Walt Disney
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This Disney history trivia quiz has 97 free questions with answers and follows the company from a Kansas City animation studio to Walt Disney World, through the man who built it. It covers Walt's Marceline boyhood and Red Cross service, the Laugh-O-Grams and Alice Comedies, losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Steamboat Willie, the Silly Symphonies, the multiplane camera, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, the 1941 animators' strike, the wartime studio, Disneyland's opening day and its ABC television deal, Audio-Animatronics, the 1964 World's Fair, the secret Florida land purchases and the original plan for EPCOT. The early questions are easy enough for any Disney fan; the later ones ask about WED Enterprises, the honorary Oscar with seven miniature statuettes, the railway that ran past the family farm and the year the company took its current name. Good for family quiz nights, Disney trip countdowns and anyone who wants the story behind the mouse. Every answer was checked against biographies and encyclopaedic sources, so the history is as accurate as the trivia is fun.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Disney character first appeared in 1932 as a nameless old-timer whose raucous laugh stole a Mickey cartoon?
Goofy
Goofy's laugh came from story man and former circus clown Pinto Colvig; it so tickled Walt that the bit player was given more cartoons, at first under the name Dippy Dawg.
Q 02In which U.S. state was Walt Disney born?
Illinois
Illinois: Walt was born in Chicago in 1901, in a house his father had built with his own hands; the family left for a Missouri farm when he was four.
Q 03Which 1950 animated feature restored the fortunes of Walt Disney's studio?
Cinderella
Cinderella ended a run of cheaper package films made while the studio was deep in debt; the gamble paid off, and its success kept Walt's feature animation alive.
Q 04Which futuristic transport system began daily service at Disneyland in 1959, the first of its kind in America?
Monorail
The monorail was opened by Vice President Richard Nixon and his family; two years later it was extended to the Disneyland Hotel, turning a ride into working public transport.
Q 05What was Mickey Mouse first going to be called, before Walt Disney's wife is said to have suggested Mickey?
Mortimer
Mortimer was later recycled as the name of Mickey's smug rival.
Q 06What was the first name of Walt Disney's wife?
Lillian
Lillian Bounds was working at Walt's young studio when she married him in 1925; in 1987 she pledged $50 million for a Los Angeles concert hall in his name.
Q 07What was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to feature synchronized sound throughout?
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie opened at New York's Colony Theatre on November 18, 1928, the date Disney still counts as Mickey's birthday, after two silent Mickey cartoons had failed to find a distributor.
Q 08Which of Walt Disney's older brothers co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio?
Roy
Roy found the money while Walt supplied the ideas; after Walt died he put off his own retirement to see Walt Disney World built, and died two months after it opened.
Q 09What does legend say happened to Walt Disney's body?
Frozen
Frozen is the myth; in fact Walt was cremated two days after he died, and his daughter Diane said there was absolutely no truth to the rumour.
Q 10Which cartoon character did Walt Disney lose the rights to in 1928, a loss that prompted him to create Mickey Mouse?
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit belonged to Universal, which kept him when Walt's distributor turned on him; Disney got the rabbit back in 2006 in a deal that sent sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC.
Q 11What small Missouri town did Walt Disney grow up in, later inspiring Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A.?
Marceline
Marceline was home for only about five years, yet Walt called them the happiest of his childhood; a neighbour there paid him to draw a horse, one of his first sales as an artist.
Q 12Which 1967 animated feature was the last one Walt Disney personally produced?
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book was steered by Walt away from the dark tone of Kipling's stories, at the cost of his first writer; he died ten months before its release.
Q 13Which Disney film was the first shown in multi-channel stereo sound?
Fantasia
Fantasia needed cinemas to be fitted with special Fantasound equipment, so costly that the film first opened in only a handful of theatres.
Q 21Under what name was Walt Disney's park design company known for decades before it became Walt Disney Imagineering?
WED Enterprises
WED Enterprises took Walt's initials; he set it up in 1952 with his own money, apart from the studio, so that shareholders could not object to his park plans.
