Disney Legend Cicely Rigdon once told me that Walt Disney had two primary requirements for all the people who worked in Guest Relations at Disneyland while he was alive: Know the answers or know where to go find the answers.
Walt believed that knowledge was powerful and that it could change things. As he told Imagineer John Hench, he believed that all the troubles in the world were the result of people not having the right information to make the right choices. One of his goals for the Epcot project was to be able to provide the people of the world with accurate information so they could transform their cities.
As a Disney historian, I have known for a long time that nobody can know everything. Not only is there so much to know that already exists but new things are being discovered every week.
That’s one of the reasons I have an extensive library of Disney-related books and magazines to go to when I need to find some information. Even more important than having these valuable references is knowing which ones can be trusted to be as accurate as possible.
Today, with Disneyland’s 60th anniversary just days away, I thought I might recommend a few Disneyland books that should be added to your own personal library if you want to know about the park’s history. All of these books are on my own library shelves and all of them can be trusted.
I am late to the party to inform all of you about their existence. They have garnered some very laudatory praise from some very knowledgeable Disney people and, in my opinion, all of those positive reviews are well deserved.
The Disneyland Story: The Unofficial Guide to the Evolution of Walt Disney’s Dream by Sam Gennawey
Sam Gennawey is a friend and I got a chance to read a rough draft of his manuscript and loved it. When it was published, I bought a copy for myself. He made many improvements and additions to the final version that was already very solid in its rough form. That’s Sam. Always continuing to add and expand as he finds new material.
Sam Gennawey is a professional urban planner so his perspective on Disneyland comes from a much different perspective than the usual Disney historian. I believe you will enjoy this new insight.
Gennawey is a popular speaker about Disney and is a frequent columnist for another unofficial Disney website. I have seen him working on preparing a book and he does a lot of original research and he does it with passion and integrity. Both of those qualities are reflected in his writing as well.
Originally released at the end of 2013, there are four pages of small black-and-white thumbnail-sized photos at the front of the book and the rest of the 400-plus pages are just text done in a small font to jam in as much information as possible. He lists his sources at the end of each chapter, as well.
One of the main reasons this book is important to have in your library, besides all the reliable information, is that it is the only book that truly covers the entire history of Disneyland. Many books concentrate on the early Walt years of the park or the current version. They gloss over everything else. His book is the only one that discusses those “lost decades” between Walt’s death and Michael Eisner’s arrival. So, this turns out to be a complete story, not just highlights.
I found the book to be very comprehensive about the entire history of Disneyland and a joy to read. It seems to be the fashion these days when reviewing a Disney book to complain about all the things it is not (where’s the full color photos? Where’s the detailed maps?) rather than what it is, an outstanding example of scholarship done in an accessible manner for the average reader. A great way to celebrate Disneyland’s anniversary.
Gennawey is also responsible for two other Disney related books I recommend: Universal Vs. Disney: The Unofficial Guide to American Theme Park’s Greatest Rivalry (a terrible title and basically a good history of Universal Studios theme park) and Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City about Epcot. I own these books, as well.
The Disneyland Book of Lists by Chris Strodder
Released just a few months ago, this 300 plus page book is a wonderful “airplane book”, the type of book you want to have on a long plane flight where you can flip to anywhere in the text and be entertained. This book more than serves that purpose by not only being fascinating but also highly informative.
Strodder previously wrote another Disneyland-related book that is on my shelves titled The Disneyland Encyclopedia: The Unofficial, UnAuthorized and UnPrecedented history of every land, attraction, restaurant, shop and major event in the original Magic Kingdom.
That subtitle is not accurate. While the book is very valuable in listing many of those items, just as many have been left on the editing room floor, so it is not “every” anything.
That being said, the book is still very valuable as a reference tool and I often use it to double or triple check a fact or a name. It is also a great “airplane book” and, for me, as someone who went to Disneyland as a kid, teenager and adult, it brought back many fond memories of things no longer there today.
On the other hand, The Disneyland Book of Lists is exactly what the title promises. It is dozens of different lists including 18 Secrets in the Haunted Mansion, 30 Jokes on the Jungle Cruise, 11 movies based on Disneyland Attractions, 16 Tallest Structures in Disneyland History, 11 Disneyland Locations Named After Royalty, 13 Never Built Areas and Attractions and many, many more.
