Walt Disney
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This Disney history trivia quiz has 98 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 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What iconic cartoon character did Walt Disney co-create with Ub Iwerks in 1928?
Mickey Mouse
Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks co-created Mickey Mouse in 1928, with Iwerks doing nearly all the drawing on the earliest Mickey shorts himself.
Q 02In which U.S. state was Walt Disney born?
Illinois
Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. His family later moved to Marceline, Missouri, when he was four years old.
Q 03What was the first full-length animated feature film produced by Walt Disney?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, and briefly held the record as the highest-grossing sound film until Gone with the Wind.
Q 04What theme park did Walt Disney open in Anaheim, California, in 1955?
Disneyland
Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, in Anaheim, California. It was the first Disney theme park and was personally overseen by Walt Disney himself.
Q 05What was Mickey Mouse's original name, before Walt Disney's wife suggested Mickey instead?
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 married Walt Disney on July 13, 1925. She worked as an ink-and-paint artist at the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio before their marriage.
Q 07What was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to feature synchronized sound throughout?
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie (1928) was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be released and the first to feature a fully synchronized soundtrack throughout the entire film.
Q 08Which of Walt Disney's older brothers co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio?
Roy
Roy handled the money and Walt the drawing, and the partnership grew into The Walt Disney Company.
Q 09In what year did Walt Disney pass away?
1966
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, at the age of 65, from lung cancer. He passed away just ten days after his 65th birthday.
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 was made for Universal in 1927, and Mickey was created as his replacement after a contractual dispute took him away.
Q 11What small Missouri town did Walt Disney grow up in, later inspiring Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A.?
Marceline
Walt Disney spent part of his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, from 1906 to 1911. His fond memories of the town's Main Street directly inspired the design of Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland.
Q 12Which 1967 animated feature was the last one Walt Disney personally produced?
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book, released in October 1967, was the last animated feature Walt Disney personally produced; he died during its production, and Wolfgang Reitherman directed it.
Q 13Which Disney film was the first shown in multi-channel stereo sound?
Fantasia
Q 21What was the original name of Walt Disney's park design team, now Walt Disney Imagineering?
WED Enterprises
WED Enterprises, named for Walt's initials, was the private company he founded in December 1952 to design Disneyland; it was renamed Walt Disney Imagineering in 1986.
Q 22What attraction was the first to use Disney's Audio-Animatronics technology?
The Enchanted Tiki Room
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, which opened at Disneyland on June 23, 1963, was the first attraction to feature Audio-Animatronics technology, with over 150 singing birds, flowers, and tiki gods.
Q 23What was Walt Disney's vision for EPCOT before it became a theme park?
Fantasia (1940) was the first commercial film to use Fantasound, a pioneering stereo sound system developed by Disney and RCA engineers. It was decades ahead of its time in multi-channel audio.
Q 14What did Hollywood critics nickname Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs during production?
Disney's Folly
Hollywood dubbed the project 'Disney's Folly'; Walt's wife and brother Roy both tried to talk him out of it, he mortgaged his house to finish it, and Snow White became the highest-grossing film of 1938.
Q 15During World War II, what did the Walt Disney Studios primarily produce?
Training and propaganda films
The studio turned mostly to training and propaganda films, from Four Methods of Flush Riveting to Donald Duck shorts urging people to pay taxes and buy war bonds; by 1942 about 90 percent of its staff worked on war-related pictures.
Q 16Which Disney film introduced the Brazilian parrot José Carioca?
Saludos Amigos
José Carioca, the cigar-smoking Brazilian parrot, first appeared in Saludos Amigos (1942) and returned alongside Donald Duck in The Three Caballeros (1944).
Q 17What 1964 Disney film combined live-action actors with animated characters and won five Academy Awards?
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (1964) starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and seamlessly blended live-action with animation. It won five Academy Awards including Best Actress for Andrews and Best Visual Effects.
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 Kansas City 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 (1932) was the first commercially released film to be produced entirely in three-strip Technicolor. It won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Q 20Disney's earliest Audio-Animatronic prototype, the 'Dancing Man', copied the tap routine of which actor?
Buddy Ebsen
Ebsen, later Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies, was filmed dancing so the engineers could reproduce his moves; the term Audio-Animatronics was first used commercially in 1961.
An experimental planned city
EPCOT stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Walt envisioned it as a real, functioning city of 20,000 residents showcasing futuristic urban planning and technology. After his death, the concept was changed to a theme park.
Q 24What did it cost to build Disneyland in 1955, after barely a year of construction?
$17 million
Disneyland cost about $17 million to build; construction began on July 16, 1954, barely a year before the park opened on July 17, 1955.
Q 25Which network bought into Disneyland and aired Walt Disney's weekly anthology from 1954?
ABC
ABC put up $500,000 plus loan guarantees for a stake in Disneyland in return for the weekly show; Disney bought out ABC's share in 1960 and bought the whole network in 1996.
Q 26What did Disney staff call Disneyland's mishap-strewn opening day in 1955?
Black Sunday
Staff dubbed July 17, 1955 'Black Sunday': rides broke down, fresh asphalt softened enough to trap women's heels, and counterfeit tickets swelled the invited crowd to roughly 28,000.
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 the last attraction Walt Disney personally oversaw. It opened at Disneyland on March 18, 1967, just three months after his death in December 1966.
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
Watching his daughters on the Griffith Park merry-go-round, Walt wanted a clean place where parents could have fun alongside their children instead of sitting on a bench eating peanuts.
Q 30What did Walt Disney do during World War I, despite being too young to enlist?
Red Cross ambulance driver
He forged his birth date to become a Red Cross ambulance driver, reached France only after the armistice, and decorated his ambulance with cartoons; some of his drawings ran in Stars and Stripes.