The Hap­pi­est Place on Earth

If you were to present an atlas to any man, woman or child cir­ca 1955 and ask them to locate the hap­pi­est place on Earth, their fin­ger would invari­ably drop on Ana­heim, CA. Built in just one year at an esti­mat­ed cost of $17m, Dis­ney­land first opened its gates at 2:30pm on Sun­day 17 July, 1955. For the Amer­i­can peo­ple it was a day of cel­e­bra­tion and cer­e­mo­ny not seen since the 1939 World’s Fair at Flush­ing Meadows.

After being intro­duced to his ador­ing pub­lic by actor and future pres­i­dent ​“Ron­nie” Rea­gan, with net­work tele­vi­sion cam­eras poised to cap­ture this momen­tous occa­sion, Walt took the mic: ​“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 savour 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 all the world.”

Through the sheer con­vic­tion of his ambi­tious vision, Dis­ney had cap­tured the imag­i­na­tions of not just those in atten­dance — includ­ing VIPs Frank Sina­tra, Jer­ry Lewis and Sam­my Davis, Jr — but every­one watch­ing at home. For the inter­na­tion­al media out­lets report­ing on the grand open­ing, it was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. As scores of work­ers furi­ous­ly applied the fin­ish­ing touch­es to the park, sev­er­al rides broke down short­ly after open­ing while a gas leak forced some areas to be tem­porar­i­ly shut down.

Worse still, a record heat­wave cou­pled with a plumbers’ strike made things par­tic­u­lar­ly uncom­fort­able for the 28,000 invit­ed guests (many of whom gained entry via coun­ter­feit tick­ets) who shuf­fled eager­ly down Main Street towards the already icon­ic Sleep­ing Beau­ty Cas­tle. Despite the result­ing luke­warm press cov­er­age, Dis­ney­land was an instant and unprece­dent­ed suc­cess, wel­com­ing an esti­mat­ed 3.6 mil­lion vis­i­tors in its first year. Put sim­ply, the Mag­ic King­dom was unlike any­thing the pub­lic had ever seen.

Boast­ing 18 rides spread out across five themed ​“lands” — ​‘Main Street, USA’, ​‘Adven­ture­land’, ​‘Fan­ta­sy­land’, ​‘Fron­tier­land’ and ​‘Tomor­row­land’ — Dis­ney­land was a mirac­u­lous spec­ta­cle, an awe­some feat of Amer­i­can engi­neer­ing where fam­i­lies could soar through the sky on Dum­bo or take a stroll through the orig­i­nal sets from the 1954 adven­ture film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In the space of a few short years, Dis­ney had tak­en a 160-acre plot of orange groves in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and turned it into one of the country’s hottest tourist des­ti­na­tions. The park’s com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty had been antic­i­pat­ed to some degree, but not even Dis­ney could have pre­dict­ed that his dream would — for bet­ter or worse — become a sym­bol of Amer­i­can cul­ture both at home and abroad for gen­er­a­tions to come. Yet the key to Disneyland’s wide­spread appeal was not the mass cul­ture prod­uct that was being sold but some­thing the pub­lic sub­con­scious­ly craved far more than inex­pen­sive thrills and plush mer­chan­dise: an ideology.

Sit­u­at­ed on the east side of the park, Tomor­row­land was ini­tial­ly con­ceived around what the world might look like in 1986. (Why 1986? Because that was the year Halley’s Comet was set to return to our skies.) Accord­ing to Dis­ney, this was the place where, ​“our hopes and dreams for the future become today’s real­i­ties.” Even for 1950s Amer­i­ca, this was a roman­tic sen­ti­ment. Cru­cial­ly, how­ev­er, Tomor­row­land was not ​“a stylised dream of the future, but a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly planned pro­jec­tion of future tech­niques by lead­ing space experts in sci­ence.” This was a far cry from the chintzy board­walk arcades and kid­die-ori­ent­ed Coney Islands that had come before. What Dis­ney had cre­at­ed was far supe­ri­or both in size and scope. Some­thing uni­fy­ing and universal.

