“To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” Walt Disney, July 17, 1955

With these words on a hot summer’s day in the little town of Anaheim, CA, Walt Disney opened Disneyland to the world. There was nothing quite like Disneyland when it first opened; certainly, various amusement parks and carnivals existed, but the idea of a theme park was something new and truly revolutionary. Against many expert predictions, Disneyland became a stirring success and quickly established itself as a sterling piece of Americana.

Disneyland was very much a reflection of its creator Walt Disney. It embodied his passions and loves the way a painter makes his canvas a reflection of his inner struggles. It was also very much a product of his ideas rendered in concrete and steel. Whereas most companies embarking on a venture of this type would do so with an eye solely to boosting their profit margins, Disney created Disneyland out of a sincere desire to give families a place to have good clean fun together regardless of status or wealth.

The makeup of Disneyland only further reflected this emphasis on themes and experiences over profit. The early rides were focused on things such as mine trains or rocket ships, not Disney’s own brand. Indeed, outside of Fantasyland, you would be hard-pressed to find an attraction directly based on one of Disney’s properties.

Disney’s expansion under Walt only ever refined this with haunted houses, tiki rooms, pirates, and presidents joining the Disneyland family. Through the park, Disney saw a way to gather the best of what he saw in America’s history, its stories, and its promise for the future and present it to families of every stripe.

Modern Disney has changed very much from what it was in Walt’s day. It has grown much larger and more powerful with a stable that includes many of the greatest cultural touchstones of the modern era and a revenue stream capable of out earning small countries.

In some respects, this is for the better for Disneyland and its sister parks as they now have access to some of the best creative talent on the planet and the resources to indulge in any fantasy. On the downside, however, this new Disney has grown more corporate and more money hungry than ever before resulting in a number of changes to the park.

The most obvious of these is the price of going to Disney parks. Over the past decade, the cost of a ticket or annual pass to get into the park has been steadily climbing and just as steadily pricing out many families from going. The resort hotels that Disney owns have become even more outrageously priced.

Compounding onto this are the various schemes and gimmicks Disney has devised to squeeze a few more bucks out of mister and misses average guest. From offering premium parking for a price, to get further in line quick passes, and slightly better viewing arrangements to shows, Disney is now becoming rife with various pay to play options to things that were formerly free.

And that’s before the merchandising comes into play. The merchandising is everywhere, and while it is certainly their right to do so, it quickly becomes excessive and annoying. All of these taken together are quickly sucking the fun out of a trip to Disney.

The more subtle influence of this new Disney is in how attractions and lands are built and themed. Most original Disney rides and lands were built around a specific theme or experience such as the old west or a voyage around the world rather than a Disney property.

Even the newer California Adventure Park maintained this convention with its lands based around California landmarks, such as Hollywood and the beach boardwalks, and rides based on things like an aerial tour of the state or river rafting mountain waterways.

Now though it has changed, bit-by-bit new rides have adopted Disney licenses or characters especially from newer properties such as Pixar films. Even older attractions have been altered to include these specific Disney properties. Sometimes this works well; the addition of Jack Skellington to the Haunted Mansion from Halloween to Christmas is a delightful treat.

But other times it breaks the illusion such as the addition of Capt. Jack Sparrow to Pirates of the Caribbean. This change to the ride feels particularly unneeded and distracting. With the success of the recently built Cars Land, and the growing hype around the upcoming Star Wars Land this trend is only likely to grow.

The changes in Disneyland in the years since Walt’s death in many ways reflect the changes in American society since then. The buoyant optimism and sense of common purpose that Walt admired has faded and been replaced with a sense of pessimism about the future and a deep running sense of divisiveness in society, a country of haves and have-nots.

The sense of comported responsibility and compassion with an eye toward the great American middle class and their families that Disney tried to run his company on has been replaced by a corporate culture that emphasizes profit above all motives and morals and creates a playing field available only to those who can pay the increasingly exorbitant cost of participation.

I cannot say how Walt would view the changes to his creation; certainly, the fact that it has continued to grow and innovate would make him immensely proud, but the increasingly inaccessible and greedy nature of it would give him pause.

While the image that Disneyland presents of America is fairly sanitized and the optimism of its creators reads at times like naïveté, it is important to analyze the various microcosms of our society and use the insights they give us to try and put our society back together. Maybe then we can make more than one “happiest place on earth.”