Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World

by Richard Snow

Overview

A propulsive and “entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) history chronicling the conception and creation of the iconic Disneyland theme park, as told like never before by popular historian Richard Snow.

One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” Despite his wealth and fame, exactly no one wanted Disney to build such a park. Not his brother Roy, who ran the company’s finances; not the bankers; and not his wife, Lillian. Amusement parks at that time, such as Coney Island, were a generally despised business, sagging and sordid remnants of bygone days. Disney was told that he would only be heading toward financial ruin.

But Walt persevered, initially financing the park against his own life insurance policy and later with sponsorship from ABC and the sale of thousands and thousands of Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Disney assembled a talented team of engineers, architects, artists, animators, landscapers, and even a retired admiral to transform his ideas into a soaring yet soothing wonderland of a park. The catch was that they had only a year and a day in which to build it.

On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates...and the first day was a disaster. Disney was nearly suicidal with grief that he had failed on a grand scale. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. Eight hundred million visitors have flocked to the park since then. In Disney’s Land, “Snow brings a historian’s eye and a child’s delight, not to mention superb writing, to the telling of this fascinating narrative” (Ken Burns) that “will entertain Disneyphiles and readers of popular American history” (Publishers Weekly).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501190810
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	12/01/2020
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	392,885
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Richard Snow spent nearly four decades at American Heritage magazine, serving as editor in chief for seventeen years, and has been a consultant on historical motion pictures, among them Glory, and has written for documentaries, including the Burns brothers’ Civil War, and Ric Burns’s award-winning PBS film Coney Island, whose screenplay he wrote. He is the author of multiple books, including, most recently, Disney’s Land.

Table of Contents

1 Sunday, July 17, 1955, 4 a.m. 1

2 How I Got to Disneyland 7

3 A Horrible Name for a Mouse 17

4 The Railroad Fair 25

5 The Lilly Belle 35

6 World's Fairs, Coney Island, and the Decline of the Amusement Park 45

7 Dwarf Land 53

8 Getting Started 59

9 Buzz and Woody 67

10 Orange County 73

11 Buying on the Sly 77

12 Roy 83

13 Like Nothing Else in the World 91

14 The Almost Broadcasting Company 95

15 Selling the Idea 103

16 Imagineering 113

17 The Admiral 119

18 The Instant Jungle 129

19 Arrow 135

20 Harriet and the Model Shop 141

21 Real Trains 147

22 King of the Wild Frontier 155

23 The Struggle for Sponsors 167

24 Van Arsdale France Founds a School 175

25 The Pony Farm 189

26 Demands of the Jungle Cruise 193

27 Milking the Elephant 199

28 Autopia 203

29 The Moonliner 211

30 Through the Castle Gate 215

31 The Perfectionist at Work 221

32 Ruth's Role 225

33 Union Troubles 231

34 "We're Not Going to Make It" 237

35 Tempus Fugit 249

36 Dateline: Disneyland 257

37 Dateline Behind the Cameras: Black Sunday 285

38 Damage Control 295

39 Something Worthwhile 309

40 Plussing 319

41 The Mountain and the Monorail 327

42 Disneyland '59 335

43 "Do You Have Rocket-Launching Pads There?" 341

44 Suing God in Heaven 345

45 A Perfect Fascist Regime 349

46 The Greatest Piece of Urban Design 353

47 The First Goodbye 359

48 Beautiful? 363

Afterword, and a Note on the Sources 373

Bibliography 379

Illustration Credits 387

Index 389

Editorial Reviews

Entertaining...Mr. Snow [proves] to be as solid a storyteller as Walt Disney himself.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Disney fans will enjoy this rendering of the founder and entrepreneurs will find their time well spent inside the covers of Snow’s book.” —Associated Press

“Disneyland is rarely mentioned as a milestone American invention, but it should be...The captivating origin story of the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ is well-told in Disney’s Land, the latest work from esteemed historian and novelist Richard Snow. It’s a rollicking read befitting the home of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, chock full of Alice-in-Wonderland-level surprises, with the grandeur of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and other delightful details (Walt Disney would eat his favorite hot dog lunch from a cart, walk away, and place garbage receptacles at the exact spot he finished his frankfurter.)” —Medium

“The clockwork of the park — and to some extent, the personality of the man who created it — receives an expert inspection...Readers are led toward the climax of opening day, July 17, 1955, with narrative wienies aplenty and the whole enterprise is shown as a magnificent amoeba that was as much an accident as a mastered design.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Eight hundred million visitors have trekked to the so-called ‘happiest place on earth’ since its 1955 opening, seeking its carefully scripted brand of excitement and cheer. How and why Walt Disney envisioned a place where people ‘could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White’ is carefully detailed in this new book.” —Washington Post, “Best Books to Read in December”

“An extremely entertaining story... Disney’s Land is Snow’s exhaustively researched, jam-packed chronicle of how Walt Disney conceived and created a new kind of amusement park.” —Newsday

“This joyful, lavishly detailed account will entertain Disneyphiles and readers of popular American history.” —Publishers Weekly

