Disneyland has marked the 68th anniversary of the park with a special piece of social media, where park fans can literally ZOOM back to the opening day festivities.
What’s Happening:
- To celebrate the 68th anniversary of the Happiest Place on Earth, Disneyland has shared a special new reel on Instagram allowing fans of the park to “zoom in” on the park’s opening day back on July 17th, 1955.
- The art featured, based on the current trend of zooming art where you can literally keep zooming into the fully rendered and detailed scenes, takes us from the present day Partners statue at the park to highlights from the parks opening, most of which will be familiar to anybody who has ever seen the opening day special that aired on July 17th, 1955.
- Those viewing will see Main Street Train Station, complete with train on approach with Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, before seeing vintage looks at Fantasyland, Frontierland and the Mark Twain, the Moonliner Rocket and Tomorrowland and the Jungle Cruise boats of Adventureland. We’ll even see Main Street U.S.A. and the Snow White parade float of the day coming down the street. All the while zooming in and continuing the journey.
- There is also a special moment where fans can see Walt dedicating Fantasyland as he did in the original opening day broadcast.
- The original opening was only intended for about 11,000 invited guests and press, as the event was telecast live by ABC, anchored by actors Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan, who were all friends of Walt Disney. Although initially intended to be a preview event, a total of 28,000 attended due to a rush of counterfeit tickets. Even though preceding the opening to the public the next day, Disneyland adopted July 17th as the official date of its opening and birthday.
- You can also see one of the park’s birthday traditions, complete with the replaying of Walt Disney’s opening day speech in our video below.
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