{"id":156226,"date":"2026-01-30T07:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T07:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/156226\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T07:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T07:24:14","slug":"disney-shelved-disneyland-handcrafted-documentary-for-years-san-gabriel-valley-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/156226\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney shelved \u2018Disneyland Handcrafted\u2019 documentary for years \u2013 San Gabriel Valley Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new documentary film about how Disneyland almost never happened sat on the shelf collecting dust for years and nearly never made it off the cutting room floor, according to the filmmaker.<\/p>\n

A 70-minute rough cut of \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted<\/a>\u201d sat on the shelf in 2020 as Disney put the project on hold indefinitely, according to documentary filmmaker Leslie Iwerks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking this would never see the light of day,\u201d Iwerks told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d debuted last week on the Disney+ streaming service and YouTube.<\/p>\n

ALSO SEE: Walt Disney made up Disneyland as he went along during construction in the mid-1950s<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d was culled from hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes footage that Iwerks used in the making of \u201cThe Imagineering Story<\/a>\u201d docuseries that debuted in 2019 on the then-fledgling Disney+ streaming service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t we put this together, put it in chronological order and see what it looks like?\u2019\u201d Iwerks said, according to a Disney press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AA craftsman works on the main entrance at Disneyland before the park opened in 1955. (Courtesy of Disney)<\/p>\n

Iwerks and her team brought the idea for what became \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d to Disney\u2019s documentary film division and got a green light to develop the project \u2014 but the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down most of the world in early 2020 soon put the project on hold indefinitely.<\/p>\n

After all, a documentary film about how Disneyland almost never opened in 1955 didn\u2019t make a lot of sense while the Anaheim theme park sat closed for more than a year<\/a> due to state-mandated pandemic restrictions.<\/p>\n

ALSO SEE: Meet the \u2018unsung hero\u2019 who helped Walt Disney build Disneyland<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DisneyDisney Experiences Vice President of Content Creation and Digital Integration Jason Recher. (Courtesy of Disney)<\/p>\n

Iwerks credits Disney Experiences Vice President of Content Creation and Digital Integration Jason Recher with rescuing and championing \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d after watching the rough cut.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018This is amazing. We should be making this film. This is history right here,\u2019 Recher told Iwerks, according to Fantasyland News<\/a>. \u201cIt really took one person\u2019s vision to see the importance of this project and help bring it to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA craftsman paints a hand-carved detail at Disneyland before the park opened in 1955. (Courtesy of Disney)<\/p>\n

Iwerks assembled a brain trust of Disneyland experts to review the shelved rough cut of \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d that included Disney Legends Tony Baxter and Don Hahn and Pixar Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter.<\/p>\n

ALSO SEE: Walt Disney was \u2018scared\u2019 Disneyland would never be ready for opening day in 1955<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d was born out of the Disneyland Movie Nights that Baxter regularly hosted where he screened unedited and silent reels of Disneyland construction from the mid-1950s. The screenings eventually moved to Pixar where Docter watched the \u201ccompelling and revelatory\u201d low-resolution footage with his fellow animation studio employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeslie used this same footage to assemble a visual stopwatch of Disneyland being built,\u201d Docter said, according to a Disney press release.<\/p>\n

\"AA craftsman paints a pirate ship at Disneyland before the park opened in 1955. (Courtesy of Disney)<\/p>\n

Hahn played the role of \u201cstory carpenter\u201d as he helped Iwerks weave the human story of Walt Disney\u2019s relentless creativity into the framework of \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d rough cut.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job was to walk the beam with her and help refine the emotional architecture,\u201d Hahn said, according to a Disney press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new documentary film about how Disneyland almost never happened sat on the shelf collecting dust for years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2223,163,165,164,7,2222,1341,611,420,136],"class_list":["post-156226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-amusement-parks","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-disney-california-adventure","tag-disneyland","tag-orange-county","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156226","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=156226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}