Walt Disney Treasure Trivia Answer Key

During the development of Disneyland, Walt had always assumed he would one day need a regular place to rest and sleep at the Park. The decision was made that Walt would have a small apartment built on Main Street, U.S.A. He would be able to work and rest there, and his family could also use it as a base while visiting Disneyland. 

Emile Kuri, an Academy Award®-winning set decorator from The Walt Disney Studios, was selected to decorate the apartment in a Victorian theme—a favorite of Walt and Lillian’s—replete with accents of the era’s famed cranberry glass. Walt’s grandchildren fondly remember spending their evenings in the cranberry-colored hideaway, listening to adventurous sounds drifting through the landscaping from the nearby Jungle Cruise attraction. 

In the window that looked out onto Main Street, U.S.A was this green faux kerosene lamp. Disneyland Cast Members would often interpret a lit lamp to indicate that Walt was in the apartment when they saw it illuminating the window. Though the apartment was later renovated with similar furnishings, today visitors see the window glow with a lamp that stays permanently lit to represent Walt’s eternal presence in Disneyland.

In the early 1990s, Bill Cottrell—Walt’s brother-in-law and President of Retlaw Enterprises, a private corporation managed by Walt’s family—told Diane there was “something special” in the Retlaw vault. When she looked in the vault, she found this rough drawing along with a “clean-up” drawing. The drawing has been authenticated as the earliest known drawing of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in existence.  

Authorship of the individual drawings has never been definitively established between Ub Iwerks, Walt, and possibly animator Les Clark. You can see the decision-making process in these rough animation sketches as they explored and developed the character designs. This drawing also helps to confirm that Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were created at the same time, reinforced by their on-screen debut in Steamboat Willie (1928), proving that there was never a Mickey without a Minnie.

Walt and Lillian—fondly called “Lilly” by her closest friends and family—had met when she was hired at the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio as an inker and painter. The first studio employee Kathleen Dollard told Lillian, “I have a job for you, but I am telling you about it on one condition: Don’t vamp the boss.”  

Lillian started inking and painting black and white cels for the Alice Comedies and was later promoted to Walt’s first official secretary. Walt would frequently offer to chauffeur Lillian and Dollard to ensure the women arrived home safely. As the story goes, Walt always dropped Lillian off last, even though her home was nearer.  

When they started courting in earnest, Lillian remembered, “He was fun even if he didn’t have a nickel. We would go to see a picture show or take a drive. We would drive up to Santa Barbara sometimes. He was always talking about what he was going to do.” On July 13, 1925, Walt Disney married Lillian Bounds at her brother Sydney’s home in Lewiston, Idaho.

In 1954, Walt was able to purchase miniature Oscar statuettes that represented his many wins and decided to give them to his wife, Lillian, to acknowledge the role she had played in his professional success. He acquired 20 18-karat gold charms, each engraved with the name of the film for which he was awarded up to that point—he would accept 32 in his lifetime with 26 personally addressed to him, making him the current record holder for most awards by an individual). Walt envisioned having a necklace made from these charms, but Lillian said she would prefer a bracelet.

Lillian gave this Hamilton Watch Company timepiece to Walt as a Christmas present in 1934. The watch is a “Langley” design fashioned with 14-karat gold, a manual hand-wound movement, solid gold numbers on the dial, and 17 jewels. Named for the early American aviation pioneer Samuel Langley, the watch was produced from 1930 through 1934, and this unit was sold in 1934 for $90. This design was advertised as “a distinguished design for the man of today.” Walt’s watch was originally fastened with a black pigskin band. By the 1940s, Walt had customized it with a brown leather cuff.  

“This is the only watch I remember [my dad] wearing and [it] was distinctive because of the leather cuff. The inscription on the back reads, ‘To Walt from Lilly 12.25.34,’” said their daughter Diane. According to Diane, Lillian collected clocks, so it seems fitting she would gift Walt a wristwatch. The family home had many clocks, and from time to time a clock winder would come to the home and wind them.

