How did Walt Disney figure out how to make people pay to stand in lines all day?

Answer 1

Glory be and behold, i'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people i don't know while considering that, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here lest ye shall not forget, which is it, is man one of god's blunders or is god one of man's?

Answer 2

He didn't.


“We did it [Disneyland], in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster - closed and forgotten within the first year.” - Walt Disney



“Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.” - Walt Disney



“When we opened Disneyland, a lot of people got the impressions that it was a get-rich-quick thing, but they didn't realize that behind Disneyland was this great organization that I built here at the Studio, and they all got into it and we were doing it because we loved to do it.” - Walt Disney

Answer 3

It started with an animated mouse...

Never underestimate the power of art, in all its forms. Have a great idea, market it well, create an empire.

Disney tapped into our love of fairytales. Sell us a beautiful world of dreams & magic & we'll stand in line an hour for a ride that lasts 30 seconds. It's a metaphor for life anyway. We love the rollercoaster. How many thrilling moments do we have? And how much waiting & drudgery in between? But hey, it's still worth it. Love that ride. That feeling of suspension just before you fall. Magic.

Answer 4

He tapped into our herd instinct, we are basically like sheep and want to follow the person in front to make sure we don't miss out on something.Having said that, if I see a line I go somewhere else!!

Answer 5

He realized how much people would pay for fantasy and escapism.

Answer 6

It's a human trap, set by a mouse.

Answer 7

On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. He got his idea for a children's theme park after visiting Children's Fairyland in Oakland, California. This plan was originally for a lot south of the Studio, just across the street. However, the city of Burbank declined building permission. The original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that was to become Disneyland. Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.

When describing one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman (who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland to present to the Bank of America for funds), Disney said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train." Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.

Among his closest friends in his last decade of life were Bob Hannah; the trainmaster; and Lorne Cline; lead brakeman; who later regaled park guests with stories about Walt into the late 1970s — Walt did not ever want to lose control of the railroad to the financial backers of Disneyland and so placed the steam train and monorail attractions into a free-standing company called "RETLAW" (which is "Walter" spelled backwards) of which he and his wife were sole owners. Prior to its dissolution into the Disney Corp in the 1980s, he (and heirs) would receive $0.60 for each person through the turnstile at the train stations and supervisors could be seen currying favor with the owner by spinning the turnstiles to increase the count (and revenues) before park opening and after closing.
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As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. Treasure Island (1950) became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed by such successes as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), The Shaggy Dog (1959), and The Parent Trap (1961). The Walt Disney Studio was one of the first to take full advantage of the then-new medium of television, producing its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC named Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim, California. In 1955, he debuted the studio's first daily television show, the popular Mickey Mouse Club, which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.


Walt Disney meets with Wernher von Braun.As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in CinemaScope, 1955), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), the financially disappointing Sleeping Beauty (in Super Technirama 70mm, 1959) and The Sword in the Stone (1963).

Production on the short cartoons had kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. Disney's mind was set toward expansion, and he wanted to make longer films.

These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had assumed all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 1955. Disneyland, one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17, 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful Disney properties and films. After 1955, the Disneyland TV show became known as Walt Disney Presents. The show went from black-and-white to color in 1961 — changing its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color — and eventually evolved into what is today known as The Wonderful World of Disney, which continued to air on ABC until 2005, when it ceased as a regular series, due in part to premium pay-cable rights currently held by the Starz! movie network. Since 2005, Disney features have been split between ABC, the Hallmark Channel, and Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. It currently airs periodically, with features such as the December 2005 revival of Once Upon a Mattress.

During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957. The films attracted the attention of not only the general public, but also the Soviet space program.

The TV series and book Our Friend the Atom (1956, together with Heinz Haber) were produced as part of an effort by the Eisenhower administration to enhance the image of nuclear energy.

Answer 8

He took dozens of fairy tale ideas and made them more kid friendly.

Answer 9

He was an insightful genius. Build it and they will come.