The Disneyland Resort
The Next Generation
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So its "
Disney's 100th Anniversary" & I was thinking about what could Disneyland wouldn't look like in my opinion & what things this project could had. As an Armchair Imagineer for about i guess 8/9 years even before i had forums.wdwmagic account, i visited many Amusement & Themed Parks like some Cedar Fair Parks, Universal Orlando & even in this topic Disney, but i only visited Walt Disney World in Florida a couple of times for vacation - (Which i always love this place) but i always wish either if i was little & love to go to Walt's Original Disneyland. Maybe one-day i would love to go & see what his park looks like but for now lets begin this project.
Introduction
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The Begin of his Dream-Park begins when Walter Elias Disney - (or shorted name as "Walt Disney") was visiting Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California with his two daughters Diane and Sharon. While eating his bags of peanuts & watching them ride the merry-go-round, he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together, though his dream lay dormant for many years.
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The earliest documented draft of Disney's plans was sent as a memo to studio production designer Dick Kelsey on August 31, 1948, where it was referred to as a "Mickey Mouse Park", based on notes Disney made during his and Ward Kimball's trip to the Chicago Railroad Fair the same month, with a two-day stop in Henry Ford's Museum and Greenfield Village, a place with attractions like a Main Street and steamboat rides, which he had visited eight years earlier. The initial park concept, the Mickey Mouse Park, was originally planned for an eight-acre (3.2 ha) plot to the south, across Riverside Drive from the studio. Besides Greenfield Village and the Chicago Railroad Fair, Disney was also inspired by Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Knott's Berry Farm, Colonial Williamsburg, the Century of Progress in Chicago, and the New York's World Fair of 1939.
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His designers began working on concepts, though the project grew much larger than the land could hold. Disney hired Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute to identify the proper area in which to position the planned theme park based on expected future growth. Based on Price's analysis, Disney acquired 160 acres (65 ha) of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County. Construction of Disneyland began on July 16, 1954, & cost about $17 million to complete.
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The park was opened on July 17, 1955 which was open only to invited guests and the media with 28,000 people attended the event. The following day, it opened to the public, featuring twenty attractions. The Special Sunday events, including the dedication, were televised nationwide and anchored by three of Walt Disney's friends from Hollywood: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan.
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Over these years since 1955, Disneyland brings in more attractions & entertainment to
Walt's Original Magic Kingdom, From climbing the alpine peaks of Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1959, to going to the streets of New Orleans Square in 1966, Flying into Space on Space Mountain in 1977 & having a Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah on Splash Mountain in 1989. In the 1990s, Former CEO of the Company Michael Eisner & Disney decided to turn Disneyland into a similar multi-park, multi-hotel resort destination like at the
Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida when that open in October 01, 1971 after 5 years from Walt's Passing in December 1966. The plan of this "Original DL Resort" is with
WestCOT Center, a theme park based on Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center, on the site of the original Disneyland parking lot.
The Disneyland Hotel would be reconfigured and renovated. The 800-room
New Disneyland Resort Hotel, - (confusing but that would do), anyways this idea will be based on the Hotel Del Coronado just like the Grand Floridian Resort in WDW. The Santa Barbara Mission would inspire
The Magic Kingdom Hotel. The Beverly Hills Hotel would influence the 1,800-room
WESTCOT Lake Resort, There is also an 5,000-seat amphitheater called
The Disneyland Bowl, & the shopping and dining district would be called The Disneyland Center, This shopping mall would surround a six-acre lake and be influenced by some of California’s most beautiful waterfront areas and coastal buildings like the Palisades, the Catalina Casino, the Venice Boardwalk, & the Coronado Island.
But with the new
Euro Disney Resort, which opened in April 12, 1992, becoming a financial and public relations albatross for the company, Disney was unable to finance the project, and cancelled WestCOT in 1995 & as well for some of those plans scrapped & cancelled but for a "
Second Gate Project" was not giving up yet & not one bit. So Disney has a better plan & the Disney executives gathered in
Aspen, Colorado for a 3-day retreat, where they came up with the idea for a California-themed park instead of having either an All-American Park like Disney's America, A Disney-MGM Studios Park or an West-Coast Version of Epcot, dubbed
Disney's California Adventure Park, to be built on the same site slated for WestCOT. $1.4 billion was budgeted to build the park, a retail district called
Downtown Disney, and hotels like
The Grand Californian Resort and Spa &
The Paradise Pier Hotel.
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Construction of the park began in June 1998 and was completed by early 2001. Disney initially projected high attendance rates at the new park; a series of preview openings held in January 2001 led to negative reviews, however, and after the park officially opened to the public on February 08, 2001, the company's attendance projections were never met. Disney spent the next several years incrementally adding new rides, shows, and attractions, and implementing other promotions aimed at boosting attendance like
A Bugs Land,
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,
Playhouse Disney Live on Stage & even
The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror. In 2007, Disney & CEO Bob Iger announced a major overhaul to Disney's California Adventure consisting of new expansion as well as re-construction of existing areas of the park. Construction lasted for five years and was completed in stages, culminating with the opening of
World of Color,
Buena Vista Street and even
Cars Land along with the re-dedication of the park in June 2012. In August 2015, it was announced that Disneyland Park would receive a 14-acre
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in the 2019 season with 2 main attractions and tons of dining & shopping experiences in a storytelling-land like no-other.
Avengers Campus opens in June 04, 2021 when the Disneyland Resort reopened in mid-2021, after being closed for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. & even in 2023 when
Disney100 starts,
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway opens on January 27, 2023 with the reimagined/refresh of
Mickey's Toontown opening in March 19 2023 & so much more.
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& so for over 68 years in the making & even during
The Company's 100th Anniversary, Disneyland continues to grow & expanded. & Walt was so right that
"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world." But What-If Disneyland's Vision of The Next Generation could be better that what we had today, well that why i'm here for it to talked about Disneyland in my way.
Soon i would talked about some-things in my opinion that would fit & what my idea is at this "
Original Vacation Kingdom of California since 1955" - (BTW that is what i wanna make my slogan to this Resort or even on the DLR Logo), so stay tuned because there is More to come.