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Disneyland is widely credited with putting Anaheim on the map.
The theme park also has had a hand in making the city a convention destination.
Disneyland was the impetus for a flurry of new hotels, motels and restaurants that sprung up after the theme park and Disneyland hotel opened in 1955.
The hotel was the first of the convention hotels, with 400 rooms by 1960 and a Top of the Park Lounge where events could be held for up to 1,400 people.
Disneyland also supported a new visitor and convention bureau in 1961 to help bring in business, while the city approved plans for a convention center, which opened in 1967.
Janice Ayres, the park's first marketing director, previously handled marketing for the American Heart Association among other groups and leveraged her contacts to bring some of those groups to Anaheim.
Those conventioneers stayed in area hotels and often brought spouses or families along to visit Disneyland and other attractions.
"That was a real plus," said Bill Snyder, the visitor bureau's first president.
The visitor bureau, in turn, reached out to potential groups that might include families.
"Everything was geared to bringing groups to Anaheim," Snyder said.
In the early days, Snyder said a major challenge was convincing people it didn't take more than a day to get to Anaheim from Los Angeles.
As the Anaheim Convention Center grew, so did Disneyland attendance. And as Disneyland grew, so did convention business.
By the time the tradeshow boom began in the 1980s, an already-solid convention business spurred big-name operators like Hilton hotels Corp. and Marriott International Inc. to open convention hotels nearby. Those two hotels still are the anchors for the convention business today.
In the mid-1990s, Anaheim approved plans for the Anaheim Resort District. The project would result in more than $6 billion in public and private investment.
Changes included another expansion...