Your Recommendation for Today

As we wait for the inevitable announcement from Disney — the parks will be closed past March 31, and/or Soul is being delayed past its scheduled release date of June 19 — I wanted to use today’s newsletter to highlight my daily quarantine recommendation on Disney+. For anyone else who’s stuck at home (like me), you might want to lose yourself in a world beyond imagination.

Thus, I give you The Imagineering Story. This six-part documentary began airing exclusively on Disney+ when the service went live in November 2019. Directed by Leslie Iwerks, The Imagineering Story is an imperfect but still fascinating look at the history of the unit within the Walt Disney Company responsible for the theme parks that are now closed.

If you know anything about the history of the Disney theme parks, the first few episodes are best without being as good as they could be, moving awfully quickly through the chronology of Disneyland and Walt Disney World in just two hours’ time. So many of the major milestones of the Disney parks could (and should) require an hourlong episode by themselves, instead of being wedged in together. And once The Imagineering Story approaches the 21st century, there’s a lot more back-patting in terms of the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Shanghai Disneyland, and more, instead of a less slanted exploration of what led to the IP shift in Disney’s theme parks.

But if you’re not a parks aficionado, you may be more willing to forgive the compressed timelines and positive bias. Either way, at a time when we can only look to images and video online to get a sense of what it’s like to be in the Disney theme parks, check out The Imagineering Story. It’s a fine way to kick back for six hours and just let the good memories wash over you.