1971:
The Orlando Evening Star runs the front page headline:
"Monster Crowd Too Much For Mickey DISNEY GATES CLOSED" Traffic-choking crowds jam Walt Disney World to capacity on this day after Thanksgiving. Shortly before noon it is announced that the Florida park must close its gates to outside visitors! (Among those in the Magic Kingdom
on this day ... the webmaster of This Day in Disney History.)
2010:
As many as as 130 Disney stores across the nation open at midnight on "Magical
Friday" – Disney's answer to Black Friday.
The first Candlelight Processional of the season takes place at Epcot. Disney World's
long-running telling of the Christmas story features a live orchestra and a massive choir performing traditional
holiday songs. Tonight's first guest narrator is actress Isabella Rossellini.
2009:
Happy Thanksgiving
The 83rd Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York City. Mickey Mouse rejoins the parade this year with a new "Cruiseship Mickey" balloon.
It is the 4th parade version of Disney's famous mouse. Not only is Sailor Mickey the newest
balloon in the parade, he's also this year's "Macy's official holiday ambassador." Mickey is
approximately 61 feet high, 33 feet wide and 48 feet long, and takes about 14,000 cubic feet
of helium to fill! He is joined by fellow helium-powered Disney-owned characters Buzz
Lightyear and parade veteran Kermit the Frog.
2005:
Disney Legend and pioneering film distribtution executive Irving Ludwig passes
away at his home in Santa Monica, California. He is 95. His 40-year career with
Disney began in 1940 when he was hired to manage the road-show engagements of Fantasia. Ludwig later served as president of Buena Vista Distribution.
1864:
Charles L. Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript to 12-year-old
Alice Liddell, one of the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the dean of the
local church. The manuscript titled "Alice's Adventures Underground" (a story first created in July 1862) is an
early Christmas present. The manuscript will later be renamed and published as "Alice in Wonderland" and
"Through the Looking Glass" under his pen name Lewis Carroll. Dodgson, a proficient photography hobbyist, uses
family, friends and colleagues (including Alice) as subjects for his photographs and creative inspiration.
1937:
Disney's Pluto cartoon Pluto's Quin-Puplets is released.
1938:
Tragedy strikes when Walt's mother, Flora Disney, dies of asphyxiation caused
by a defective furnace in the house in Los Angeles that Walt and Roy had built
for their parents less than a month earlier. She is 70 years old.
1946:
Disney animator Woolie Reitherman (one of Disney's "Nine Old Men") weds Janie McMillan at Ermita Presbyterian Church in Manila.
1961:
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color airs
"Holiday for Henpecked Husbands."
1967:
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color airs part 1 of "The Monkey's Uncle."
1972:
The Wonderful World of Disney airs part 1 of "Chander, the Black Leopard of Ceylon."
1976:
Disney airs The Moonspinners and Prowlers of the Everglades as a TV special.
1987:
Tokyo Disneyland welcomes its 50-millionth guest!
1997:
Disney's Flubber, starring Robin Williams & Marcia Gay Harden, is released. A remake of the 1961 film The Absent-Minded Professor, Williams portrays Professor Phillip Brainard who along with his robot assistant Weebo, voiced by Jodi Benson, creates an energetic "substance." The cast includes Clancy Brown, Ted Levine, Wil Wheaton, and Edie McClurg.
1998:
Thanksgiving Day
Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving airs on ABC-TV.
2001:
The Walt Disney Company reiterates its commitment to support
U.S. troops at home and abroad, and assist in the nation's relief
and rebuilding programs. (Disney has become a USO World
Sponsor providing more than $1 million financial aid.)
2003:
Disney's feature The Haunted Mansion opens in theaters. The movie stars Eddie Murphy as real estate agent Jim Evers who drags his family to see the creepy Gracey mansion when he learns it is being put up for sale!
When the Evers family gets there, however, they are stranded by a torrential thunderstorm and quickly find that they are not alone—not when 999 grim, grinning ghosts come out to socialize. Directed by Rob Minkoff, the cast includes Terence Stamp, Nathaniel Parker, Marsha Thomason, and Jennifer Tilly.
2004:
The popular Disney World holiday event the Candlelight Processional is performed
at Epcot for the first time this season as Holidays Around the World begins.
The Disney/Pixar animated feature The Incredibles is released in the United Kingdom
and the Republic of Ireland.
The final episode of the interactive animated series Stanley airs on Playhouse Disney. Based on the series of children's books by Andrew Griffin, the show first debuted in 2001.
2006:
The Wonders of Life pavilion including the attractions Body Wars, Cranium
Command, and The Making of Me reopen in Epcot. Closed since January 2005, the pavilion
now opens seasonally.
A Mickey Mouse balloon was first
added to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (then called the Macy's
Christmas Parade) in New York City in 1934.
1951:
MGM releases the comedy Grounds for Marriage featuring Van Johnson and Kathryn Grayson. Among the musical numbers is one by the Firehouse Five Plus Two (a
Dixieland jazz band led by Disney animator Ward Kimball).
Matthew Diamond, a film and television director, producer and choreographer is
born in New York City. His directing credits include an episode of ABC's Ugly Betty, the TV movie Camp Rock,
an episode of Phil of the Future, and multiple episodes of That's So Raven.
1942:
The Warner Brothers romance film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Peter Lorre, is released. (A scene from this film was represented in Disney's Hollywood
Studios' The Great Movie Ride. It was also among the trailers shown in the ride's queue area.)