Q 22What attraction was the first to use Disney's Audio-Animatronics technology?
The Enchanted Tiki Room
The Enchanted Tiki Room was planned as a restaurant where mechanical parrots would serenade diners, until Walt saw how few guests it could serve and made it a show instead, opening in 1963.
Q 23What was Walt Disney's vision for EPCOT before it became a theme park?
Q 14What did Hollywood insiders nickname Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs while it was in production?
Disney's Folly
Disney's Folly was the trade's verdict on a cartoon feature that ran far over its budget; it then became the biggest box-office hit of 1938.
Q 15During World War II, what did the Walt Disney Studios primarily produce?
Training and propaganda films
Training and propaganda films took up some nine-tenths of the studio's work by 1942; Walt made them at cost, so the war kept his artists busy without easing his debts.
Q 16Which Brazilian parrot, introduced in 1942's Saludos Amigos, went on to become one of The Three Caballeros?
José Carioca
José Carioca teaches a visiting Disney star the samba in the film, which had its world premiere in Rio de Janeiro in August 1942, months before it opened in the United States.
Q 17Which American actor played both Bert the chimney sweep and the ancient banker Mr. Dawes in Mary Poppins?
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke was billed for the old banker as 'Navckid Keyd', letters that unscramble into his real name during the closing credits.
Q 18What was Disney's first cartoon series, made in the early 1920s before the move to Hollywood?
Laugh-O-Grams
Laugh-O-Grams were modernised fairy tales Walt Disney made in Missouri from 1921; the Laugh-O-Gram studio went bankrupt in 1923, which is what sent him to Hollywood.
Q 19Which cartoon was the first color Silly Symphony and won Disney his first competitive Oscar?
Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees was already under way in black and white when Walt scrapped that work and remade it in colour, then secured sole cartoon rights to the new process for the next few years.
Q 20The 'Dancing Man', a forerunner of Disney's Audio-Animatronic figures, copied the tap routine of which actor?
Buddy Ebsen
Buddy Ebsen, later Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies, was filmed dancing in front of a grid so that Walt's technicians could copy his steps into a small mechanical figure.
An experimental planned city
An experimental planned city of some 20,000 residents was Walt's idea for EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow; after he died the company dropped the city and built a theme park.
Q 24Which 1959 Disneyland ride was the first permanent roller coaster with tubular steel track?
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Matterhorn Bobsleds grew from Walt's Swiss film Third Man on the Mountain; the trees on its slopes get smaller towards the top, a trick to make the peak look taller.
Q 25Which network bought into Disneyland and aired Walt Disney's weekly anthology from 1954?
ABC
ABC helped pay for the park in return for the weekly show; four decades later Disney bought ABC itself.
Q 26What did Disney staff call Disneyland's mishap-strewn opening day in 1955?
Black Sunday
Black Sunday earned its name: counterfeit tickets nearly doubled the invited crowd to about 28,000, and fresh asphalt on Main Street melted in the heat and trapped women's high heels.
Q 27What Disney theme park attraction was the last one Walt Disney personally supervised before his death?
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean was so elaborate that Walt, who worked on it for years, never saw it finished: it opened in March 1967, three months after he died.
Q 28What Florida city is Walt Disney World located near?
Orlando
Walt Disney World is located near Orlando, Florida. Walt Disney secretly purchased approximately 27,000 acres of land southwest of Orlando using shell companies to prevent price speculation.
Q 29At which Los Angeles spot did Walt Disney first dream up Disneyland while his daughters rode the merry-go-round?
Griffith Park
Griffith Park's merry-go-round left Walt on a bench watching his daughters have all the fun; he wanted a clean place where parents and children could enjoy themselves together.
Q 30What job did Walt Disney take in World War I after being turned down for military service as too young?
Red Cross ambulance driver
A Red Cross ambulance driver at 16, he reached France only after the fighting had stopped, and covered his ambulance from end to end with his own cartoons.