On 16 October 1923, a new studio was born in Hollywood, one that would change the world forever.

Exactly one hundred years on from the day, we celebrate all things Disney with 100 Magical Disney Facts You Never Knew…

1. It’s well known nowadays that Mickey was once to be named Mortimer Mouse – we’ve Walt’s wife Lillian to thank for the switch – but Goofy too was known by a different name in his early days. Originally, the goofy hound was known as Dippy Dawg.
2. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s first animated feature film, the filmmakers used real water, slowed down in the edit, to visualise the effect of rai. The snow, briefly captured late in the tale, was bleached cornflakes shot on black and superimposed.
3. Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animation to have a script. Before Linda Woolverton, storyboards were used in lieu.
4. Walt Disney is the most recognised individual in the history of the Academy Awards, with 26 wins and 59 nominations to his name. The Academy even gave him 7 little ones to celebrate Snow White.
5. 6,469,952 dots were drawn for the headline dogs in One Hundred and One Dalmatians – full marks to the fan that counted them.
6. To help convince Robin Williams to star in Aladdin, the animators animated one of his stand up routines as delivered by the genie himself.
7. The Black Cauldron was the first animation to feature computer generated imagery – a whole decade before Toy Story.
8. Carried away by their Snow White success, the Disney animators blew a cool $25k on the thirty second opening of Pinocchio. Walt warned against such lavish working in future.
9. It would take 68 years to sleep in every single room at Disney World. That’s two years longer than Walt’s entire life!
10. Donald, Mickey and Goofy all appear in The Little Mermaid. We won’t tell you where…
11. When planning the dining for his first park, Walt Disney had bins stationed exactly 25 steps away from each hot dog stall. This was how long it took him to eat a hot dog. Hot dog was also Mickey Mouse’s first ever line in the 1929 short The Karnival Kid.
12. When the Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened in 1967, the fake skeletons available were so unconvincing that the engineers borrowed medical research skeletons – yes, real ones – from UCLA.
13. Mickey and Minnie married in real life! Wayne Anthony Allwine, who voiced Mickey for over three decades, married Russi Taylor, who played Minnie.
14. Doritos were invented at Disneyland in 1966 at a park restaurant called Casa de Fritos. In an act of unwitting genius, the restaurant served up repurposed stale tortillas. They were a hit!
15. When Walt and Roy first founded their studio in 1923, it was to be called: the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. It wasn’t until 1986, after a few changes here and there, that the name ‘The Walt Disney Company’ was finally adopted
16. Steamboat Willie wasn’t actually Mickey’s debut – that was the uncirculated Plane Crazy some five months earlier – but it was the first film to sync sound and animation. Pretty revolutionary.
17. In 1955, Disneyland opened for the first time. It was a total disaster. Tens of thousands showed up in the sweltering July heat. Rides and plumbing broke, high heels sunk into freshly laid roads and the restaurants ran out of food.
18. When Walt died in 1966, his 73-year-old brother Roy delayed retirement to help finish Disney World in his brother’s honour. He retired the day after its opening in October 1971 and died just two months later.
19. Not only was Wall-E named after Walter Elias Disney himself, it’s a little known fact that the garbage collector’s name is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class.
20. The sorcerer in Fantasia is called Yen Sid. Spell it backwards…
21. Sulley from Monsters Inc has more than 2.3 million individual hairs. It took the animators an average of 12 hours to produce every single frame.
22. Real lions were considered to be too quiet by the makers of The Lion King. The roars you hear are actually tigers.
23. Bruce, the fish friendly great white shark of Finding Nemo, was named after the mechanical shark used in Jaws. Steven Spielberg borrowed the name from his lawyer.
24. Lilo and Stitch features more Elvis Presley songs than any of the King’s own films.
25. In 1957, Democrat President Harry Truman took a trip to Disneyland. He refused to ride the Dumbo ride because elephants are the symbol of the Republican party.
26. A biologist studying Hyenas once sued Disney for the way it portrayed the animal in The Lion King. It’s no laughing matter.
27. Disneyland has a secret basketball court hidden inside the Matterhorn roller coaster. It’s very well used.
28. Until the year 1960, neither employees nor visitors to Disneyland were not allowed on park properties if they had facial hair. Only Walt and Captain Hook dodged the law.
29. While making Monsters Inc, Pixar animators brought their children to work with them to fill the role of the children’s screams.
30. While Pixar’s own calculations predicted that it would take 26.5 million balloons to lift a small house, only 20,622 balloons were animated for the lift-off sequence in Up.
