History

Walt Disney joined an advertising company in 1919. At the company Walt made drawings of agricultural implements. At the Pesman-Rubin art company just before hiring Walt Disney they had hired another eighteen year old named Ubbe Iwerks. Ubbe taught Walt some tricks he learned to make drawings. Around Christmas both gentleman were let go from the company. After being let go Ubbe and Walt decided to start there own company. They called it Iwerks-Disney. Later, the Kansas City Film Ad Company offered Walt a job alone for forty dollars a week. At the new firm Walt began learning about animation.

Walt Disney World

Walt Disney started a studio with his brother Roy called Disney Studios. On May 15, 1928 the first Mickey Mouse carton previewed at a Hollywood movie house. Walt had previewed two Mickey cartoons and none had excited the crowd much. Walt decided he needed to add sound to his cartoons producing the first Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie. By 1929 Mickey Mouse was famous, and still was a top star of Walt Disney Productions. Along with Mickey there were other popular characters including Goofy and Pluto which appeared in 1930’s and Donald Duck in 1934.

Walt was a great storyteller. So great that some animators sat and listened to Walt for hours. Walt acted out out the different part of Snow White. A movie still famous today. Walt announced that Snow White would be their first full-length feature. And in this full-length feature would be music. In the “Three Little Pigs” one of the songs was “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became extremely popular and still is today. Along with snow white came many more movies and characters to add on to Disney.

Although the studio was showing profit, there was money owed to the Bank of America. Walt had come to his brother, Roy to ask him for money to draw up plans for an amusement park. Walt had always planned on having an amusement park but he had bigger plans, a Mickey Mouse Park. Walt took his own money and hired architects to design a plan. The plan was to have one entrance bringing visitors to a replica of a small American town at the turn of the century. Beyond this town would be four lands Tommorowland, Fantasyland, Adventureland, and Frontierland. After Snow White became a hit Walt wanted to use that money to make something different, Disneyland. Walt needed 2 million more to get his project started. One night Walt was laying in bed and thought of television. Walt had an idea, he would make films on his own television program to fund to build Disneyland. One director wrote a pamphlet on Disneyland for Roy to show networks, but they refused to go along. ABC called Walt and offered him what he wanted. Many months later on ABC featured the show “Disneyland” the show became popular introducing hits like operations undersea, twenty thousand leagues under the sea and Davey Crockett. In 1955 Walt had another show on ABC called “The Mickey Mouse Club” Disneyland opened in 1955 with 22 major attractions. Ten years later twice as many Disneyland became a huge success.

With Disneyland being a huge success it made Walt realize he could build another park. The brothers wanted to attract the east coast. They decided Florida because the climate is the same as California. They found a place in Central Florida near Orlando. In fall of 1965 the Orlando Sentinel paper said on the front page that Disney org. was the buyer of the Orlando land. Walt and his brother met with the governor to announce that that this park would be called Disney World on November 15, 1965. Walt was getting older and his cough and neck were getting worse. Walt went into the doctors and had an x-ray, what they found was nodules on one lung. On November 7, 1966 Walt had surgery. Surgeons found a walnut-sized tumor on the left lung, it was cancer. Within two weeks he was back to work. On December 14^th Roy visited Walt to talk about a future park, Epcot. Early that next morning Walt had died.

		The official opening ceremony of Walt Disney World was on October 1971. An employee dressed as Mickey walked Lilly Disney, Walt’s wife to the stage. When the question was asked, “What would Walt have thought?” Lilly said that he would have approved. By 1978 Mickey had been 50 years old and museums celebrated the event. By 1982 Epcot opened one of Walt’s most important projects. And also a Japanese version of Disneyland opened. Walt is still one of the most respected men of all time.