Disneyland Park, originally Disneyland, is the first of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim,California, opened on July 17, 1955. It is the only theme park designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney
Walt Disney came up with the concept of Disneyland after visiting various amusement parks with his daughters in the 1930s and 1940s
The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves.Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and construction began in 1954.
Walt Disney intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children.
Disneyland was dedicated at an "International Press Preview" event held on Sunday, July 17, 1955, which was only open to invited guests and the media. Although 28,000 people attended the event, only about half of those were actual invitees, the rest having purchased counterfeit tickets.
After the extremely negative press from the preview opening, Walt Disney invited attendees back for a private "second day" to experience Disneyland properly. The next day, crowds gathered in line as early as 2:00 am. The first person to buy a ticket and enter the park was David MacPherson with ticket number 2, as Roy O Disney arranged to pre-purchase ticket number 1 from Curtis Lineberry, the manager of admissions. However, an official picture of Walt Disney and two children, Christine Vess Watkins (age 5) and Michael Schwartner (7), inaccurately identifies them as the first two guests of Disneyland. Both received lifetime passes to Disneyland that day, and MacPherson was awarded one shortly thereafter, which was later expanded to every single Disney-owned park in the world. Approximately 50,000 guests attended the Monday opening day
Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with over 650 million guests since it opened
In 2011, the park hosted approximately 16.14 million guests, making it the second most visited park in the world that calendar year
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