Once upon a time, a man named Walt Disney walked this earth. The “Walt Disney” that the company now places at the center of its legacy often feels more like a convenient myth than an actual person.
In a way, The Imagineering Story turns out to be an ideal place to start an exploration of the new Disney+ streaming service, because it’s a story built on that mythologizing of Walt Disney. Through the first two episodes of the series available for preview, it’s as much about the behind-the-scenes work of WED company personnel creating Disney theme parks as it is about the legend of the man who inspired them—and, more interestingly, occasionally about how that legend impacted the company even after his death.
Episode 1, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” chronicles the creation of Disneyland with basic details that are familiar to anyone immersed in the park’s history: Walt’s vision for a place where families could play together; the unique gifts that the people already in the Disney stable as animators and filmmakers brought to the idea of an amusement park; the deal with ABC that created the Disneyland TV show and financed the park’s construction; the opening day complete with logistical nightmares. And the time frame covered also allows for an exploration of the almost-immediate choice by Walt to keep tweaking and improving Disneyland, plus Disney’s participation in the 1964 World’s Fair that yielded classic attractions like It’s a Small World and the Carousel of Progress. Director Leslie Iwerks has access to plenty of great archival footage, so she’s able to illustrate these iconic stories with images that are far less familiar; it’s a delight watching Imagineer Harper Goff drive a car along the yet-to-be water-filled route for the Jungle Cruise, or see the time before Autopia cars were on rails and could still collide and cause traffic jams, or a Mark Twain riverboat so overloaded its lower deck was dangerously close to the Rivers of America waterline. “The Happiest Place on Earth”—which ends with Walt’s death in 1966—doesn’t shy away from the many problems that were part of Disneyland’s birth, because those problems have become part of the park’s own mythology. It might be one component of a pop-culture monolith now, but it could have, and perhaps should have, been a failure a hundred different ways.
Episode 2, “What Would Walt Do?,” gets into more compelling territory simply by virtue of covering the period when the company was trying to figure out the answer to that titular question, or even whether it was the right question to ask. Most of the running time is devoted to the projects initiated by Walt but left in various stages of development at the time of his death, from the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland to the “Florida Project” that evolved from an “experimental prototype city of tomorrow” to first another Magic Kingdom, and then the theme-park-ized version of Epcot. But it does also allow for an understanding of the way the Disney company found itself somewhat adrift as new CEO Card Walker asked the creative people “what next,” rather than providing the guidance they were used to during Walt’s tenure. Again, there’s great archival material available to convey the various pieces of this approximately 16-year time period, including delightful snippets of the 1970 Wonderful World of Color episode where a young Kurt Russell introduced viewers to the Haunted Mansion. It also feels like in the focus on telling a comprehensive history of every major theme park milestone from 1967-1983, Iwerks can’t really tell a unified story about a group of people trying to move on after the loss of their visionary boss. Space Mountain, for example, was created during this time, but it’s not really part of the story.
For a few moments during “What Would Walt Do?,” there’s a glimpse of some of the more fascinating avenues The Imagineering Story could have explored beyond its determination to provide a comprehensive history of creative and technological developments in Disney theme parks. Those moments hone in on Roy Disney, long the common-sense counterpart to his dreamer brother, who dealt with the mundane details of making sure there was enough money to realize Walt’s flights of fancy. From 1967 to 1971—as WED turned its attention to launching Walt Disney World—Roy was forced to step into the role of the company’s public face, yet even then he was simply doing his best to bring to fruition ideas that weren’t his own. Almost immediately after Walt’s death, he had already become the symbol of the company’s creative potential. While The Imagineering Story gives plenty of credit to the many Disney Legends whose contributions turned theme park attractions into an art form, it’s also part of the mythologizing of Walt Disney. The company that bears his name, and continues to expand its multimedia reach, has a lot riding on that myth.
For all its strengths and weaknesses, The Imagineering Story is compelling television and will likely be on the binge list of Disney fans everywhere.
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