Credit: PAT/Disney, edited by ITMHave you ever heard of Disneyland Oklahoma? While the original Anaheim location of the Happiest Place on Earth has been joined by the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, and Shanghai Disney Resort, the idea of a Disneyland in the American Midwest is confusing people online, and for good reason. It’s not (and never was) real.
An alleged screenshot from Twitter user TheRealNeo purporting to describe the history of Disneyland Oklahoma recently went viral, leading many fans to believe that it once existed and even to express memories of visiting the park as children. The Tweet has since been deleted, but as this is the Internet, everything exists somewhere.
It seems a little far-fetched and unrealistic to me that someone would build another Disneyland in Oklahoma specifically. Gives me some weird feelings inside.
— Reebop Rants (@ReebopRants) January 1, 2024
According to the screenshot, Disneyland Oklahoma was built in 1987 by a man named Zachariah Richard, who discovered that the original patent for Disneyland was misspelled and thus won a lengthy legal battle with the Walt Disney Company that allowed him to build his own park using the actual name. There is also a Fandom page for the theme park location.
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Also, Disneyland Oklahoma, the post claims, was destroyed when it was crushed by a falling International Space Station in 2022.
Needless to say, the entire concept of Disneyland Oklahoma is a hoax. For one thing, there has never been a Disney Park in Oklahoma, nor could Inside the Magic verify the existence of any theme park entrepreneur named Zachariah Richard.
For another, patents do not pertain to the naming rights for theme parks (or anything). Per the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a patent protects:
“Technical inventions, such as chemical compositions like pharmaceutical drugs, mechanical processes like complex machinery, or machine designs that are new, unique, and usable in some type of industry.”
In actuality, a theme park like Disneyland is legally protected by a series of trademarks and copyrights, which respectively cover concepts that distinguish products and services and original intellectual property.
Finally, the International Space Station, which was launched in 1989 as a joint effort by the United States, Japan, Europe, and CSA, did not fall to Earth and crush anything in 2022. It is currently still in active orbit and use. The inclusion of the ISS in the brief legend of Disneyland Oklahoma appears to be a reference to “Planned Obsolescence,” an episode of the Netflix sitcom Bojack Horseman.
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All this said, the Disneyland Oklahoma hoax appears to be in good fun, as evidenced by other people on Twitter adding to the legend of the allegedly destroyed theme park:
disneyland oklahoma: boy it sure is nice being a theme park, i hope nothing destroys me in a catastrophic incident
the ISS: pic.twitter.com/cNY6hIAsDu— Cap (@SirCap_) January 1, 2024
my family and i actually went to disneyland oklahoma but got turned away because i think the people running the gate didnt see us as profitable for some reason? which is crazy because i dont remember living in like. squalor during my childhood
— cocaine bear memorial coliseum (@jrhugfriendbear) January 1, 2024
Do you have any memories of Disneyland Oklahoma that have suddenly resurfaced? Let’s hear them in the comments below!