Last time, we looked at Electric Park, Coney Island, Griffith Park, Greenfield Village, and Children’s Fairyland as entertainment venues that inspired Walt’s vision of Disneyland.
Here are 10 more locations that also helped inspire The Happiest Place on Earth.
Beverly Park Amusement Center
David Bradley, whose wife, Bernice, worked in story research at Disney Studios, opened Beverly Park, a small amusement park on less than an acre of land on the corner of Beverly and La Cienega boulevards in Beverly Hills (the current site of the Beverly Center shopping center) in 1946.
The park was so successful that Bradley recouped his investment in the first two years. His philosophy was that the park should be spotless and that customers should feel safe and comfortable on all the rides. He often spent hours in his little machinist shop on the property repairing and inventing rides.
Walt would often take his two young daughters to visit it on weekends.
Bernice Bradley remembered, “Our park was very tiny. There was a carousel, a little train ride, and another little boat ride for children…Walt was out there almost every day, sitting on the end of the bench, watching how children enjoyed the rides.”
She added, “He also talked to a lot of the children, which is what he enjoyed the most. He challenged them. 'How was that horse you were riding? What color was it painted? Did you like it?'”
Beverly Park had a 1916 C. W. Parker carousel, tiny motorcycles on the minibike race course, a kid-sized roller coaster, ferris wheel, boat ride and, through a remote microphone, Bradley himself projected his voice as the blue hippopotamus that talked to children outside the Haunted Castle. Inside the castle, two giant freak faces rolled their eyes, and a bat flapped up and down in front of visitors. Young children sometimes came out sobbing.
Bradley's primary business was building amusement rides and Beverly Park was to some extent a demonstration showcase for prospective customers.
There were usually about 12 kid-sized rides running at any one time, as well as animals, hot dogs and cotton candy. Because the rides only accommodated kid-sized riders, parents sat on benches watching their children ride the merry-go-round, and birthday parties were celebrated at picnic tables.
Because of its location many celebrity families visited as well as it being a haven for divorced dads who only had their children on a weekend.
Bradley called it the “park of the stars.” Directors set up their cameras here for movies such as Sylvia, starring Carroll Baker and George Maharis (1964), and Three on a Couch, with Jerry Lewis and Janet Leigh (1966), if you want to catch a glimpse of what it looked like.
Through Bernice, David was introduced to Walt Disney and went on to consult on the Disneyland project. Walt sent Bradley to Europe to photograph rides. It was Bradley who convinced Walt to build Main Street at a reduced scale and introduce themed photo ops to the park. They remained good friends even after Bradley returned to full time operation of his own park after Disneyland opened.
After the Beverly Park closed in 1974, Bradley continued building rides becoming an innovator of modern amusement rides. Higher rent, expanded oil drilling on the surrounding property, and just the fatigue of running his kiddieland for nearly three decades convinced Bradley it was time to close.
Next door to the park was Ponyland operated by Leo “Pat” Murphy and his wife.
Ponyland consisted of dusty old wooden stalls with a three-track riding ring. People often visited both venues on the same day and some falsely assumed that they were both just part of one park.
Tivoli Gardens
Tivoli Gardens is the second-oldest amusement park in the world. It opened on August 15, 1843 and is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen visited many times and there is an attraction in the park devoted to his stories. Founder Georg Carstensen said in 1844, “Tivoli will never be finished” alluding to the concept that it would continue to grow over the decades with new attractions and events.
Walt visited Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen for the first time in 1951.
The location in the heart of the city is an actual garden dotted with Chinese pagodas, Japanese water streams, brilliant flowers and with many rides that are designed to blend with the architecture and the landscaping.
It is home to one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in the world.
The venue drew Disney’s attention in 1951 when he visited with his good friend (and TV personality) Art Linkletter. Linkletter later spoke about the experience, describing Disney as scribbling notes about everything from the seats, the layout of the gardens, the type and operation of rides, food and every other detail.
“As we walked through it, I had my first experience of Walt Disney's childlike delight in the enjoyment of seeing families and in the cleanliness and the orderliness of everythingm” Linkletter said. “He was making notes all the time about the lights, the chairs, the seats, and the food.”
Linkletter asked Walt what he was doing and Walt replied, “I'm just making notes about something that I've always dreamed of, a great, great playground for the children and the families of America.”
The park featured twinkle “popcorn” lights and a variety of outdoor entertainment areas, typical of Disneyland’s Main Street. The Danish amusement park was also known to be very clean and orderly and banned alcohol.
The park is completely gated in, and has three entrances. There's a small admission fee to enter the park, and the rides are pay-as-you-go. The park is open from mid-April to mid-September. It then re-opens to celebrate Halloween for two weeks in October and then opens again for Christmas in mid-November and stays open through December.
At night, Tivoli is lit up by more than 120,000 lights, and was inspiration for the lights after dark at Disneyland.
