Did You Know?

There's a pet cemetery hidden on the Haunted Mansion grounds, with headstones for departed animals - including Mr. Toad.

Pirates of the Caribbean was the last attraction Walt personally oversaw. He died before it opened.

The Matterhorn was the world's first tubular steel roller coaster - the design that made virtually every modern coaster possible.

There is a small climbers' break area near the top of the Matterhorn, complete with a basketball hoop. It's a break room, not the full secret court of legend.

The Matterhorn's abominable snowman has a name: Harold.

Disneyland once ran on ticket books lettered A through E. The biggest thrills needed an 'E ticket' - which is why a great experience is still called an E-ticket ride decades after the books were discontinued in 1982.

New Orleans Square, opened in 1966, was the first entirely new land added to Disneyland - and the first land anywhere modeled on a real American city.

Walt designed the layout of Tom Sawyer Island himself, reportedly sketching it at home after being unhappy with his designers' versions.

The Monsanto House of the Future was so sturdily built from plastic that wrecking balls bounced off it. Demolition took roughly two weeks of hand-cutting.

Disneyland's Space Mountain squeezes two intertwined tracks into a smaller building than its Florida counterpart, which is why the two rides feel so different.

Big Thunder Mountain's queue and set dressing include genuine antique mining equipment that Imagineers bought and hauled in.

A colony of feral cats lives in Disneyland year-round. They're fed, given medical care, and let loose at night to handle rodents - an arrangement said to date back to the park's early years.

The horses that pull Main Street's streetcars are mostly Belgians and Percherons, work only short shifts, and retire to a Disney-owned ranch.

Disneyland's horses, ponies and other park animals live at Circle D Ranch, a working ranch on Disney property.

The Enchanted Tiki Room was the debut of Audio-Animatronics - and the technology worked so well that Walt reportedly worried people would think the birds were real.

Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln was such a leap in animatronics that audiences in 1964 debated whether a live actor was on stage.

Disneyland has closed for a full unscheduled day only a handful of times in 70 years - including the day of President Kennedy's assassination and after the September 11 attacks.

The Main Street Electrical Parade debuted in 1972 and has been retired and revived so many times that 'farewell season' has become a running joke among fans.

Four Disney attractions premiered not at a Disney park but at the 1964 New York World's Fair, built for corporate sponsors as a way to get someone else to fund Walt's experiments.

'it's a small world' was built for that World's Fair as a UNICEF fundraiser, then shipped to Disneyland in 1966.

Carousel of Progress also came from the 1964 World's Fair and is believed to be the longest-running stage show in American theater history, by number of performances.

Its theme song, 'There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,' was written by the Sherman Brothers - who also wrote the song from 'it's a small world' that you cannot now get out of your head.

Disney bought the Florida land through a web of dummy corporations with names like 'Ayefour Corporation' - a pun on Interstate 4 - so landowners wouldn't realize who was buying and raise prices.

The secret held until a local newspaper reporter pieced it together, forcing Disney to confirm the project early.

Walt Disney World's property covers roughly 27,000 acres - about the size of San Francisco - and Disney still hasn't built on most of it.

Disney bought that much land specifically because of Disneyland: Walt watched motels and attractions crowd right up to his fences in Anaheim and vowed never again.

For decades, the Florida property operated under its own quasi-governmental district with powers most private companies never get - including, on paper, the authority to build a nuclear power plant.

Magic Kingdom is built on what is effectively the second story. A network of tunnels called utilidors runs beneath it, so cast members and deliveries move unseen.

The idea for those tunnels reportedly came from Walt spotting a Frontierland cowboy walking through Tomorrowland in Disneyland and deciding it broke the spell.

The utilidors weren't dug down. Magic Kingdom was built at ground level and earth was piled around it, because Florida's water table made real basements impractical.