31. Tiana was Disney’s first left handed princess. This was at the request of her voicing star, Anika Noni Rose, a left-hander.
32. From 1934 to 1936, Disney was the only studio allowed to make colour-animated films. Disney had two year contract with Technicolour.
33. Alice in Wonderland was the first Disney animated feature to screen on TV. It hit the schedules in 1954.
34. Walt gave his housekeeper and cook, Thelma Howard, so many Disney shares across his life, for Christmas, birthday presents and bonuses, that her assets were worth $9m by the time she died in 1994.
35. Disney cast members are banned from saying ‘I don’t know’ even if they don’t. It’s to be hoped they always do.
36. The Little Mermaid features over a million hand painted bubbles.
37. The credits for 2013’s Frozen credit Carlos Benavides for his work on ‘caffeination’.
38. Flowers and Trees was the first cartoon produced in the three-color Technicolor process and the first short animated subject to receive an Academy Award.
39. Many a film icon has earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mickey was the first animated recipient.
40. 136 unique costumes were designed for The Incredibles. We’re going to need a bigger wardrobe…
41. Owing to time constraints, the final scene of Beauty and the Beast borrowed Belle and the transformed beast’s dance from Sleeping Beauty.
42. Walt Disney World in Florida is the second biggest buyer of explosives in the United States. Only the US army buy more.
43. Adriana Caselotti received no credit for her role as Snow White and only $970. Disney was keen that she shouldn’t take any other roles to preserve the integrity of his premiere Princess.
44. Disney dropped out of high school at age 16 in hopes of joining the Army. He was rejected for being underage, but was able to get a job as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross in France by forging himself older.
45. Pay attention when next watching Frozen. Elsa’s palace changes colour with the ebb and flow of her mood.
46. For Disney Channel Original Movie Descendants 2, costume designers mustered up over 1500 different get ups.
47. The horses trotting up and down Main Street USA in Disneyland all wear rubber shoes.
48. Robin Williams voiced his Aladdin lines 20 different ways in recording, generating over thirty hours of dialogue
49. Just like Buzz, Woody was given a second name during the production of Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear meet Woody Pride.
50. During the Second World War, Walt helped to design a Mickey Mouse gas mask. Disney also produced anti-Nazi propaganda and helpful infographics.
51. John Lennon was on holiday at the Disney Polynesian resort when he signed the contract that dissolved the Beatles.
52. At over 30,000 acres in size, Walt Disney Workd is roughly the same size as San Francisco.
53. Aurora, from Sleeping Beauty, only has 18 lines of dialogue in the whole film. More than Dumbo, who hasn’t a single line.
54. Rapunzel’s 70-foot-long hair took over 30 animators and engineers to animate.
55. In the original script of Peter Pan, Nana, the Darling family’s Saint Bernard nursemaid, traveled to Neverland with her charges and acted as the story’s narrator.
56. Cinderella loses her shoe three times in the film. Perhaps a smaller fitting is in order? She’s only a 4 1/2.
57. Dopey wasn’t always imagined as a silent character. The original plans penned him as exceedingly chatty. No voice artist quite fit the bill. Sometimes you really do say more when you say nothing at all.
58. The Liberty Square tree in Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom was growing on property 8 miles away from where the park designers wanted it. So they moved it.
59. The voice of Lilo, from Lilo and Stitch, is none other than Daveigh Chase. That’s the same Daveigh Chase who played the terrifying Samara Morgan in The Ring.
60. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise might be based on the original Disney ride but the Shanghai attraction is based on the films.
61. When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was made, dwarfs was the accepted plural. It was a surge in popularity for J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring that changed it to dwarves.
62. Disney World tickets were $3.50 for adults on opening day. Kids were only charged $1. It’s a little more now…
63. That vanilla smell you love when entering a Disney park is no accident. The company use a patented machine called a “Smellitzer,” to pump sweet aromas the area via vents. For Christmas, they switch over to a seasonably suitable peppermint scent.
64. Rupert Everett auditioned for the role of Gaston. Allegedly he was ‘not deemed arrogant enough’. Tell that to Shrek.
65. At 14, Snow White is the youngest Disney Princess. Seven years her elder, Elsa is the oldest.
66. Despite the fact that he had drivers, a live-in housekeeper, and a number of other staff members at his disposal, Disney drove his two daughters to school every day.
