How many of us have daydreamed about what we would do at Disney if we were left in charge? Who among us doesn’t long for the opportunity to shape the future of the theme parks we love so much? How many times have you wondered, “What would it be like to be an Imagineer?” For most people visiting Theme Park Tourist, the chance to change the future of Disney Parks would be a welcome one – whether it would mean returning to the “classics” of yesteryear or blazing a trail forward into the future. But a common question must be, where do I start?
The answer is with your nose in a book. There are dozens – hundreds – of spectacular, in-depth biographies, tell-alls, collections, and histories written by and for fans, Imagineers, executives, insiders, and artists eager to tell their piece of the Disney story. From the unbelievable works of Rolly Crump and Marty Sklar to the written words of Marc Davis and Walt’s original storytellers, the library of any future Imagineer will be chocked full of chapters.
Today, we offer a good start: eleven must-have books ranging from coffee table collections of concept art to in-depth expertise passed down from Walt Disney’s own peers. Take a look through this Imagineering book club and find the start that’s right for you!
1. Progress City Primer
Author: Michael Crawford
If you believe you know everything about Walt Disney and his theme parks, this is the book to begin with. Though the same talking points and same stories have circulated through biographies and tell-alls about Disney over and over again, Progress City Primer is truly a book for fans, always glancing sideways from the stories we already know to detail the more amusing and askew tales from Walt’s time to today. It’s funny and – most importantly – fresh, even
The book jumps (perhaps unceremoniously) from figure to figure, anecdote to anecdote, park to park, though it never feels rushed! It’s a loving tribute to the Walt Disney Company, its founder, and the themed entertainment industry it created, but it’s not overly sentimental.
As you might suspect, the heart of the book revolves around Walt Disney’s Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow and its almost-mythical evolution into EPCOT Center with its host of Lost Legends and spectacular stories. Brilliantly, the book’s final chapters dive deep into never-built Possibilitylands – projects from the infamous Eisner era that might’ve changed Disney Parks forever… if only they’d happened. Some of the most vibrant detail available on the Disney-MGM Studios, Port Disney, and Disney’s America are contained in this eclectic collection!
Long story short, Progress City Primer is a must-read.
2. The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering the Disney Classic
Author: Jason Surrell
There may be no Disney Parks attraction on Earth with a story as compelling as the Haunted Mansion. The first test of Imagineers’ resilience after Walt’s death, the ride’s creation was marked by infighting over exactly what this dark ride should be. The result, of course, is one of the most celebrated classic dark rides in Disney’s entire portfolio, and Imagineering the Disney Classic is a complete look at the many iterations that could’ve been for this living legend.
When Jason Surrell’s book was initially published in 2003, it was supposed to trace the evolution from the 1969 attraction to the 2003 Eddie Murphy film it inspired. Thankfully, recent re-issues have edited out allusions to that poorly received family film and instead re-focused on the Imagineering masterpiece that we know today.
Better yet, updated editions follow the ride’s most recent steps, detailing how the Haunted Mansion evolved to create spiritual sequels in the form of Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland’s Modern Marvels: Phantom Manor and Mystic Manor, respectively. That makes Surrell’s beautiful study of the Haunted Mansion as essential as the ride itself.
Also read: Jason Surrell’s Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies
3. Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show
Author: John Hench
Foreword: Marty Sklar
Author John Hench is a true Disney Legend. His impact on the Disney Parks we know today simply can’t be overstated. Imagineer, philosopher, animator, designer, storyteller, teacher, and voracious reader (52 magazines a month!), Hench was truly one of the founders of WED Enterprises (today called Imagineering) and was instrumental in the iconic mid-century design of Walt’s New Tomorrowland, and of the 1964 – 65 attractions that became Modern Marvels: Carousel of Progress, the Peoplemover, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and “it’s a small world.”
Designing Disney – written in his 94th year – is his creative tell-all, packed with unimaginable insider stories, phenomenal and never-before-seen concept art, and a career’s worth of wisdom from Walt’s right-hand man. The book is sub-divided into the Art of Show, the Art of Visual Storytelling, the Art of Character, and the Art of Color, with each section packed with spectacular examples and surprising detail.
Today, John Hench is remembered as a legendary figure that worked on every Disney Park from California to Hong Kong, but Designing Disney emphasizes his role as a true artist with a keen eye toward the role of shape, architecture, color, structure, setting, and light as unifying pieces of the storytelling Disneyland was built to bring to life.
