The concept for Disneyland began when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters Diane and Sharon. While watching them ride the merry-go-round, he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together, though this idea laid dormant for many years.

Disneyland was built by Walt Disney and his team of "Imagineers" at WED Enterprises, opening in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955. Walt’s motivation for building the park was born from a sense of dissatisfaction with the dirty, unorganized amusement parks of the 1940s. He famously said the idea came to him while sitting on a park bench watching his daughters ride a merry-go-round, wishing there was a place where "parents and children could have fun together." He wanted to create an immersive, "cinematic" experience where guests could step into the stories they saw on screen, leading to the creation of themed lands like Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. To fund the massive $17 million project, he made a historic deal with the ABC television network, creating the "Disneyland" TV show to provide both capital and a marketing platform. His goal was to build a "magic kingdom" that was clean, safe, and governed by a philosophy of "optimism and imagination." For Walt, Disneyland was never meant to be finished; it was designed to be a "living" entity that would grow and change as long as there was imagination left in the world.