Doug Parks Disney World’s first Mickey Mouse dies at 60

This article comes to us from the Orlando Sentinel.

The man widely believed to be the first Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World has died.

Doug Parks of Gotha died Aug. 29. He was 60.

Disney officials would confirm he was an entertainment cast member, but would not say whether Parks was the first costumed Mickey Mouse at the Magic Kingdom when it opened in October 1971. His family, likewise, was reluctant to spoil the so-called Disney Magic.

But a story and a picture of him at home that ran in the Orlando Sentinel in 1971 identified him as Disney World’s first costumed Mickey Mouse. He later trained two other substitute “mice.”

“Employer-erected barriers” made it difficult at the time to talk to Parks about his work at Disney, where his identity was protected, the article stated.

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