17 July 1955: Disneyland opens, chaotically
Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, and the first day was a mess: counterfeit tickets, overcrowding, fresh asphalt soft enough to grab shoes, and too few drinking fountains. Staff later nicknamed it Black Sunday. Walt Disney fixed the problems, attendance boomed, and the park became the model for a theme park empire. A rough launch is survivable when the underlying idea is strong and management keeps improving it.
The lesson: A bad first day matters far less than whether the business keeps getting better afterward.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Disney at the start of 1990 → $15,714 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 15.7 times the money, but $3,714 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Disney teaches: Expensive strategic pivots can take years to pay off; a company remaking itself for a new era can leave shareholders waiting a long time.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $7.00 | $15,714 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $15.00 | $7,333 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $30.00 | $3,667 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Disney? Every starting year and the full story →
More Disney history
- 16 October 1923: Walt and Roy Disney start a cartoon studio
- 30 October 2012: Disney buys Lucasfilm and Star Wars
- 14 December 2017: Disney agrees to buy much of 21st Century Fox
- 21 December 1937: Snow White premieres and saves Disney
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
Play Sixty-40