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Coordinates: 28°25′7″N 81°34′52″W / 28.41861°N 81.58111°W / 28.41861; -81.58111

The Walt Disney World Resort (also known informally as Disney World) is the world's most-visited entertainment resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, approximately 21 miles (34 km) southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of 30,080 acres (12,173 ha; 47 sq mi) and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels (excluding eight more that are on-site, but not owned by the Walt Disney Company), including a campground, two spas and physical fitness centers, five golf courses, and other recreational venues and entertainment.

The resort was originally developed by Walt Disney in the 1960s to supplement Disneyland in California. In addition to hotels and a theme park similar to Disneyland, Walt's original plans for the resort also included an "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", a planned city that would serve as a test bed for new innovations for city living. After extensive lobbying, the Government of Florida created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special government district that essentially gave the Disney Company the standard powers and autonomy of an incorporated city. Walt died in 1966 before his original plans were fully realized.

Disney World opened on October 1, 1971 with only the Magic Kingdom theme park and has since added Epcot (October 1, 1982), Disney's Hollywood Studios (May 1, 1989) and Disney's Animal Kingdom (April 22, 1998).

History and development[link]

Cinderella Castle, the icon of Magic Kingdom

Spaceship Earth, the icon of Epcot

The Sorcerer's Hat, the icon of Disney's Hollywood Studios

The Tree of Life, the icon of Disney's Animal Kingdom

In 1959, Walt Disney Productions began looking for land for a second park to supplement Disneyland, which opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955. Market surveys revealed that only 5% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where 75 percent of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted control of a much larger area of land for the new project.^[1]

Walt Disney flew over the Orlando site (one of many) in November 1963. Seeing the well-developed network of roads, including the planned Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike, with McCoy Air Force Base (later Orlando International Airport) to the east, Disney selected a centrally-located site near Bay Lake.^[2]

To avoid a burst of land speculation, Disney used various dummy corporations to acquire 27,443 acres (11,106 ha) of land.^[2] In May 1965, some of these major land transactions were recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in Osceola County. Also, two large tracts totaling $1.5 million were sold, and smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotic-sounding companies such as the Latin-American Development and Management Corporation and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation (Some of these names are now memorialized on a window above Main Street, U.S.A. in the Magic Kingdom). In addition to three huge parcels of land were many smaller parcels, referred to as "outs."

Much of the land acquired had been platted into 5-acre (2 ha) lots in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to investors. In most cases, the owners were happy to get rid of the land, which was mostly swamp. Another issue was the mineral rights to the land, which were owned by Tufts University. Without the transfer of these rights, Tufts could come in at any time and demand the removal of buildings to obtain minerals. Disney's team eventually negotiated a deal with Tufts to buy the mineral rights for $15,000.^[3]

After most of the land had been bought, the truth of the property's owner was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper on October 20, 1965. A press conference soon was organized for November 15. At the presentation, Walt Disney explained the plans for the site, including EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, which was to be a futuristic planned city (and which was also known as Progress City). He envisioned a real working city with both commercial and residential areas, but one that also continued to showcase and test new ideas and concepts for urban living.

Walt Disney died from lung cancer on December 15, 1966, before his vision was realized. His brother and business partner, Roy O. Disney, postponed his retirement to oversee construction of the resort's first phase.

On February 2, 1967, Roy O. Disney held a press conference at the Park Theatres in Winter Park, Florida. The role of EPCOT was emphasized in the film that was played, the last one recorded by Walt Disney before his death. After the film, it was explained that for Disney World, including EPCOT, to succeed, a special district would have to be formed: the Reedy Creek Improvement District with two cities inside it, the City of Bay Lake and the City of Reedy Creek (now the City of Lake Buena Vista). In addition to the standard powers of an incorporated city, which include the issuance of tax-free bonds, the district would have immunity from any current or future county or state land-use laws. The only areas where the district had to submit to the county and state would be property taxes and elevator inspections.^[1]

The legislation forming the district and the two cities was signed into law by Florida Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr. on May 12, 1967. The Florida Supreme Court then ruled in 1968 that the district was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public projects within the district despite the sole beneficiary being Walt Disney Productions.

The district soon began construction of drainage canals, and Disney built the first roads and the Magic Kingdom. Disney's Contemporary Resort, Disney's Polynesian Resort, and Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground were also completed in time for the park's opening on October 1, 1971. The Palm and Magnolia golf courses near the Magic Kingdom had opened a few weeks before. At the park's opening, Roy O. Disney dedicated the property and declared that it would be known as "Walt Disney World" in his brother's honor. In his own words: "Everyone has heard of Ford cars. But have they all heard of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here." After the dedication, Roy Disney asked Walt's widow, Lillian, what she thought of Walt Disney World. According to biographer Bob Thomas, she responded, "I think Walt would have approved." Roy O. Disney died on December 20, 1971, less than three months after the property opened.

However, much of Walt Disney's plans for his Progress City were abandoned after his death. The Disney Company board decided that it did not want to be in the business of running a city. The EPCOT concept evolved into EPCOT Center, the resort's second theme park, which opened in 1982. While still emulating Walt Disney's original idea of showcasing new technology, it is closer to a world's fair than a "community of tomorrow". The park would later permanently adopt the name Epcot in 1996. Some of the urban planning concepts from the original idea of EPCOT would instead be integrated into the community of Celebration much later.

In 1989, the resort added Disney-MGM Studios, a theme park inspired by show business, whose name was changed to Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2008. The resort's fourth theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom, opened in 1998.

Meg Crofton was named president of the resort in August 2006, replacing Al Weiss, who had overseen the site since 1994.

