Master Resort Timeline (1955–2026)

Seventy-one years on, the old orange grove holds two theme parks, three Disney hotels and a shopping district across 489 acres (Wikipedia: Disneyland Resort). The park opened with five lands. New Orleans Square followed in 1966, Bear Country in 1972, Mickey's Toontown in 1993 and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in 2019. Holidayland, a picnic and circus ground, came and went between 1957 and 1961. The chart below shows the crowds. The table after it shows the changes.

Read the line and the history is there. Attendance rose almost every decade. It went flat after Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971, and jumped in 1995, the year Indiana Jones Adventure arrived for the 40th anniversary. Only a pandemic turned it back. In 2024 the park drew 17.33 million people, second in the world behind the Magic Kingdom it inspired (Wikipedia).

The table runs oldest first, so it reads as a story. Attraction dates come mainly from TouringPlans' opening-date register. Where a land chapter covers an event in depth, the chapter has the detail.

Still to come (announced, not yet open). Avengers Infinity Defense and Stark Flight Lab are slated for 2028. A refreshed "Remember… Dreams Come True" and the original "World of Color" return in February 2027, and "Magic Happens" returns for summer 2027. No dates have been given for the Coco attraction, the Avatar land that will replace Monsters, Inc. at California Adventure, or the new Tomorrowland.

Fun facts: seventy-one years

1. Doritos were born at Disneyland. The Casa de Fritos restaurant started frying leftover tortillas so they would not go to waste. Frito-Lay began selling the chips regionally in 1964 (Wikipedia).
2. The park first shut its gates because it was full on July 4, 1976, the nation's Bicentennial.
3. Disneyland has closed unexpectedly only six times: after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, during the Yippie protest in 1970, for winter storms in 1987 and 1992, after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and for the pandemic in 2020.
4. In its early years, the park often closed on Mondays and Tuesdays in the off-season. Nearby Knott's Berry Farm closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so Orange County visitors always had somewhere to go.
5. For the 30th anniversary, on December 5, 1985, one million balloons were released along the streets around the park.
6. In September 1984, several hundred employees walked out in the largest labor dispute in the park's history. The strike ended the next month.
7. From the late 1950s to 1968, Los Angeles Airways flew passenger helicopters between Disneyland and LAX.
8. When the Mickey and Friends parking structure opened in 2000, its 10,250 spaces made it the largest parking structure in the United States.
9. Since October 2014, the FAA has kept a permanent no-fly zone over the park, drones included.
10. In October 2024, the top one-day, one-park ticket price passed $200 for the first time, reaching $206 (Wikipedia).