McDonaldland was the fictional advertising world created for McDonald’s character campaigns.
The setting gave Ronald McDonald and other branded figures a shared place for television commercials, promotions and children’s marketing. Characters such as Grimace, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and Birdie the Early Bird were presented as inhabitants or visitors within this imaginative world.
McDonaldland helped McDonald’s connect menu products with recurring stories and recognizable personalities. It was a branding system, not a real theme park or ordinary restaurant location.
The name is sometimes confused with individual characters, especially Mayor McCheese or Ronald McDonald. Those are characters associated with McDonaldland; McDonaldland is the fictional setting itself.