Disneyland’s Very First Customer Continues To Use His Lifetime Pass To Visit Each Year

In 1955 Disneyland opened its gates for the first time to customers and the first guy in line was Dave MacPherson. That gave him the honor of becoming the first-ever customer of the very popular theme park.

Along with this opportunity, Dave also received one of the most amazing gifts that kids would surely be jealous of, a lifetime pass to Disneyland!.

This lifetime pass means he can go to the park and enter its gates for free all throughout his life. And now, more than six decades later, Dave says he still uses his lifetime pass every time he gets the chance to visit, and that’s practically every year.

We know that it’s not easy to be the first in line when an establishment opens for the first time. But on July 18, 1955, at 2 o’clock in the morning, 22-year-old Dave who was a college student from Long Beach, California at the time secured a spot for himself at the very front of the line for the opening of this brand new park.

But the journey for him wasn’t easy. You see, Dave is from Long Beach. And that time, he drove his motorcycle to Anaheim only to make sure he was the first person there before the gates opened. And after 10 hours on the road, he finally reached the Disneyland gates and stood right next to the ticket booth that was still closed.

He said, “I decided I wanted to be the first in line. The first person to go into the park who wasn’t a relative of Walt’s or some celebrity. The first regular guy to go in through the front door.”

And as soon as the gates started to let people buy tickets, Dave bought the first ticket from the theme park and was the first one who was let in through the gates. And that effectively made history as the first person, who was not a relative of Walt Disney to enter the park.

Unfortunately, he had to get back home so he didn’t get to use the complimentary card on any ride or amusement that first day at Disneyland. In fact, he doesn’t even know where that card is today. However, he was able to preserve a copy of the ticket in microfilm back in the 80s.

Disneyland later on awarded Dave with lifetime passes!

And he takes advantage of that opportunity every year. And of course, to use the lifetime pass, Dave has to always show a photo ID. And as a backup, he also carries some photocopies of a page in his scrapbook which contains the “first-day” clippings from papers in L.A. and Long Beach to prove that he was the person who bought the first ticket back in the 50s.

He said, “It isn’t unusual, after I give a copy of that scrapbook page to anyone manning the entrance gate, to have that official shout to the crowd ‘Folks, this man bought the first ticket to Disneyland when it opened in 1955!’ You can’t believe how many folks from different parts of the world have then come over and asked for my autograph or shot a picture of my wife Wanda and myself!”

When Dave and his wife Wanda moved to Kansas a few years later, they still visited Disneyland every chance they got.