Location[link]

Despite marketing claims and popular misconceptions, the Florida resort is not located within Orlando city limits and is actually located about 21 miles (34 km) southwest of downtown Orlando within southwestern Orange County, with the remainder in adjacent Osceola County. The property includes the cities of Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake which are governed by the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The 25,000 acres (10,117 ha; 39 sq mi)^[4] site is accessible from Central Florida's Interstate 4 via Exits 62B (World Drive), 64B (US 192 West), 65B (Osceola Parkway West), 67B (SR 536 West), and 68 (SR 535 North), and Exit 8 on State Road 429 (Florida), the Western Expressway. At its peak, the resort occupied approximately 30,000 acres (12,141 ha; 47 sq mi), about the size of San Francisco, or twice the size of Manhattan. Portions of the property since have been sold or de-annexed, including land now occupied by the Disney-built community of Celebration.

Attractions[link]

Water parks[link]

• Typhoon Lagoon Attractions include Crush 'n' Gusher, Castaway Creek, Surf Pool, Ketchakiddee Creek, Gang Plank Falls, Humunga Kowabunga, Shark Reef, Keelhaul Falls, Mayday Falls, Sandy White Beach, Storm Slides, and Surf Lessons ^[5].

• Blizzard Beach features one of the world's tallest and fastest water slides.

Other attractions[link]

• Downtown Disney
• Disney's BoardWalk
• Disney's Wedding Pavilion
• ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex
• Walt Disney World Speedway (Home of the Richard Petty Driving Experience)

Golf and recreation[link]

Disney's property includes five golf courses. The four 18-hole golf courses are the Palm (4½ Stars), the Magnolia (4 Stars), Lake Buena Vista (4 Stars) and Osprey Ridge (4½ Stars). There is also a nine-hole walking course (no electric carts allowed) called Oak Trail, designed for young golfers. The Magnolia and Palm courses play home to the PGA Tour's Children's Miracle Network Classic. Additionally, there are two themed miniature golf complexes, each with two courses, Fantasia Gardens and Winter Summerland.

Catch-and-release fishing excursions are offered daily on the resort's lakes. A Florida fishing license is not required because it occurs on private property. Cane-pole fishing is offered from the docks at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground and Disney's Port Orleans Resort.

Additional recreational activities include watercraft rentals, surrey bike rentals, and firework cruises that launch from several resort marinas.

Former parks and attractions[link]

• Disney's River Country: The first water park at the Walt Disney World Resort. It opened on June 20, 1976 and closed on November 1, 2001.
• Discovery Island: An island in Bay Lake which was home to many species of animals and birds. It opened on April 8, 1974 and closed on April 8, 1999.

Resorts[link]

On-site Disney Resorts & accommodations[link]

Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Walt Disney World.

There are 33 resorts and hotels located on the Walt Disney World property. Of those, 24 are owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company. The Disney resorts are classified into five categories: Deluxe, Moderate, Value, Disney Vacation Club Villas, and Campground. Additionally, they are located in four resort areas: Magic Kingdom Resort Area, Epcot Resort Area, Downtown Disney Resort Area and Animal Kingdom Resort Area. A new concept, the Golden Oak at Walt Disney World Resort luxury residential community, was announced in June 2010 and will feature homes designed by the Walt Disney Company. The campground, Fort Wilderness also provides guests with the opportunity to stay in cabins as well as camping in tents or campers.

Deluxe resorts[link]

Moderate resorts[link]

Value resorts[link]

Cabins and campgrounds[link]

Disney Vacation Club Resorts/Disney Deluxe Villa Resorts[link]

Residential areas[link]

Future Disney resorts[link]

On-site Non-Disney hotels[link]

Disney beach resorts[link]

Disney often advertises its two off-site beach resorts as destinations to complement a Disney World vacation.

Former Disney resorts[link]

• The Golf Resort — Became The Disney Inn, and later became Shades of Green.
• Disney's Village Resort — Became the Villas at Disney Institute and then Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa. The "Tree House" Villas were decommissioned for a time because they were not accessible to disabled guests. Until early 2008, they were used for International Program Cast Member housing. In February 2008, Disney submitted plans to the South Florida Water Management District to replace the 60 existing villas with 60 new villas.^[6] The Treehouse Villas opened during the summer of 2009.

Never-built Disney resorts[link]

• Disney's Asian Resort
• Disney's Persian Resort
• Disney's Venetian Resort
• Disney's Mediterranean Resort
• Fort Wilderness Junction

Former Disney residential areas[link]

• Celebration (A town designed and built by Disney, but no longer owned by Disney.)
• Lake Buena Vista (Disney originally intended this area to become a complete community with multiple residences, shopping, and offices, but transformed the original homes into hotel lodging in the 1970s, which were demolished in the early 2000s to build Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa)

Disney's Magical Express[link]

Guests with a Disney Resort reservation arriving at Orlando International Airport can be transported to their Disney resort from the airport using the complimentary Disney Magical Express service, and have their bags picked up and transported for them through a contract with BAGS Incorporate. Guests board custom motor coaches, watch a video about the Walt Disney World Resort, and their luggage is later delivered directly to their rooms.

Executive management[link]

• President, Walt Disney World Resort – Meg Crofton
  • Senior Vice President of Operations and Next Generation Experiences, Walt Disney World Resort – Joe Rohde
  • Senior Vice President of Operations, Sales, and Alliance Development, Walt Disney World Resort — George Aguel
    • Vice President, Magic Kingdom — Phil Holmes
    • Vice President, Epcot — Rilous Carter
    • Vice President, Disney's Hollywood Studios – Dan Cockerell
    • Vice President, Disney's Animal Kingdom — Michael Colglazier
    • Vice President, Downtown Disney — Keith Bradford
    • Vice President, Resort Operations — Kevin Myers
    • Vice President, Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex and Disney Water Parks —Ken Potrock
    • Vice President, Transportation, Sports, and Golf — Jim Vendur
    • Vice President, Global Relationship Marketing, Disney Destinations LLC. – Greg Albrecht
    • Vice President Engineering, Walt Disney World Resort — John Watkins
    • Vice President, Animal Programs and Environmental Initiatives — Dr. Jackie Ogden
  • Senior Vice President of Public Affairs, Walt Disney World Resort — Brian Besanceney
    • Vice President, Community Relations and Minority Business Development, Walt Disney World Resort — Eugene Campbell
    • Vice President Government Relations, Walt Disney World Resort — Bill Warren

