Acquired
02:34:50 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:34:50] S1: And the way Walt would frame this is that he was developing these hobbies to keep his mind off of the problems at the studio. That's what he would [02:34:57] S0: always say. Right. That these were nice things to do after a hard day at work. Yep. But they became obsessions. Yes. When I said reaching back to his childhood, there was a train that ran through Marceline, which is why Marceline existed. And there's this, like, deep seated psyche around trains in small town America. He and some of the other senior animators developed this interest in large scale model trains, which are one eighth the scale of an actual railroad train. So, like, big, like, ones you could ride around sitting on top of. There's amazing old footage of of Walt, like, riding around on these these one eighth scale trains. Yep. So Walt took this extremely seriously. He ends up traveling to the 1948 And 1949 Chicago Train Fair, and he kinda dove into this community of fellow train enthusiasts. I was thinking this was strange. Like, I kept reading about this, and I was like, this is wild. There were 6,000,000 train enthusiasts, like model train enthusiasts at the time. This was actually, like, a pretty big thing. [02:36:00] S1: Yeah. This isn't like billionaire hobbies today. This is like a Wald is hanging out with other enthusiasts, kinda man of the people style.
02:36:00 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:36:00] S1: Yeah. This isn't like billionaire hobbies today. This is like a Wald is hanging out with other enthusiasts, kinda man of the people style. [02:36:08] S0: Yes. And it was something that was really tangible for him to do with his hands. I mean, he was building some of the train cars himself. He he actually had a workspace in the machine shop in Burbank where he was building with the machine shop staff. There was a guy, Roger Brogi, who sort of led the machine shop team who would go on to build a serious, serious model train for Walt. Roger would also become, just to foreshadow here, the first Imagineer. [02:36:34] S1: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, just to foreshadow even more, all of this would lead to Imagineering. [02:36:42] S0: Yes. So this team in the machine shop, and Walt end up building this train. And and, David, you were saying, like, man of the people style. In a very not man of the people style thing, he ends up sinking $50,000, which is like a giant amount of money at the time and a huge amount of his personal liquidity in 1950, into building a train in his backyard. There was a half mile of track that went through a tunnel. That tunnel, that which he dug under his wife's garden, on its own was 90 feet long. [02:37:17] S1: Yes. When Walt gets obsessed with something, he he goes to an unreasonable extremes.
02:37:17 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:37:17] S1: Yes. When Walt gets obsessed with something, he he goes to an unreasonable extremes. [02:37:24] S0: When he and his wife were looking at houses to figure out where what property they were gonna buy and then build a house on, A major consideration was, is there room for a giant train to be laid out? He ends up it's on Carrollwood Avenue, I believe, Carrollwood Street. Yep. And he ends up naming it the Carrollwood Pacific. The, steam engine is named the Lily Bell after his wife. It's a whole thing. [02:37:47] S1: Yep. And if you go to Disneyland or Disney World today, most of the steam engines of the railroads are named in callbacks to this period and this inspiration in Walt's life. So there's the Lily Bell engine at Walt Disney World. There's the Ward Kimball, who is the original animator that gets him into this hobby. There's the Roger Brogi, as you're saying, and, then there's also the Roy Disney. [02:38:11] S0: Oh, nice. I did not know that. So this is great quote in a PBS American Experience documentary by historian Nancy Cohn, where she's reflecting on Walt in this moment. And her quote is, I can't control my employees, turns out. I can't control the larger stage right now. I can't even completely control my company. So here's a world I can recreate down to the smallest detail that is mine and perfect. And it [02:38:38] S1: would become something much bigger that would also be his and also be perfect. [02:38:44] S0: Yes. So out of this stew comes Disneyland.
02:38:44 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:38:44] S0: Yes. So out of this stew comes Disneyland. [02:38:48] S1: Yes. Which is so funny because Walt would insist in interviews until his dying day that, quote, the idea for Disneyland came about when my daughters were very young. And as I'd sit there while they rode the merry-go-round, I felt that there should be something built where parents and children could have fun together. So that's how Disneyland started. It all started from a daddy with two daughters wondering where he could take them where he could have a little fun with them too. [02:39:18] S0: It's also that. [02:39:19] S1: You know, I'm sure that's part of it. Yeah. Some of both, but really the trains. [02:39:24] S0: Okay. So how did Disneyland happen? Well, the initial thing was actually pretty small. [02:39:29] S1: Yep. The initial idea. [02:39:30] S0: Yes. There was a name floated Mickey Mouse village that sort of quickly changed to Disneyland since it was much more about his new passions, trains, Americana, and miniatures than it was about Mickey Mouse. And he started working with artists to sketch out what it would be. And the constraint that he had was we've got this 16 acre plot of land that's adjacent to the Burbank Studio lot between that and the river. So that's sort of what we're working with here. [02:40:00] S1: Yeah. And that's the natural place you would put this.
02:40:00 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:40:00] S1: Yeah. And that's the natural place you would put this. [02:40:03] S0: Of course. Of course. So in March 1952, Walt announces it, Disneyland, to be constructed on that little strip of land for a cost of $1,500,000. A Snow White. A Snow White. Yeah. We should speak in units of Snow White. It's actually cheaper than a Snow White given the, inflation since [02:40:24] S1: Right. Right. Right. Much cheaper than a Snow White. [02:40:26] S0: It's now been, fifteen years. So he decides I'd actually like to spend some money on a a larger study for this because I've got a couple of, like, artist renderings here that include cool little river and a train that runs on this, and we're gonna figure out, you know, attractions that that go in this thing. But I we really gotta jam a lot in here, so I'd like more money. [02:40:47] S1: Roy and the board are none too enthused about this. [02:40:51] S0: Yeah. Think about everything that we have said over the last, I don't know, hour about the state of the company. And Walt is saying, hey. I found a thing I'm interested in. Can I have some money to explore building this kinda, like, inarticulate able idea, yeah, right next to the studio lot? [02:41:09] S1: Yeah. Kinda goes over like a lead balloon.
02:41:09 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:41:09] S1: Yeah. Kinda goes over like a lead balloon. [02:41:12] S0: Yes. So the Walt Disney company, at this time called Walt Disney Productions, does not free up the purse strings for this. So what does Walt do? He kinda talks to Roy about it, and they they they figure out a path forward. He's gonna start his own company that would get formalized later in the year in 1952 that ends up being called WED Enterprises, w e d, Walter Elias Disney. Yep. His personal company that he can do weird personal stuff with. [02:41:41] S1: Yes. [02:41:42] S0: So over the course of 1952, Walt starts poaching people from Disney to work on this thing. And at first, it's just like a half dozen people, and they're set up in a building on the back lot at Burbank. These would become the first Imagineers. Yes. And the interesting thing is the people he's poaching, these are artists, and they're animators. They're being hired to build a theme park and, like, big physical trains. This gives you a sense of Walt's leadership style. He would take a talented creative person, and he'd be perfectly willing to assign them to things that they've never done before and say, yeah. You'll figure it out. We also