Quick, how long did it take to build Disneyland? Consider that opening day was in 1955. Construction equipment wasn’t what it is today. And that many people regarded the man at the helm of the project (that’d be Walt) as delusional.
Consider, too, that he insisted that everything be done by hand: The rocks sculpted. The signs brush-painted. The steam engine welded. The trees and bushes planted, one by one. Over 160 acres.
Add to that Mr. Disney’s financial predicament. He’d already gone broke five times (“One more won’t hurt,” he reasoned) and was gambling his life savings to chase down his improbable dream.
You’d be forgiven if your guess comes in wildly off. Mine did: Five years? 10? The answer is a year and a day. 366 intense days from groundbreaking to opening. Makes you wish someone had filmed it all.
Disneyland Handcrafted: the documentary of Disneyland’s creation
Turns out, someone did. Ever the producer, Walt hired a camera crew to document Disneyland’s construction. Some of the video they took appeared on the TV show he hosted to help fund the park. But most of it disappeared into the archives, not to emerge for almost 70 years.
That’s when director Leslie Iwerks came upon them, while she was making an Emmy-nominated series called The Imagineering Story. Iwerks, the granddaughter of Walt’s business partner and best friend, Ub Iwerks (the lesser known co-creator of Mickey Mouse), realized the potential of the archive and decided to meticulously assemble that never-before-seen footage into a love letter to Walt and the craftspeople who hustled to build his dream.
The result is Disneyland Handcrafted, a remarkable new documentary that lets us into the behind-the-scenes drama of one of the most audacious construction projects in American history.
The premiere
I watched Disneyland Handcrafted at its premiere on the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank and brought my 12-year-old daughter Hannah as my plus one. In the studio’s iconic theater, Iwerks introduced her film to her audience, which on this night included Josh Gad, Pete Docter, Susan Egan, and Bret Iwan, members of the Disney family, plus Iwerks’s own mom.
She explained what it was like to turn 200 hours of raw archival materials into a feature-length production that chronicles Disneyland’s Cinderella transformation from dusty orange grove into a place of pilgrimage.
“Like an archaeological dig, we forensically went through each reel to tell the story of what Walt went through to pull this off,” Iwerks said, before recalling then-CEO Bob Iger’s note to her after seeing her movie: “He said, ‘It’s really emotional, it’s great. But you need more conflict.’” Obligingly, the film doesn’t sugarcoat the stress Walt hoisted onto his slightly panicked workforce—or himself.
After the screening, the blue carpet was a jumble of executives, Imagineers, Disney Legends, photographers, influencers, YouTubers, and TikTokers. My daughter wanted to meet a few people, including Iwerks. We made our way over and waited our turn. When Iwerks spotted Hannah, one of very few children at the event, she gave her her full attention.
Hannah complimented her movie enthusiastically.
“Weren’t you bored?” Iwerks joked. “It’s a documentary.”
Charmed, Hannah told Iwerks how not bored she had been. The two clearly had a connection. Iwerks gently guided Hannah away from the crowd for a brief private conversation that I couldn’t hear. Whatever Iwerks told my daughter, Hannah came away glowing.
A film for Disney fans of all ages
So, yes, the film is for kids. It’s for everyone, Disney fan or not. Esquire has already named it one of this year’s best documentaries, and it’s truly a pleasure to watch. The footage that Iwerks arranged into a tense chronological showdown leading up to Walt’s self-imposed deadline has a charming low-resolution nostalgia about it.
Some of the scenes she selected for the movie are so unforgettable that they inspired online debates about whether they’re AI (they’re not), like when a crane plucks an orange off a tree (likely a gag shot but Disney-level delightful nonetheless) or when a tractor tips and dumps its driver. Iwerks’s team did add sound effects and a stirring soundtrack, since the material she was working with was silent.
The documentary is well-named in that it reminds us that Disneyland wasn’t manufactured. It was handcrafted. This most beloved of destinations, we see in grainy detail, was built piece by piece, by the hands of blue-collar folks who were tired, rushed, and under pressure, but driven by a unified idea—Walt’s idea—of constructing something, well, wonderful.
A they-said-it couldn’t-be-done fairytale
Walt, of course, is the star of the show.
