Acquired
03:06:53 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:06:53] S1: That's right. I did see that. Yes. And then they've got the 4 and a half million of debt guaranteed by ABC. [03:07:01] S0: Exactly. So there's a total of million dollars that they have to spend to build the thing. Plus, there was actually another 2,000,000 of ten year bonds that ABC was committed to if they really, really needed an extra $2,000,000 to flex from a budget of six to a budget of eight. [03:07:16] S1: So, Ben, I've read a bunch of places this ended up costing $17,000,000. [03:07:22] S0: Yes. That is correct. So the cap table is, Walt Disney Productions and ABC each own 34%. Western Publishing owns 14%, and Walt himself personally owns 17%. And there's a contract between Disneyland Inc. And WED Enterprises, which Walt owns a 100% of to actually build it all. So all of this leads up to 07/17/1955, the opening of Disneyland that would change the company forever, that would change American vacations forever Yep. That would lay out a giant part of Disney's business model going forward, the opening of Disneyland. [03:08:02] S1: Yes. But before we do that, now is a great time to thank our friends at Statsig. [03:08:08] S0: Yes. So Walt Disney had this idea that he would often talk about, plussing. Most amusement parks would be effectively complete at opening, and then they'd call it finished, but not Disneyland. Walt treated the park as something that you have to keep improving forever, and he constantly looked at how guests move through it.
03:08:08 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:08:08] S0: Yes. So Walt Disney had this idea that he would often talk about, plussing. Most amusement parks would be effectively complete at opening, and then they'd call it finished, but not Disneyland. Walt treated the park as something that you have to keep improving forever, and he constantly looked at how guests move through it. [03:08:26] S1: Yep. This idea, though, only works if you can see what's happening. You can't improve an experience on a hunch. What mattered was how guests really behaved, not what anyone assumed in a meeting, which is largely the same problem that product teams have today, just at speed and scale. You can ship faster than ever now, but the hard part becomes knowing which changes actually improve the product. [03:08:47] S0: And now coding with AI only raises those stakes because LLMs are nondeterministic, meaning that the same input doesn't always produce the same output. So a small change to a prompt or model can have surprisingly large downstream effects. Offline evals will really only get you so far, and you need to be getting signals from real users and making decisions on that. [03:09:08] S1: And that's where Statsig comes in. They offer product teams experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics all in one place. You can ship quickly, roll out changes safely, and measure how those changes impact users making your product actually better instead of just guessing.
03:09:08 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:09:08] S1: And that's where Statsig comes in. They offer product teams experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics all in one place. You can ship quickly, roll out changes safely, and measure how those changes impact users making your product actually better instead of just guessing. [03:09:22] S0: Yes. So just like Walt continuously was plusing Disneyland still today, Statsig is how you improve your product after you've shipped it. You can learn more at statsig.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. Alright. So the development of the park. The team at WED had been getting inspiration and sort of concepting and iterating while all the ABC stuff is happening, while the hype building around America is happening, and, of course, while the financial negotiations are are happening. So in September 1953, as legend goes, Roy is about to walk into meetings with television executives, and Walt famously locks himself in a room with Herb Ryman for an entire weekend and says, Herb, can you draw the first full drawing of Disneyland? And Herb looks at him and he's like, Disney what? This is the first time hearing of this. And he's like, the theme park. You're gonna come work on that with me. And he's like, don't even work here. I I used to work at Disney, but I I don't work here now. And Walt was like, yeah, but you're the guy to do this. And so Herb kinda looks at him. He says, can you tell me a little bit more about this theme park? Walt this is metaphorical. Kinda locks the
03:09:22 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:09:22] S0: Yes. So just like Walt continuously was plusing Disneyland still today, Statsig is how you improve your product after you've shipped it. You can learn more at statsig.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. Alright. So the development of the park. The team at WED had been getting inspiration and sort of concepting and iterating while all the ABC stuff is happening, while the hype building around America is happening, and, of course, while the financial negotiations are are happening. So in September 1953, as legend goes, Roy is about to walk into meetings with television executives, and Walt famously locks himself in a room with Herb Ryman for an entire weekend and says, Herb, can you draw the first full drawing of Disneyland? And Herb looks at him and he's like, Disney what? This is the first time hearing of this. And he's like, the theme park. You're gonna come work on that with me. And he's like, don't even work here. I I used to work at Disney, but I I don't work here now. And Walt was like, yeah, but you're the guy to do this. And so Herb kinda looks at him. He says, can you tell me a little bit more about this theme park? Walt this is metaphorical. Kinda locks the [03:10:36] S1: door. Yeah. He's like, great. I will stay here all weekend with you and tell you about the theme park.
03:10:36 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:10:36] S1: door. Yeah. He's like, great. I will stay here all weekend with you and tell you about the theme park. [03:10:42] S0: And out of the weekend emerges this beautiful drawing that we will send out in the email, Acquire dot f m slash email, that they can use as a sales tool for the first meeting with ABC. You've got a castle. You've got mountains. You've got the railroad. You've got the river. The bones are all there. [03:11:01] S1: The core vision of what Disneyland is.
03:11:03 · Ben Gilbert
[03:11:03] S0: Yes. Yes. Other WED employees, meanwhile, start traveling all over The US looking at the best existing theme parks. Walt and others travel overseas to places like Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen to get sort of a a completely different take on how they could do a park with green space, much more pleasant, less carnival like, safer, kind of a less seedy experience than you are getting in theme parks in The US. That is the goal. So this year leading up to the park, what we were about to describe is completely insane. Remember I said that the date was fixed in the television deal in part because the TV show was gonna culminate in a live broadcast of the actual park opening. Yep. And there was all sorts of, like, brand new technology and logistics and operations that ABC was gonna bring to bear for that. So they were they were planning around that. And there are some sources that say that it was March to build the park. If you actually look at physical construction, it was less than that. Eleven months. Wow. So they end up building Disneyland in one third the time that it took to make Snow White. Incredible. This whole thing sounds like a fever dream when you describe it. A main street reflecting how Walt pictured the ideal small town from his childhood. Multiple rivers with different types of boats. There's gonna be multiple rivers, robotic animals coming out of the water on the jungle cruise. A castle, American Indians performing live shows of dances, cars that kids, like three year old kids, can drive around and crash into stuff.