At the Tomor­row­land ded­i­ca­tion, white doves were released — ​“har­bin­gers of peace for the world of tomor­row.” Lat­er, dur­ing the live open­ing cer­e­mo­ny tele­cast, Dis­ney him­self com­ment­ed, ​“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.” It’s easy to look back at this bold ide­al­ism with quaint fond­ness, but Amer­i­can soci­ety under­went a pro­nounced trans­for­ma­tion dur­ing the Eisen­how­er era, exem­pli­fied by a con­stant­ly shift­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion of what con­sti­tut­ed ​‘mod­ern’.

The auto­mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion and the rise of the nuclear fam­i­ly dove­tailed to spark a pop­u­la­tion boom that gave rise to a great sub­ur­ban sprawl (Cal­i­for­nia alone grew by 49 per cent in the space of 10 years). Tomor­row­land tapped into this post­war rest­less­ness, fea­tur­ing more rides and mov­ing attrac­tions than any oth­er area of the park. Vis­i­tors could climb into an Astro-Jet, pilot their own per­son­al Fly­ing Saucer, hop on the Alweg Mono­rail or take in aer­i­al views of the park via the Swiss E‑lift inspired Skyway.

In addi­tion, Tomor­row­land offered escapism from the mount­ing sense of nation­al anx­i­ety and para­noia brought on by the Cold War. Aver­age Amer­i­cans feared the Bomb and saw Com­mu­nism as a gen­uine threat to their civ­il lib­er­ty (Dis­ney him­self had been a found­ing mem­ber of the anti-com­mu­nist group Motion Pic­ture Alliance for the Preser­va­tion of Amer­i­can Ideals). Dis­ney­land pro­vid­ed sanc­tu­ary, cocoon­ing peo­ple in the whole­some fam­i­ly val­ues they recog­nised as their own. As reporter Glad­win Hill observed in his 1959 New York Times’ arti­cle, ​‘The Nev­er-Nev­er Land Khrushchev Nev­er Saw’, ​“Dis­ney­land is less an amuse­ment park than a state of mind.” But this seem­ing­ly aus­pi­cious won­der­land was not entire­ly pure.

Bud­get cuts meant that Tomor­row­land opened with­out sev­er­al of its planned attrac­tions, the emp­ty space being reluc­tant­ly leased to cor­po­rate spon­sors. There was the Mon­san­to Hall of Chem­istry, the Amer­i­can Dairy Asso­ci­a­tion Dairy Bar (“nour­ish­ment for the future!”), Amer­i­can Motors’ A Tour of the West, pre­sent­ed in Cir­cara­ma (a gigan­tic 360° cin­e­ma screen), and the some­what pecu­liar Crane Paper endorsed Bath­room of the Future. These edu­ca­tion­al attrac­tions were harm­less enough, but col­lec­tive­ly they became the ulti­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Amer­i­can consumerism.

In its promise of a brighter future, Tomor­row­land offered hope to ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, regard­less of their social sta­tus. Yet it point­ed down a pre­de­ter­mined path, the foun­da­tions of which were laid in a well-estab­lished sys­tem of cap­i­tal­ist ideals. It’s telling that Dis­ney intend­ed vis­i­tors to exit the park via Tomor­row­land, empow­ered by a renewed belief in Amer­i­can exceptionalism.

Despite what the name sug­gests, Tomor­row­land was not sim­ply an evoca­tive pro­jec­tion of an aspi­ra­tional future, but a tan­gi­ble utopia anchored in the present. One of Tomorrowland’s orig­i­nal and most vis­it­ed attrac­tions was Autopia, a mile-long asphalt cir­cuit which kids could race around in minia­ture motorised cars at a top speed of 11 mph. With­in a few years of the park open­ing, Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er would sign the Inter­state High­way leg­is­la­tion, paving the way for the first mul­ti-lane high­ways. Some rides, such as the Fly­ing Saucers (a cross between bumper cars and air hock­ey), were more exper­i­men­tal than prac­ti­cal, but by and large Tomor­row­land was inspired by real-world tech­no­log­i­cal know-how, much of which was already being rolled out on an indus­tri­al scale.