Also read: Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century of Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms and One Little Spark! by Marty Sklar
4. Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment
Author: David Younger
Foreword: Tony Baxter
Afterword: Joe Rohde
At nearly 600 pages, Theme Park Design would be the textbook complement to a Master’s level college course in Imagineering. The vast manual is a go-to resource for those seriously considering a career in the still-relatively-new field of themed entertainment design, delving into the history of the medium, the business, concept design and development, theme park design, “land” design, attraction design…
Fusing the art and science of this whacky field that so many of us care so deeply about, this literal textbook is loaded with quotes and examples that peel back the layers of subconscious and subliminal design choices to reveal the importance of what’s unseen by even the most observant of fans.
5. Poster Art of the Disney Parks
Author: Daniel Handke and Vanessa Hunt
Sailing with pirates, soaring over London, exploring remote jungle rivers, and launching into space… it was Walt’s belief that the wonders within Disneyland were so exceptional, guests wouldn’t understand exactly what they had in store. Just as a movie poster attempts to capture the beauty, romance, intrigue, adventure, and excitement of a film in a single image, the attraction posters Walt commissioned for Disneyland did the same for the park’s unprecedented attractions.
Poster Art of the Disney Parks is one of the most spectacular coffee-table books available for fans of Disney Parks and is an absolute must-have. Inside, posters are arranged by land for the castle parks (and then by park for Disney California Adventure and Tokyo DisneySea – the only non-castle gates to have poster collections). Vibrant, electric, and vivid, the printings are spectacular, and fans can spend hours pouring over the details. Most interesting of all, you can physically see changes in pop culture, style, and Disney’s direction through these iconic pieces of art, exploring the interwoven evolution of the entertainment industry.
Here at Theme Park Tourist, we were so inspired by the book that we created our own Poster Art of the Disney Parks gallery – one of our favorite features on the site!
6. Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality
Author: Alain Littaye
Even if you’ve never visited Disneyland Paris – even if you never intend to! –Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality remains a must-have that will change your perception of the European resort forever. Curated by Alain Littaye – the voice behind the spectacular Disney and More blog – this coveted, limited-run, 320-page behemoth is stocked cover-to-cover with rare concept art, construction photos, and accounts of the unprecedented detail that went into this one-of-a-kind park.
Among Disney Parks fans, it’s well known that Disneyland Paris is a pinnacle of Imagineering, somehow blending the intimacy and warmth of Disneyland, the scale and scope and Magic Kingdom, and the grandeur and detail of DisneySea. From Sketch to Reality reveals how.
The book is a comprehensive resource, exploring each of the park’s themed lands from initial concept to execution, revealing the ingenious way that Imagineers shifted each land at its core to appeal to European audiences, creating spectacular one-of-a-kind attractions like the park’s Modern Marvel: Phantom Manor and its fan-favorite Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune.
Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality is a must-have because it’s curated by an Imagineering fan for Imagineering fans, presenting what’s likely to be the most thoughtful and thorough look at a Disney Park’s design from the ground up ever to be published.
7. Liar’s Guide to Disneyland
Author: Horatio Liar
The Liar’s Guide to Disneyland is proudly the funniest, “most inaccurate, least helpful guide to the Disneyland Resort ever published,” and is “97% Fact Free.” Assembled by “Horatio Q. Liar,” the guide is a complement to DisneyLies.com, a must-scour website that reads as an almost-true guide to the parks packed with sarcastic detail that will leave fans laughing out loud.
For example (and particularly timely), the guide’s entry on Pirates of the Caribbean points out, “Of particular note is a scene in which a pirate is holding a flower pot and handing a woman a flower. Originally, this scene was of a pirate grabbing a woman’s purse and punching her in the face, but it was changed to reflect modern sensibilities. This explains why the pirate his clenching the flower in his fist and, apparently, handing it to her nose.”
Or of Disney California Adventure’s Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Liar offers, “The lightning strike not only vaporized an elevator full of guests … it also mysteriously retrofitted all of the hotel’s elevators with seats and safety bars and opened up a nexus into — The Twilight Zone. It’s interesting to note that an almost identical tragedy occurred some years ago at a similar hotel in Florida.”
While Liar’s guide may be a 300 page comedy collection, it’s surprisingly on-the-nose with its dissections of Disney culture and Imagineering staples.
8. Universal vs. Disney
Author: Sam Gennawey
Our friends at The Unofficial Guide have done it again with Sam Gennawey’s spectacular Universal Vs. Disney. This is the book you want to be reading on your next flight to Los Angeles or Orlando. The book is mostly chronological, weaving through the unusual relationship between the two media giants and their unspoken rivalry in Orlando and beyond.