Walt fashioned this 1/8th scale pot-bellied stove to be used in the interior design of the Lilly Belle caboose. Walt shared, “I had a pattern made up, and it turned out so cute with the grate, shaker, and door, and all the little working parts, I became intrigued with the idea. I had a few made up; one was bronze, another black, and I even made a gold one! Then we made more and started painting them in motifs that fitted the period at the turn of the century.” 

Each of these five-and-a-half inch tall stoves had a different design, and eventually about one hundred were made. Walt gave some to friends and even sent some to an antique gift shop in New York where, to Walt’s delight, Narcissa Thorne—whose exhibition of miniatures first sparked Walt’s interest in collecting and making his own—purchased two to add to her renowned collection. They sold for $25 each and Walt made no special effort to market them or make a profit. He was curious to see if there was any interest and by 1957, the supply was depleted. “It has been fun making them and others appreciate them, too, so all in all, I feel well repaid,” said Walt.

Named after Walt’s wife Lillian, the Lilly Belle is a one-eighth scale model of an actual steam engine. By comparison, the Disneyland Railroad is five-eighth scale. Walt built the Lilly Belle with coaching and assistance from his accomplished studio machine shop team. His eventual backyard right-of-way, the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, ran around a half-mile track encircling his Holmby Hills home.

He explained in the 1965 issue of Railroad Magazine, “After serving an apprenticeship in a machine shop, I studied metalwork and carpentry before I figured I was ready to start building. Then I built a train to one-eighth scale. The engine and the tender combined was seven feet long and operated on coal and water. I fashioned all the cars myself. The boxcars were big enough for a person to straddle, and the flatcars could seat two. My special pride was the caboose, which I furnished entirely in miniature, right down to the pot-bellied stove. The engine was designed after one that had run on the old Central Pacific, so I named my little railroad the C.P., for Carolwood Pacific, the street I lived on.”

Mark Twain Riverboat 

The Mark Twain Riverboat was an Opening Day attraction in Frontierland. The Disneyland Publicity Department originally touted as the first paddlewheeler built in the US in 50 years. Walt recalled, "One of the biggest joys of my life is sitting on the levee in the Frontierland… As I gaze to the north, I can see the smokestacks of the steamer, Mark Twain, belching smoke and skirting along toward the tip of Tom Sawyer Island.”  

Walt was passionate about having the Mark Twain at Disneyland. When corporate funding fell short of building the sternwheeler, Walt helped to finance the construction personally. Walt shared in an article “Frontierland” that was published in True West in 1958, "As you can expect from a Missouri-bred boy, I wanted the Mark Twain to be authentic. Our staff did extensive research on riverboats of the past before [they] came up with a design. Like most of Disneyland, the boat is under-scale to give a fantasy-like appearance. That meant the engines had to be specially built to fit into a smaller craft.”

Created in 1954 by James Trout, these miniature models of Main Street, U.S.A. were used to bring  the blueprint drawings of the elevations for each building to life. Before guests could walk down Main Street, these models helped Imagineers envision how Walt’s dream of a turn-of-the-century boulevard would come to life. These hand-painted models are made from balsa wood and have incredible detail adorning each one. The windows have a glare to them, and each brick has been hand-drawn.

In Disneyland’s earliest days, Guests paid admission to the Park and would purchase an individual ticket every time they wanted to experience an attraction. On October 11, 1955, Disneyland debuted the first ticket book. For $2.50 per adult, $2 per junior, and $1.50 per child, ticket books included admission to the park and a selection of “A”, “B”, and “C”-tickets for eight attractions. The “D”-ticket was added in 1956 and the famous “E”-ticket was added in 1959 for the most popular and thrilling attractions. The implementation of the ticket book completely changed how Guests experienced the park. The term “an ‘E’-ticket ride” would become synonymous with an exhilarating experience.  

Ticket books were discontinued in June 1982 and replaced with passports that allowed admission and unlimited access to attractions, which is how Disneyland is experienced today.