More than 120,000 incandescent light bulbs illuminate Tivoli at night.
Madurodam
Madurodam opened in The Hague district of the Netherlands in 1952 with a collection of miniatures depicting famous Dutch castles and other quaint buildings on display including an airport, a shipping port and windmills. Every object in Madurodam had been built at a scale of 1:25.
The park showcased a scaled down sample of the Netherlands. Everything, including flora and street decorations, was modeled to scale. Even miniature figures who change their attire according to the weather surround the buildings.
Walt visited in July 1952 with his brother-in-law Bill Cottrell, and it influenced Walt’s desire to include realistic miniatures in Disneyland, including Fantasyland’s Storybook Land canal boat ride and Walt’s initial plans for a Lilliputian Land.
Walt studied the miniatures closely and sent Imagineer Ken Anderson to study the park, as well.
Bud Hurlburt’s Unnamed Kiddie Park in El Monte.
Skilled at woodworking, Wendell “Bud” Hurlbut began building miniature trains. In 1943, he had sold several trains to amusement parks. Around the same time, he opened his own small amusement park in El Monte, California in the parking lot of Crawford’s Market located at 5 Points that had been there since 1937.
The small amusement area featured one of Hurlbutt’s trains and had a tiny car ride, boat ride for children, pony rides, a carousel, ferris wheel and more and was to be a showcase of his rides for potential buyers.
“I saw this man on my property,” Hurlbutt recalled when talking to author Christopher Merritt. “When he was there the second or third time I thought he didn’t look like a customer. So I spoke with him and told him it looked like he was interested in the amusement park business. He was a really nice fellow so I sat down with him and he asked about rides.”
The man, of course, was Walt Disney who visited several times and brought over some of his Disneyland staff to Hurlbut’s shop.
Hurlbut started working for Walter Knott around 1955, operating a Dentzel Menagerie carousel at Knott’s Berry Farm that he had had in storage. Hurlburtt later went on to create memorable rides for Knott’s Berry Farm, including the Calico Mine Train and Timber Mountain Log Ride.
Hurlbut also owned Castle Park in Riverside, which opened after the Knott’s family sold their interests in the amusement park, as a miniature golf course and arcade, adding rides in the mid-1980s. Hurlbut sold the park in 1999.
Playland at the Beach
Playland at the Beach was a 10-acre seaside amusement park in the San Francisco area. In 1926, George Whitney became the general manager and over the succeeding years, he and his brother purchased all the attractions and the land. In 1952, Whitney bought out his brother and continued to operate the park until his death in 1958.
Whitney was one of the amusement park owners who pointed out all the potential flaws in Disneyland to Walt and his staff. George Whitney’s son, George K. Whitney, would become director of Ride Operations at Disneyland (and the park's seventh employee) after being personally recruited by Walt and was directly involved in projects like the Mickey Mouse Club Circus and the Frontierland Indian canoes. He left Disney to take over the operation of Playland at the Beach. That park closed in 1972.
Knott’s Berry Farm
Knott’s Berry Farm the theme park grew out of a simple berry farm stand in 1920 where Walter Knott and his wife Cordelia sold boysenberries and later homemade chicken dinners.
In 1940, a replica Wild West Ghost Town using actual buildings from real old west ghost towns was installed to entertain guests who were waiting to eat. It was officially named Knott’s Berry Farm in 1947. The Ghost Town was so popular that the park continued to expand with new additions including attractions and themed areas.
Knott's Berry Farm's replica of a Wild West Ghost Town was the basis for the rest of the park.
Walter Knott and Walt Disney had a friendly relationship with each other. Walt had been invited to the inaugural run of the “Ghost Town and Calico Railway” in 1952. In 1953, Walt and his staff including Harper Goff visited and studied closely the design and operation of Knott’s Berry Farm.
“We’d measure the width of the walkways, the traffic flow and study how people moved about,” recalled Imagineer Richard Irvine.
Walt invited Walter Knott and his wife Cordelia to the grand opening of Disneyland. He also gave them a Gold Lifetime Pass to the park. On the Opening Day ceremony for Disneyland, someone had forgotten to bring Davy Crockett’s rife “Old Betsy” for the television special. A hurried call to Walter Knott resulted in an authentic rifle from his collection, under police escort, being delivered to Disneyland for the event.
Over the years, the two parks helped each other out often loaning items back and forth.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Hubert Eaton took over the management of the cemetery in 1917. He envisioned Forest Lawn to be not a cemetery but a memorial park “devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and … memorial architecture.”
The grounds are adorned with 1,500 statues some of which are replicas of famous works of art. It is a popular tourist attraction, with nearly 1 million visitors each year, because of its beauty and serenity, as well as the many celebrities that are interred there.