The Disneyland Book of Lists is exactly what the title promises.
Strodder even asked me to contribute to one of the lists, but that does not influence my affection for this book. My little contribution is infinitesimal to the max compared with all the delightful new material between the covers.
When I first got the book, I intended to set it aside while I battled a deadline for an article. Unfortunately, I made the mistake to open the book randomly to a page and an hour later I had to pull myself away.
I was impressed by the ingenuity of many of the lists as well as the overall accuracy of the book. I also appreciated that the book was not covering the same worn-out territory but that Strodder had done some significant original research. A wonderful, fun book to have in your collection.
Jason’s Disneyland Almanac 1955-2010 by Jason Schultz & Kevin Yee
While I heartily recommend this book, it is only for the hardcore Disneyland fan. If you are looking for a narrative with interesting stories and quotes, this book is not for you. This is an important reference document that will enrich other people’s stories about Disneyland but I heard one person complain that it was about as interesting as a spread sheet, completely ignoring the book’s purpose to record and share information not found anywhere else.
If you are an information hound like me, this 300-plus page book can be a real eye-opener. There are no pictures in the book but lots of teeny-tiny type so be warned.
Using resources that no one else has ever tapped into, like a Santa Ana climate station to get accurate temperatures for each day of park operation, or Roy O. Disney’s Disneyland Attendance Summary held at the Anaheim Heritage Center for official daily attendance counts, Schultz comes up with an impressive reference that also includes the opening and closing days of attractions and the days of special events like Grad Nite.
If you wanted to track what an individual day was like at Disneyland, you would find the operating hours, the temperature, the attendance and any special information like the day that Walt and the Mouseketeers helped raise the tent for the Mickey Mouse Club Circus.
That would be Friday November 11, 1955 with a high of 69 degrees and a low of 48 degrees with an attendance of 16,643. It was also Veteran’s Day and the park operated from 10 a.m to 10 p.m.
If that type of information captures your interest, then you should invest in this book. I am extremely appreciative that Schultz and Yee did the research and got the book in print.
The Disneyland Almanac includes crowd numbers and temperatures.
This book is an offshoot of another book that Schultz has been researching for years, a Disneyland compendium or thesaurus that would include finally a short biography of the people who worked at the park, descriptions of attractions and events, important dates and much, much more.
He is using a lot of primary documents like copies of the Disneylander magazine that was just for those who worked at the park. He has already uncovered many forgotten facts and stories.
While we all await that book, some of Schultz’s on-going research can be accessed at his blog.
Out-of-Print Disneyland Books
Additional books about Disneyland that I am eagerly anticipating have been announced and should appear this year to take advantage of the 60th celebration.
I am especially anxious to have Todd James Pierce’s epic about early Disneyland, from University of Mississippi Press, due later this year. Check out his articles and you will see why I am excited that his massive book (600 pages) is finally being printed after so many years of research.
Unfortunately, three outstanding reference books about Disneyland are long out of print and can sometimes be pricey to obtain if you are not a careful shopper.
Walt Disney’s Disneyland, written by Marty Sklar, and first released in 1964 and 1965 (with a round blue Tencennial sticker on the front of some copies in 1965), was the first hardcover souvenir book published for the park. It has a foreword by Walt Disney, probably ghost written by Sklar himself since that was part of his job at the time.
An updated edition appeared in 1969 with a mention of the forthcoming Haunted Mansion and another in 1975 mentioning the Country Bear Jamboree. One collector has seven different editions of the book (including one completely in Spanish that I have never seen).
While other souvenir guide books had been published previously beginning in 1955, this is the first book that shares the philosophy, history and funny anecdotes about the building and maintaining of the theme park. It really is a lengthy essay about Disneyland’s first decade written by someone who experienced it.
In its way, it is extremely honest about the story behind Disneyland without all the “pixie-dusted publicity palaver” usually found in such in-house publications. In the pre-Internet days, this was the only reliable source in print for many years about the history of Disneyland.
It is roughly 63-pages long and is filled with full color pictures, often of things that no longer exist today. Fortunately, the most common edition of this book with the white cover and red title lettering can be found relatively inexpensively.