Former Executive Management[link]

• Former President, Walt Disney World Resort 1994–2006 — Al Weiss
• Former Executive Vice President of Operations, Walt Disney World Resort  1994-2006 — Lee Cockerell
• Former Senior Vice President of Operations, Walt Disney World Resort  2006-2009 — Erin Wallace
• Former Senior Vice President of Operations, Walt Disney World Resort — Karl Holz
  • Former Vice President, Magic Kingdom 2000-2001 — Erin Wallace
  • Former Vice President, Magic Kingdom 1987-1994 — Bill Sullivan
  • Former Vice President, Epcot 2007-2009 — Jim MacPhee
  • Former Vice President, Epcot 2001-2007 — Brad Rex
  • Former Vice President, Epcot 1994-1996 — Linda Warren
  • Former Vice President, Epcot 1987-1990 — Norm Doerges
  • Former Vice President, Disney's Hollywood Studios — Michael O'Grattan
  • Former Vice President, Disney-MGM-Studios — Bruce Laval
  • Former Vice President, Disney's Animal Kingdom — Val Bunting
  • Former Vice President, Disney's Animal Kingdom — Kevin Lasnsberry
  • Former Vice President, Downtown Disney — Kevin Lasnsberry
  • Former Vice President, Downtown Disney — Djuan Rivers
  • Former Vice President, Downtown Disney — Karl Holz

Attendance[link]

The June 2011 AECOM Theme Park Attendance report for the year of 2010, included the following information:

• Magic Kingdom, 16.97 million visits (No. 1 worldwide)
• Epcot, 10.83 million visits (No. 5)
• Disney's Animal Kingdom, 9.67 million visits (No. 7)
• Disney's Hollywood Studios, 9.60 million visits (No. 8)

Employment[link]

When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the site employed about 5,500 "cast members". Today it employs more than 66,000, spending more than $1.2 billion on payroll and $474 million on benefits each year. The largest single-site employer in the United States,^[7] Walt Disney World Resort has more than 3,700 job classifications. The resort also sponsors and operates the Walt Disney World College Program, an internship program that offers American and International college students (ICP's) the opportunity to live about 15 miles (24 km) off site in 4 Disney-owned apartment complexes and work at the resort, providing much of the theme park and resort "front line" cast members. There is also the Walt Disney World International College Program, an internship program that has college students from all over the world.

Maintenance[link]

In a March 30, 2004 article in The Orlando Sentinel, then-Walt Disney World president Al Weiss gave some insight into how the parks are maintained:

• More than 5,000 cast members are dedicated to maintenance and engineering, including 750 horticulturists and 600 painters.
• Disney spends more than $100 million every year on maintenance at the Magic Kingdom. In 2003, $6 million was spent on renovating its Crystal Palace restaurant. 90 percent of guests say that the upkeep and cleanliness of the Magic Kingdom are excellent or very good.
• The streets in the parks are steam cleaned every night.
• There are cast members permanently assigned to painting the antique carousel horses; they use genuine gold leaf.
• There is a tree farm on site so that when a mature tree needs to be replaced, a thirty-year-old tree will be available to replace it.

Transportation[link]

A Disney bus, one of several transportation modes within the Walt Disney World Resort

A fleet of Disney-operated buses on property, branded Disney Transport, is available for guests at no charge. In 2007, Disney Transport started a guest services upgrade to the buses. SatellGPS systems controlling new public address systems on the buses give safety information, park tips and other general announcements, with music. They are not to be confused with the Disney Cruise Line and Disney's Magical Express buses, which are operated by Mears Transportation. The Walt Disney World Monorail System also provides transportation at Walt Disney World. They operate on three routes that interconnect at the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC), adjacent to the Magic Kingdom's parking lot. One line provides an express non-stop link from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom, while a second line provides a link from the TTC to Epcot. The third line links the TTC and the Magic Kingdom to the Contemporary, Polynesian, and Grand Floridian resorts. Disney Transport also operates a fleet of watercraft, ranging in size from water taxis up to the ferries that connect the Magic Kingdom to the Transportation and Ticket Center.

The major roads within the resort, World Drive, Osceola Parkway and Epcot Center Drive, have segments that are built as freeways with full grade-separated interchanges. World Drive enters Walt Disney World from U.S. Route 192 and heads north to the Magic Kingdom Resort Area. Osceola Parkway heads east from the Animal Kingdom Resort Area to Interstate 4. Epcot Center Drive is a freeway for most of its route, running east from World Drive, past the Epcot parking lot to Interstate 4. Buena Vista Drive is a major surface street, running east from the Animal Kingdom Resort Area to Disney's Hollywood Studios, the Epcot Resort Area, and Downtown Disney.

Name and logo[link]

During the resort's early planning stages, Walt Disney referred to the project as Project X, The Florida Project, Disney World, and The Disney World. Early visual references used the same medieval font as Disneyland. Walt Disney was very involved in the site selection and project planning in the years before his death. The secretive names were chosen because of the high confidentiality of the project during the initial planning. After Walt Disney's death, Roy O. Disney added the name Walt to Disney World as a permanent tribute to his brother.

The resort's original logo had an oversized "D" with a Mickey Mouse-shaped globe containing latitude and longitude lines, with the property's name presented in a modern, sans-serif font. Walt Disney World Resort retired its original font and symbol during its 25th anniversary celebration in 1996–97. The old "D" symbol still can be found in many places, however, including the SpectroMagic title float, the front car of each monorail, manhole covers, survey markers, select merchandise items and flags flown at several sites across the property.

