There wasn’t a whole lot of Disneyland-specific content coming out of year’s Destination D23 but one thing that did get announced is a brand new documentary for Disney+ called Disneyland Handcrafted. Promising rarely seen construction footage from before Disneyland opened, the new documentary is being crafted at the hands of Leslie Iweks who was also behind the 2019 fan-favorite docu-series The Imagineering Story on Disney+.
Here’s a look at the trailer for Disneyland Handcrafted which first dropped at Destination D23 2025.
About Disneyland Handcrafted
Capturing the excitement of the creation of Disneyland as it was being built more than 70 years ago, you’ll get a chance to peek behind the orange groves and experience the making of the park like never before in Disneyland Handcrafted. This unique film, complete with ASMR moments and constructed using only rarely seen footage that Leslie handpicked through the Walt Disney Archives, depicts the thoughtfulness and care that was put into the development of Disneyland.
During production, Leslie was able to tour the Walt Disney Archives and track down binders full of film reels, discovering historical reels that had never been scanned before (including some raw 16mm footage that was never used for “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”). Having been stored in the vaults for years, Leslie and her dedicated team were able to produce high-resolution scans of every reel without a timecode, helping to restore beautiful, once-forgotten shots of the early days of Disneyland onto a hard drive through a revolutionary process that had never been tackled before.
See it for Yourself
Disneyland Handcrafted debuts on Disney+ winter 2025.
Destination D23 takes place at Walt Disney World from August 29-31, 2025. As a perk of membership, D23 Gold Members are able to stream select panels as they happen at the D23 Gold Theater.
