2026 - DISNEYLAND HANDCRAFTED, how they built Disneyland

The granddaughter of one of Walt Disney's most important contributor's Ub Iwerks, has assembled this film about the construction of Disneyland in Orange County, California during the 1950's.  First off who was Ub Iwerks?  Well he was with Walt Disney at the very beginning helping to develop the Mickey Mouse character.  Iwerks was responsible for many of the visual effects that showed up in Disney's films in particular Mary Poppins, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Sleeping Beauty just to name a very few.  Iwerks also handled the special effects for Hitchcock's The Birds.

Anyway, Ub Iwerk's granddaughter Leslie got access to some rarely seen 16mm films on the construction of Disneyland that Walt Disney had commissioned during the building.  The films had for the most part had never been seen and were in perfect condition. They were edited into a narrative and are interesting to watch.

 

Disneyland was one of Walt Disney's most important creative endeavors and he spared no expense in building it.  Amazingly the park was constructed in one year,  a real pressure cooker of a time table.  The film has voice over narration from the actual participants in the construction of Disneyland and they clearly had their doubts about the whole project. 

Obviously this film is going to appeal mostly to groupies of the Disneyland Park.  However it is kind of fascinating to see the construction of one of the seminal theme parks in the United States and the near perfect color films shot during the construction are pretty cool to look at.  This documentary can be viewed where else, on the Disney plus channel.

The running time is 79 minutes.