“An animated history of an iconic destination.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Snow’s smooth narrative spotlights the hard work and heart that the ‘happiest place on Earth’.” —Booklist

“Call it what you will: a fantasy, a folly, a country of its own, a city from the Arabian Nights, a giant cash register, a monument to Main Street, a saccharine absurdity, a triumph of urban design. Richard Snow calls Disneyland an invention on par with the Kitty Hawk Flyer and—in the most shapely of narratives—not only convinces us of its magic but somehow reproduces that magic on the page. A witty, wild, wondrous Tilt-A-Whirl of a book.” —Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Witches and Cleopatra: A Life

“This is a deeply felt and deeply researched story about the complicated man and his vision to create ‘the happiest place on earth.’ Snow brings a historian’s eye and a child’s delight, not to mention superb writing, to the telling of this fascinating narrative.” —Ken Burns

“Richard Snow gives Disney fans everything they could want in a history of the world’s favorite theme park, from its nascent phase as a mere faraway look in Walt Disney’s eye, to the hysteria of its opening day, with the freshly poured asphalt on Main Street barely set—and beyond. Snow is a great researcher and a terrific storyteller—and no detail is too small, whether it’s the landscaping, the design of the rides, or the way Walt Disney did (or didn’t) manage the money. As Snow tells it, Disney’s Land is more than mere history; it’s a page-turner of a suspense story, and, even knowing how it all turns out, you’ll find yourself wondering if Walt is really going to get his pie-in-the-sky project ready in time for its opening day. I couldn’t put it down.” —Brian Jay Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Jim Henson: The Biography and Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination

“Fantastic.” —New York Journal of Books

“[An] exceptional biography of the Disneyland theme park ... Snow’s attention to detail and impeccable research are the true highlights of a tremendous work of popular history.” —New England Journal of History

“My favorite new book of 2019... brisk, smart, a delight.” —Richard Brookhiser, The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

The clockwork of the park—and to some extent, the personality of the man who created it—receives an expert inspection in Richard Snow's new history Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World. This is primarily a construction saga, albeit a highly readable one set in an anxious nation that didn't know it needed Disneyland until Walt provided it.

The New York Times Book Review - Tom Zoellner

10/07/2019

Former American Heritage editor-in-chief Snow (Iron Dawn) tells the story of Disneyland from the park’s ground-breaking to its five-year anniversary in this immensely readable history. According to Snow, Walt Disney was inspired to create the world’s first “theme” park by the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair and a visit to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village outside Detroit. Because it was the first of its kind, Disneyland’s rides had to be built from scratch, frequently on-site, and data-tracking methods, such as “per capita visitor expenditures” and “on-site crowd densities,” had to be invented. Among the many people who helped create the park, Snow profiles Joe Fowler, a U.S. Navy submarine designer who built the Mark Twain steamboat, and landscape architect Ruth Shellhorn, who redesigned whole sections of the park after trees and shrubs were initially planted haphazardly. Expecting 11,000 visitors for its “Press Preview Day” in July 1955, the park got nearly 30,000. Many of the rides failed; none of the water fountains worked. Newspapers declared it a disaster, but paying guests weren’t deterred. By early 1956, Snow writes, Disneyland was “regularly drawing crowds 50 percent above the most optimistic projections.” This joyful, lavishly detailed account will entertain Disneyphiles and readers of popular American history. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-09-15
How nostalgia, fantasy, and cutting-edge engineering merged into the "tireless commercial dynamo" of Disneyland.

For Snow (Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle That Changed History, 2016, etc.), former editor-in-chief of American Heritage magazine, a fascination with amusement parks began at Playland in Rye, New York, and intensified when he raptly watched Disneyland, a show airing weekly on ABC that whetted viewers' appetite for Walt Disney's ambitious project. When Snow finally visited, in 1959, at the age of 12, he arrived with high expectations that, he recalls happily, "were met and surpassed." The author's admiration for Disneyland infuses his brisk, thorough history of the huge theme park, from an idea conceived by "the powerful personality of one man" to its realization as a monument to "an America where all is prosperous and convivial"—a place, as writer Ray Bradbury commented, that "liberates men to their better selves." Snow portrays Disney as a tireless and demanding boss who was "often dissatisfied with things as he found them; his preferences changed from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour." He was a perfectionist determined to build his park no matter who (his brother, for example, who balked at the expense) or what (problems building a scale model of the Matterhorn, for one, and installing a jungle in arid California) got in the way of his dream: "something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts and a showplace of beauty and magic." Snow chronicles in detail the process of finding a site (Anaheim, in southern California); hiring engineers, designers, architects, landscapers, artists, and an ever increasing number of genial, polite staff; building the park's structures and rides; planning for visitors' movements through the park, expenditures, and needs such as water, toilets, and food; dealing with unions' demands; promoting the new destination as "a place for people to find happiness and knowledge"; and overcoming an opening described as nothing less than mayhem.

An animated history of an iconic destination.

Kirkus Reviews