Disneyland Handcrafted is an all-new documentary, looking back at the building of Disneyland over 70 years ago. This one-of-a-kind documentary premiered on Disney+ and Disney’s YouTube channel on January 22nd and is an absolute must-see for any Disney fan.
In collaboration with Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary Celebration, Iwerks & Co. has created an intimate look into the handcrafted details of the year-long construction of “The Happiest Place on Earth”. The documentary feels as if you are living within each frame, experiencing the marvel of Disneyland and the pure wonder and gumption of Walt Disney himself.
In 1954, Walt Disney hired a documentary team to film the entirety of the Disneyland construction. The footage is both stunning and cinematic but was originally found out of sequence often without any sort of marker and with absolutely no audio. Not only was the film brought to vivid 2K resolution but George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic assisted in bringing authentic audio to the film.
Disney fans may already know a lot about the making of Disneyland but everyone is guaranteed to walk away from Disneyland Handcrafted with a new perspective. While you may have heard about women’s heels sticking to the asphalt on the opening day of Disneyland, seeing a truck get stuck in the concrete the day before the opening really paints the picture of how impossible of a dream it was to build Disneyland in just one year.
Perhaps the greatest gift from Disneyland Handcrafted is a new perspective of Walt Disney that humanizes him as a leader, dreamer, risk taker, and at times a very vulnerable man. In a poignant scene of the Moonliner Rocket being installed in Tomorrowland, Walt talks about money not being something that should be stored away but instead used to spread joy and ignite inspiration.