Pacing his land in a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, he’s clearly a man who would never have accepted that he might fail. He turned others into the same kind of workhorse he was. He didn’t mind bankrupting himself, or think anything of overworking hundreds of people six days a week.
“The magic was in his head,” Iwerks explained. “He mobilized all these engineers and craftspeople to follow him, to do everything they could to bring his dream to fruition, when something like this was unheard of.”
At its core, Disneyland Handcrafted is a classic they-said-it-couldn’t be-done fairytale. “People were doubting him left, right, and center,” Iwerks told us. His big brother (and CEO) Roy outright told Walt that he thought this would be a failure. Banks thought so too. Everyone around him criticized the concept, the location, the scope.
But Walt was the ultimate maker. In the film, we hear him say, “Instead of talking to somebody about something, I’d go ahead and make something. And then I’d show it to ’em.”
In retrospect, Disneyland’s success was far from inevitable. Although we know that Walt’s yearlong frenzy had an ending as happy as any of his motion pictures do, it didn’t come before a disastrous, sweltering opening day that the film does a poignant job of portraying.
After “quick and dirty” last-minute finishes, crowd management was an immediate issue when thousands of people stormed the park with counterfeit tickets. Heels sank into melting asphalt, rides broke down, and the press dubbed the event “Black Sunday” to encapsulate everything that went wrong. In Disneyland Handcrafted, Roy E. Disney recounts it being a “sweaty rat maze,” adding, “It was not the best of all days.”
Disneyland recovered, and so did Walt. As the movie’s final frame says, “Despite many early setbacks, Disneyland has welcomed over 900 million guests since opening day.”
Why it’s a must-see before your next Disneyland visit
That astounding number notwithstanding, the story of how the park came to be isn’t widely known.
Which is what makes Disneyland Handcrafted such compelling homework to do before you arrive in Anaheim. Not because it’ll optimize your itinerary or help you game Lightning Lane. Iwerks’s film won’t tell you where to rope-drop or how to shave 20 minutes off your wait time.
Instead, it will change what you see as you journey through the lands.
Before the apps, before IsItPacked, before a whole cruise line, a Star Wars land, Single Rider lines, Park Hopper tickets, nighttime spectaculars (though the parades have existed since Day 1, apparently)—heck, before California Adventure or Disney World—there were sprawling acres of orange groves and dirt that Walt and his employees scraped open and built upon.
Also, before Bobs Iger and Chapek, there was Bob Gurr, who was there at the premiere, dapper and beaming in the reddest of sportscoats, decades after handmaking Disneyland’s original attractions: You can tip your hat to his engineering prowess the next time you board a fiberglass Autopia car or the straddle-beam monorail.
Watching Disneyland Handcrafted might inspire you to linger on the sight of Main Street’s hand-painted signs. You might notice the sculpted texture of Frontierland’s craggy rocks, or the curve of a wrought-iron railing. You’ll probably remember just how the workers stuck palm fronds to the roof of the Tiki Room. The Jungle Cruise is still boats and jokes, but now it’s also welders, surveyors, and divers wearing oxygen tanks in muddy water.
Hard work as a source of magic
For kids, that’s a powerful perspective shift. A Disney trip is full of wonder, but this documentary shows children that “magic” doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from work. Really hard work.
So yes, to enrich your time in the park, you can always pay for a guided tour, hire a plaid, or fuss over your must-do list. But before your next Disney trip, you should also make sure to plop your family on the couch for 78 minutes, popcorn in hand, to behold Disneyland Handcrafted. You’ll come away with a deeper appreciation for Disneyland, and for how quickly it materialized.
If you’re like me, you’ll also come away wondering what you’re making for this world. Isn’t that Walt’s legacy, after all? Proving, irrefutably, that crafting magical things for other people to enjoy is worth doing?
After the premiere, we waited in chilly air for an Uber back to Burbank Airport. To pass the time, I turned to Hannah and asked, “Who’s your favorite person that you met tonight?”
I expected her to name one of the more outright celebrities, someone that millions of kids worship. But she immediately named Iwerks: “The director was the kindest person there.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering. “What did Leslie say to you when she took you aside?”
She smiled and said, “Do work that makes people happy.”
How to watch Disneyland Handcrafted
Stream it for free on YouTube’s Disney+ channel or watch it directly on Disney+.
