Disneyland Handcrafted has been streaming on Disney+ and YouTube since January 22, delivering stunning, raw, behind-the-scenes footage of Disneyland, the entertainment giant's first theme park, construction. It’s immediately different from other retellings of the park’s origin story, relying almost entirely on previously unseen footage of the process, without the extra polish or pixie dust one might expect from Disney.
What made that difference was a meticulous editing and restoration process – one that director Leslie Iwerks describes as being less like traditional storytelling and more like investigation. While there’s a template for how Disneyland was built, Handcrafted wasn’t about creating a fresh narrative. It was about uncovering one that was already there.
