"The Imagineering Story": Uncover the stories behind Disneyland

Spoilers

Do you know who has won the most Oscars in the Academy Awards? It was Walt Disney, the founder of Disney.

He has received 59 Oscar nominations, 22 Oscars, four Academy Honorary Awards, and seven Emmy Awards in his lifetime. He is a dream-making legend.

Today, Disney is the world's largest tangible dream factory. Children, or adults who still cherish their inner kids, can not escape Disney's fairy tale dream, nor would they ever want to escape it. We are immersed in this dream and do not want to wake up. However, none of us ever imagined this dream coming true. What is its purpose? Who is in charge of developing it? And what is the source of inspiration?

A highly rated documentary released in November 2019 where we can find the answer to all these questions, and they reveal the stories behind Disney. This is “The Imagineering Story”.

The film was directed by Leslie Iwerks, who thus received the coveted access authorization to go deep into the Disney development center. She could interview those dream-making experts hidden behind the scenes and film those little-known stories.

Because the information is detailed and comprehensive enough, and the shots are retro and bold enough, "The Imagineering Story" has been praised as one of the best documentaries to tell the stories behind Disney, and can even be seen as a biography of Walt Disney.

Disney's origin: Walt wanted to build a small amusement park

Walt Disney was born in 1901, long before the creation of the Disney theme park, he was the owner of an animation company. "Peter Pan", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty" and other animated films we are all familiar with, were all launched by his company. Like all successful entrepreneurs, he is energetic and imaginative. But he is also a born dreamer who wants to turn all fairy tales into reality.

In the 1950s, Walt had the idea of building a theme park, starting with just a small desire to give his children a great experience playing at an amusement park. Initially, he just wanted to build it on a small piece of empty land near his home, but this idea was soon rejected by the government. So, Walt left angry to find a more extensive deserted land in Anaheim. All the fantasy dreams and countless stories began there.

Behind Disney: The people who made it

Through interviews filled with information, "The Imagineering Story" details all the steps that led to the birth of Disneyland from all aspects of team building, concept introduction, theme follow-up, and story creation.

Walt specially organized a dream team to develop the park, called the "Imagineering" team. Members include animation directors, screenwriters, effect artists, art students, costume designers, colorists, etc. They are called Imagineers. Such an artful "development" team is unparalleled in the world.

This group of artists can not only dream on paper but are also responsible for making those paper dreams come true. Each person can hold several positions, such as architect, modeler, development tester, engineer, etc.

For example, animation screenwriters and special effect designers began to learn composition modeling. To improve his design, an illustrator who was completely ignorant of mathematics began to learn trigonometry. Or for instance, an unknown colorist was hired by Walt to do costume design for the park's cartoon characters.

These dream makers got together and accomplished something that no one ever thought possible. After watching the documentary, you will realize that behind such an endeavor there's a giant and an incredible group of people.

What Walt wanted was such a group of people who dared to daydream, and then got together to build a real fantasyland for all the children of the world. He wanted it to be unexpected, gorgeous, dreamlike, eternal, and holy.

Disney's Grand Opening: It turned out to be a nightmare

A lot of old video materials in the film also reveal the various troubles they encountered during the execution of Disney Imagineering and the weird solutions they came up with at the time.

For example, when building the water attractions, the team found they had no funds to buy trees, so Walt placed an ad in the newspaper stating that anyone who had a large unwanted tree in his/her yard, could provide removal services for free. It didn't take long for the park to harvest a variety of large trees from various yards, tropical trees, orange trees, apple trees... To meet certain thematic settings, they also had to remove all the fruit from the trees and pretend that it wasn't a fruit tree, the whole process was interesting.

When they ran out of budget, Walt created a win-win partnership with a declining TV station. He filmed the construction of Disneyland and made a weekly series to sell to the TV station in exchange for a $5 million construction fund. This not only solved the funding shortage but also gave the park a wave of advertising in advance and allowed the whole country to know there was a park under construction.

The first day of the park's opening was an unprecedented event, with 22 cameras broadcasting live at the same time, 83 million people watching and almost everyone wanting to visit the site. And in just 2 months, Disney welcomed 1 million visitors. Of course, the team lacked experience in running a physical park, it is safe to say that problems were constant after the grand opening.

For example, on the first day of opening, fake tickets brought the number of visitors to three times the park's capacity, leading to chaotic conditions. The vending machines were out of stock, the spinning cups were broken, the water supply was overall insufficient, the tarmac melted, etc.

As a result, Disney attracted a lot of bad reviews and the media also claimed that Walt's dream was just a nightmare. However, this "nightmare" did not kill Disneyland. Walt learned from his mistakes and continued to improve the park's facilities in detail.

Disney's Charm: the only thing everyone can agree on is that that's a place where dreams come true

The most fascinating thing about "The Imagineering Story" is that it shows us the whole process of a group of dream makers putting their dreams into practice, everyone is doing what they love. They learn new skills, solve problems with all sorts of whimsical ideas, and never get tired of them. Although they do not always agree on everything, they all believe that Disneyland's a place where dreams come true.

The journey of the park has been extremely difficult. In the face of various unknown difficulties, they have been supported by faith and succeeded. Since then, a new kind of industry has arisen in the world.

This documentary has a total of six episodes, condensing more than half a century of Disney's development history and creative details. The most surprising and rewarding thing is that I have seen a lot of very valuable interviews with Disney seniors in the film.

I was touched by the glittering names of the staff, I was shocked by the imaginative designs, the captious details, the decisive and bold business decisions, and the energetic craftsmanship spirit.

After watching "The Imagineering Story", I felt the power of faith. If it wasn't for Walt's love, Disney wouldn’t have been a dream come true.

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