A Short History of Disneyland and Mickey Mouse

The dream of every child all over the world is to visit the Disneyland. It is an appeal for millions of tourists. It is a theme park and street shows, fairy tale characters, colorful stage, special tours, movies, movie sets of famous films, theme rides, games and food restaurants are its main attractions.

When we talk about Disneyland, the famous mouse character called Mickey Mouse comes to our mind. It is a cartoon character of a talking mouse created by The Walt Disney Company in 1928. It is one of the oldest cartoon characters and its figure is quite unique among cartoon characters with large black ears and a pointy nose, red shorts with white buttons and large yellow construction boots, the shape of Mickey’s ears and nose are the logo of The Walt Disney Company.

Disney land has the aim of presenting itself as the happiest place on earth. Many creative and highly skilled people were involved in the creation of Disneyland which took a long time. Although the origin of Mickey Mouse is a bit hazy and there were different stories which appeared to suit the publishers and copyright holders. It may never be known who was behind the creation of Mickey Mouse but it is mostly believed that Walt Disney who was the founder of The Walt Disney Company created the character.

Walt Disney was also the person who came up with the idea of a theme park when he was saw his two daughters enjoying the ride of merry-go-round in a park. On seeing this, he thought of an idea to build a place where both adults and children could enjoy and appreciate the games and rides.

The first Mickey Mouse short was distributed in 1928 but it was full of mishaps and it failed to find a distributor so a second short was filmed. This second short also failed to find a distributor. The first Mickey Mouse animated short which was successful was Steamboat Willie, released in 1928. It proved an immediate hit with audiences loving the use of music and sound effects which added humor to the production.

The opening day of Disneyland unluckily had problems and was referred as Black Sunday. The temperature was unusually hot which made the people thirsty, the problem of counterfeit tickets caused the crowd to swell and Disneyland received bad press on that day.

Mickey Mouse Clubs were operated in cinemas throughout the US by The Disney Company that claimed over a million members and the Mickey Mouse Club was revived as a television series and from 1955 to 1959. Mickey Mouse Club was also aired in 1970s with famous pop celebrities. A new format show named the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse started airing in 2006 aimed at preschoolers which the company reserves the right to revive.

Still today, Disneyland is an attraction and Mickey Mouse is one of the most celebrated cartoon characters of children entertainment.