Disneyland, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Disneyland comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 1:16 Ben Gilbert And Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader, and Winnie the Pooh, and Disneyland, and Disney World, and Disney Cruises, Disney Hotels, but now it's also The Simpsons, and Avatar, and National Geographic, plus the entire studio of 20th Century Fox.
- ▶ 10:58 David Rosenthal They drive down to go spend the day at Disneyland, and, uh, John's girlfriend at the time comes along with them, and she says to them, just think, someday this park is gonna be filled with the characters that you guys are gonna create.
- ▶ 20:39 David Rosenthal One of the first things they do that ends up, I think, really setting up all the following success that Eisner and Wells and Katzenberg have is they raise the ticket prices at Disneyland and Disney World.
- ▶ 21:11 David Rosenthal So parking at Disney World and Disneyland when Eisner and Wells come in to run the company is still only a buck.
- ▶ 33:49 Ben Gilbert Which, uh, as a fun little aside, Disneyland, when it was originally supposed to be like a little 15 acre park or something right next to the Disney lot before it became a much bigger project, this is actually the plot of land.
- ▶ 47:58 Ben Gilbert Didn't they start running a whole bunch of, like, come to Disneyland
- ▶ 1:14:37 Ben Gilbert That's how they built the Disneyland mania around that TV show.
- ▶ 1:35:33 Ben Gilbert The movie did great based on a Disneyland ride.
- ▶ 1:53:02 Ben Gilbert One of his early jobs is working the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:48:20 Ben Gilbert On the other hand, every time I go to Disneyland, it's super full.
The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:45:15 Ben Gilbert When you go to Disneyland, there's a lot of people walking around with like dopey and grumpy.
- ▶ 2:25:40 David Rosenthal And for those, like, two of you out there who've never been to Disneyland, the magic isn't just from one great ride.
- ▶ 2:37:48 David Rosenthal 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.
- ▶ 2:38:46 Ben Gilbert So out of this stew comes Disneyland.
- ▶ 2:38:49 David Rosenthal 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.
- ▶ 2:39:09 David Rosenthal So that's how Disneyland started.
- ▶ 2:39:24 Ben Gilbert Okay, so how did Disneyland happen?
- ▶ 2:39:32 Ben Gilbert 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.
- ▶ 2:40:09 Ben Gilbert Disneyland.
- ▶ 2:43:34 Ben Gilbert Even with all the clever ideas to be space efficient, there's just too much that he wants to do with this Disneyland concept.
- ▶ 2:43:59 David Rosenthal You could describe Disneyland as lots of things, but carnival-like atmosphere, clearly they did not get the vision.
- ▶ 2:45:51 Ben Gilbert And the effect of terrain on television transmission, since the idea was that TV will play an important part in the promotion and development of Disneyland.
- ▶ 2:57:23 David Rosenthal They need something like Disney and Disneyland to break out.
- ▶ 2:59:36 David Rosenthal So boom, there's the rest of the financing that they think they need to get Disneyland off the ground.
- ▶ 3:00:14 Ben Gilbert There is one other deal point, which is, uh, ABC negotiated to have the right to all the profits from Disneyland's food and beverage for the first decade.
- ▶ 3:01:06 David Rosenthal So pretty quickly, Disneyland, because of course they name the TV show the same as the park.
- ▶ 3:01:45 Ben Gilbert So it both promotes Disneyland and the current movie slate.
- ▶ 3:02:11 David Rosenthal So in that same fall and winter of 1954 into 1955, the show has its first big, like, viral moment even before the park opens.
- ▶ 3:04:59 David Rosenthal And what timing, right before Disneyland opens.
- ▶ 3:05:12 Ben Gilbert And not just with programming, but directing all this attention at Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:05:27 Ben Gilbert And by 1956, the year after Disneyland opened,
- ▶ 3:06:23 David Rosenthal And it's just so incredible that because he started playing with trains, Disney became a major force in television, and of course opened the park.
- ▶ 3:07:43 Ben Gilbert So, all of this leads up to July 1719 55, the opening of Disneyland that would change the company forever, that would change American Vacations forever, that would lay out
- ▶ 3:07:57 Ben Gilbert A giant part of Disney's business model going forward, the opening of Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:08:14 Ben Gilbert Most amusement parks would be effectively complete at opening, and then they'd call it finished, but not Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:08:20 Ben Gilbert Walt treated the park as something that you have to
- ▶ 3:09:23 Ben Gilbert Yes, so just like Walt continuously was plussing Disneyland still today, Statsig is how you improve your product after you've shipped it.
