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Disneyland Gets Its Last Touches

(July 9, 1955, The New York Times)

(Anaheim, Calif. July 8) - The final fantastic touches are being put on Disneyland. The $16,500,000 amusement park created by Walt Disney, the film producer, is scheduled to open July 18.

It covers sixty acres and is calculated to draw about 5,000,000 visitors a year.

Disneyland is situated in this citrus-ranching suburb twenty-two miles from Los Angeles. For it the appellation "amusement park" is inadequate; for it has no such banalities as rollercoasters, Ferris wheels and dodge-'ems in a milieu of honky tonk.

In concept, it is an integrated juvenile world's fair of fantasy. The entrance gate takes you into "Main Street - U.S.A." - a re-creation of the typical American town of 1890. Like everything else in the park, down to railroad trains and park benches, "Main Street", is built on a five-eighths scale.

Real Horse-Cars Used

Along a gas-lighted street of old-time business establishments, real horse-cars carry you into the park's central plaza.

Radiating from it are four theme - "lands" - Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland.

Adventureland is an African-like jungle, threaded by a river. A congo-type boat plies the river and animals, (rubber, accentuated by compressed air) snore and growl at explorers.

Frontierland, fronted by a stockade fort, is the America of about a century ago. Its piece de resistance is another river, plied by the "Mark Twain," a self-propelled reproduction of a Mississippi stern-wheeler. Along its banks, burro-trains carry youthful pioneers on pack trips.

Fantasyland is fronted by a 70-foot-high reproduction of a medieval castle, with moat, swans and portcullis.

Within is a remarkable array of mechanized adventures - an aerial monorail that duplicates Peter Pan's flight from the Danling mansion, to Never-Never Land; a Mad Hatter's Tea Party carrousel and expeditions to Alice - in - Wonderland's rabbit hole and Snow White's gold mine.

Tomorrowland's major attractions are a rocket trip to the Moon and an "autorama" where children can drive miniature cars both on test tracks and futuristic "freeways".

Throughout the park are a thousand typical Disney touches - scaled-down operating railroads, both passenger and freight; a blacksmith shoeing horses, and bending nails into rings; a remarkable collection of nickelodeons -- one a fantastic German antique that simulates a twenty-piece band - to lend the old-time flavor.

Park Carefully Planned

In designing the park, Mr. Disney retained the Stanford Research Institute to make an exhaustive study of just what a park of the sort should comprise, how it should be arranged and where it should be located.

A year ago, he bought a 200 acre orange grove just off the Santa Ana Freeway, a high speed thoroughfare running from downtown Los Angeles.

One hundred acres was allocated to parking space for 12,000 cars. The park was designed to accommodate up to 60,000 people a day, with an average of 15,000 expected.

There are restaurants and refreshment establishements in the park, in decors ranging from gay-Nineties to Tahitian. No alcoholic beverages will be served in the park.

On a thirty-acre tract adjacent to the park, a $10,000,000, 650 room hotel-motel with a capacity of 1,250 guests is being completed.

Copyright (C) 1955 By the New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

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