Tomor­row­land was a place where peo­ple could come togeth­er to acknowl­edge America’s indus­tri­al, sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal enter­prise while bask­ing in the opti­mistic glow of the next chap­ter in their nation’s man­i­fest des­tiny. This for­ward-think­ing was typ­i­fied by Disney’s per­son­al fas­ci­na­tion with astro­nau­tics. In the mid-’50s, the con­quest of space was seen as the last great chal­lenge left to mankind, and hav­ing already trans­port­ed tele­vi­sion audi­ences beyond the swash­buck­ling astro­nom­i­cal fan­tasies of Buck Rogers and Flash Gor­don via the 40-minute 1955 edu­ca­tion­al film, Man in Space, Dis­ney was deter­mined to give peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence first-hand what space trav­el might be like. Ever the show­man, Dis­ney went as far as stag­ing an elab­o­rate rock­et launch from an on-site Mis­sion Con­trol dur­ing ABC’s live Dis­ney­land open­ing cer­e­mo­ny broadcast.

This expen­sive pub­lic­i­ty stunt was lat­er shown on a loop in the Space Sta­tion X‑1 exhib­it, where vis­i­tors were blast­ed into orbit to gain a ​“Satel­lite View of Amer­i­ca” — yet anoth­er spec­tac­u­lar illu­sion that suc­ceed­ed in fuelling the public’s imag­i­na­tion by bring­ing the near-future into view. Accord­ing to Sam Gen­nawey, author of ​‘The Dis­ney­land Sto­ry: The Unof­fi­cial Guide to the Evo­lu­tion of Walt Disney’s Dream’, ​“Walt believed that with enough imag­i­na­tion and the free­dom to pur­sue hap­pi­ness, any­thing was pos­si­ble. Dis­ney­land was the first time on this scale that a guest could be trans­port­ed to anoth­er time or place and become part of the show. It was vir­tu­al real­i­ty before vir­tu­al reality.”

Of course, the allure of Dis­ney­land was not pred­i­cat­ed on cute opti­cal tricks alone. Right down to the last detail, the park was metic­u­lous­ly engi­neered to ensure that each clear­ly defined land seam­less­ly com­ple­ment­ed the next. There was an unam­bigu­ous effi­cien­cy about the place. The entrance to Tomor­row­land was marked by the Clock of the World, described in typ­i­cal­ly grandiose fash­ion in an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment in the LA Times as, ​“an elab­o­rate chronome­ter that tells you the exact minute and hour any­where on the face of the plan­et Earth.”

Fur­ther in, the cen­tral plaza was fringed with the flags of all 48 states (Alas­ka and Hawaii were added to the fed­er­al repub­lic in 1959), each raised high along­side Old Glo­ry. Tru­ly, this was a hap­py and har­mo­nious land, some­where every­day cit­i­zens could feel proud to be Amer­i­can. As Gen­nawey tells LWLies, ​“Dis­ney­land was a tech­no­log­i­cal won­der that would demon­strate that Amer­i­ca was great and free enter­prise was the only way to go. It was a sub­ur­ban expe­ri­ence that cel­e­brat­ed urban set­tings. Every­body entered through the same gate. That was a first. The sequence of spaces was deter­mined by the rules of sto­ry­telling. That was new. Spa­tial manip­u­la­tion was used in a way nev­er before expe­ri­enced at this scale. The blend of fic­tion­al intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ties and real-life com­mer­cial busi­ness­es cre­at­ed a new way of look­ing at pub­lic space.” Already renowned as a mas­ter sto­ry­teller, Dis­ney was fast earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as a UX pioneer.

By form­ing a bar­ri­er between the immer­sive bub­ble of Dis­ney­land and the world out­side it, Dis­ney had changed the land­scape of the amuse­ment park indus­try on a mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el. But his beloved park would soon be in dan­ger of falling vic­tim to its own suc­cess. By the late ​’50s, rival theme parks had begun spring­ing up across Amer­i­ca. Fear­ing that the glis­ten­ing jew­el in his all-con­quer­ing empire was at risk of becom­ing Yes­ter­day­land, Dis­ney set to work on blue­print­ing an upgrad­ed Tomor­row­land. As well as plan­ning a major super­fi­cial revamp, Dis­ney imple­ment­ed a park-wide strat­e­gy of per­pet­u­al mod­erni­sa­tion which he intend­ed to be car­ried out long after he was gone.

