Disney Facts, Trivia & Secrets

Masterpieces

• Disney has produced hundreds of movies over the years, but only a few have been designated "masterpieces" by the company itself. Disney archivist Dave Smith has a list of 44 films--running from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937 to "Home on the Range" in 2004--which meet the criteria. All of them are animated, though the list doesn't include CGI films such as "Toy Story," which were produced by Pixar and only released by Disney.
  
  

Feature Length Cartoon

• "Snow White" is justly celebrated as a cinematic classic, but in 1937, it constituted a huge risk. No one had seen a feature-length cartoon before, and no one was sure whether it would work. Walt Disney hedged his bets by testing various animation techniques in the short cartoons he produced leading up to "Snow White." If something didn't work, it could be dropped from the feature-length project without ruining it.
  
  

Oscars

• Among his other achievements, Walt Disney is the only person ever to receive four Oscars on a single night. He won them in 1953, for Best Cartoon Short Subject ("Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom"), Best Two-Reel Short Subject ("Bear Country"), Best Documentary Short Subject ("The Alaskan Eskimo") and Best Documentary Feature ("The Living Desert").
  
  

Disneyland and Disney World

• Disneyland was originally created as a fun way for fans to visit the Walt Disney company. (Disney's Burbank studios were rather dull.) It opened in 1955, just down the road in Anaheim, and despite a rocky first day, soon became a huge hit. Because comparatively few of the park's visitors came from the East Coast, Disney began exploring options for a second park. The result was Walt Disney World, which opened in Orlando, Florida, in 1971.
  
  

Hidden Mickeys

• One of the more enjoyable secrets of the Disney theme parks is the presence of "hidden Mickeys" at strategic locations. They're silhouettes shaped like the famous head and ears of Mickey Mouse. While the architecture contains a number of overt Mickey images, hidden Mickeys are designed to be unobtrusive and hard to spot. For example, one appears on a piece of furniture in the attic of the Haunted Mansion, while another is on the ceiling in the lobby of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.