Welcome to Disneyland - referat engleza

Welcome to Disneyland

INTRODUCTION

Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company. Originally, and still often colloquially, called Disneyland, it was dedicated with a televised press preview on July 17, 1955, and opened to the general public on July 18, 1955. Disneyland is the only theme park to be designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney himself. In 1998, the theme park was re-branded 'Disneyland Park' to distinguish it from the larger Disneyland Resort complex. Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with close to 600 million guests since it opened. In 2009, 15.9 million people visited the park, making it the second most visited park in the world that calendar year.

To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to the entire world.

Concept and construction

The concept for Disneyland began when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park with his daughters Diane and Sharon. While watching them ride the merry-go-round, he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together. His dream lay dormant for many years. Walt Disney also may have been influenced by his father's memories of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago (his father worked at the Exposition). The Midway Plaisance there included a set of attractions representing various countries from around the world and others representing various periods of man; it also included many rides including the first Ferris wheel, a 'sky' ride, a passenger train that circled the perimeter, and a Wild West Show. Another likely influence was Benton Harbor, Michigan's nationally famous House of David's Eden Springs Park. Walt Disney visited the park and ultimately bought one of the older miniature trains originally used there; the colony had the largest miniature railway setup in the world at the time.

While many people wrote letters to Walt Disney about visiting the Disney Studio, he realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to the visiting fans. This began to foster ideas of building a site near his Burbank studios for tourists to visit. His ideas then evolved to a small play park with a boat ride and other themed areas. Disney's initial concept, his 'Mickey Mouse Park', started with an 8-acre (3.2 ha) plot across Riverside Drive. Disney started to visit other parks for inspiration and ideas, including Tivoli Gardens, Greenfield Village, The Efteling, Tilburg, Playland, and Children's Fairyland. He started his designers working on concepts, but these would grow into a project much larger than could be contained in 8 acres.

Disney hired a consultant, Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute, to gauge the proper area to locate the theme park based on the area's potential growth. With the report from Price, Disney acquired 160 acres of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County.

Difficulties in obtaining funding prompted Disney to investigate new methods of fundraising. He decided to use television, and created a show named Disneyland which was broadcast on the then-fledgling ABC television network. In return, the network agreed to help finance the new park. For the first five years of its operation, Disneyland was owned by Disneyland, Inc., which was jointly owned by Walt Disney Productions, Walt Disney, Western Publishing and ABC. In 1960 Walt Disney Productions purchased ABC's share (it had earlier bought out Western Publishing and Walt Disney). In addition, many of the shops on Main Street, U.S.A. were owned and operated by other companies who rented space from Disney.

Construction began on July 16, 1954 and cost $17 million to complete. The park was opened one year and one day later. U.S. Route 101 (later Interstate 5) was under construction at the same time just to the north of the site; in preparation for the traffic Disneyland was expected to bring, two more lanes were added to the freeway before the park was finished.

Lands of Disneyland

Main Street, U.S.A. is patterned after a typical Midwest town of the early 20th century. Walt Disney derived inspiration from his boyhood town of Marceline, Missouri and worked closely with designers and architects to develop the Main Street appeal. It is the first area guests see when they enter the park (if not entering by monorail), and is how guests reach Central Plaza. At the center of The Magic Kingdom and immediately North of Central Plaza stands Sleeping Beauty Castle, which provides entrance to Fantasyland by way of a drawbridge across a moat. Adventureland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland are arrayed on both sides of the castle.

Main Street, U.S.A. is reminiscent of the Victorian period of America with the train station, town square, movie theater, city hall, firehouse complete with a steam-powered pump engine, emporium, shops, arcades, double-decker bus, horse-drawn streetcar, jitneys and other bits of memorabilia. Main Street is also home to the Disney Art Gallery and the Opera House which showcases Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln a show featuring an Audio-Animatronic version of the president. There are many specialty stores on Main Street including: a candy store, jewelry and watch shop, a silhouette station, a store that sells Disney collectable items created by various artists, and a hat shop where you have the option of creating your own ear hat along with a personalized embroidery. At the far end of Main Street, U.S.A. is Sleeping Beauty Castle, and the Central Plaza (also known as the Hub), which is a portal to most of the themed lands. Several lands are not directly connected to the Central Plaza-namely, New Orleans Square, Critter Country and Mickey's Toontown.

Adventureland is designed to recreate the feel of an exotic tropical place in a far-off region of the world. 'To create a land that would make this dream reality', said Walt Disney, 'we pictured ourselves far from civilization, in the remote jungles of Asia and Africa.' Attractions include opening day's Jungle Cruise, the 'Temple of the Forbidden Eye' in Indiana Jones Adventure, and Tarzan's Treehouse, which is a conversion of the earlier Swiss Family Robinson Tree House from the Walt Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson. Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room which is located at the entrance to Adventureland is the first feature attraction to employ Audio-Animatronics, a computer synchronization of sound and robotics.

Critter Country opened in 1972 as 'Bear Country', and was renamed in 1988. Formerly the area was home to Indian Village, where indigenous tribespeople demonstrated their dances and other customs. Today, the main draw of the area is Splash Mountain, a log-flume journey inspired by the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris and the animated segments of Disney's Academy Award-winning 1946 film, Song of the South. In 2003, a dark ride called The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh replaced the Country Bear Jamboree, which closed in 2001. The Country Bear Jamboree presented shows featuring singing bear characters that were visualized through Disney's electronically controlled and mechanically animated puppets, known as Audio-Animatronics

Mickey's Toontown opened in 1993 and was partly inspired by the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Toontown in The Walt Disney Studios' 1988 release Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Mickey's Toontown is based on a 1930s cartoon aesthetic and is home to Disney's most popular cartoon characters. Toontown features two main attractions: Gadget's Go Coaster and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. The 'city' is also home to cartoon character's houses such as the house of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Goofy, as well as Donald Duck's boat.

