Biography | Walt Disney — The Press Sunday That Became Disneyland's Birthday
· 1955-7
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Biography | Walt Disney — The Press Sunday That Became Disneyland's Birthday
kevin
People treat 17 July 1955 as if the gates opened to anyone with a ticket.
That Sunday was an invitation-only International Press Preview, carried live on ABC.
Estimates put the television audience near 90 million.
Counterfeit invitations and extra guests packed a park that was not finished. Asphalt on Main Street was still soft. Food ran out.
The Mark Twain took on more passengers than it should have.
Walt read the dedication at Town Square. The plaque that remains there begins by welcoming all who come to this happy place.
Newspapers and the company's own advertisements had named Monday 18 July as the public opening.
Walt posed that Monday with Christine Vess, aged five, and Michael Schwartner, aged seven, as the first paying visitors.
The park sat on about 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim. Construction-cost figures circulated at the time around $17 million.
While they lived, Walt and Roy treated the 18th as opening day. The company later folded the press Sunday into the official anniversary.
The pin is Town Square, in front of the railroad station, where the dedication was read.
Photo: Tuxyso, Sleeping Beauty Castle, 2013, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Portrait: Boy Scouts of America, 1946, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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