Twin town[link]

As part of a competition run by Disney for 2010, Walt Disney World Resort has an unofficial twinning (sister city) with Swindon, England, since 2009.^[8][9]. Rebecca Warren's submission to the competition granted Swindon to be the twin town of Walt Disney World, which is famous for its intersection with six roundabouts. Warren and the mayor of Swindon were invited to a "twinning" ceremony, where a plaque revealing the connection will be placed ^[10].

Development timeline[link]

See also[link]

• Incidents at Walt Disney World Resort
• Walt Disney Travel Company, Incorporated
• Walt Disney World Casting Center
• Walt Disney World College Program
• Walt Disney World Company
• Walt Disney World Explorer
• Walt Disney World Hospitality and Recreation Corporation
• Walt Disney World International Program

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Fogleson, Richard E. (2003). Married to the Mouse. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 274. ISBN 978-0-300-09828-0. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Mannheim, Steve (2002). Walt Disney and the Quest for Community. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited. pp. 68–70. ISBN 0-7546-1974-5. 
3. ^ Koenig, David (2007). Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World. Irvine, CA: Bonaventure Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-9640605-2-4. 
4. ^ Walt Disney World News^{[dead link]} Press Release on Resort Landscape Facts (2008)
5. ^ "Disney's Typhoon Lagoon". disneyworld.disney.go.com. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/parks/typhoon-lagoon/attractions/. Retrieved 08 March 2012. 
6. ^ "Treehouse Villas To Be Replaced By New Treehouses At Walt Disney World". Netcot.com. 2008-02-12. http://www.netcot.com/thesite/2008/02/12/treehouse-villas-to-be-replaced-by-new-treehouses-at-walt-disney-world/. Retrieved 2008-09-08. 
7. ^ "Disney Profile". Hospitality Online. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20070927043040/http://profiles.hospitalityonline.com/206943/. Retrieved 2007-07-07. 
8. ^ "Walt Disney World to become twin town of Swindon". BBC News Online. December 7, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8399996.stm. Retrieved May 27, 2010. 
9. ^ Gammell, Caroline (2009-12-07). "Swindon twinned with Disney World". London: Telegraph.co.uk. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/planning/6753758/Swindon-twinned-with-Disney-World.html. Retrieved May 27, 2010. 
10. ^ "Disney World taps "twin town"". Orlando Sentinel. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-12-09/news/0912080154_1_sister-city-twin-town-roundabout. Retrieved 08 March 2012. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walt Disney World Resort

• Walt Disney World Resort
• Shades of Green (Hotel at the Walt Disney World Resort for servicemembers and their families.)
• Walt Disney World Resort travel guide from Wikitravel

Walt Disney
Walt Disney on January 1, 1954
Born	Walter Elias Disney (1901-12-05)December 5, 1901[1] Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	December 15, 1966(1966-12-15) (aged 65) Burbank, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Lung Cancer
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S.
Residence	Burbank, California
Nationality	American
Education	McKinley High School
Occupation	Film producer, Co-founder of The Walt Disney Company, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions
Years active	1920–1966
Home town	Chicago, Illinois
Political party	Republican
Board member of	The Walt Disney Company
Religion	Christian (Congregationalist)[2]
Spouse	Lillian Bounds (1925–1966; his death)
Children	Diane Marie Disney Sharon Mae Disney
Parents	Elias Disney Flora Call Disney
Relatives	Ronald William Miller (son-in-law) Robert Borgfeldt Brown (son-in-law) Roy Edward Disney (nephew)
Family	Herbert Arthur Disney (brother) Raymond Arnold Disney (brother) Roy Oliver Disney (brother) Ruth Flora Disney (sister)
Awards	7 Emmy Awards, 22 Academy Awards, Cecil B.DeMille Award
Signature

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon,^[3] and philanthropist, well known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year.^[4]

Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year,^[5] giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history.^[6] Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.

The year after his December 15, 1966 death from lung cancer in Burbank, California, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.

1901–1937: Beginnings[link]

Childhood[link]

Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 2156 N. Tripp Avenue in Chicago's Hermosa community area to Irish-Canadian father Elias Disney and Flora Call Disney, who was of German and English descent.^[7][8] His great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney, had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny, Ireland where he was born in 1801. Arundel Disney was a descendant of Robert d'Isigny, a Frenchman who had travelled to England with William the Conqueror in 1066.^[9] With the d'Isigny name anglicised as "Disney", the family settled in a village now known as Norton Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.

In 1878, Disney's father Elias had moved from Huron County, Ontario, Canada to the United States at first seeking gold in California before finally settling down to farm with his parents near Ellis, Kansas, until 1884. Elias worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888, in Acron, Florida. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1890,^[10] hometown of his brother Robert^[10] who helped Elias financially for most of his early life.^[10] In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri,^[11] where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland.^[11] In Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing^[12] with one of the family's neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paying him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert.^[12] His interest in trains also developed in Marceline, a town that owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which ran through it. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train^[8] then try and spot his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, conducting the train.

10-year old Walt Disney (center right) at a gathering of Kansas City newsboys in 1912.

The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years,^[13] before moving to Kansas City in 1911^[14] where Walt and his younger sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School. At school he met Walter Pfeiffer who came from a family of theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long Walt was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.^[15] As well as attending Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute,^[16] Walt often took Ruth to Electric Park, 15 blocks from their home, which Disney would later acknowledge as a major influence of his design of Disneyland.^{[citation needed]}

Teenage years[link]

In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory in Chicago and moved his family back to the city,^[17] where in the fall Disney began his freshman year at McKinley High School and took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute.^[18] He became the cartoonist for the school newspaper, drawing patriotic topics and focusing on World War I. Despite dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen to join the army, Disney was rejected for being underage.^[19]

After his rejection by the army, Walt and a friend decided to join the Red Cross.^[20] Soon after joining he was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance, but only after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.^[21]

