“The Happiest Place on Earth” is at the Walt Disney Family Museum through May

For most of us, Disneyland has always been there. You can’t say the word Anaheim without conjuring up images from the wonderful world of Disney. The long and winding road to creating the whimsy of Walt Disney’s dream park is the subject of the new book The Happiest Place on Earth: The Disneyland Story by Don Hahn and Christopher Merritt. The pair have brought the book to life at a sister exhibition and documentary film that opened recently at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.

Harper Goff, Bill Evans, Dick Irvine, Walt Disney, Ruth Shellhorn, and Joe Fowler examine working drawings, April 1955;Credit: Courtesy of Ruth Patricia Shellhorn Papers, UCLA Library Special Collections, © Disney

Visitors reach the temporary exhibit after an hour immersed in the story of Walt’s journey from cartoonist to studio mogul to “Showman of the World,” as an award presented to Disney shortly before his death in 1966 proclaimed.

The exhibit includes artifacts that shine a light on the vast team of artists and production designers who assembled to create the new park. “We wanted to highlight the people nobody really knew,” says Hahn, himself a Disney legend. “Look, here’s Marc Davis, here’s Sam McKim. Here’s people you haven’t heard of that did a million iterations of Disneyland. These are the really strong talents from the animation studio that designed Disneyland.”


“The Happiest Place on Earth” exhibition at the Walt Disney Family MuseumCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Hahn is especially proud of including original illustrations of cast member uniforms designed by Renié Conley, a film designer who won her Oscar for Cleopatra. “They are so precious and beautiful,” Hahn says. “They’re working drawings meant to do the heavy lifting of what a costume would look like. She even stapled fabric swatches to the drawings.”

“The Happiest Place on Earth” exhibition at the Walt Disney Family MuseumCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols

The book and exhibit also include ideas that never came to be, like the original version of Pirates of the Caribbean. “There is a great drawing from when it was a wax museum walk through,” Hahn says. “Some of those pieces are still there like the pirate ship. You can see the sweat and coffee stains and pencil marks.”

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Bruce Bushman, Pink elephants concept art for Dumbo attraction, Fall 1954; magineering CollectionCredit: Courtesy of the Walt Disney Imagineering Collection, © Disney

Both authors have worked for the Walt Disney Company and have personal relationships with many of the artists who helped create the park of the 1950s and 60s. “Chris (Merritt) was really close to Rolly Crump,” says Hahn. “A lot of things we were able to steal off his walls which I love because I makes it really personal to the people who created these strange little items.”


“The Happiest Place on Earth” exhibition at the Walt Disney Family MuseumCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Artifacts that once lived at the park, from the carpet bag used by Wally Boag in the Golden Horseshoe Revue, a plastic leaf from the Swiss Family Treehouse or signage from the Tahitian Terrace restaurant behind Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, immediately transport you to the first time you saw them at their original home.


“The Happiest Place on Earth” exhibition at the Walt Disney Family MuseumCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Disney’s idea of putting visitors in the middle of a movie adventure and letting it unfold all around you was a whole new model of entertainment, completely innovative for the time. “The men and women who designed this stuff were so imaginative and able to bring the cinematic arts to an orange grove in Anaheim,” Hahn says.

Even though the museum is located in San Francisco, The Happiest Place on Earth and Walt Disney’s life are foundational Los Angeles stories. Hahn was one of the original advisors when Disney’s daughter Diane was dreaming up the museum. “It has become this wonderful place of storytelling,” Hahn says. “It’s all about the story. That’s how we human beings pass along who we are, and I think that legacy is really cool.”


“The Happiest Place on Earth” exhibition at the Walt Disney Family MuseumCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols