The Disneyland Resort, commonly known as Disneyland, is an entertainment resort in Anaheim, California. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks and Resorts division and is home to two theme parks, three hotels, and a shopping, dining, and entertainment complex known as Downtown Disney.

The resort was developed by Walt Disney in the 1950s. When it opened to guests on July 17, 1955, the property consisted of Disneyland, its 100-acre (40 ha) parking lot (which had 15,167 spaces[1]), and the Disneyland Hotel, owned and operated by Disney's business partner Jack Wrather. After succeeding with the multi-park, multi-hotel business model at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Disney acquired large parcels of land adjacent to Disneyland to apply the same business model in Anaheim.

During the expansion, the property was named the Disneyland Resort to encompass the entire complex, while the original theme park was named Disneyland Park. The company purchased the Disneyland Hotel from the Wrather Company and the Pan Pacific Hotel from its Japanese owners. The latter became Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel. The property saw the addition of Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, a second theme park, named Disney California Adventure, and the Downtown Disney shopping and dining area.

Walt Disney's early concepts for an amusement park called for a "Mickey Mouse Park" located adjacent to the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank (presently the site of the West Coast headquarters of ABC). As new ideas emerged, Walt and his brother Roy realized that the Burbank location would be too small for the project, and hired a consultant from Stanford Research Institute to provide them with information on locations and economic feasibility. The consultant recommended a remote location near Anaheim, adjacent to the then-under-construction Santa Ana Freeway. The consultant correctly predicted that the location – covered by orange groves at the time – would become the population center of Southern California. Since the location was far from Southern California population centers in the 1950s, Walt Disney wanted to build a hotel so that Disneyland visitors traveling long distances could stay overnight. However, the park had depleted his financial resources, so he negotiated a deal with Hollywood producer Jack Wrather in which he would build and operate a hotel called the Disneyland Hotel across the street from Disneyland.