Disney as an ambulance driver immediately after World War I

Hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory,^[22] in 1919 Walt moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career.^[23] After considering whether to become an actor or a newspaper artist, he decided on a career as a newspaper artist, drawing political caricatures or comic strips. But when nobody wanted to hire him as either an artist or even as an ambulance driver, his brother Roy, then working in a local bank, got Walt a temporary job through a bank colleague at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio^[23] where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters.^[24] At Pesmen-Rubin he met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks^[25] and when their time at the studio expired, they decided to start their own commercial company together.^[26]

In January 1920, Disney and Iwerks formed a short-lived company called, "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, Disney left temporarily to earn money at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon joined by Iwerks who was not able to run their business alone.^[27] While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animations, Disney became interested in animation, and decided to become an animator.^[28] The owner of the Ad Company, A.V. Cauger, allowed him to borrow a camera from work to experiment with at home. After reading the Edwin G. Lutz book Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, Disney considered cel animation to be much more promising than the cutout animation he was doing for Cauger. Walt eventually decided to open his own animation business,^[29] and recruited a fellow co-worker at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Fred Harman, as his first employee.^[29] Walt and Harman then secured a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman, arguably the most popular "showman" in the Kansas City area at the time,^[30] to screen their cartoons at his local theater, which they titled Laugh-O-Grams.^[30]

Laugh-O-Gram Studio[link]

Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams",^[30] Disney's cartoons became widely popular in the Kansas City area^[31] and through their success, he was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram,^[32] for which he hired a vast number of additional animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks.^[33] Unfortunately, studio profits were insufficient to cover the high salaries paid to employees. Unable to successfully manage money,^[34] Disney's studio became loaded with debt^[34] and wound up bankrupt^[35] whereupon he decided to set up a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.^[36]

Hollywood[link]

Disney and his brother Roy pooled their money and set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood^[37] where they needed to find a distributor for Walt's new Alice Comedies, which he had started making while in Kansas City^[35] but never got to distribute. Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him that she was keen on a distribution deal for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.^[38]

Alice Comedies[link]

Virginia Davis, the live-action star of Alice’s Wonderland and her family relocated from Kansas City to Hollywood at Disney's request, as did Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the Disney Brothers' Studio located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where it remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief courtship, the pair married that same year.

The new series, Alice Comedies, proved reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice with Lois Hardwick also briefly assuming the role. By the time the series ended in 1927, its focus was more on the animated characters and in particular a cat named Julius who resembled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit[link]

By 1927, Charles Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her business. He then ordered a new all-animated series to be put into production for distribution through Universal Pictures. The new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was an almost instant success, and the character, Oswald — drawn and created by Iwerks — became a popular figure. The Disney studio expanded and Walt re-hired Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from Kansas City.

Disney went to New York in February 1928 to negotiate a higher fee per short and was shocked when Mintz told him that not only did he want to reduce the fee he paid Disney per short but also that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng—but not Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney—under contract and would start his own studio if Disney did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Walt. Disney declined Mintz's offer and as a result lost most of his animation staff whereupon he found himself on his own again.^[39]

It subsequently took his company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character when in 2006 the Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels.^[40]

Mickey Mouse[link]

After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him, which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City.^[41] Ub Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney to make the character easier to animate although Mickey's voice and personality were provided by Disney himself until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul."^[41] Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in the Alice Comedies, which featured "Ike the Mouse". Moreover, the first Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks showed a Mickey Mouse look-alike playing fiddle. The initial films were animated by Iwerks with his name prominently featured on the title cards. Originally named "Mortimer", the mouse was later re-christened "Mickey" by Lillian Disney who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for Minnie – taller than his renowned adversary and speaking with a Brooklyn accent.

The first animated short to feature Mickey, Plane Crazy was a silent film like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound called Steamboat Willie. A businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became an instant success,^[42] and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks. After the release of Steamboat Willie, Disney successfully used sound in all of his subsequent cartoons, and Cinephone also became the new distributor for Disney's early sound cartoons.^[43] Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartoon character^[41] and by 1930, despite their having sound, cartoons featuring Felix had faded from the screen after failing to gain attention.^[44] Mickey's popularity would subsequently skyrocket in the early 1930s.^[41]

[edit] Silly Symphonies

Following in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly Symphonies were released in 1929. The first, The Skeleton Dance was entirely drawn and animated by Iwerks, who was also responsible for drawing the majority of cartoons released by Disney in 1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the Disney studio thought it was not receiving its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers,^[45] and in 1930, Disney signed a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. The original basis of the cartoons was their musical novelty with the first Silly Symphony cartoons featuring scores by Carl Stalling.^[46]

Iwerks was soon lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract, while Stalling would also later leave Disney to join Iwerks.^[47] Iwerks launched his Flip the Frog series with the first voiced color cartoon Fiddlesticks, filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other cartoon series, Willie Whopper and the Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut down his studio in order to work on various projects dealing with animation technology. He would return to Disney in 1940 and go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies in the studio's research and development department.

By 1932, although Mickey Mouse had become a relatively popular cinema character, Silly Symphonies was not as successful. The same year also saw competition increase as Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character, Betty Boop, gained popularity among theater audiences.^[48] Fleischer, considered Disney's main rival in the 1930s,^[49] was also the father of Richard Fleischer, whom Disney would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of Disney cartoons to be replaced by United Artists.^[50] In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera,^[51] approached Walt and convinced him to reshoot the black and white Flowers and Trees in three-strip Technicolor.^[52] Flowers and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first 1932 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. After the release of Flowers and Trees, all subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were in color while Disney was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use their three-strip process,^[53][54] a period eventually extended to five years.^[46] Through Silly Symphonies, Disney also created his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs (1933).^[55] The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, featuring the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".^[56]

One of two stars dedicated to Walt Disney on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

First Academy Award[link]

In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of "Mickey Mouse", a series which switched to color in 1935 and soon launched spin-offs for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. Pluto and Donald became standalone cartoons in 1937,^[57] with Goofy following in 1939.^[58] Of all Mickey's partners, Donald Duck, who first teamed up with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan's Benefit, was arguably the most popular, going on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character of all time.^[59]

Children[link]

