Disney+’s Disneyland Handcrafted Review: A One-Of-A-Kind Documentary For A One-Of-A-Kind Place

When Walt Disney first conceived of Disneyland, pretty much everybody thought he was crazy. The idea of an amusement venture that would be bigger, better, and cleaner than the traveling carnival or the local carousel was something nobody had ever tried before. A great deal has been said, written, and filmed about just how Disneyland came to be, but the new documentary film from Leslie Iwerks, Disneyland Handcrafted, available on Disney+, delves into the story in a way that’s literally never been seen before.

Disneyland Handcrafted isn’t about how Walt Disney came up with his idea or the way he had to go into debt up to his eyeballs to pay for it all. It’s focused on a specific period: the 10 months that transpired between Disneyland breaking ground in Anaheim, CA, and opening day in July 1955, and specifically on the physical construction of the park. The story is told almost exclusively through video that was shot while construction was happening but that has been buried in the Walt Disney Archives for 70 years – much of which hasn’t been seen since then, if ever.

Walt Disney once said, “Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.” Disneyland Handcrafted takes that ethos to heart in its production. The seven-decade-old footage is all the new film ever shows us. There is no narrator, there are no visual cutaways to modern or even archival interviews.

The only audio we get is the occasional voiceover from the different people involved in Disneyland’s development. Walt himself is there, of course, though not as much as you might expect. You’re more likely to hear from Art Director Dick Irvine or Admiral Joe Fowler. The voices help focus whatever you’re seeing on screen, but they never take control of the narrative. That's the video’s job.

Disneyland Handcrafted lets Disneyland be the star.

The real focus of Disneyland Handcrafted is the work. It’s the discussion and the display of the artisans, the fabricators, the landscape architect, and the landscapers. What you see in the new documentary are all the steps that come between the idea and the idea being realized. Disneyland may have happened because of Walt Disney, but he didn’t build it with his bare hands. Here, you get to see a lot of the work being done. It’s not glamorous, but it’s no less important.

Disneyland Handcrafted is the fourth time director Leslie Iwerks has focused her attention on Disney. Her first film, The Hand Behind the Mouse, told the story of her own grandfather, Ub Iwerks, co-creator of Mickey Mouse. Since then, she’s given us The Pixar Story and, most recently, The Imagineering Story, the definitive look at the creative talents that make Disney parks happen.

In that way, Handcrafted works as almost a companion piece to her other Disney+ project, showing the “boots on the ground” that set the stage for the popular attractions. The attractions themselves aren’t even a major focus here, beyond the physical construction of tracks and the painting of ride vehicles.

Director Leslie Iwerks again shows that there is nobody better at Disney history.

Iwerks has Disney in her blood, and maybe that’s why she has shown herself so capable at telling the story of Disney. Each of her documentary projects is unique in its own way, but each also celebrates a new piece of this massive, century-old organization – with Disneyland Handcrafted being the latest to do so.

Disneyland is a place capable of transporting us to new places, or those that never existed, and making us feel like we’re part of a story. Disneyland Handcrafted certainly does that, taking us back to a point in the past and making us feel like we’re there, watching history be built right in front of us. Serious Disney fans will love to get this new perspective on such a well-known place. Everybody else will still appreciate watching the incredible undertaking that was Disneyland come together.