Film animator Walt Disney had his first big hit with the 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willy, starring Mickey Mouse. Disney’s studio churned out many more cartoons, including the Silly Symphonies series that introduced Donald Duck and the Three Little Pigs, whose song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” became a hit in the U.S. during the Depression Era of the 1930s.

In 1937, Disney produced the first American feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which became the biggest-selling movie up to that time. Many animated films followed: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, and more, alongside nature documentaries and live-action adventures and comedies. As of 2021, Disney Animation Studios has released 60 animated features.

These films, and especially their characters—Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Mister Toad, and others—became the theme material for a California amusement park, Disneyland, that opened in 1955. The park features a central Main Street styled after a late-1800s American downtown, surrounded by four “lands”—Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and Adventureland—with rides, restaurants, and other features based on each land’s central theme. Disneyland is noted for its groundbreaking realism, thoroughness of detail, and continuous state of cleanliness and repair.

Frustrated by the limited few hundred acres of Disneyland, Walt Disney bought up nearly 40 square miles of land in central Florida for a new resort that would contain several themed parks.