Prior to the opening of Disneyland, Forest Lawn was the most popular tourist attraction in Los Angeles.
Walt’s mother and father loved spending a day just walking the grounds. They are buried there, as well as the cremated ashes of Walt and his wife. It was later discovered that the memorial park's visitor patterns paralleled, on a smaller scale, those of Disneyland.
Chicago Railroad Fair
The Chicago Railroad Fair was an event organized to celebrate and commemorate 100 years of railroad history west of Chicago. It was held in Chicago, Illinois (the birthplace of Walt Disney) in 1948, on 50 acres of land with Lake Michigan as a backdrop for all the activities.It is often referred to as “the last great railroad fair” with 39 railroad companies participating. In addition to being the last great assembly of some classic original (and replica) railroad equipment and technology by participating railroad companies, the Fair held other activities and events.
Trains circled the perimeter of the fairgrounds with stops at station areas that mimicked the tourist attractions that guests might visit on an actual train trip like New Orleans or Yellowstone Park (with a working replica of Old Faithful) or an Indian village. And, of course, there were nightly fireworks.
Carolwood Pacific
When Walt and his family moved into their new home on 355 N. Carolwood Drive, he built a backyard one-eighth scale live steam miniature railroad dubbed the Carolwood Pacific. He was inspired by the backyard railroads of two of his top animators, Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnston.
There was 2,615 feet of track that circled through the backyard and looped back and forth including a trip over a trestle and through a tunnel. It first started operation on May 15, 1950.
In the spring of 1953, Walt was becoming more involved with the idea of a full-sized theme park. In addition, one weekend there was an accident where the engine turned over on its side and released a jet of steam that slightly burned a curious 5-year old girl on her arm who had ran to see what had happened.
The next morning, Imagineer Roger Broggie drove to Walt’s home, stored the freight cars in the tunnel, put the caboose in Walt’s barn and took the engine back to the studio where, for several years, it was stored under Imagineer Bob Gurr’s drafting table.
Bob sometimes used it as a foot rest.
Disneylandia
In 1950, Walt developed a concept called Disneylandia, a series of small animated dioramas reflecting Americana with miniature figures that would be exhibited in a series of train cars that would travel from town to town.
Walt described it as “visual juke boxes with the record playing mechanism being replaced by miniature stage setting.”
“Walt envisioned a big long train which would go all over America. In each city, people would come and go through the railroad cars,” remembered Imagineer Harper Goff. “They would start at the back of the train, and all the cars would have these little animated things you could watch.”
“Walt didn’t want poor people to have to come clear across the country and stay in a hotel,” Goff said. “He wanted to have something here [in Burbank, California] permanently, but he also wanted to put a show on the road.”
Walt built the first exhibit himself entitled Granny Kincaid’s Cabin and work had started on the second exhibit referred to as “Project Little Man,” where a vaudevillian dancer figure would perform on a miniature stage. Before a third exhibit featuring a barbershop quartet could get really started, Walt came down and told Imagineer Roger Broggie to stop all work because “We’re going to do this thing for real!”
Of course, Walt took inspiration from many other places like Lincoln Park, a major family gathering spot in Los Angeles, owned by Ross Davis. Davis was passionate about the importance of carousels in city parks. He was responsible for the one in Griffith Park, as well as ones in San Diego (Balboa Park), San Francisco (Golden Gate Park) and Berkeley, California (Tilden Park).
Lincoln Park was originally created by the City of Los Angeles in 1881, from land donated by John Strother Griffin. It was one of Los Angeles' first parks. It was originally called East Los Angeles Park. By 1901 it had become a major amusement center for the people of Los Angeles, and it was at this time that the name was changed to Eastlake Park. On May 19, 1917, the park was renamed Lincoln Park after nearby Lincoln High School.
There were many things that made Disneyland different than these amusement parks but what made it incredibly successful was the “stay time”, the amount of time a customer would stay at the location. When Disneyland was built, the average amusement park “stay time” was less than two hours.
With Disneyland the average rose to almost seven hours. During that increased time, customers spent more on food, souvenirs, ride tickets and more. People were not going for a particular attraction because Disneyland itself was the attraction. It was refreshing, clean, beautifully landscaped, friendly and safe and, yes, it was something the entire family could enjoy together and not be separated.
It was also well-planned. Where most amusement parks had been built and expanded in a hap-hazard fashion, Walt set the patterns where guests would walk first. Everything was planned from the perspective of the guest.
When it opened, it was touted in publicity that “Disneyland is so carefully designed that an actual walking distance of one and a fourth miles takes you through the entire Park.”
More important, it was a theme park, meaning there was a coherent story and not the chaotic, noisy atmosphere of a typical amusement park or carnival. Rather than being designed for the benefit of the operators, Disneyland was designed for the guests.
While many different locations inspired Walt, Disneyland was unique and people immediately saw the important differences.