Dis­ney died of lung can­cer on 15 Decem­ber, 1966, hav­ing over­seen Disneyland’s first 11 for­ma­tive years. He had made good on his promise of deliv­er­ing free­dom and hap­pi­ness to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and in turn they had become ardent dis­ci­ples of Walt’s way. But the world was mov­ing quick­er than Disney’s ​‘Imag­i­neers’ could keep up. Just two years after Dis­ney­land opened, Sput­nik went stratos­pher­ic, and in May 1961 Amer­i­ca put the embar­rass­ment of the failed Van­guard TV3 rock­et behind it, tak­ing a giant leap in the Space Race by announc­ing the Apol­lo pro­gramme that would put a man on the Moon before the decade was out. Dis­ney may no longer have been at the helm, but the park’s board of exec­u­tives, who had long been frus­trat­ed by the var­i­ous cor­po­rate spon­sor-serv­ing attrac­tions, knew that keep­ing pace with progress was cen­tral to main­tain­ing Disneyland’s sym­bol­ic status.

When Tomor­row­land 2.0 opened on 2 July, 1967 it cov­ered twice the area of the orig­i­nal lay­out. In the process of demol­ish­ing and rebuild­ing the site, the Clock of the World went, along with numer­ous Atom­ic Age motifs that a decade ear­li­er had looked futur­is­tic but now seemed com­i­cal­ly anti­quat­ed. In their place were the Carousel of Progress, an ani­ma­tron­ic edu­tain­ment curio devel­oped by Dis­ney for the Gen­er­al Elec­tric pavil­ion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and trans­plant­ed to a spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed 240-seat audi­to­ri­um; Adven­ture Thru Inner Space, a scaled-up dio­ra­ma; and the Peo­ple­Mover, an ele­vat­ed Goodyear-pow­ered train ride through Tomor­row­land. Else­where, the Rock­et to the Moon was renamed Flight to the Moon (it sub­se­quent­ly became Mis­sion to Mars in 1975 before even­tu­al­ly clos­ing in 1992).

The advent of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion cou­pled with the vast net­work of urban free­ways and inter­state high­ways built by the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion had giv­en rise to a kinet­ic cul­ture, and, just as in 1955, every attrac­tion and exhi­bi­tion in this new-look Tomor­row­land was designed to reflect the chang­ing times. It even had a new theme: ​‘A World on the Move’.

The ultra­mod­ern focus on inner, out­er and even liq­uid space con­tin­ued to take vis­i­tors through the look­ing glass, but it was the appli­ca­tion of con­tem­po­rary tech­niques and trends that rein­forced the sense of won­der vis­i­tors felt when they entered Tomor­row­land. It was, as Gen­nawey puts it, ​“the Tomor­row­land that Walt had always wanted.”

Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, Tomor­row­land has been expand­ed and ren­o­vat­ed more often than any oth­er part of Dis­ney­land, with the present incar­na­tion resem­bling a retro-futur­is­tic fan­ta­sia prac­ti­cal­ly unrecog­nis­able from the park’s mid-cen­tu­ry hey­day. To walk in the shad­ow of Space Moun­tain today is to hold a fad­ing pho­to­graph of a once bright future. Yet although the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of Dis­ney­land (and theme parks at large) has unques­tion­ably dimin­ished, the wider his­tor­i­cal con­text from which it arose has nev­er been more rel­e­vant. We live in an age in which we feel increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed — across both the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal realms — and yet at the same time social com­men­ta­tors are con­stant­ly lament­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of community.

Tomor­row­land, Brad Bird’s sci-fi epic, is a tale of inter­di­men­sion­al trav­el that dou­bles as an alle­go­ry of humanity’s end­less pur­suit of progress and the dan­gers present there­in. There is an unmis­tak­ably reflec­tive, almost wist­ful sub­text at work here. Even the film’s tagline evokes the shrink­ing bea­con of Walt Disney’s hope: ​‘Imag­ine a place where noth­ing is impos­si­ble’. Six­ty years ago, Dis­ney­land rep­re­sent­ed a com­mon goal that, while at once ambi­tious and ide­al­is­tic, felt entire­ly obtain­able because of one man’s gal­vanis­ing vision. We may have lost that shared sense of opti­mism, but now more than ever it is imper­a­tive that soci­ety pre­serves the found­ing prin­ci­ples of Walt’s way: to edu­cate, inno­vate and ulti­mate­ly cul­ti­vate new ideas with the view to build­ing a bet­ter tomorrow.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 59: the Tomor­row­land issue