- ▶ 3:10:09 Ben Gilbert Can you draw the first full drawing of Disneyland?
- ▶ 3:11:02 David Rosenthal The core vision of what Disneyland
- ▶ 3:12:07 Ben Gilbert So they end up building Disneyland in one third the time that it took to make Snow White.
- ▶ 3:12:41 David Rosenthal Still my favorite part of Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:13:24 David Rosenthal That Disneyland is 100% about the past and the future and zero percent about the present.
- ▶ 3:13:35 Ben Gilbert So the first part of construction is the twenty-foot-high berm insulating all of Disneyland from the outside world with the Disneyland Railroad sitting right atop it.
- ▶ 3:13:47 Ben Gilbert To this day, I think the most impressive thing about Disneyland is the sight lines.
- ▶ 3:15:04 Ben Gilbert You absolutely could not build anything remotely close to Disneyland today for two hundred million dollars or in a single year.
- ▶ 3:15:34 David Rosenthal There were 65 corporate sponsors in Disneyland within the first few years of it opening.
- ▶ 3:23:11 Ben Gilbert Now, reflecting on all this, Disneyland actually was not a Bet the Company move for Walt Disney Productions financially.
- ▶ 3:24:30 Ben Gilbert I mean, when you visit Disneyland, don't you assume, hey, wait, this is just part of Disney.
- ▶ 3:26:06 Ben Gilbert As a part of the personal services contract, because it was like, hey, I was already doing this side project, and now I'm just putting it on Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:26:20 David Rosenthal Mmm, right, because all the rides cost money, so the, the railroad at Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:28:38 David Rosenthal And Disneyland, the combination of the television show and the park,
- ▶ 3:29:22 Ben Gilbert I mean, I just got back from Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:33:59 Ben Gilbert At Disneyland, which opens in 1955, there is, the centerpiece of the whole thing is Sleeping Beauty Castle.
- ▶ 3:34:21 David Rosenthal So the article walks through, at Disneyland, they've installed animated dioramas as an attraction that they're charging a 35 cent admission fee for.
- ▶ 3:35:41 David Rosenthal Now, there is one other thing we haven't talked about, which is that Disney in-housed their own film distribution right before the launch of Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:36:23 Ben Gilbert So in 53, two years before Disneyland opened, they incorporated Buena Vista.
- ▶ 3:37:00 Ben Gilbert Especially because of that weekly ABC show and because of Disneyland, where they were pretty uniquely well-suited to actually self-distribute without a middleman.
- ▶ 3:38:16 Ben Gilbert At this point, Disneyland plus the merchant licensing provides this really stable foundation.
- ▶ 3:38:23 Ben Gilbert Like, replatformed the business is one way you could put it, where it's the same, like, spiritual entity, but instead of the business being in the films, they now have the business in this stable foundation, and they do the films to, like,…
- ▶ 3:39:31 David Rosenthal After all the success of Disneyland and all the ballyhooing about the flywheel and everything in the Wall Street Journal article, I mean, they really went whole hog on this one.
- ▶ 3:39:46 Ben Gilbert But yeah, I mean, Walt was pretty distracted with Disneyland, so he wasn't that kind of authoritative voice to help the team find the great story in there.
- ▶ 3:40:27 Ben Gilbert ABC canceled Zorro and Mickey Mouse Club, which were both TV shows that Disney was making, which was related to Walt Disney Productions blowing up the Disneyland deal.
- ▶ 3:40:41 Ben Gilbert We want to buy you out of Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:41:14 David Rosenthal Now though, post Disneyland, they've got this stable base that they can take these big swings.
- ▶ 3:41:20 Ben Gilbert Merchant licensing taught them to crawl and then they, they walked and ran with Disneyland in terms of that, that stable platform.
- ▶ 3:42:12 Ben Gilbert Is Disneyland, like, is a theme park gonna really be my legacy?
- ▶ 3:44:12 David Rosenthal And now, after the success of Disneyland,
- ▶ 3:44:41 David Rosenthal That they have at Disneyland can partner with other big American companies and institutions to create Disney-sponsored pavilions and exhibitions at the fair that they can then transfer into Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:45:57 David Rosenthal By far the most successful pavilion at the fair that makes its way to Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:46:24 Ben Gilbert Yes, this whole thing is this amazing testbed for audio animatronics, which Disney kind of invents and then popularizes in Disneyland and then in Disney World.
