Interesting Facts
You may love Disney, but you probably don’t love it as much as Jeff Reitz. The 49-year-old brought new meaning to the term “Disney adult” by visiting the Happiest Place on Earth 2,995 days in a row — a streak that only ended when Disneyland shut down during the pandemic. It began as “a joke and a fun thing to do” between him and a friend when the two were in between jobs on New Year’s Eve 2011, and it continued for eight years, three months, and 13 days. The original plan was to spend every day of 2012 at the park, in part because it was a leap year and Reitz liked the idea of going 366 days in a single year, but he didn’t feel inclined to stop once 2013 rolled around. He became the unofficial record-holder at the 1,000-day mark and was oh so close to reaching 3,000 days before COVID-19 prevented that particular milestone when Disneyland shut down on March 14, 2020.
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It's a fibMickey was actually preceded by one Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the star of 26 short cartoons beginning in 1927. After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney came up with Mickey — and the two creatures bear a striking resemblance to one another.
Reitz, who worked in nearby Long Beach, would usually arrive at Disneyland between 4:30 and 5 p.m. and log some 10,000 steps during his three-to-five-hour visits. Though he initially struggled with the park’s closure, he eventually made peace with it: “A lot has changed over the eight years that I started it,” he said after his streak ended. “I’m good with it. I went more than eight years. I got to see a lot of changes at the park. Now, I’m not worried about going every day like I was.” After more than a year of being closed, Disneyland reopened in April 2021. It’s not clear if Reitz has been back, but he has enough memories to last him a while.
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Walt Disney received a custom-made Oscar statuette for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Walt Disney won 32 Academy Awards, a record for the most individual Oscars, and one that’s unlikely to be broken anytime soon (if ever). Because there was no award for Best Animated Feature until 2001, when Shrek won the inaugural prize, he received an Honorary Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1939 that included a unique custom design — one regular Oscar statuette and seven miniature ones placed along a stepped base. The Oscar was awarded for Snow White’s “significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon.” It was presented to him by Shirley Temple, who was a bit confused as to why the star of the film wasn’t being honored as well: “I thought that the big statue was for Walt and that the Seven Dwarfs were the little ones going down the side and that Snow White herself hadn’t gotten anything,” she later said.
Interesting Facts writers have been seen in Popular Mechanics, Mental Floss, A+E Networks, and more. They’re fascinated by history, science, food, culture, and the world around them.
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