Happy Birthday, Mickey

You may recall my sort-of indignation that Disney did not always celebrate Mickey's birthday on November 18 in my "1970 Disneyland Doesn't Know Disney History" post. Like there are arguments for celebrating Disneyland's birthday on July 17th or 18th, there are a number of criteria one could use to say one date should be used over another. Below are my two personal stakes in celebrating Mickey's birthday on November 18.

The first is a little souvenir I was given way back:

This heavy canvas bag was apparently produced for a small birthday cavalcade given for Mickey on that day. As I attended school that day, I do not know any of the details--how many there were, how they were used, etc. I think it was meant to be a mailbag, filled with letters or birthday greetings to The Mouse. (I can tell you that it's now used to store my towels before laundry day.) If anybody has any information, I'd love to have it--and would definitely love to see photographs of it in use!

The other stake I have in November 18th is that it was also my hire date at Disneyland. Now, while I'm far more interested in the Disney parks and Disneyland than I am in Disney more generally, I am happy that my hire date fell on a noteworthy date. Some of my co-workers would later ask me if I had planned that, but I had no hand in it. It just happened to fall on the Saturday on which I had my Orientation! This opening date for the Disneyland chapter of my work life helped me to hold out for my final date of July 17, 2003, despite the fact that I was ready to leave several weeks earlier.

Today also marks the 15th anniversary of the dedication of the Partners Statue in the Central Plaza, seen here in May 2000:

Unrelated to November 18, I know I'm woefully behind with my promised Circle-Vision follow-up. I'm completing the graduate school experience, so posts will continue to be infrequent for a little while. But know that I am still working on the thesaurus behind the scenes, for your future enjoyment.