2005:
Smash Mouth, S.O.S. Band and Paul Jackson Jr. help ring in 2006 with
a special New Year's Eve concert at Downtown Disney's Pleasure Island.
Celebrated every evening since 1990, tonight is the final time Pleasure Island will celebrate
"New Year's Eve" on a nightly basis.
Disney World's Timekeeper (a Tomorrowland attraction) plays what will be
its final show. It will close for good in February 2006.
The creator of this website asked his lovely girlfriend to marry him on this day in 1998 in the midst of a New Year's Eve celebration at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. (To find out if she said "yes" see November 15.)
1918:
Virginia Davis, Walt Disney's first human star, is born in Kansas City, Missouri. She will begin working full-time for Walt in the
summer of 1924 and appear in the first 13 titles of his live action/animated Alice Comedies. (Davis will be named a Disney Legend in 1998.)
1920:
Western entertainer & Disney Legend Rex Allen is born in his Grandmother Clark's home in Wilcox, Arizona. He will perform as a narrator, singer, and actor in more than 80 Disney films and provide the voices for 150 different Disney cartoon characters. Allen will be the original voice of the father and later the voice of the grandfather in Disney's Carousel of Progress!
1932:
A Florentine publisher named G. Nerbini launches a weekly magazine called Topolino (which means “mouse” in Italian). This Italian version of Mickey Mouse is badly drawn - but still recognizable to fans.
1936:
Walt Disney and his wife gain a second daughter when they adopt a baby girl named Sharon Mae.
1940:
Actor & Disney Legend Tim Considine - Spin Evans of Disney's
Spin and Marty TV serial - is born in Los Angeles, California.
1957:
Leigh Woolfenden, of Phoenix, Arizona becomes the ten-millionth guest to enter Disneyland!
A New Year's Eve party is held for the first time in Disneyland. The event draws 7,500 people.
1995:
The World of Motion Pavilion at Disney World's Epcot closes. This sleek, circular structure
housed one of Disney's largest collections of Audio-Animatronic figures (188) set in 24 scenes. Each one depicted
the progression of transportation and society through the ages. (It will be replaced with Test Track.)
1998:
The Teen Idol Tour - starring Bobby Sherman, Davy Jones, and Peter Noone - comes to Disney-MGM Studios for 2 evening performances. Earlier in the afternoon Sherman attends a special luncheon for fans at the Grand Floridian Convention Center.
Meanwhile over at Pleasure Island, a concert featuring Huey Lewis & The News, Sister Hazel, and Rick Springfield takes place.
Disney's internal staff newsletter Eyes and Ears announces that Epcot's Horizons will close to guests in nine days.
1999:
Disney's Fantasia 2000 is generally released in the U.S.
Cheap Trick rocks Disney-MGM Studios.
2000:
Vertical Horizon headlines a New Year's Eve show at Walt Disney World.
2001:
Cyndi Lauper headlines the New Year's Eve entertainment lineup at
Downtown Disney Pleasure Island in Florida.
David Swift, a writer-director-producer whose career included stints as an
animator at Walt Disney Studios and writing comedy for radio, dies at age 82
at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Swift created Wally Cox's popular "Mr. Peepers" television series in the early 1950s and made his debut as a
movie director in 1960 guiding a young Hayley Mills in Disney's Pollyanna. He also worked on such Disney
classics as Snow White, Fantasia, Dumbo, Pinocchio, The Reluctant Dragon, Peter Pan and 101
Dalmations. (Throughout the '70s, he directed such TV shows as "Barney Miller," "The Love Boat" and
"Eight Is Enough.")
2002:
Terror of Tower's new random drop sequence officially
debuts at Disney-MGM Studios.
AT&T's sponsorship of Epcot's Spaceship Earth ends.
The B-52's, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, and Chris Botti
rock Downtown Disney Pleasure Island, Florida.
2003:
The U.S. Postal Service unveils 4 new 37-cent postage stamps featuring
Disney characters. The stamps, which celebrate friendship as portrayed
by the Walt Disney studio, will be issued sometime in mid-2004.
Blondie and the Sugar Hill Gang headline Walt Disney World's
New Year's Eve celebration at Pleasure Island.
2004:
Cheap Trick, Tone Loc and Kurtis Blow headline the New Year's Eve entertainment lineup at Downtown Disney Pleasure Island, Florida.
The future awaits ...
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1962:
Universal's feature 40 Pounds of Trouble, starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette, is released. It is the first non-Disney motion picture to use Disneyland as a location!
In this day's issue of Newsweek magazine, Walt Disney talks about plans of creating an attraction at Disneyland for "all of the Disney characters, so everyone can see them… I have in mind a theater, and the figures will not only put on the show but be sitting in the boxes with the visitors, heckling. I don't know just when I'll do that."
Almost a decade later, “The Mickey Mouse Revue” will open at Walt Disney World.
2006:
Disney's High School Musical The Concert Tour pulls into Uniondale, New York (on Long Island) for a performance at the Nassau Coliseum.
Dozens of Ugly Betty look-alike actresses roam through the Disney-MGM Studios theme park to promote ABC-TV's "Be Ugly in '07" campaign.
1969:
The Disney live-action comedy feature The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes - starring Kurt Russell, Cesar Romero, and Joe Flynn - is released.
More than 8,000 construction workers
were originally employed to build Walt Disney World.
1971:
The very first Magic Kingdom New Year's Eve Party is held at Walt Disney World, from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Tickets ($7.50 in advance and $9.00 night of the party) include admission, entertainment, hats & noisemakers.
Meanwhile singer Patti Page and dixieland bandleader and vocalist Bob Crosby star in the Contemporary Hotel's New Year’s Party.
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1947:
Actor Tim Matheson, who portrays Captain Braddock in Epcot's Body Wars attraction and Private Jeff Reed in the 1979 The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, is born in Glendale, California. (Fans of Animal House will always remember Matheson as Otter!)
2007:
Disney recording artists Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers appear live on ABC-TV's Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve from New York City.
NOW
PLAYING
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1997:
This evening's New Year’s Eve Party and midnight fireworks display over Sleeping Beauty Castle are broadcast live from Disneyland as part of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin Eve ‘98 on ABC-TV.
DECEMBER 31
advertisement
Today is New Year's Eve
THIS DAY MADE
IN THE
USA
DECEMBER 31
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1975:
A record 82,404 guests visit Walt Disney World on this day!
1980:
A new record-setting 92,969 guests visit Walt Disney World
on this final day of the year!
1948:
The Firehouse Five Plus Two (a Dixieland jazz band made up of Disney Studio
employees) perform in a large rehearsal room above Roy Hart’s Drum City, a
percussion store on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Street in Hollywood,
California. After the performance, the group is approached by Lester Koenig, a former assistant producer at
Paramount Pictures, who wants to become a record producer. He wishes to record the group's first album. (Koenig will start the Good Time Jazz Record Company and in May 1949 record the first Firehouse Five session!)
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DEC
2009:
Marvel shareholders approve the acquisition of Marvel by the Walt
Disney Company. Disney now owns the rights to over 5,000 super heroes, villains, and
general comic book characters.
Jump-swing specialists Big Bad Voodoo Daddy ring in the New Year with a
performance at Disney Hall. (This past September, the band performed at Epcot during
the International Food and Wine Festival.)
1994:
At Disney World the New Year's Eve entertainment includes Buster Poindexter, Fleetwood Mac, Peabo Bryson, and the Marshall Tucker Band at Pleasure Island.