The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Lillian became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933.^[60] Later, the Disneys adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).^[61]

Diane married Ron Miller at the age of 20 and is known as Diane Disney Miller. The Millers established and own a winery called Silverado Vineyards in California.^[62] Diane and Ron Miller have seven children: Christopher, Joanna, Tamara, Jennifer, Walter, Ronald and Patrick.^[63] Years later, Diane went on to become the cofounder of The Walt Disney Family Museum, with the aid of her children.^[60] The museum was created to preserve her father's image and reach out to millions of Disney fans worldwide.^[64] The museum displays a chronological view of Walt Disney's life through personal artifacts, interactive kiosks and various animations.^[64]

Sharon Mae Disney was born December 31, 1936, in Los Angeles, California and was later adopted by the Disneys, due to Lillian's several birth complications.^[63][65] In 1950, Sharon went on to star as herself in the Walt Disney Studios special One Hour in Wonderland.^[66] Sharon married Robert Brown in 1958, with whom she had one child, and they remained married until his death in 1967.^[65] Sharon married William Lund in 1969 and had two children with him, but six years later they divorced.^[65][67] Sharon was a philanthropist and had contributed to charities such as the Marianne Frostig Center of Educational Therapy and the Curtis School foundation.^[68] In 1993 at the age of 57, Sharon died from cancer at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California.^[65] After Sharon's death, her estate donated $11 million to the California School of Performing Arts, where she was a member of the board of trustees for almost two decades. Sharon's donation was commemorated by renaming the School of Dance the Sharon D. Lund School of Dance.^[60][69]

1937–1941: Golden age of animation[link]

[edit] "Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Walt Disney introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937 Snow White theatrical trailer.

Following the creation of two cartoon series, in 1934 Disney began planning a full-length feature. The following year, opinion polls showed that another cartoon series, Popeye the Sailor, produced by Max Fleischer, was more popular than Mickey Mouse.^[70] Nevertheless, Disney was able to put Mickey back on top as well as increase his popularity by colorizing and partially redesigning the character to become what was considered his most appealing design to date.^[41] When the film industry learned of Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they were certain that the endeavor would destroy the Disney Studio and dubbed the project "Disney's Folly". Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature, employing Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff. Disney then used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus such as the multiplane camera – a new technique first used by Disney in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.^[71]

All of this development and training was used to increase quality at the studio and to ensure that the feature film would match Disney's quality expectations. Entitled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the feature went into full production in 1934 and continued until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To obtain the funding to complete Snow White, Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21, 1937 and at its conclusion the audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation. Snow White, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures. RKO had been the distributor for Disney cartoons in 1936, after it closed down the Van Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution.^[72] The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million on its initial release. These initial release earnings for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be the equivalent of $122,487,945 in 2010.^[73]

Golden age of animation[link]

Following the success of Snow White, for which Disney received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes, he was able to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939. Snow White was not only the peak of Disney's success, but also ushered in a period that would later be known as the Golden Age of Animation for the studio.^[74][75] Feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi as well as the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Wind in the Willows while the shorts staff carried on working on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this time.^{[clarification needed More info needed on end of the Silly Symphonies to make a new and separate sentence.]} Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.^[76]

Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staff went on strike, permanently straining relations between Disney and his artists.

1941–1945: World War II era[link]

In 1941, the U.S. State Department sent Disney and a group of animators to South America as part of its Good Neighbor policy, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie, Saludos Amigos.^[77]

Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the US entered World War II. The U.S. Army and Navy Bureau of Aeronautics^[78] contracted most of the Disney studio's facilities where the staff created training and instruction films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power. However, military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi underperformed on its release in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition for his features. In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.

In 1944, Encyclopædia Britannica publisher William Benton, entered into unsuccessful negotiations with Disney to make six to twelve educational films per annum. Disney was asked by the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.^{[79][80][81][82][83]}

1945–1955: Post-war period[link]

Disney studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. These included Make Mine Music (1946), Melody Time (1948), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections, the first based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and the second on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. During this period, Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade.^[84]

By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years. Work also began on Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1948 the studio also initiated a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with On Seal Island the first. Despite its resounding success with feature films, the studio's animation shorts were no longer as popular as they once were, with people paying more attention to Warner Bros. and their animation star Bugs Bunny. By 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country's most popular animation studio.^[85] However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's,^[86] a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.^[87]

During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.

Walt Disney meets Wernher von Braun in 1954.

Disney and the Second Red Scare[link]

Disney was a founding member of the anti-communist group Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.  In 1947, during the Second Red Scare,^[88] Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers, Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations and Sorrell went on to testify before the HUAC in 1946 when insufficient evidence was found to link him to the Communist Party.^[89][90]

Disney also accused the Screen Cartoonists Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.^[88]

1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond[link]

Planning Disneyland[link]

Disneyland: aerial view, August 1963, looking SE. New Melodyland Theater at top. Santa Ana Freeway (US 101 at the time, now I-5) upper left corner.

On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. The idea for a children's theme park came after a visit to Children's Fairyland in Oakland, California. It also said that Disney may have been inspired to create Disneyland in the park Republic of the Children located in Manuel B. Gonnet, La Plata, Argentina, and opened in 1951.^[91] This plan was originally intended to be built on a plot located across the street to the south of the studio. These original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that would become Disneyland. Disney spent five years developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary company, WED Enterprises, to carry out planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.^{[citation needed]}

As Disney explained one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman, who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland presented to the Bank of America during fund raising for the project, he said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train."^[92] Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.

Disneyland grand opening[link]

Disneyland officially opened on July 18, 1955. On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland hosted a live TV preview, among the thousands of people in attendance were Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following dedication day speech:

Carolwood Pacific Railroad[link]

The Lilly Belle on display at Disneyland Main Station in 1993. The caboose's woodwork was done entirely by Walt himself.

