Train Sparked Disneyland

A story about how Walt Disney's visit to an employee's backyard train setup became the catalyst for creating Disneyland.

"Walt hired this guy Kimball to work in his studio as a junior animator. Kimball invites all the coworkers over to his house for a gathering, and in his backyard, he had built these little trains - steamboat style, life-sized but very small, just one link of a train.

Walt goes to see this and is completely blown away seeing the train up close. He's amazed that Ward built this thing himself. When he comes back to the office, he sends a memo saying 'Mickey Mouse Park is back on.'

The shareholders tell him not to do it, saying the movie studio is already on edge and this would be a big distraction against the company charter. Walt responds, 'Okay, no problem, I understand - I'll create a new company.' He creates another company to build the park, saying 'I'm still going to do this, but if you don't want in, I'll do this myself.'

He initially thinks it's going to take $5 million to build Disneyland, but it ends up taking $17 million. To fund it, he takes a loan against his life insurance policy, sells his house in Palm Springs, then goes to ABC television network. He makes a deal where ABC would invest in the park in exchange for him creating a TV show for them. Disney puts down half a million plus about 6.5 million in loans and bonds for 34% ownership of Disneyland. He then did similar deals with two other companies and sold sponsorships to accumulate the full $17 million needed."