Review: Disneyland Handcrafted
Remember a few weeks ago when we reviewed Epic Ride: The Story of Universal Theme Parks and basically said, “This is incredible, please give us as much theme park behind-the-scenes content as humanly possible?” It didn’t take long for Disney to answer that call with Disneyland: Handcrafted, now streaming on Disney+ and, maybe even better, available for free on YouTube.
Disneyland: Handcrafted focuses on the development of Disneyland, taking viewers on an unforgettable journey through the exhilarating year that gave rise to The Happiest Place on Earth. Through newly unearthed materials from the Walt Disney Archives, Director and Executive Producer Leslie Iwerks and her team uncovered long-forgotten original 16mm film reels and audio recordings that captured what was truly happening behind the scenes, told through the firsthand accounts of the artists, craftsmen, and Imagineers who were there.
Iwerks, the daughter and granddaughter of Disney legends Don Iwerks and Ub Iwerks, and her team are no strangers to Disney history. Her filmography includes The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, The Pixar Story, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, and The Imagineering Story. That experience shows here. She masterfully weaves presumable miles of film reels and audio recordings into a cohesive narrative that counts down the final ten months of Disneyland’s construction.
This “found footage” is some of the most unique theme park video I’ve ever seen, and honestly, it’s a little mind-blowing that it exists at all. Let’s be realistic for a moment. The 1950s were not the 2020s. No one had a camera in their pocket. There was no internet, no vlogging, and no drone or bioreconstruct helicopter footage tracking progress essentially in real time. But Walt Disney, being Walt Disney, had the foresight to place multiple cameras on-site to document construction and record audio from the people building the park.
Like any good documentary, Disneyland: Handcrafted starts strong, opening with massive crowds at Disneyland one year after opening, before abruptly cutting to a title card reading “One Year Prior to Opening” and an almost completely empty plot of land. When we say empty, it was empty. In today’s world, building a theme park the size of Disneyland in one year – 366 days from groundbreaking to opening day – feels impossible. We live in a world where a single attraction or land can be announced one year, not break ground for another year, and still take several more years on top of that to open. Disneyland: Handcrafted takes us through July 1954-July 1955, through the lens of the cameramen hired to capture the construction.
For nearly 80 minutes, the journey of Disneyland: Handcrafted is largely visual. Interviews are interspersed throughout, featuring names hardcore Disney fans will immediately recognize, including Dick Irvine, Marty Sklar, John Hench, Herb Ryman, Joe Fowler, and more. Unlike modern documentaries where the interview subject is often seen on camera, these interviews are audio-only, allowing the visuals to take center stage and making the storytelling even more immersive. Television and audio clips of Walt Disney himself are also scattered throughout, showing updates on Disneyland’s progress as the countdown ticks from ten months out to opening day.
One of the most refreshing and entertaining things about the documentary is that the footage hasn’t been sanitized for a modern audience. Just to set expectations, OSHA wasn’t founded until 1971. This footage was captured well before that. In just the first few minutes, we see a cameraman climbing a tall tower with no harness, workers sparring with each other with one holding a jackhammer, a jeep riding on two wheels as a counterweight, workers straddling steel beams 20 to 25 feet in the air before free-climbing down, and a dump truck that literally tips over, ejecting its operator in the process. (I wasn’t the only one with these thoughts. Universal designer Jordan Hill summed it up perfectly in a hilarious tweet.)
Watching the Disneyland: Handcrafted gave me a whole new appreciation for the craftsmen who brought the park to life. There are multiple scenes showcasing the painstaking hand-crafted textures of castle turrets, rockwork, and set pieces throughout the park. The behind-the-scenes ride footage is equally fascinating, from the first-generation Autopia vehicles designed by Bob Gurr, to an early Peter Pan’s Flight prototype that looks like it was made entirely of plywood and sheer optimism, to the construction of the Mark Twain Riverboat.
As someone who closely follows theme park construction today, it’s incredible to see Disneyland, often considered the gold standard for theme park design, rise from a giant empty construction into the Happiest Place on Earth. Even in 1954 and 1955, techniques like time-lapse photography and dangling a cameraman from a box flown from a helicopter (again pre-OSHA!) to capture sweeping overhead shots were ahead of their time. The fact that the footage looks this good, both from a quality and artistic point of view, more than 70 years later is even more impressive.
What I didn’t fully grasp before watching, beyond the one-year build timeline which still blows my mind, is just how much of Disneyland was built on a wing and a prayer. Allegedly, only a fraction of the park’s plans were complete when construction began, and the future of the Walt Disney Company was deeply tied to Disneyland’s success. With so many resources committed to the project, there was real concern that if the park didn’t open on time or at all, it could sink the company. The idea that “we’ve spent all this money, and there’s nothing here anyone would pay 15 cents to see” loomed heavily just months before opening. According to Art Linkletter, who hosted Disneyland’s opening-day television broadcast, it’s nothing short of a miracle that the park opened on schedule.
As Disneyland: Handcrafted comes to a close, we arrive at opening day and Walt Disney’s iconic dedication: “To all who come to this happy place, welcome.” The moment is paired with dozens of full-color crowd shots that make it abundantly clear why opening day was far from magical. The crowds were massive. I may not be fully caught up on every piece of vintage Disney footage out there, but this is the first time I’ve truly been able to visualize just how packed the park was that day.
To sum it up, if you’re a Disney fan, a theme park nerd, or even just someone who loves mid-century Americana, Disneyland: Handcrafted is an incredible 78-minute watch. The sheer volume of behind-the-scenes footage and candid interviews gives you a whole new appreciation for how Disneyland came to exist, not just as a park, but as the catalyst for Disney’s global theme park empire and much of the modern theme park industry. It’s a story that’s been told for decades, but now that we finally have the visuals to match the lore, it’s an even better story.
Disneyland: Handcrafted succeeds in doing what great documentaries do. It makes something familiar feel new again. Seeing the park come to life through “found footage” and recording simply reinforces what we as theme park fans already know – Disneyland was as ambitious as it was unprecedented, and it wasn’t just the construction of a single theme park, but a gamble that reshaped entertainment, storytelling, and popular culture in ways that are still felt today.
You can stream Disneyland: Handcrafted on Disney+, or on YouTube in the window below.