During the 1955 inauguration Walt Disney dedicated with these words: 'Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are opening the doors of the Space Age to achievements that will benefit our children and generations to come. The Tomorrowland attractions have been designed to give you an opportunity to participate in adventures that are a living blueprint of our future.' Disneyland producer Ward Kimball had rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and Heinz Haber serve as technical consultants during the original design of Tomorrowland. Initial attractions included Rocket to the Moon, Astro-Jets and Autopia; later, the first incarnation of the Submarine Voyage was added. The area underwent a major transformation in 1967 to become New Tomorrowland, and then again in 1998 when its focus was changed to present a 'retro-future' theme reminiscent of the illustrations of Jules Verne.

Current attractions include Space Mountain, Innovetions, Captain EO Tribute, Autopia, the Disneyland Monorail Tomorrowland Station, the Astro Orbitor and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage opened on June 11, 2007, resurrecting the original Submarine Voyage which closed in 1998. Star Tours was closed in July 2010, to be replaced with a brand new attraction called 'Star Tours: The Adventures Continue' in 2011.

Fantasyland is the area of Disneyland of which Walt Disney said, 'What youngster has not dreamed of flying with Peter Pan over moonlit London, or tumbling into Alice's nonsensical Wonderland? In Fantasyland, these classic stories of everyone's youth have become realities for youngsters - of all ages - to participate in.' Fantasyland was originally styled in a medieval European fairground fashion, but its 1983 refurbishment turned it into a Bavarian village. Attractions include several dark rides, the King Arthur Carrousel, and various children's rides. Before the fireworks begin, some attractions in Fantasyland close at approximately 8:30 on nights that fireworks shoot off at 9:25. The inside of Sleeping Beauty's Castle is a walk-through of the story of Sleeping Beauty that was previously open from 1959 to 1972 and then closed for several years. The walkthrough is now reopened and it features the restored work of Eyvind Earle . Fantasyland has the most fiber optics in the park; more than half of them are in Peter Pan's Flight

Transportation

Disneyland Railroad

Encircling Disneyland and providing a grand circle tour is the Disneyland Railroad, a short-line railway consisting of five oil-fired and steam-powered locomotives, in addition to three passenger trains and one passenger-carrying freight train. Originally known as the Disneyland and Santa Fe Railroad, the DRR was presented by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway until 1974. From 1955 to 1974, the Santa Fe Rail Pass was able to be used in lieu of a Disneyland 'D' coupon. With a three-foot gauge, the most common narrow gauge measurement used in North America, the track runs in a continuous loop around The Magic Kingdom through each of its realms. Each turn-of-the-19th-Century train departs Main Street Station on an excursion that includes scheduled station stops at: New Orleans Square Station; Toontown Depot; and Tomorrowland Station. The Grand Circle Tour then concludes with a visit to the 'Grand Canyon/Primeval World' dioramas before returning passengers to Main Street, U.S.A.

Disneyland Monorail System

One of Disneyland's signature attractions is its monorail service, which opened in Tomorrowland in 1959 as the first daily-operating monorail train system in the Western Hemisphere. The monorail guideway has remained almost exactly the same since 1961, aside from small alterations while Indiana Jones Adventure was being built. Five generations of monorail trains have been used in the park, since their lightweight construction means they wear out quickly. The most recent operating generation, the Mark VII, was installed in 2008. The monorail shuttles visitors between two stations, one inside the park in Tomorrowland and one in Downtown Disney. It follows a 2.5 mile (4 km) long route designed to show the park from above. Currently, the Mark VII is running with the colors red, blue and orange.

The monorail was originally built with one station in Tomorrowland. Its track was extended and a second station opened at the Disneyland Hotel in 1961. With the creation of Downtown Disney in 2001, the new destination is Downtown Disney, instead of the Disneyland Hotel. The physical location of the monorail station did not change, but the original station building was demolished as part of the hotel downsizing, and the new station is now separated from the hotel by several Downtown Disney buildings, including ESPN Zone and the Rainforest Café.

Attendance of Disneyland Park

Ticket price of Disneyland Park

Conclusion

Disneyland Park has attracted millions of visitors since it first opened its doors 50 years ago. When you enter Disneyland, the cares and worries of the day are left behind. Once you enter Disneyland Park, you're transported to a fantasy world where elephants can fly and pirates serenade.

Disneyland California is most certainly a land of enchantment where children and the young at heart find that dreams really do come true. Disneyland Park is a seamless blend of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Smiling train conductors, marching bands and the clip-clop of horse drawn carriages bring you back to carefree days. You can also rocket through the galaxy, meet a mermaid or trek through the jungle. Laughter is always in the air, with friendly smiles all around. The secret to Disneyland is its ability to change yet, remain the same. As Walt Disney said 'Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.'

California, Here We Come!

Bibliography

-www.wikipedia.com

-www.disneylandcalifornia.org

www.expedia.com

-www.wdwinfo.com/disneyland-california/