‘Disneyland Handcrafted’ changes everything you think you know about Disneyland

If you think you know everything about Disneyland, a new documentary from filmmaker Leslie Iwerks will make you realize you really don’t know anything about the wild, improbable and chaotic birth of Walt Disney’s first theme park.

The new “Disneyland Handcrafted” documentary on the one-year blitz to create the Anaheim theme park will debut Jan. 22 on YouTube and the Disney+ streaming service.

The blue carpet premiere of “Disneyland Handcrafted” took place on Thursday, Jan. 8​​ at the Walt Disney Studios Lot in Burbank.

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Think again if you think you’ve seen and read everything about Disneyland and know every corner of the park inside and out. “Disneyland Handcrafted” will make you realize you simply don’t and you haven’t.

I was mesmerized by every second of “Disneyland Handcrafted.” That’s in part due to the cinema verite-style of filmmaking employed by Iwerks that eschews the typical talking heads cutaways that are popular in today’s documentaries in favor of bathing you in nonstop footage that makes you feel like a fly on the wall of a seemingly impossible undertaking.

You are completely immersed in the yearlong making of Disneyland thanks to excerpts from 100 hours of raw and rarely seen footage from the Walt Disney Archives shot by a team of cameramen tasked by Walt Disney to capture the construction of Disneyland.

You quickly realize how unlikely it was that Disneyland ever got finished and made it to opening day.

You also realize how few OSHA rules and regulations there were in the 1950s with film crews riding untethered atop moving trains, workers shimmying down I-beams and visitors standing on the deck of the Mark Twain Riverboat sans any guardrails.

Legend always told us that Disneyland was woefully unprepared for opening day. “Disneyland Handcrafted” shows us why. The whole thing was just barely held together by bailing wire, duct tape and Band-Aids.

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The film makes you realize just how close Disneyland came to never happening. A couple of months before the grand opening there was almost nothing there. A few weeks out, the park was nowhere near ready to swing open the gates to the waiting public.

“Disneyland Handcrafted” starts with an idyllic scene a year after the park opens with all the happy faces and bustling crowds we know today. A little young and fresher, but recognizable by anyone who has ever been to Disneyland.

Then the film bounces back to a year before the park opens and there’s nothing there but dirt where an Anaheim orange grove once stood. As each month passes you start to quickly realize how little progress is being made. Three months before the park opens there’s still almost nothing there.

Walt remarks on there being nothing but holes and piles of dirt and laments: “There isn’t one thing that any human being would spend 15 cents to come and see.”

It’s at that moment that you realize this thing we know today as Disneyland came amazingly close to never happening. That everything everyone said about Walt’s Folly was true. That Disneyland was destined to be the biggest bust in Hollywood history. That Walt was certifiably crazy.

And then in the last couple of months the whole project quickly comes together right before our eyes. One of the things we find out is just how much work on the theme park attractions was done at the Disney studios — something Iwerks cleverly withholds until late in the movie.

Disneyland wasn’t ready by opening day. Not even close. But Walt insisted on opening anyway. Disneyland looked chaotic during the 90-minute live broadcast on ABC — but it also looked insanely enticing. The kind of chaotic madness you just had to see for yourself. And they came – with a million visitors within the first two months and 5 million in the first year.

“Disneyland Handcrafted” makes you realize that Walt truly did risk it all. Walt asks at one point: “What’s the worst thing that can happen? That I go broke? I’ve been broke five times in my life. One more won’t hurt.”

Creative risk was ingrained in Walt’s DNA. In all the things he’d ever done. Why not push all the chips into the middle of the table on his biggest dream of all?

Iwerks spoke before the premiere about a note she got from Disney CEO Bob Iger after he’d screened an early draft of the film.

“It’s great, but you need more conflict,” Iger wrote to Iwerks.

Iwerks listened to Iger. There’s a ton of conflict, tension and pressure in “Disneyland Handcrafted.” Even though you know how the story ends, you still wonder how they pulled it all off. The film makes clear how unlikely Disneyland was to be completed and how remarkable it was that it was finished on time — unfathomable, impossible and downright crazy.

The craziest part of the film takes place during the final week before Disneyland opened. Just as the work crews were making the final push, Walt hosted an anniversary party for his wife in the park with hundreds of visitors and the ABC TV crew showed up to go through rehearsals for the live broadcast. Obstacles were literally everywhere preventing the work crews from making it to the finish line — from partygoers on the Mark Twain Riverboat to TV cables strewn across every route throughout the park.

“Disneyland Handcrafted” is a fantastic film that takes all the outtakes from ABC’s 1954-55 Disneyland TV show that ended up on the cutting room floor and turns them into an amazing story about how close Walt came to failing. It’s also a testament to the hundreds of craftsmen who toiled right up to the final moments to turn Walt’s impossible dream into an improbable reality.

“Disneyland Handcrafted” will change your whole perspective on how Disneyland came into being and make you appreciate what the park has become today.