During 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home on a large piece of land in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. With the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball, who already had their own backyard railroad, Disney developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, came from his home's location on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46-foot (14 m) long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90-foot (27 m) tunnel underneath his wife's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie Lilly Belle in his wife's honor and had his attorney draw up right-of-way papers giving the railroad a permanent, legal easement through the garden areas, which his wife dutifully signed; however, there is no evidence of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property's title.^{[clarification needed]}

Expansion into new areas[link]

As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950, Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, soon followed by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and The Parent Trap (1961). The studio produced its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC entitled Disneyland, after the park, on which he aired clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim. The show also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started the "Davy Crockett craze" among American youth, during which millions of coonskin caps and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country.^[93] In 1955, the studio's first daily television show, Mickey Mouse Club debuted on ABC. It was a groundbreaking comedy/variety show aimed specifically for children. Disney took a strong personal interest in the show and even returned to the animation studio to voice Mickey Mouse in its animated segments during its original 1955-59 production run. The Mickey Mouse Club would continue in various incarnations in syndication and on the Disney Channel into the 1990s.

As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. Although he was spending less time supervising the production of the animated films, he was always present at story meetings.^[94] During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp ( the first animated film in CinemaScope) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty ( the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels) in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone in 1963.

Production of short cartoons kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the responsible division although special shorts projects would continue for the remainder of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had taken over all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 1955. Disneyland, one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17, 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based on a number of successful Disney characters and films.

After 1955, the Disneyland TV show was renamed Walt Disney Presents. It switched from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, at the same time moving from ABC to NBC,^[95] and eventually evolving into its current form as The Wonderful World of Disney. The series continued to air on NBC until 1981, when it was picked up by CBS.^[96] Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, the Hallmark Channel and the Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the Disney series offered some recurring characters, such as the newspaper reporter and sleuth "Gallegher" played by Roger Mobley with a plot based on the writings of Richard Harding Davis.

Disney had already formed his own music publishing division in 1949 and in 1956, partly inspired by the huge success of the television theme song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records.

Early 1960s successes[link]

By the early 1960s, the Disney empire had become a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.

After decades of pursuit, Disney finally acquired the rights to P.L. Travers' books about a magical nanny. Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful Disney film of the 1960s and featured a memorable song score written by Disney favorites, the Sherman Brothers. The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World's Fair, including Audio-Animatronic figures, all of which were later integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project which was to be established on the East Coast.

Although the studio would probably have proved major competition for Hanna-Barbera, Disney decided not to enter the race and mimic Hanna-Barbera by producing Saturday morning TV cartoon series. With the expansion of Disney's empire and constant production of feature films, the financial burden involved in such a move would have proven too great.

Plans for Disney World and EPCOT[link]

In early 1964, Disney announced plans to develop another theme park to be called Disney World a few miles southwest of Orlando, Florida. Disney World was to include "the Magic Kingdom", a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, known as EPCOT for short.

Mineral King Ski Resort[link]

During the early-to-mid 1960s, Walt Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral King, a glacial valley in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. He brought in experts such as the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among the several bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid 1960s, but Walt died before the actual work started. Disney's death and opposition from conservationists ensured that the resort was never built.

Death[link]

Like many people of the time, Walt Disney was a chain smoker his entire adult life, although he made sure he was not seen smoking around children.^[97] In 1966, Disney was scheduled to undergo surgery to repair an old neck injury^[98] caused by many years of playing polo at the Riviera Club in Hollywood.^[99] On November 2, during pre-operative X-rays, doctors at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the Disney Studio, discovered a tumor in his left lung.^[100] Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung.^[100] After removal of the lung, doctors informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years.^[100] After several chemotherapy sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California.^[98] On November 30, Disney collapsed at his home. He was revived by fire department personnel and rushed to St. Joseph's where on December 15, 1966, at 9:30 a.m., ten days after his 65th birthday, Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer.^[98] The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor Kurt Russell, the significance of which remains a mystery, even to Russell.^[101]

Roy O. Disney continued out with the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World in honor of his brother.

The final productions in which Disney played an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, as well as the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire, all released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman recalled of the last time he saw Disney:

Hibernation Urban Legend[link]

A long-standing urban legend maintains that Disney was cryogenically frozen, and his frozen corpse stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.^[103] In fact, Disney was cremated on December 17, 1966, and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The first known human cryogenic freezing did not occur until January 1967, more than a month after Disney's death.^[103]

According to "at least one Disney publicist", as reported in the French magazine Ici Paris in 1969, the source of the rumor was a group of Disney Studio animators with "a bizarre sense of humor" who were playing a final prank on their late boss.^[104]

Although the rumor is acknowledged as false by most historians, Robert Mosley (in Disney’s World (1986)) and Marc Eliot (in Walt Disney – Hollywood’s Dark Prince (1993)) argue that Disney may have known of cryonics and may have had an interest in the science.^[105] However his daughter Diane wrote in 1972, "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics."^[104]

Legacy: 1967–present[link]

Continuing Disney Productions[link]

Plaque at the entrance that embodies the intended spirit of Disneyland by Walt Disney: to leave reality and enter fantasy

After Walt Disney's death, Roy Disney returned from retirement to take full control of Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises. In October 1971, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt Disney World Resort.

After giving his dedication for Walt Disney World, Roy asked Lillian Disney to join him. As the orchestra played "When You Wish upon a Star", she stepped up to the podium accompanied by Mickey Mouse. He then said, "Lilly, you knew all of Walt's ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it [Walt Disney World]?". "I think Walt would have approved," she replied.^[106] Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the day he was due to open the Disneyland Christmas parade.

1968 US postage stamp

During the second phase of the "Walt Disney World" theme park, EPCOT was translated by Disney's successors into EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. As it currently exists, EPCOT is essentially a living world's fair, different from the actual functional city that Disney had envisioned. In 1992, Walt Disney Imagineering took the step closer to Disney's original ideas and dedicated Celebration, Florida, a town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT. EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of Disney characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children. However, the company later changed this policy and Disney characters can now be found throughout the park, often dressed in costumes reflecting the different pavilions.

