A park that may have almost opened before Disneyland!
The Walt Daily
Mickey Mouse Park
Hi everyone! Many Disney Park ideas over the years have come and gone. One of these ideas, Walt Disney took many steps towards creating, and if it was realized, it may have opened even before Disneyland. For decades prior to the creation of Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney had thought about ideas for an amusement park that he would like to create that would be clean, include Disney characters in their storybook lands for guests to meet, and have kid-sized attractions and amusements. Walt felt that tourists would come to Hollywood, but they wouldn't have anything to see. Saying that even if they came to the Disney studio, there really wasn't much to see at all. By 1948, Walt wrote an intro office memo for an idea he was calling Mickey Mouse Park. Keeping in mind popular amusement parks that he had visited over the years, fairs, and the local Griffith Park where he would take his daughters, he wanted Mickey Mouse Park to take all the elements that were great about those other venues, like lush greenery, and include even more elements that they don't have. So Mickey Mouse Park would become a draw for tourists. He wanted to use spare acreage near the studio to build the park, even getting in contact with the city of Burbank to inquire about using some of the land under the parks and rec department. Some of the ideas for Mickey Mouse Park are probably going to sound very familiar to you. First would be a main village area where there would be a railroad station, benches, and foliage. There would also be a town hall and fire station, working post office, plenty of shops harkening back to the turn of the century, and statues of Disney characters including Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Even in Mississippi Riverboat Castle and Haunted House were ideas on the table. Walt became so adamant about the park and the ideas kept coming to him about stuff that needed to be included, that even in studio conversations on completely different topics, he would find a way to make the park come up. So, with an endless stream of great ideas to include in Mickey Mouse Park, what happened? Financing the venture proved prohibitive. The studio suffered a major blow to their income during World War II, and was still in the midst of recovery in the early 50s. The city of Burbank, where the studio and proposed land acreage was located, was also not convinced of the venture, feeling that it would be like carnivals at the time that were not clean and generally out to scam visitors. But despite this, it's said that Walt wasn't so bothered by the outcome of Mickey Mouse Park. Because his persistence convinced his brother Roy, who was in charge of the financials of the studio, that it wasn't a fleeting idea, and ultimately it helped pave part of the way for a dream park like Disneyland to come to life. [Music]