Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle

Since the very first images of Walt Disney's Disneyland television series flickered across monochrome screens in 1954, the Sleeping Beauty Castle has stood as the icon not only of the series and the park for which it was named, but of all things Disney. In the process, it has likely become one of the most photographed buildings in the world.









Standing overtop the original geographic centre of the park (notable by a gold surveyor's spike driven into the floor of its archway), Sleeping Beauty Castle's gates mark the entrance to Fantasyland. The working drawbridge has only been raised twice: once at Disneyland's opening ceremonies and again at the opening of the rennovated Fantasyland in 1983. Both times it was lowered to the excitement of children who rushed into the mediaeval courtyard where the adventures of Peter Pan above Neverland and Snow White in the dwarves' mine unfolded before them.

The diminutive castle, standing only 77' high, was based primarily on King Ludwig II's Bavarian dream castles. The echoes of Schloss Neuschwanstein can be seen in its spires, though moreso in her descendants, the Cinderella Castles of Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland. It is fitting in its own way, as Neuschwanstein was itself a romantic recollection of fairy tales, a theme park of its own built as a crown jewel of the late 19th century Gothic Revival. Walt Disney brought it into the 20th century in his own theme park.

The following guidebook was made available to patrons of Disneyland in 1957, prefiguring the premiere of the film Sleeping Beauty and contemporaneous with the debut of the Sleeping Beauty Castle walk-through exhibit that occupied the central icon of the Magic Kingdom. The cover, Walt Disney's own introduction and a page-long promotion for the film are presented here, as well as thumbnails linking to the centre fold-out, which featured a poster of the film's "Once Upon a Dream" sequence on one side and concept art from the walk-through exhibit on the other.

The original exhibit based on this concept art was lowly regarded as too abstract at the time and was eventually changed for a series of dioramas using small maquettes. The walk-through was closed in 2001, but thanks to the successful remodelling of Injun Joe's Cave on Tom Sawyer Island as the piratical "Dead Man's Grotto" the walk-through was restored with a suite of new effects. A virtual version of the original attraction can be found on the Platinum Edition home video release of Disney's Sleeping Beauty.