The Disney entertainment empire[link]

Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carry his name. Among other assets The Walt Disney Company owns five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network. As of 2007, the company had annual revenues of over U.S. $35 billion.^[107]

Disney Animation[link]

Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animation. He was one of the first people to move away from basic cartoons with just "impossible outlandish gags" and crudely drawn characters to an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience can connect to on an emotional level. The personality displayed in the characters of his films and the technological advancements remain influential when animating today. He was also considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his demise until the late 1980s in a period known as the Disney Renaissance. The most financially and critically successful films produced during this time include Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar's Toy Story, the first computer animated feature film. Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney claimed that Walt would have loved Toy Story and that it was "his kind of movie".^[108] With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful Traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early years of the 2000s (decade) emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility, firing hundreds of people in the process. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film, Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to Chief Creative Officer, that position has changed with the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation and the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today, Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.

CalArts[link]

In his later years, Disney devoted substantial time to funding The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s, when Disney died, one-fourth of his estate went to CalArts, which helped in building its campus. In his will, Disney paved the way for the creation of several charitable trusts which included one for the California Institute of the Arts and other for the Disney Foundation.^[109] He also donated 38 acres (0.154 km²) of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia for construction of the school. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1972.

In an early admissions bulletin, Disney explained: "A hundred years ago, Wagner conceived of a perfect and all-embracing art, combining music, drama, painting, and the dance, but in his wildest imagination he had no hint what infinite possibilities were to become commonplace through the invention of recording, radio, cinema and television. There already have been geniuses combining the arts in the mass-communications media, and they have already given us powerful new art forms. The future holds bright promise for those who imaginations are trained to play on the vast orchestra of the art-in-combination. Such supermen will appear most certainly in those environments which provide contact with all the arts, but even those who devote themselves to a single phase of art will benefit from broadened horizons."^[110]

Walt Disney Family Museum[link]

In 2009, The Walt Disney Family Museum opened in the Presidio of San Francisco. Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including 248 awards that he received.^[111]

Antisemitism accusations[link]

Disney was long rumored to be antisemitic during his lifetime, and such rumors have persisted after his death. Indeed, in the 1930s he welcomed German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl to Hollywood.^[112] Disney biographer Neal Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concluded in 2006 that available evidence does not support such accusations. In a CBS interview Gabler summarized his findings:

Disney eventually distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance in the 1950s.^[114]

The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that Disney did have "difficult relationships" with some Jewish individuals, and that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons, such as Three Little Pigs and The Opry House. However, the museum points out that Disney employed Jews throughout his career, donated to several Jewish charities (The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Yeshiva College^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Jewish Home for the Aged, The American League for a Free Palestine)^[114] and was named "1955 Man of the Year" by the B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills.^[114][115]

Academy Awards[link]

This display case in the lobby of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco shows many of the Academy Awards he won, including the distinctive special award at the bottom for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Walt Disney holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (59) and the number of Oscars awarded (22). He also earned four honorary Oscars. His last competitive Academy Award was posthumous.^[116]

• 1932: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Flowers and Trees (1932)
• 1932: Honorary Award for creation of Mickey Mouse.
• 1934: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Three Little Pigs (1933)
• 1935: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: The Tortoise and the Hare (1934)
• 1936: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Three Orphan Kittens (1935)
• 1937: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: The Country Cousin (1936)
• 1938: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: The Old Mill (1937)
• 1939: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Ferdinand the Bull (1938)
• 1939: Honorary Award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) The citation read, "For Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field." (The award, unique in the history of the Oscars, is one large statuette and seven miniature statuettes.)^[5]
• 1940: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Ugly Duckling (1939)
• 1941: Honorary Award for Fantasia (1940), shared with: William E. Garity and J.N.A. Hawkins. The citation for the certificate of merit read, "For their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia."^[5]
• 1942: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Lend a Paw (1941)
• 1943: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Der Fuehrer's Face (1942)
• 1949: Best Short Subject, Two-reel: Seal Island (1948)
• 1949: Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (Honorary Award)
• 1951: Best Short Subject, Two-reel: Beaver Valley (1950)
• 1952: Best Short Subject, Two-reel: Nature's Half Acre (1951)
• 1953: Best Short Subject, Two-reel: Water Birds (1952)
• 1954: Best Documentary, Features: The Living Desert (1953)
• 1954: Best Documentary, Short Subjects: The Alaskan Eskimo (1953)
• 1954: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (1953)
• 1954: Best Short Subject, Two-reel: Bear Country (1953)
• 1955: Best Documentary, Features: The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
• 1956: Best Documentary, Short Subjects: Men Against the Arctic
• 1959: Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects: Grand Canyon
• 1969: Best Short Subject, Cartoons: Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day

Other honors[link]

Walt Disney was the inaugural recipient of a star on the Anaheim walk of stars awarded in recognition of his significant contribution to the city of Anaheim and specifically Disneyland, which is now the Disneyland Resort. The star is located at the pedestrian entrance to the Disneyland Resort on Harbor Boulevard. Disney has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and the other for his television work.

Walt Disney received the Congressional Gold Medal on May 24, 1968 (P.L. 90-316, 82 Stat. 130–131) and the Légion d'Honneur awarded by France in 1935.^[117] In 1935, Walt received a special medal from the League of Nations for creation of Mickey Mouse, held to be Mickey Mouse award.^[118] He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on September 14, 1964.^[119] On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Walt Disney into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

A minor planet, 4017 Disneya, discovered in 1980 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina, is named after him.^[120]

The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, opened in 2003, was named in his honor.

Waltograph, a freeware typeface, is based on his signature and handwriting.

In 1993, HBO began development of a Walt Disney biopic, directed by Frank Pierson and produced by Lawrence Turman, but the project never materialized and was soon abandoned.^[121] However, Walt - The Man Behind the Myth, a biographical documentary about Disney, was later made.^[122]