Walt Disney envisioned a happy, safe, place where families could spend a day together. “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,” he said in a televised broadcast.

Disney and his team rushed the new amusement park together in a year and a day. On Disneyland’s debut day — July 17, 1955, or what The Walt Disney Company now calls “Dedication Day” — the park was filled with Hollywood stars, luminaries and reporters.

It wasn’t smooth sailing. Someone had counterfeited tickets. Rather than the 20,000 expected, almost 35,000 showed up at the park, said Martin Sklar, vice chairman of Walt Disney Imagineering, in the Wired.com video interview above.

Plus, some of the rides (there were only 20 at the time) broke down. Filled beyond its capacity, the ferryboat sank. A gas leak fouled Fantasyland. A plumbers’ strike meant the drinking fountains didn’t work (though the toilets did).

On top of all that, it was a treacherously hot day, with the temperature soaring above 100 degrees in Anaheim. Ladies’ heels sank into the black asphalt. (A highly unlikely urban legend holds that a poodle sank into the blacktop, never to be seen again.)

Needless to say, members of the press weren’t impressed.

The staff nicknamed the day “Black Sunday.”

But, 55 years later, Disneyland is still open, and attracts more visitors than ever. We asked old-time Disney legends Sklar and Dick Nunis to recall what it was like on Black Sunday more than a half-century ago, and if Disneyland has lived up to Walt’s vision.

See Also:

• The Massively Multiplayer Magic Kingdom
• Rebuilding Tomorrowland
• The Ever-Expanding, Profit-Maximizing, Cultural-Imperialist, Wonderful World of Disney

Authors: Annaliza Savage

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