4. Beverly Park

Image: Prayitno, Flickr (license)

Like Fairyland, Beverly Park Children’s Amusement Center provided a small, safe theme park for L.A. parents to escort their children year-round. Established in the heart of Beverly Grove in 1945, the three-quarter-acre fairground was acquired and operated by former music manager and businessman David Bradley. The park’s young guests were treated to kid-sized attractions, including some refurbished equipment from an abandoned traveling carnival: a portable Little Dipper roller coaster, Ferris wheel, carrousel, electric trolley, Tilt-A-Whirl, Road Runner (an Autopia-like attraction), Dodgem bumper cars, pony rides, and all the popcorn, peanuts, and cotton candy they could get their hands on.

Beverly Park was more than your run-of-the-mill fair, however. It was a place designed to make children feel important. Bradley designed every aspect of the park to enchant and delight his visitors and built out many of his attractions with special murals, flowers, and tunnels so that guests would always have something interesting to look at and explore.

Walt was one of a long list of celebrity parents to bring their kids to Beverly Park on the weekends. More than that, he spent hours sitting on the benches of the park and asking his daughters (and the other children roaming the grounds) to describe what they loved about the rides. He picked Bradley’s brain on everything from attraction operations and dining options to the length of the queues. Bradley left Beverly Park to work on Walt’s Disneyland in 1950 and eventually returned to his own amusement park operations in 1955—but not before he made his imprint on Anaheim’s newest recreation area. Thanks to the innovative ideas of his fellow theme park creator, Walt was inspired to create themed areas of his park where families could take photos together. He was also convinced to scale down the buildings along Main Street, U.S.A. so visitors would feel taller and more important, and the littlest guests wouldn’t be too intimidated by the size and scope of the park. And, as Bradley had done throughout his stamp-sized plot of land, Walt would pay special attention to the theming and cleanliness of his theme park as he sought to make every square inch of Disneyland beautiful and interesting to discover.

5. Tivoli Gardens

Image: Malte Hübner, Wiki Commons

The crème de la crème of European amusement parks, there was no way Walt could in good conscience construct his own Magic Kingdom without first paying a visit to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark. Constructed in 1843, Tivoli is among the oldest theme parks still in existence and famed for its Rutschebanen roller coaster, bumper cars, roundabout boats, carousel, Glass Hall Theater, and self-piloted Dragon Boats.

More than a captivating sprawl of amusement rides and entertainment, it had a reputation for being clean, beautiful, and restful, a place that appealed to both kids and adults, and one that refused to serve alcohol to its guests. As Walt toured the grounds in the early 1950s, taking notes, discussing the park’s many attractions with television celebrity Art Linkletter, and developing his own ideas for what a theme park should look and feel like, he exclaimed to his wife, Lillian, “Now, this is what an amusement park should be.”

Tivoli was regarded as one of the best parks in the world, and in time, Disneyland would share its highly-coveted status as a top-tier destination for families and visitors of all kinds. Because of Tivoli, Walt was able to create a park that made children feel like the heroes of their own stories, made adults feel like children, and made everyone feel comfortable, safe, and relaxed as they enjoyed a day of breathtaking attractions and integrated entertainment. More important still—and more crucial to the survival of a park like Disneyland—was the philosophy espoused by army officer and theme park developer Georg Carstensen in 1844, well over 100 years prior to Disneyland’s creation.

“Tivoli will never, so to speak, be finished,” Carstensen was quoted. And he was right: the park continued to morph into something new and wonderful with every decade that passed, from the development of the vintage cars track in 1959 to the addition of the Golden Tower turbo drop ride in 1999. To anyone familiar with Tivoli’s world-class grounds, it must have felt like déjà vu when they heard Walt’s reply to a skeptical reporter at the opening of Disneyland on July 17, 1955:

“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world. It is something that will never be finished.”