1933:
Legendary star of stage, screen, television and records, Robert Goulet is born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He is the singing voices of Mikey in Recess: School's Out and Wheezy
the Penguin in Toy Story 2 - who sings his own version of "You've Got a Friend In Me." (Goulet first rose to
international stardom in 1960 as Lancelot in Lerner and Loewe's hit Broadway musical Camelot. In 1988 he was
cast by Tim Burton as a houseguest blown through the roof by Beetlejuice.)
1986:
The Disney Channel first airs "How to Haunt a Haunted House,"
the 75th episode of The Edison Twins.
NOVEMBER 26
THIS DAY MADE
IN THE
USA
NOVEMBER 26
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O
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2004 Holidays Around the World begins
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Traffic-choking crowds jammed Walt Disney World to capacity today, forcing the giant playground to close its spinning turnstiles.
-November 26, 1971 issue of Orlando Evening News
WDW closes gates for first time in history!
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1943:
Disney's Donald Duck short Home Defense, directed by Jack King, is released.
When Donald, a civilian war aircraft spotter, falls asleep at this post ... his nephews trick him by launching a
toy plane and toy parachutists!
"... used to sit on the big sofa on each side of him, while he told us stories, illustrating them by pencil or ink drawings as he went along ...
He seemed to have an endless store of these fantastical tales, which he made up as he told them, drawing busily on a large sheet of paper
all the time. They were not always entirely new. Sometimes they were new versions of old stories; sometimes they started on the old
basis, but grew into new tales owing to the frequent interruptions which opened up fresh and undreamed-of possibilities." -Alice Liddell
1959:
Thanksgiving Day
Disneyland's "Zorro Days," featuring the cast of Disney's popular
ABC-TV series, returns to the park for the 4th time. The 4-day event
includes parades and live performances in Frontierland.
"Disney always liked the casts of his shows to make appearances at Disneyland. It was great for attendance at the park and a lot of
Zorro products were sold at the same time. Things like little Zorro costumes, play swords, puzzles, games and dozens of other items
relating to the series. Money would pour into the Disney coffers. These personal appearances were a great moneymaker for the studio
and Walt knew it certainly helped in the ratings which made ABC a very happy puppy." -actor Britt Lomond (best remembered as the
sinister yet dashing Captain Monasterio on Disney's TV series Zorro)
2008:
The Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough reopens at Disneyland after being closed
since 2001. The attraction allows guests into a dark castle with narrow hallways, where they can relive the fairy
tale via a series of dioramas that portray passages from the story.
1992:
Thanksgiving Day
Santa Goofy takes the spotlight in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade,
as the "new" balloon. The procession also features 6,000 amateur tap dancers donning
Mickey Ears, tapping to set the Guinness World Record for Largest Assembly of Tap Dancers.
November 26
2014:
It is announced that The Turner Classic Movies cable channel is joining with two
divisions of the Walt Disney Company. TCM will help the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division
make changes to the Great Movie Ride, a long-running attraction at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida.
In return, TCM will receive "Presented by" credits at the attraction on posters, banners, display windows,
marquees and the like, which will also display the TCM logo. In the other part of the deal, another Disney
division, Walt Disney Studios, will provide TCM with vintage movies, cartoons, documentaries and episodes of
TV series like "Disneyland" and "Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color" for a periodic programming block on
the channel under the banner of "Treasures From the Disney Vault." The block will be offered by TCM
approximately four to five times a year starting with a broadcast on December 21.
1955:
Donald Paul Hahn, a film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in recent history, including The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast (the first animated film to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture), is born in
Chicago, Illinois. Starting his career in animation working for Disney Legend Wolfgang Reitherman as an assistant director on The Fox and the Hound, he later worked closely with director Don Bluth on the production of Pete's Dragon.
He then became production manager of The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective before moving on as an associate producer of Disney/Amblin's Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The 2009 Waking Sleeping Beauty is Hahn's feature directorial debut. Hahn also serves as executive producer of numerous Disneynature documentaries.
1965:
Comedian, actor, and writer Scott Adsit is born in Northbrook, Illinois. He is the voice of the robot Baymax in the Disney animated film Big Hero 6 and the television series Big Hero 6: The Series.
1981:
Singer and songwriter Natasha Bedingfield is born in West Sussex, England. Her song "Unwritten" (from her 2004 debut studio album of the same name) was featured in Disney's 2005 motion picture Ice Princess. The song was also nominated for a Radio Disney Music Award in 2006. Bedingfield can also be heard in Disneytoon's 2014 The Pirate Fairy singing "Who I Am" and "Weightless." Bedingfield recorded the end credit song, "More of Me," for Disney's Tangled: The Series in 2017.
2017:
Ale & Compass Restaurant opens in the former Captain’s Grille space in the Yacht Club Resort at Walt Disney World. Guests can dine on New England comfort food and classic seafood dishes in a gastropub-inspired restaurant that is reminiscent of a cozy lighthouse.
1956:
Actor Don Lake is born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He voiced Stu Hopps (father of Judy Hopps) in the 2016 Zootopia.
2020:
The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration airs
on ABC on this Thanksgiving Day.
1999:
The 4th Epcot Holidays Around the World begins.
1939:
Singer and actress Tina Turner is born in Nutbush, Tennessee. She contributed the songs "Easy As Life" (with Angélique Kidjo) to the concept album "Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida" and "Great Spirits" to the 2003 Disney animated feature film Brother Bear. She performed live at the 2003 premiere of Bother Bear along with Phil Collins. Tuner also performed "He Lives in You" in the international release of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and the compilation album "The Lion King Collection." Her cover of "Whole Lotta Love" can be heard in Cruella. Touchstone Pictures produced the 1993 film "What's Love Got to Do with It," in which Angela Bassett portrayed Turner. Widely referred to as the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer. Having sold over 100 million records worldwide, Turner is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.
