Dateline Disneyland (1955)

When this broadcast aired on July 17, 1955, Americans had been primed for the grand opening of Disneyland. Every week for nearly a year, Walt Disney had come into viewers' homes to tell them about his upcoming theme park and interest was high. Kid across America were waiting eager with anticipation for their first glimpse at the part and so were their parts who had grown up with Walt Disney's creations. When this live broadcast took place over 90 million viewers tuned in to see the payoff for their investment of tuning in to a season's worth of shows. Nearly every TV set in America at that time was watching this broadcast. Let that sink in.

The broadcast itself was a marvel of engineering as there'd never been a live broadcast on such a grand scale like this ever attempted before. (For more information on that look at the Operation Disneyland video.)

To host this broadcast, Walt asked his friends Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan to host the festivities. All three broadcasters were well known to 1950's audiences from a variety of venues, and these were A-list talents leading this broadcast.

Because this broadcast was live and had never been attempted, there were a few errors during it, and they didn't get to everything that had been rehearsed. The flubs and snafus are part of the nostalgic charm. Also, the reason we don't see the interiors of the Fantasyland dark rides is because these were unable to be filmed at the time. Overlays of footage from Walt's animated features were inserted into the live broadcast to make up for it.

Opening Day of Disneyland was a legendary disaster story known as Black Sunday with bathrooms and water fountains not working, pavement not hardened, gas leaks, food sellouts, counterfeit tickets, and more. You wouldn't realize it from the footage as ABC has a financial investment in the parks and kept all of that content off screen.

Walt himself is in grand form as his latest dream has become a reality. The Firehouse Five Plus Two, a Dixieland Jazz Band comprised of Walt Disney artists is also one of the many cameos to be found in this historic broadcast.

In this broadcast you'll also see the prayer and blessing that was held over the park by Rev Glenn D Puder. There's also a video about that with more detail elsewhere on this Rumble channel.

We have made this broadcast as complete as we can. Unfortunately, in early 2001 this broadcast was officially released in the first wave of Treasures DVD's in edited form and that version of this footage is all that's in circulation online. A pet project of Roy Disney, Jr., this series of DVD's released many Walt era animated shorts, TV episodes, and theatrical shorts for the first time. Film critic and Disney fan Leonard Maltin hosted these DVD sets with immense enthusiasm. While the overall series was applauded for being complete and unedited, this was not true for the Disneyland USA DVD set and several edits were made across the content of this it because of PC culture.

The Mouseketeers were completely purged from Dateline Disneyland when they had been present in both the parade down Mainstreet USA and had their own segment. A gag with Sammy Davis Jr. was also cut to avoid paying his estate. This deleted footage was always included when this episode would air on The Disney Channel. Every copy in circulation online has been from this edited print and most people are unaware of these edits. This is how history gets revised.

We have edited in a version of the Mouseketeers segment that was released to a later Treasures set but it isn't the correct footage. It's of a rehearsal edited into the final footage. If this deleted footage ever surfaces, we will edit all the removed footage back into the show for the historical record. If anyone has this footage and would like to make it available, please leave a comment below. People should see this content as it originally aired.

After this Treasure release blunder, Roy Jr never allowed it to happen again and whenever there was an overlooked edit on a futures Treasures release, a replacement program was instituted to ensure collectors could have the complete copy of the content.

Original airdate July 17. 1955

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.