This year, Disneyland Park added a new special guided tour honoring Women’s History Month: the Women Who Make the Magic Guided Tour, which spotlights the achievements of Harriet Burns, Alice Davis, Mary Blair, Ruth Shellhorn, Leota Toombs, Kim Irvine, Dorothea Redmond, and other visionary Disney women.

Women Who Make Magic

The tour came to be because of the influence of Cast Member Justin Turrentine, who has been a Disneyland Tour Guide since 2012. Driven by his deep love and admiration for his mother and aunt, Justin started thinking about a tour that focused specifically on the creative contributions of women within The Walt Disney Company.

I wanted to work on a history tour that focused on the women of Disney, because they were there from the beginning. In fact, before the beginning. 

His Tour Guide leader, Marissa Day, “immediately said yes” to the idea, recognizing its potential impact:

This is what we need: meaningful stories of the women who made the magic that can open the door for the stories of the women who make the magic.

Justin worked with fellow Tour Guides Karen Fleishauer and Abby Gonzalez to craft the tour, with their personal experiences as women in creative guest-experience roles proving a vital contribution. Fleishauer, who has worked as a Tour Guide, trainer, and lead since 2007, says that the Women Who Make the Magic Tour “has probably been [her] favorite that [she’s] gotten to work on.”

Gonzalez, who became a Tour Guide in 2022 and has since grown into a lead, trainer, and tour developer, agrees wholeheartedly:

I love learning about this company; it has such an extensive history. We get to share those stories with guests in a new and exciting way.

The trio worked together to compile a list of influential women with incredible Disney stories, from Flora Disney to Mary Blair, and then divided and conquered on researching the individual histories and writing the respective sections of the tour.

The final tour takes guests on a journey of over 100 years of amazing women’s stories, art, and innovation spanning animation, Imagineering, Disney Parks, and beyond. 

Have you taken the Women Who Make the Magic Guided Tour at Disneyland? Let us know on social media.

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