67. Disney’s French family name was originally D’Isigny before being Anglicized to Disney. He learnt about it visiting Lincolnshire and that’s where he first saw the flag that flies atop the Disney castle at the start of each film.
68. Disney was the head of pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.
69. On his deathbed, Disney wrote the name “Kurt Russell” on a piece of paper. These were his final (written) words. Nobody knows why.
70. Encanto star Bruno was originally to be called Oscar. They must have talked about it.
71. Walt Disney has an apartment built for his family on Main Street U.S.A at Disneyland California. A lamp on the window signaled when Walt was home. There is a light permanently lit in that window now in his memory.
72. A documentary recalls the troubled production of The Emperor’s New Groove, but you never see it. They’ve made sure of that.
73. The directors of Atlantis: The Last Empire had t-shirts printed saying ‘Fewer songs, more explosions’. This was something of a mantra for the film but did nothing for its box office hopes.
74. It was all hands on deck in the rush to finish Disneyland. Walt even helped with the spray painting the night before!
75. Each Pixar film holds an easter egg that features the code A113. This is the classroom number used by animation students at the California Institute of the Arts.
76. The two minute storm in The Little Mermaid took 10 special effects artists over a year to finish. Now that’s dedication.
77. The spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp almost never happened. Walt ridiculed the concept, insisting no dog would ever share their food with another. It was only the persistence of animator Frank Thomas – who went ahead and drew it anyway – that saw it included.
78. 79. There were 27 different emotions in the original concept for Inside Out. Pride, Greed, Irritation, Shame, Gloom, Love, Ennui, Hope and Schadenfreude.
79. To help bring Snow White to life, real rouge was applied to the animation cells.
80. It was originally hoped that the vultures in The Jungle Book would be voiced by the Beatles. History repeated itself when the Spice Girls were almost asked to voice the Hercules muses
81. Some of the food served at Epcot is grown inside the park.
82. Mrs Potts was once planned to be called Mrs. Chamomile. The name change came when that original offering was deemed too hard to say and spell.
83. Walt Disney has three college degrees but never went to college. Across his life he earned an honorary masters of science and two in the arts
84. The voice of Optimus Prime is also the voice of Eeyore. That’s Peter Cullen, by the way.
85. Alicia Keys auditioned to play Tiana three times but was eventually popped by Anika Noni Rose.
86. Few early Disney films feature mothers. Many put this down to Disney’s guilt over the death of his own mother in 1938. With his grand earnings from Snow White, Walt bought a home for his parents. Tragedy struck with a faulty heating system led to Flora Disney’s death from carbon monoxide poisoning.
87. Steve Martin used to work in the magic shop at Disneyland.
88. In Monsters Inc, Boo’s real name is Mary, after her voice actress Mary Gibbs. You can see it written on a drawing in her room. You probably knew that one…
89. ‘Man is in the forest’ was a code used by animators to warn colleagues to get back to work when Walt Disney was coming down the hallway. The phrase came from the villain of Bambi.
90. Cars features a white racing car with the Apple logo, and the number ’84’, which refers to the year the first Apple computer was released. This was in honour of Steve Jobs, the studio’s largest share holder.
91. Jodi Benson (the voice of Ariel), Paige O’Hara (the voice of Belle), and Judy Kuhn (the voice of Pocahontas) all cameo in Enchanted.
92. Julie Andrews declined to feature in Mary Poppins Returns due to feeling it would be too confusing. The role of balloon lady instead went to Mrs. Potts voice Angela Lansbury.
93. Disney loved trains. Adored them. He even built a miniature railway in his garden. It was called the Carolwood Pacific Railroad and had 2,615 feet of track.
94. Aurora is the only ‘true’ blonde Disney Princess. Cinderella is strawberry blonde, while Rapunzel is a brunette, turned blonde by magic.
95. The Ken doll in Toy Story 3 is based on ‘Animal Lovin’ Ken, from 1988.
96. Until Brave, Ariel was the only Disney princess to have siblings – the rest are all only children.
97. Disneyland’s iconic castle was originally conceived to be that of Snow White. However, to promote their upcoming film, the castle was remodelled for Sleeping Beauty, which would be released roughly four years after the attraction opened.
98. A trip down Main Street transports you to the USA in 1910, while Tomorrowland is meant to depict 1986. Both are years when Halley’s Comet could be seen.
99. Clarence Nash, Donald Duck’s original voice actor, also lent his voice to some of the canine barks heard in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
100. No, Walt Disney was not cryogenically frozen.