Disneyland
Updated: Wikipedia source
Disneyland is a theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, opening on July 17, 1955. Disney initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent to his studios in Burbank to entertain fans who wished to visit; however, he soon realized that the proposed site was too small for the ideas that he had. After hiring the Stanford Research Institute to perform a feasibility study determining an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near Anaheim in 1953. The park was designed by a creative team hand-picked by Walt from internal and outside talent. They founded WED Enterprises, the precursor to today's Walt Disney Imagineering. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a special televised press event on the ABC Television Network on July 17, 1955. Since its opening, Disneyland has undergone many expansions and major renovations, including the addition of New Orleans Square in 1966, Bear Country in 1972 (known today as Bayou Country), Mickey's Toontown in 1993, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in 2019. Additionally, the theme park Disney California Adventure opened in 2001 on the site of Disneyland's original parking lot. Disneyland has had a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with 757 million visits since it opened (as of December 2021). In 2024, the park saw 17.33 million visitors, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind Magic Kingdom, the very park it inspired.