Acquired
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.
03:12:41 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:12:41] S1: Still my favorite part of Disneyland. Yes. Autopia. [03:12:44] S0: An intense amount of greenery and trees that all had to be brought in. I mean, they're doing pine trees, and they're doing palm trees. Absolutely exquisite landscaping to reinforce how pleasant and safe of a place that it was. A passenger train built from scratch on real railroad ties that had to be laid down. This thing is like Walt's fever dream reflection of America all in the most idealized, safe, clean, cheery way possible. They've got the past. They've got the future with Tomorrowland and Frontierland and Adventureland, but no sign of the present. So you can be completely immersed and disconnected from your day to day troubles. [03:13:21] S1: You know what? I actually never realized that that Disneyland is 100% about the past and the future and 0% about the present.
03:13:21 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:13:21] S1: You know what? I actually never realized that that Disneyland is 100% about the past and the future and 0% about the present. [03:13:29] S0: And about the fantasy. Yeah. You can go to Fantasy Land. That's your other option if you don't want the past or the future. So the first part of construction is the 20 foot high berm insulating all of Disneyland from the outside world with the Disneyland Railroad sitting right atop it. To this day, I think the most impressive thing about Disneyland is the sight lines. Yeah. Despite several very, very different environments on a relatively small plot of land, I mean, from Star Wars today to Frontierland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Main Street, you really only ever see what the Imagineers want you to. And it creates that unique experience where Main Street can feel nostalgic and wholly different than the jungle over at Adventureland, and very, very different than the strip mall mania happening just a few acres away on any side of you. Yep. I'll just keep going on the insanity of building this thing. There wasn't yet any on-site buildings to fabricate the rides, so they did construction at Burbank. [03:14:30] S1: That's right. And they trucked it all down.
03:14:30 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:14:30] S1: That's right. And they trucked it all down. [03:14:32] S0: That's a fifty minute drive if you don't hit traffic, and the highway was still being built. So it's all on surface streets. It's crazy. Think of the scale of the stuff that they were building. Yep. Halfway through construction, they discover that Rivers Of America almost doesn't work at all. When they filled it with water, the water just drained into the dirt underneath. And, David, as you mentioned, cost ballooned from the original 5,000,000 to a total of 17,000,000, but that's actually pretty cheap. Totally. I I did the inflation math. That's $210,000,000 today. You absolutely could not build anything remotely close to Disneyland today for $200,000,000 or in a single year. [03:15:08] S1: It is astounding how it all got built. Also, very convenient for Disney that they sold a lot of Coonskin caps as the budget was ballooning. [03:15:17] S0: Yes. And found sponsors to sponsor lands and rides and drew on every ounce of debt they could. [03:15:24] S1: Yes. This is the other just, like, absolute galaxy brain Walt addition to the flywheel that he brings in with the parks, corporate sponsorships. Yes. There were Yes. 65 corporate sponsors in Disneyland within the first few years of it opening.
03:15:24 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:15:24] S1: Yes. This is the other just, like, absolute galaxy brain Walt addition to the flywheel that he brings in with the parks, corporate sponsorships. Yes. There were Yes. 65 corporate sponsors in Disneyland within the first few years of it opening. [03:15:40] S0: So at opening, there was Richfield Auto for Autopia. Yep. Bank of America, of course, they had to be there, a sponsor of Fantasyland. Coca Cola as well. You won't believe this. In addition to Coca Cola, Pepsi, they had a sponsorship in Frontierland. Coke actually didn't become the exclusive, supplier sponsor until 1990. Yeah. That's right. American Motors, Santa Fe Railway, TWA for the rocket to the moon, Monsanto was actually a sponsor. [03:16:07] S1: That's right. [03:16:07] S0: Carnation, Kodak, the list goes on. But I I do have one favorite, David. The National Rifle Association. Oh, [03:16:16] S1: wow. Frontierland? [03:16:18] S0: Yes. Inside the Davy Crockett Museum, there was a shooting gallery. [03:16:23] S1: There you go. [03:16:23] S0: And it's unclear from the historical records if it is technically a sponsorship, but the rifles were provided by the NRA. Like, real rifles. [03:16:30] S1: There you go. Flywheel in action. Yes. So I was trying [03:16:34] S0: to do some comparison on this 17,000,000 inflation adjusted to 210,000,000. The rise of the resistance star wars ride that they built in 2019, which is excellent if you've never been on it, was rumored to cost anywhere from 200,000,000 to 450,000,000 for just one ride. Right.