- ▶ 3:46:34 David Rosenthal Yeah, and because it's Disney and part of Disneyland, we think, oh, yeah, audio animatronics, like, Disneyland, like, these are robots.
- ▶ 3:47:00 David Rosenthal So all four of those rides after the fair get ported right over to Disneyland, because of course...
- ▶ 3:47:08 Ben Gilbert The part of the deal is that Walt says, you have to pay a million dollars to use my name as a part of your attraction, of course, in addition to footing the bill for building it, but I'll forgive that million dollars if you let us put it…
- ▶ 3:47:34 David Rosenthal Ok, so three of the four get ported over to Disneyland, but all of it leads right into planning for the Florida Project.
- ▶ 3:47:43 Ben Gilbert And I think, well, the Florida Project initially is not a theme park, and Walt very much is uninterested in building an East Coast Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:47:54 Ben Gilbert He does have a nagging concern that an East Coast audience is more sophisticated than a West Coast audience, and there isn't demand for a theme park like Disneyland in Florida.
- ▶ 3:48:22 Ben Gilbert No, people would absolutely love a Disneyland-type thing, especially with audio animatronics and all this cool new technology you're developing for the World's Fair.
- ▶ 3:48:48 David Rosenthal So, Walt though, like you said, had no interest in just building another Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:49:19 David Rosenthal Two, there will, of course, be a theme park, a new Disney World Magic Kingdom theme park that was initially intended to be five times the size of Disneyland, just for, just for the theme park.
- ▶ 3:49:46 David Rosenthal Think everybody that Walt is partnering with at the World's Fair, Ford, GE, Pepsi, all the companies that are corporate sponsors back at Disneyland.
- ▶ 3:50:35 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, I gotta say, they couldn't open most of Tomorrowland for 1955 when they opened Disneyland, and they're having a really hard time keeping up with the pace of technology.
- ▶ 3:57:00 Ben Gilbert Plowing cash into all the expensive failures after Snow White, Disneyland, every point in his life he was betting the farm over and over and over again, and he always pushed all his chips in.
- ▶ 3:58:41 Ben Gilbert And famously, Walt was very regretful that they didn't buy up all the land around Disneyland, too, because he just hated
- ▶ 3:59:31 Ben Gilbert Copy paste of Disneyland in Florida for four hundred million dollars with two hotels and no debt.
- ▶ 3:59:50 Ben Gilbert It's more or less like, hey, we've got all this land, and we're extremely confident that Disneyland is gonna work here, so we'll build it.
- ▶ 4:00:14 Ben Gilbert They took everything about Disneyland and made it better.
- ▶ 4:00:40 Ben Gilbert It's this, like, whole insane concept of what if we could do Disneyland over again, but not as cowboys, as, as real planners and builders and engineers and a much bigger budget.
- ▶ 4:22:02 David Rosenthal And it is married to this incredible commerce engine that is in of itself beautiful and like Disneyland and Disney World and all the parks are the most perfect expression of that.
- ▶ 4:22:16 Ben Gilbert The sight lines, man, the, the, I, I like going to Disneyland just to walk around is the craziest thing.
- ▶ 4:23:27 David Rosenthal And of course, Trader Joe's itself was in part inspired by the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland.
Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:17:55 Ben Gilbert Walt Disney creates Disneyland.
TSMC · Acquired
- ▶ 2:25:35 Ben Gilbert I also think I previously had only read The Ride of a Lifetime and watched the Disney Plus special about sort of the history of Disney and Disneyland.
Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:26:29 Ben Gilbert In fact, they operate a M&M's store in Disney World or in Disneyland.
IKEA (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:25:12 Ben Gilbert hey, we want to add a Disneyland effect and add perceived value to your trip here.
- ▶ 2:10:34 Ben Gilbert It does lead them to this insight, which is, we've been building these Disneylands out in the potato fields, and I've heard a few people refer to the potato fields, and I read it in a few places, and then everything springs up around.
Costco (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:29 Ben Gilbert Most of you are very familiar with this Disneyland of consumer value that I'm referring to.
Lockheed Martin (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:28:03 David Rosenthal I'm pretty sure that Disney Imagineering was involved in creating these sets like they made for Disneyland.
Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:11:41 Ben Gilbert Actually, for the episode we did with Brad Gerstner on Altimeter, we needed a third camera, and so I went out and bought a Sony RX 100, a little point-and-shoot camera, and, ah, recently took it to Disneyland.