Disneyland's original prospectus (1953) | Hacker News Reader

Disneyland's original prospectus (1953)

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84 pointstrsohmers16 comments

The text was rather small to read and the OCR'd text at the Internet Archive had errors so I've put up a cleaned up text version.

http://liamk.org/disneyland/

I think it is fascinating because of what it could have been had Walt Disney's vision continued. It's right there in the opening line: a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. Judging from my visit last weekend, today that line would say "a place for people to spend money and trudge through queues to experience self-contained stories with no room for imagination or learning." It's an object lesson — Walt Disney was clearly as proud of his accomplishments in business as well as his creative endeavors. He was an old school Republican, who thought that American business could make the world better. Sadly, that part of the equation was lost over the decades. And so, Disneyland is still a little model of world in microcosm: from a place where you could imagine and learn to a place where you can spend and ride a "convenience vehicle" and spend a little more to get VIP treatment.

"today that line would say "a place for people to spend money and trudge through queues to experience self-contained stories with no room for imagination or learning." "

people see what they want to see

I always find Disney's attention to detail, especially for what is really a giant coorporation, sort of inspiring

I love that they planned a realistic moon-mission simulation 16 years before we actually landed on the moon.

Tintin had just been to the Moon in 1953:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(comics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorers_on_the_Moon

it is interesting to read that he expected to use the facilities to broadcast a number of his shows while also being part of the park experience. that would likely make it easier for him to spend more time at the park versus at the main studio in burbank.

EPCOT was intended to also be a place to live, no?

EPCOT was originally going to be a place to live - a model for future urban living ideas. and going to be all of what is now disney world.[1]

I don't think walt was going to live there though :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Prototype_Communit...

Cinderella's Castle in DisneyWorld was to have an apartment for Walt Disney, though he died before it was completed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_Castle

Walt actually lived in an apartment off Main Street during the construction and early days of Disneyland:

http://www.justdisney.com/Features/Apartment.html

And now Disney actually allows a random guest to stay in the Cinderella's Castle suite each night:

http://www.wdwmagic.com/resorts/cinderella-castle-suite.htm

Except that suite is in Disney WORLD, not Disneyland...

EPCOT (Every Person Comes Out Tired)

They never really gave up on that:

http://www.disneygoldenoak.com/

Unfortunately, instead of a futuristic urban dream, it became a "mousified" 'burb for the 1%.

Golden Oak isn't really an example of Disney's EPCOT concept. A closer example is probably Celebration, Florida:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida

Does anyone know the license/copyright state of those images? I'd love to have the map [0] printed as a gift for someone (maybe on a canvas wrap).

[0] http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/bigma...

No idea about the legality of it, but there is a much higher resolution version of that image in the (4GB).zip on the page.

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