{"id":144590,"date":"2026-01-22T11:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/144590\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T11:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:24:10","slug":"disneyland-handcrafted-on-disney-reveals-unbelievable-early-park-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/144590\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Disneyland Handcrafted’ on Disney+ reveals unbelievable early park footage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today Disneyland is so fully formed that it\u2018s taken for granted. We debate ticket prices and crowd calendars, strategizing the optimal time to visit. <\/p>\n

The new documentary \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d hits pause on all of that. <\/p>\n

Culled from about 200 hours of mostly unseen footage, director Leslie Iwerks\u2019 film takes viewers back to the near beginning, tracing the largely impossible creation of the park from a year before its opening. <\/p>\n

\u201cCan you imagine L.A. without Disneyland?\u201d Iwerks asks me during an interview. <\/p>\n

To begin to answer that question cuts to the importance of \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted,\u201d which premieres Thursday on Disney+. For while Disneyland is corporately owned and managed, the park has become a cultural institution, a reflection of the stories and myths that have shaped America. Disneyland shifts with the times<\/a>, but Iwerks\u2019 film shows us the Walt Disney template, one that by the time the park opened on July 17, 1955, was so set in place that it would soon become a place of pilgrimage, a former Anaheim orange grove in which generations of people would visit as a rite of passage. <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Walt Disney surveying the Anaheim land that would become Disneyland, as seen in Leslie Iwerks\u2019 film \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Disney+)<\/p>\n

Iwerks comes from a family of Disney royalty. Her grandfather, Ub, was a legendary animator instrumental in the development of Mickey Mouse. Her father, Don, was a cinematic and special effects wizard who worked on numerous Disney attractions, including the Michael Jackson-starring film \u201cCaptain EO.\u201d As a documentarian, Iwerks has explored Disney before as the director of \u201cThe Imagineering Story\u201d and has a long career<\/a> of films that touch on not just Hollywood but also politics and environmental issues.<\/p>\n

Here, Iwerks reveals just how fragile the creation of Disneyland was. <\/p>\n

1 <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

2 <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

3 <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

1. A worker applies gold detailing to the ornate spires of Sleeping Beauty Castle, showcasing the elegance and precision that defined the centerpiece of Disneyland Park. 2. A craftsperson applies paint to the stone facade of Sleeping Beauty Castle. 3. A glimpse of Sleeping Beauty Castle under construction. (Disney+) <\/p>\n

Having watched the film now numerous times, there are many small moments that stick with me. A worker, for instance, carefully sculpting the concrete on Sleeping Beauty Castle just months before opening while a narrator speaks of the park\u2019s rising cost. A construction vehicle toppling, with its driver escaping a life-changing accident by jumping out just in the nick of time as Disney himself talks up how there have been very few accidents. And the mistakes, such as frantically learning \u2014 and failing \u2014 at how to build a river. <\/p>\n

That Disneyland is as popular today as it was in 1955 \u2014 the film reveals that more than 900 million people<\/a> have visited the park \u2014 is no accident. We live in stressful, divisive times, and Disneyland was not only born of such a moment but built for them, arriving in 1955 in a post-World War II America that was adjusting to more internalized, less-overtly-visible fears. The specter of nuclear annihilation was now forever a reality, and the Cold War heightened the sense of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

A fake world inspired by a real one that never existed, don\u2019t mistake Disneyland for nostalgia. Disneyland seeks to reorient, to show a better, more optimistic world that only exists if we continue to dream \u2014 to imagine a walkable street, for instance, in which a fairy tale castle sits at its end. Disneyland isn\u2019t so much an escape from our world as it is a place where we go to make sense of it, a work of live theater where we, the guests, are on a stage and can play at idealized versions of ourselves. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we care? Why does it matter?\u201d asks Iwerks. \u201cI think what matters, for Disneyland, is that Walt set out to create the happiest place on Earth. Right there, putting that stake in the ground. That\u2019s so impressive. That\u2019s so risky. And yet he did it by sheer belief that he wanted families to come together and experience a place they could come back to time and again, a place that would continue to grow and always be evolving through cultures, through time, through generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The front gates of Disneyland under construction.<\/p>\n

(Disney+)<\/p>\n

What makes the film so poignant is that Iwerks essentially gets out of the way. The footage was initially commissioned by Disney and shot for use in the company\u2019s then weekly ABC series, which was funding the park. Some of the clips have appeared in episodes of \u201cWalt Disney\u2019s Disneyland,\u201d but very few. For that show, Disney was selling the public on the park. With the public having long been sold, Iwerks can show us the park in shambles, a dirt path entering a wood-strewn Frontierland while Harper Goff, then Disneyland\u2019s art director, speaks of a frustrated Disney lamenting that half the park\u2019s money is gone and it remains nothing but a pile of muck. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what worry is,\u201d Goff says in the narration. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat rose to the surface was how much pressure there was during this one year,\u201d Iwerks says. \u201cIt was impossible. It was building what ultimately was a mini city in less than a year, pulling together all those construction workers, all those people who handcrafted this whole park in record time using their own skills, artistry and storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Iwerks, \u201cYou can\u2019t remodel your kitchen right now in a year.\u201d <\/p>\n

Since the film is a light cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 style, Iwerks doesn\u2019t editorialize as to how it all did get done. But we see workers, for instance, straddling beams in Tomorrowland with no support, making it clear this was an era with fewer regulations. Iwerks herself points to the ABC funding, acknowledging that the arrangement simply necessitated the park being completed in a year. But when it opened, it was far from finished. Disneyland\u2019s struggles on opening day have long been mythologized<\/a>, be it stories of weak asphalt or plumbing disasters. <\/p>\n

\"Construction \"A <\/p>\n

A craftsperson works on the yellow decorative trim of King Arthur Carousel in Fantasyland.<\/p>\n

(Disney+)<\/p>\n

Iwekrs is more interested in showing us the race against time, especially for a park that deviated from the light theming and simple rides of amusement parks of the era. Throughout the film\u2019s hour and a half running time, Iwerks is making the argument that Disneyland simply wasn\u2019t practical. Two months before opening we see a concrete-less Main Street while we\u2019re told of a debate as to whether Disneyland should delay its planned July date. The decision was made not to, as the park was running out of money and there was a fear any push would ultimately kill it. <\/p>\n

And in some ways it\u2019s a surprise we\u2019re seeing any of this. Iwerks notes the film was completed years ago, but sat on the shelf. She credits Disney executive Jason Recher with pushing it through. \u201cI showed him a link, and he said, \u2018This has to be seen.\u2019 It takes someone with a vision to see that this could get out there and be appreciated by audiences,\u201d Iwerks says. \u201cI was thinking this would never see the light of day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end result is a film that will likely be cherished by Disney fans but also admired by anyone interested in the making of an American classic. One of the most striking moments in the film is that of the cars of the Disneyland Railroad being ferried on trucks past downtown\u2019s City Hall, a reminder that Disneyland, no matter its influences, its stewards or its changes, is a Southern California original. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today Disneyland is so fully formed that it\u2018s taken for granted. We debate ticket prices and crowd calendars,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,3588,67944,72314,5993,72313,72312,48002,1833,592,1410,3044,315,4455,72],"class_list":["post-144590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-disney","tag-disneyland-handcrafted","tag-harper-goff","tag-instance","tag-iwerk","tag-iwerks","tag-new-film","tag-park","tag-people","tag-place","tag-story","tag-time","tag-worker","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}