Grab your party hats and birthday candles because it’s officially the 70th anniversary of Disneyland, and we’re celebrating the best way possible — by going to the castle!

Disneyland!

Today, July 17th, 2025, the original Disney theme park turns 70 years old! We’ve been celebrating this huge milestone since May with new entertainment, snacks, decor, and more. Now, on the park’s official birthday, we’re popping in to celebrate and check out the crowds!

Disneyland Park has been making families smile for 70 years, but it doesn’t look a day over 50! The theme park is decked out from head to toe in its birthday best, and it turns out the crowds came to see it. 

The castle’s birthday decor

We expected the park to be pretty busy today, especially since Magic Key reservations have been sold out since April. The crowds were big before we could even scan into the park!

MASSIVE crowds

Here’s another look! Again, this is all before we even scan in. It’s the space between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.

Lines, lines, lines

Almost ready to scan in!

More and more lines

Once we scanned in, we grabbed our special button and map, and this is really when we felt the chaos.

Getting our map

As we entered the train, we took in the beautiful decorations and headed on our next adventure (and it truly felt like an adventure with all of the lines).

Entering

Here’s the crowd we met once we got inside. We felt like we were weaving in and out of people, trying to move forward.

Yikes!

Over at “it’s a small world,” a new verse debuted in the final scene, and the lines were long with everyone wanting to hear it.

Yep, that’s the line!

We are so excited to be here on such a special anniversary for the park we love so much. If you’re heading to Anaheim soon, you can experience so many exciting things. Paint the Night is finally back after years of begging! There are new MagicBand+ activities in the park. Plus, there are SO. MANY. SNACKS!

Strawberry Shortcake Macaron at Disneyland!

The 70th Anniversary celebrations are running now until Summer 2026. Good luck to the crowds today! As always, be sure to keep following DFB for more Disney news and updates!

Learn More About Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary Celebrations Here

Will you be celebrating this anniversary? Tell us in the comments!

Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disneyland to attend their 70th celebration. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