Inventing Disneyland: The Unauthorized Story of the Team That Made Walt Disney’s Dream Come True

Inventing Disneyland is the story of how Disneyland came into being. For many years I loved going to Disneyland and being immersed in the fantasy, excitement, and sheer fun of it. Yet I never gave much thought to how it came to be. It is a fascinating story! The book is based on comprehensive research. It includes remarkable stories of the personalities, creative processes, challenges, obstacles and the amazingly tight timeline from the start of construction around the middle of 1954 to its opening July 17, 1955. The story is told giving the context of current events at the time as well as the many other projects Walt Disney was engaged in while he was promoting Disneyland and intensely focused on getting it ready for the grand opening.Reading the book prompted fond memories of the thrills and joy of the magical kingdom I experienced as a child growing up in southern California during the 1950’s and 1960’s. If you ever loved playing on Tom Sawyer’s Island, rode the Matterhorn, drove in Autopia, or flew with Dumbo; you will find details in this book that will interest you. The book also gave me an appreciation for the creativity and perseverance of Walt Disney and the creative people who worked so hard and dedicated a significant portion of their lives to bring Disneyland to reality.

I worked with the author as an Imagineer during the design and construction of EPCOT. I too had the opportunity to listen to the memories and stories of many of the fabled creators of Disneyland (and other Disney properties). The author has taken many of those stories and with further interviews and outside research has woven a narrative of the complicated “beginnings” of Disneyland with events from the life of Walt Disney and the outside world. The author also recognizes that these are memories, and memories reflect the values and experiences of each individual, and acknowledges attributing thoughts and conversations to people based upon what he was told. As such he refers to the book as a work of fiction. As a librarian (as I later became) I would question that categorization – after all Grimm’s Fairy Tales are cataloged in “non-fiction.” It is a fascinating, readable narrative into a complex and creative process woven through with the memories of the people who were there. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it recalled to my memory many of the stories I was told but, unlike the author, neglected to write down!

so i study theme park design, and i find that even the weakest of titles can offer me some reference material i hadn't otherwise come across. this includes a number of books from theme park press, some of which contain invaluable first person accounts. i admit that held my nose while pressing purchase on this one because the cover design is such a monstrosity. but, reading the text, i've come to realize that it's actually the perfect distillation of the book's content and organization—a drawing, a mental sketch of ideas (castle blueprint) colliding with a more objective reality (castle photograph). the collision is not pretty, either on the cover or throughout the text.the start of the notes section declares "inventing disneyland is a work of fiction." then following are some thirty pages of endnotes, citing where source material came from. some of the citations are to wikipedia! i almost spit out my coffee. i THINK what the author intended to say by "a work of fiction" is what professor todd james pierce more accurately noted in his fabulous three years in wonderland: the disney brothers, C.V. wood, and the making of the great american theme park. i'll quote pierce directly. in the "author's note on construction of the book" he says one of his goals in writing was "to fashion a language in such a way as to create a narrative history" and although "the majority of information in this book comes from eyewitness accounts" the text also "assumes the perspectives of historic individuals" and "presentations of interiority are always subjective."the difference is that pierce's three years in wonderland is artful and considered. inventing disneyland is not.it's a real shame, because the author has apparently invested "years of original research and interviews" (according to the back cover, although it's not as clear how many of them were spent reading wikipedia) and the text is substantial in length and detail. a fictionalized narrative history with pockets of subjective interiority (as pierce describes his work) is fine, if done well. but the shifts in tone and voice in inventing disneyland are all over the map. sometimes they change mid-paragraph! which, for the reader, is something akin to motion sickness.this would have been a solid one star, but there are a few bits and pieces here and there which directed me to the endnotes and thus another source i was not aware of. which means the book only really works as an annotated bibliography. so an extra star for that. otherwise, i cannot recommend it. certainly not as a narrative which can be consumed cover to cover.

Great work of part-fact, part-speculation that offered a behind the scenes view of Disneylands construction. My ONLY complaint is that it felt like the author had an animosity toward Walt. Those of us who have read everything about Walt know that he was a hard man to work for but some pieces of this work seemed to at the very least vilify him and at best heavily overindex on his aggressive attitude toward project progress.

A fresh insiders look full of personal stories of the fears, frustrations and challenges of inventing Disneyland without all the corporate pixie dust. Being a scholar on the park and former Imagineer, I even learned some new interesting antidotes. A must read for anyone wanting to know the real backstory of the ‘happiest place on earth’. Some of the conversations are created through interviews and memories of several individuals and not recorded dialogues, however it is this approach of conveying facts that I believe gives the book its real heart and soul.

Forget the great scholars negative reviews, this book is fun to read and has many stories no other author had the nerve to publish, until now. I love how this book tells the complete story of Disneylands creation and not just from one persons point of view, very objective. It includes the many creative people who designed parts of Disneyland, people never talked about before. A great starting point for anyone who wants to have a good overview of the life and times of Walt Disney.

This is the first time I've ever written a review in 16 years of amazon usage, but this book really was the tops.Enjoy