Walt Disney famously said Disneyland would never be complete “as long as there is imagination left in the world,” but the biggest dreamer of them all was scared Disneyland would never be finished in time for opening day, according to a new documentary about the making of the Anaheim theme park.
Disneyland Art Director Harper Goff said Walt Disney was “scared” Disneyland would never be ready for opening day in July 1955 in the new “Disneyland Handcrafted” documentary by filmmaker Leslie Iwerks that debuted Thursday, Jan. 22 on the Disney+ streaming service and YouTube.
“Everything wasn’t sweetness and light and beautiful during construction,” Goff said during “Disneyland Handcrafted.”
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Walt remarked to Goff in the documentary that there was nothing but “holes and piles of dirt” when he surveyed the state of Disneyland construction three months before the park opened.
“‘There isn’t one thing that any human being would spend 15 cents to come and see,’” Walt told Goff in the documentary. “And he said, ‘I’m scared.’ And he was.”
Disneyland was over budget, behind schedule and quickly running out of money just a few months before the park was scheduled to open, according to the documentary.
“Walt always came down on Sunday morning,” Goff said in the documentary. “He looked all around over everything and he took a couple of big sighs. He turned to me and he said, ‘Do you know something? I just got some figures today. We’ve spent a little over half the money that we have to spend on this park.”
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The budget for Disneyland that started at $4.5 million in July 1954 and climbed to $7 million by August 1954 and $11 million by December 1954 would reach $17 million by July 1955 when the park opened.
“I was supposed to look at the cost sheets when they came in every day. But I failed at arithmetic in high school. I didn’t know whether we were in the black or in the red,” Goff said in the documentary. “Walt would come in and he would say, ‘How much money have you spent so far?’ And I’d say, ‘Let me see.’ And he’d say, ‘I’ll tell you.’ And he’d tell me exactly.”
But despite the budget concerns, Walt was willing to “go broke” to build Disneyland and risk losing the Disney movie studios, according to the documentary.
“There were a lot of people that said, ‘He’s done,’” Disney accountant Milt Albright said in the documentary. “If it had gone down, the studio would have gone down with it because everything was tied up in the park.”
Despite all the challenges, Disneyland drew massive crowds when it opened in 1955 — attracting a million visitors within the first two months and 5 million in the first year.
Today, Disneyland’s all-time attendance has reached 900 million visitors, according to “Disneyland Handcrafted.”