If you’ve ever seen or attended a media event involving any of the Disney Parks, you’ve probably seen Disney Ambassadors. These figureheads (now appointed for roughly a year term each) make appearances at big events, travel to promote their respective parks, and host special VIP visitors, among other miscellaneous promotional duties.
But this program started at Disneyland with a different kind of figurehead, now largely forgotten in Disneyland history. Let’s take a look back at the origin of the Disneyland Ambassador.
Source: D23
This is Valerie Curry. In her time with Disney, she held a number of important roles – from customer relations and VIP tour guiding at Disneyland to various roles at both WED and the Walt Disney World Preview Center in Florida. But it was during her time as a VIP tour guide in Anaheim that she caught the attention of Russell Downing, president of Radio City Music Hall.
In 1962, Disney was preparing a stage show called Disneyland, USA in the famous music hall to help promote the upcoming film Moon Pilot. Curry had been Downing’s tour guide during a previous visit to the park, and he agreed with Disney officials that she was the perfect choice for a knowledgeable and charismatic representative of Disneyland for the stage show. Thus, she became “Miss Disneyland.”
Though the title was created for a specific show, the concept at its core had much more longevity. So for the park’s 10th anniversary celebration (1965), Disney rebranded the idea to the Disneyland Ambassador. And the first official ambassador was Julie Reihm Casaletto, who like her predecessor also served as a tour guide at the resort.
Source: D23
Casaletto’s official job description wasn’t exactly easy to live up to: “a personification of Disneyland’s world-famous spirit of friendliness and happiness”. But she took the challenge and ran with it, leading festivities for the 10th anniversary park opening, appearing on the Wonderful World of Color television program, and attending Mary Poppins press events. She traveled across the US and internationally, logging more than 52,000 travel miles in total.
Source: D23
Curry and Casaletto formed the blueprint for today’s ambassadors, who are important public faces of Disneyland, especially when Walt is no longer here to do it himself. If I had any say, both would have commemorative windows on Main Street to honor them. They had to master media training and presenting, have the charisma of public figures, and maintain extensive park knowledge from their training as tour guides. All while making Disneyland look its absolute best as the park was still building its global brand. If that doesn’t qualify you to be a “Disneyland legend”, I’m not sure what does!