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¶ Work was rushing ahead last week on Disney's particular hobbyhorse ("The world's biggest toy," one of his friends called it, "for the world's biggest boy"): an $11 million "permanent World's Fair" set on 160 acres in Anaheim, just 30 minutes from the center of Los Angeles. "Disneyland" opening next July, will be able to handle 10,000 cars and 40,000 people a day. The park will be divided into four areas: 1) Fantasyland—a guided tour through the Disney imagination, during which the visitor takes a ride in an airborne pirate galleon, pops through the rabbit hole into Alice's Wonderland, hops on a mining cart for a trip to the diamond mines of the Seven Dwarfs; 2) Adventureland—an outdoor museum of natural wonders, designed to complement the True-Life Adventure Films, which will offer a Tahitian village populated by real live Tahitians (peddling papaya juice), and a trip down a tropical river past nattering monkeys, gnashing crocs and yawping plastic hippos; 3) Frontierland —"a glimpse into America's historical past" that will give its young customers all the sensations of starring in a horse opera; and 4) Tomorrowland—a showplace for science, where audiences can peer into a simulated atom furnace or jump aboard a rocket ship and fly to the moon.
"Why, every kid in the country," gasped one East Coast parent, "will be hounding his father for a trip to California."
Cash v. Quality. "Disney hasn't expanded," said a moviemaker last week, "he has exploded." And as the fiscal dust settles, it is clear that in business terms as well as in public estimation Disney has become a major power in the entertainment world. The Disney lot today is the busiest in Hollywood, and one of the most shrewdly managed. Its production is cautiously diversified. "Eighty percent of it, right now, is television," says Disney, "but we'll soon be back in balance." Two major cartoon features—a story about dogs called Lady and the Tramp, which is scheduled for July release, and a version of Sleeping Beauty —are on the drawing boards, as well as six short cartoons.
But Disney knows from expensive experience that the cartoons, which cost about $500 a foot to produce (twice as much as a live-action feature), take a long time to pay for themselves. He will use them as loss leaders for the Disney merchandise (which in 1954 has brought him some $2,000,000 in profits), for one annual, big-budget, live-action spectacle (Conrad Richter's Light in the Forest will be next), and for a series of full-length True-Life Adventures. A new company, set up by Disney during 1954, will distribute these pictures at a 20% saving to the studio. These facts have been duly noted in Wall Street. In the last nine weeks, since Disneyland went on the air, Disney stock has gone up from 14 3/8 bid to 24 bid. "This year," says Disney with satisfaction, "has been our best."