Main Street Cinema
Main Street Cinema is a small movie theatre on Main Street, U.S.A. (Disneyland) at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Behind a bulb-lit marquee and a ticket booth, a single standing-room-only room shows early Disney cartoons on six screens at once, looping continuously through the day. There are no showtimes and no seats in the traditional sense: guests wander in off Main Street, watch for as long as they like, and wander out again. It opened with the park in 1955 and is one of Disneyland's original attractions.
For Walt Disney, the cinema served a purpose beyond entertainment. Placing a period picture palace on Main Street let him preserve the early cinema he had grown up with, and show younger guests where his own career began.
History
Main Street Cinema opened on July 17, 1955, Disneyland's opening day.[1] In its first years it did not show Disney cartoons at all. True to its turn-of-the-century setting, it screened silent films of the kind a small-town audience of around 1910 would have seen, including pictures starring Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.[2]
In the 1970s the programme changed to Disney's own early animation. Six screens were arranged around the room, each looping a different short, with a recorded musical accompaniment playing over the room as a whole. Five of the shorts have traditionally run effectively silent under that shared accompaniment, while the sixth screen has always been reserved for Steamboat Willie (1928), played with its original synchronised soundtrack — in a slightly edited version, preceded by an introduction made for a 1950s reissue.
The line-up of the other shorts has rotated over the years, but the regular company around Steamboat Willie has included other early Mickey Mouse cartoons such as Plane Crazy (1928), Traffic Troubles (1931), The Moose Hunt (1931), The Dognapper (1934) and Mickey's Polo Team (1936).
The cinema has otherwise changed remarkably little, which is part of its point. A brief experiment in June 2019 placed merchandise displays inside the theatre to draw more guests in; the displays were later removed and benches were added, giving the standing room a small amount of seating for the first time.
Experience
The cinema occupies a Victorian-style brick building with a bright marquee announcing Steamboat Willie and the other cartoons. A cast member in period dress staffs the ticket booth outside, although no ticket is needed.
Inside, the hexagonal room is dim and noticeably cooler and quieter than the street outside, which makes it a well-known resting point on hot or crowded days. The six screens run simultaneously, so a visitor standing in the middle can turn slowly and take in six different cartoons, all sharing the same cheerful accompaniment, with Steamboat Willie — the 1928 short that introduced Mickey Mouse to the public with synchronised sound — providing the one true soundtrack.
Because the films loop and last only a few minutes each, most visits are short. The cinema's charm lies in that modesty: it is the rare Disneyland attraction that asks for no queue, no strategy and no more of a guest's day than they feel like giving it.