walt Disney Imagineering.
The televised press preview on 17 July 1955 drew 28,000 people, about half of them holding forged tickets or having climbed the fence. It was hot, rides broke down, food ran out and the Mark Twain riverboat was overloaded, earning the name Black Sunday. Wood was fired within a year and is the only leading executive with no honorary window on Main Street.
Doritos were invented at the park's Casa de Fritos to use up stale tortillas. Soviet leader Khrushchev was refused a visit in 1959 over security concerns, and the single-day record of 82,516 guests came in August 1969, just after the Haunted Mansion opened.
Source: Disneyland