The book is historical and informative, but a wildly entertaining page-turner, exploring the concepts each company cooked up to outwit the other, culminating in the design of Universal’s second theme park in Orlando and first real try at creating a Disney-style experience from scratch. And, as we saw in Modern Marvels: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, it was originally not Islands of Adventure…
Universal vs. Disney is – like the rivalry it’s named for – a lot of fun. Best of all, it dives into the creative history of Universals parks, so often overlooked because of the big names and movers and shakers known through Disney Imagineering. All in all, Gennawey’s book should be on the shelf of all industry fans.
Also read: Sam Gennawey’s The Disneyland Story
9. The Disney Mountains: Imagineering at its Peak
Author: Jason Surrell
For most of Disney Parks history, some of the greatest thrills, most breathtaking attractions, and most memorable E-Ticket anchors have had one thing in common: they’ve been built around a literal mountain range of Disney-designed peaks, from the snowcapped cols of the Himalayas to the sun-baked, sunset-hued cathedrals of the Southwest. In our Countdown: Peaks of Imagineering, we explored these rides that carry between generations, delighting young and old and – for many – serve as the first major “thrills” of a lifetime.
Like the other Jason Surrell-penned book on this list (The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering the Disney Classic) and its companion (Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies), this large format, 128-page book is a visual wonder packed with vivid concept art and spectacular stories, facts, trivia, and statistics. But rather than hyper-focusing on one attraction, The Disney Mountains traces Disney’s 60-year relationship with its artificial peaks.
The Disney Mountains isn’t just a recollection of what each ride s like. Rather, it dives into how and why Disney decided to bring them to life to begin with, climbing through the creative process for each summit. From Matterhorn to Big Thunder; Space to Splash, the 2007 book logically culminates in an in-depth exploration into what was then Disney’s most triumphant E-Ticket and Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest. Naturally, one thing missing from this Disney-approved look are the numerous “peaks” that never made it off the drawing board, living only in our Possibilityland: Never-Built Disney “Mountains” feature. Still, The Disney Mountains is a beautiful book that reveals the creativity behind these Disney Parks icons.
10. Maps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to Shanghai
Authors: Vanessa Hunt and Kevin Neary
As long as Disney Parks have existed, so too has fans’ fascination with and collection of the iconic guide maps handed out at each park’s entrance. More than simply navigational aids, Disney Parks maps are snapshots of a place and time; free souvenirs; genuine works of art. That’s why anticipation of Maps of the Disney Parks was at an all-time high when it was announced.
Unfortunately, Maps of the Disney Parks probably isn’t quite what you imagined. It’s not a pictorial of Disney’s souvenir guide maps through time, watching as each park grows year after year with map styles evolving and attractions appearing. Imagine, for example, a chapter dedicated to the subject of our Disaster File: Disney California Adventure beginning in 2001, watching as page after page, the park grows and evolves, pointing out attractions as they appear or disappear each year.
Rather, about half of the book is filled with what we might call “aerial concept art” of parks – that special sort of glowing, abstract, romantic, hazy artwork we all know. A further 30% are “novelty” maps, with 15% more of the book specializing in “in-universe” maps, like the “map” of Vulcania on display in Nemo’s chart room in Disneyland Paris’ walkthrough of the Nautilus, or the “map” of the Hundred Acre Wood that serves as the backdrop for Tokyo Disneyland’s Pooh ride loading area… And while they are maps and they are in Disney Parks, it’s probably not the kind of thing most of us imagined when we saw this book…
Only the last 5% of the book is made of the souvenir guide maps most of us would have in mind upon seeing the title, and even then the book zooms indiscriminately from continent to continent. Maps of the Disney Parks is a beautiful collection of artwork that’s spectacularly displayed and perfect as a coffee-table companion to Poster Art of the Disney Parks; it’s just probably not what you thought.
11. DisneyWar
Author: James B. Stewart
It won’t come as a surprise to fans of the Walt Disney Company that things haven’t always gone smoothly when it comes to the company’s leadership. One of the most divisive figures in modern Disney history is Michael Eisner, a man whose cinematic ambitions saved Disney, and whose actions almost killed it all over again.
So many of our Lost Legends entries pivot around Eisner’s arrival and his new vision for the international media conglomerate that Disney would become, but DisneyWar is a unique view into the Walt Disney Company he created and how he reacted as it began to collapse around him. DisneyWar explores it all, from the death of his anchoring right-hand man Frank Wells to Eisner’s rivalry with Jeffrey Katzenberg (eventually leading to the creation of competitor Dreamworks), his attempts to shut down the Pirates of the Caribbean film, his combative relationship with Pixar, and his eventual ousting at the hands of the “Save Disney” campaign led by Roy E. Disney.
DisneyWar does focus more heavily on the corporate side of the Walt Disney Company, but it’s a must-read for the way that these larger-than-life figures and their interactions around Eisner underscore everything happening in the themed entertainment industry at the time.
