Jack Lindquist

Jack Lindquist (March 15, 1927 – February 28, 2016) was an American business executive who served as president of the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California from 1990 until he retired in 1993. He was a Disney employee from 1955 until his retirement, and was a marketing executive in the theme parks division for almost thirty years, including a stint as the first advertising manager for Disneyland. His eventual reach would extend worldwide, having trained and/or greatly influenced others who would become amusement industry leaders, both inside and outside of the Disney attractions. Among the amusement industry, many have credited Lindquist with founding and greatly expanding the arts and sciences of attraction promotion.

Early years and film roles Born in Chicago and a graduate of Hollywood High School, Jack Lindquist was also involved as a child actor who appeared as an extra in several episodes of the Our Gang short film series and appeared in the film Best Foot Forward with Lucille Ball. He also appeared in the Shirley Temple Black film, The Little Princess, and Laurel and Hardy's Nothing But Trouble, as 'The Kid'. In all, Lindquist spent 15 years acting as an extra in films.

After graduating from high school, Lindquist enlisted in the U.S. Air Force where he spent two years. He then attended college at the University of Southern California (USC), where he was a member of the Theta Xi Fraternity and the Trojan Knights.

Disney years Two months after the park's official opening, Lindquist received a phone call from early management at Disneyland (Milt Albright) asking for suggestions of an available advertising manager. Lindquist suggested himself and was in turn offered the job. The option to pre-sale tickets for upcoming special events has since been used by theme parks, industry-wide. Likewise this has become commonplace practice for event ticket sale opportunities used among the leisure and entertainment industries alike for concerts, theater, and sporting events.

Grad Night In response to a high school night the preceding year, in which students were involved in a tragic automobile accident, Jack Lindquist and co-worker, Bill Schwenn, met with several women from local high school Parent-Teacher Association(PTA) groups to discuss the opportunity for a safe graduate evening party within the Disneyland park. Realizing that it would not be operationally feasible to justify opening the park only for the total of 800 students the women represented, Lindquist opened the event to additional area high school graduating classes. To fill the park so that it could afford to adequately staff and run the park for the Grad Night evening, tickets were sold to students from eight Southern California high schools, at a cost of $3.95 per ticket, from which a total of 8,500 attended on the first Grad Night party of June 15, 1961. As a result of the success of this first event, Disneyland's Grad Night became an annual event. By 2012, Disneyland had hosted over five million graduates from thousands of Southern California high schools. In 2013, the Grad Night event moved out of the Disneyland park and into the adjacent Disney California Adventure park.

The tradition of Grad Night proved so successful that it continued every year since 1961 in Anaheim, and eventually grew to also take place at the parks in Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris. Similarly, for the celebration of the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee theme park, Dollywood, the park not only designed a season's marketing campaign around the anniversary, but park namesake and country music performer, Dolly Parton used the opportunity to promote the park through a televised anniversary special that included popular performers such as Miley Cyrus, country music performers Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, and Reba McEntire, as well as multiple Grammy Award winner Kenny Rogers.

Commercial tie-ins Commercial tie-ins with Disneyland commenced with the planning and development of the park in the 1950s. With the need to raise money to finance the park, Walt Disney entered into a production agreement with the ABC television network to provide weekly programming in exchange for a line of credit to be used to pay for the park's development, as well as to market the park, itself, through the programming of a weekly program: Disneyland. The weekly show featured themes in keeping with the different themed areas of the namesake amusement park.

Jack Lindquist later helped to create one of today's most recognized commercial tag-lines, and celebratory tradition, when the New York Giants won Super Bowl XXI in 1985, and quarterback Phil Simms was the first to utter the phrase: "I'm Going to Disneyland." while on the East coast broadcasting feed, the line was: "I'm Going to Disney World."

Disney Dollars

Upon reading of the rise of the British pound in the financial section of a newspaper, Lindquist was inspired to create a real currency for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Disneyland, after all, was at that time drawing approximately 12 million people a year and an additional 24 million would visit the Walt Disney World resort; a transient population greater than many small countries.

The first Disney Dollars, an "A Series", were released in 1987 in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, Florida. The printing process and special 100% cotton paper was used, to give the currency a look and feel of legal tender. The bills would be used as face value currency within the Disney theme parks, with 870,000 of the original series printed for the May 5, 1987 release date in both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World resort. By 1996, Disney had exchanged approximately $135 million in Disney Dollars.

Following the example of the Disney Dollar, Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee offers its own form of namesake currency in the form of "Dolly Dollars."

Archive collection In 1994, Lindquist was named trustee of Chapman University in Orange, California and in 2002 received Emeritus status, yet continued to speak twice a year at the university to students studying marketing strategy. In 2013, the university dedicated the "Jack and Belle Lindquist Dream Room and Disney Collection" in the university's Leatherby Library. The room contains two large display cases featuring portions of Lindquist's personal collection of awards and rare memorabilia. The artifacts on display feature only a small portion of the entire collection of awards and rare memorabilia that Jack Lindquist donated to the university for safekeeping and archiving. Other artifacts in the collection are rotated on an ongoing basis.

Legacy Jack Lindquist's eventual reach was worldwide, having trained three generations of young leaders within Disney, who went on to lead attractions around the globe, both inside and outside of the Disney organization. One example was Matt Ouimet, who started his career within Disney, where he learned directly from Lindquist. Ouimet later left Disney to lead other international attraction companies, and is currently president and CEO of Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, owners of approximately 19 amusement and water parks in the United States and Canada. In an indirect manner, Tom Mehrmann, the current CEO of Ocean Park, Hong Kong, learned indirectly form Jack Lindquist by competing against Lindquist while working at Disneyland rival theme park, Knott's Berry Farm, in Buena Park, California. Many amusement industry executives credit Jack Lindquist with founding and greatly expanding the arts and sciences of attraction promotion.

Recognition After Lindquist retired, he received a commemorative window on Main Street, U.S.A., at Disneyland that reads J.B. Lindquist, Honorary Mayor of Disneyland. In 1994, he was named a Disney Legend.

In Disneyland's Mickey's Toontown, in the yard of Goofy's Playhouse, there was a pumpkin in the Jack-O-Lantern patch that has the face of Jack Lindquist to pay tribute to him. Though the pumpkin was removed during the 2023 refurbishment of the area, it was incorporated into a framed Halloween photo of the Goof Troop cast inside Goofy's Playhouse.