The sunbelt in general, and Disneyland in particular, seemed a logical place for a demobilized veteran of the Carter battalion to reprogram his brain before jumping back into age of Reagan. So off I went. Disneyland first opened in 1955, the year some of the new Republican members of Congress were born. Its designers consciously saw it as an ideogram of America. They even mimicked the geography, putting ...

[*This article has been edited non-Disneyland Info removed--RLM*] Disneyland It's not surprising that the 1955 breakthrough occurred in Los Angeles. It grew out of the resident movie industry's capabilities and the special kind of ingenuity that for years had gone into inventing convincing effects for the camera. The park's chief innovator, Walt Disney, was a movie man. His contribution was the ...

March 7, 1981:--18-year old Mel Yorba becomes Disneyland's first murder victim. Yorba is stabbed to death during a fight with James O'Driscoll, 28, who says Yorba had pinched his girlfriend. O'Driscoll stabbed him with an 8 1/2-inch knife. He was treated by a park nurse, then taken in a Disneyland van to a hospital. A jury convicted O'Driscoll on second-degree murder charges and ...