However, as I mentioned, there are variations that can be pricier like the first edition printed in Italy (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) and available for just a few months before the more common edition was released that has a red banner along the bottom of the front of the book with the title.
Disneyland: Inside Story written by Imagineer Randy Bright was released in 1987. It is 240 pages long and loaded with full-color illustrations.
Bright was an amazing man and started his career in 1959 working as a crew member on the Columbia Sailing Ship at Disneyland and as the costumed Space Man in Tomorrowland. He became an Imagineer in 1968 and was renowned for his show writing. His boss, Marty Sklar, highly recommended him to write this first official history of the park covering the first thirty-two years.
This look at Disneyland was based on Bright’s conversations with the people who actually built the park. It took him two years to write the book. While some have complained there aren’t any “new” stories in the book, they fail to realize that this is where the stories first came from that have appeared in other articles and books. Bright often tells the stories much better than those who have “borrowed” from his work without crediting him as the source.
It is easy to tell that the book was written by someone who loved Disneyland and had access to material denied regular fans. The book is worth purchasing just for the beautiful pictures alone.
Disneyland: The Nickel Tour by Bruce Gordon and David Mumford
Gordon and Mumford were both Imagineers but more importantly were huge fans of Disney history. They were popular speakers at Disney fan conventions in Anaheim. Disneyland was the passion of their life for both of them.
Originally released in 1995, this 350 plus page book with a maroon cover weighing 4 1/2 pounds has become legendary and desirable for good reason. A second updated edition was published in 2000 with a blue cover.
The original price for the book was $75 which was considered very, very high when it was published but used copies now easily command three to four times that amount.
Using images of the postcards produced of Disneyland over the years as a springboard, the authors share a rich anecdotal history of the famous park.
Disneyland: The Nickel Tour was written from a fan perspective.
“We started looking at the cards (in our respective collections) and seeing bizarre things in them and saying ‘When was there a butcher shop on Main Street?’ and “I wonder where that stagecoach route was?’” Mumford said.
They realized others had the same types of questions and no way to find the answers.
“We thought that it would be fun to amplify the postcards with information behind what each card shows,” Gordon told the Orange County Register in 1998. “We wanted all the stories that nobody ever heard before and that don't make it into the official guidebooks.”
Fortunately, both Gordon and Mumford knew the people involved in Disneyland and had access to material in the Disney Archives and the Imagineering Art Library as well as material belonging to their many friends in Disney fandom.
So the illustrations are not just postcards but rare photographs to supplement the stories.
No one, including Disney, was interested in publishing the book for such a niche audience, especially since it was so large and would be expensive to print. So, deciding to self publish, Gordon spent his nights and weekends designing the book on his computer himself.
He and Mumford reportedly mortgaged their homes and borrowed money from friends to raise $100,000 to have an Italian printing house produce only 3,000 copies. That’s one of the reasons a first edition is so expensive today.
This will probably be the most expensive Disneyland history book that you will ever purchase but you will discover that it still remains a great value not only in terms of content and imagery but also in design.
Mumford and Gordon both died at too early an age and they also co-authored and co-edited several other books including limited editions of A Brush With Disney: An Artist’s Journey (about Herb Ryman); Walt’s Time: From Before to Beyond (with Jeff Kurtti) (about the Sherman Brothers); Ellenshaw Under Glass (about Peter Ellenshaw) and Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real (with Kevin Rafferty and Randy Webster).
These Disneyland books should prove a strong foundation for your library. Eventually, you will want to supplement them with some of the other fine books about Disneyland out there.
One of my favorite Disney authors is the prolific Jeff Kurtti and I would recommend his books like The Art of Disneyland, Disneyland Through the Decades, Disneyland From Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After, and, especially, Walt Disney Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park.
I am also fond of the Carlene Thie series of books featuring vintage photos of Disneyland taken by her photographer grandfather Mel Kilpatrick, such as Disneyland: The BeginningHomecoming Destination DisneylandA Photographer’s Life with Disneyland Under Construction, and more.
And other books too numerous to mention like Disneyland: Then, Now and Forever by Tim O’Day and Bruce Gordon.
One of the best ways to celebrate Disneyland’s 60th is to have a better understanding of what is being celebrated and these books offer an opportunity to enhance your appreciation of the Happiest Place on Earth.
