Revisiting ‘Disneyland Around The Seasons,’ One Of The Buried Gems On Disney+
By Josh Spiegel/Jan. 9, 2020 10:00 am EST
(Welcome to Out of the Disney Vault, where we explore the unsung gems and forgotten disasters currently streaming on Disney+.)In its first couple of months, the Disney+ streaming service has offered its millions of subscribers a wealth of viewing options. If you like Star Wars, check out The Mandalorian or the many earlier films in the franchise. Marvel’s your speed? Good, have at the various MCU movies available to stream. And so on. But if you scroll through the hundreds of options in the Movies area, there are two titles that stick out like sore thumbs. One, a TV episode titled “The Plausible Impossible”, is something this column highlighted last month. The other is an hourlong installment from the same show that, depending on your viewpoint, functions as a home movie and time capsule.
The Pitch
“Disneyland Around the Seasons” is not entirely what it sounds like based on the title, if only because only one segment of the episode is seasonally focused. As I discussed when talking about “The Plausible Impossible”, this hour is a remnant of the Walt Disney anthology TV series. That phrase may sound like a mouthful, but it’s also the most accurate way to call out the show. In 1956, when “The Plausible Impossible” aired on ABC, the show was simply called Disneyland. But in 1966, when “Disneyland Around the Seasons” aired, the show had changed titles twice and was on a new network. It was now known as NBC’s Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. (The program as it exists in 2019 is ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney.)The show was so renamed, and switched networks, for the same reason. In the early 1960s, ABC didn’t air its programs in color, but NBC did. For a studio that had long since embraced Technicolor, it was a necessity for Disney’s program to air in color. Of course, it didn’t help matters that the ABC network had waffled on selling its stake in the Disneyland theme park until 1960. (For those of you who didn’t know that a television network owned part of Disneyland back in the day…well, it’s a conversation for another time, but times were different back then.) Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color was otherwise a very similar program to what aired in the 1950s. Each episode could explore one of the four lands you could find in the Disneyland theme park: Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. Although that was true, by 1966, the show’s overall thrust had changed slightly. That year, the show was in its thirteenth season, with 25 episodes. (As of 2019, the show has aired 53 seasons’ worth of more than 1,100 episodes.) Of those 25 installments, seven were serialized versions of recent live-action films and ten others were new films split into serialized installments, films such as Gallegher Goes West and Willie and the Yank. (I promise you, those are real titles.) The earlier iterations of the show also made time for serialized content like Zorro and Davy Crockett, but they also had aired more episodes exploring topics in nonfiction form, from space exploration to the principles of animation.Every so often in that first decade-plus of episodes, the show would travel to the theme park whose existence was inextricably connected to it. “Disneyland Around the Seasons” followed in the footsteps of episodes themed to the holidays, nighttime entertainment, and more. But the episode stands out for a much bigger, much sadder reason — though you wouldn’t know it from the Disney+ presentation.
The Legacy
“Disneyland Around the Seasons” is just the second episode of the Walt Disney anthology TV series to make its way to the Disney+ streaming service. Just like “The Plausible Impossible,” it was once available on a Walt Disney Treasures DVD collection, the kind of set that always appealed to the true superfan. But now, anyone can watch it. And since I’ve very publicly advocated that Disney+ feature all of the episodes of the anthology show, I sincerely recommend that you check this out.For now, there aren’t other plans to add more episodes of the Disneyland TV series to Disney+. (I will note here that plenty of other episodes of the TV series were available on the Walt Disney Treasures DVDs, so hopefully they’ll get the HD treatment soon.) But episodes like “Disneyland Around the Seasons”, even if they wind up in the Movies section of Disney+ are well worth a watch. It’s not just the morbid connection to Disney’s passing — these episodes represent entertaining time capsules that showcase what it was like to see Disney Imagineering in action in one of their most creatively fertile periods.
Revisiting ‘Disneyland Around The Seasons,’ One Of The Buried Gems On Disney+
By Josh Spiegel/Jan. 9, 2020 10:00 am EST
(Welcome to Out of the Disney Vault, where we explore the unsung gems and forgotten disasters currently streaming on Disney+.)In its first couple of months, the Disney+ streaming service has offered its millions of subscribers a wealth of viewing options. If you like Star Wars, check out The Mandalorian or the many earlier films in the franchise. Marvel’s your speed? Good, have at the various MCU movies available to stream. And so on. But if you scroll through the hundreds of options in the Movies area, there are two titles that stick out like sore thumbs. One, a TV episode titled “The Plausible Impossible”, is something this column highlighted last month. The other is an hourlong installment from the same show that, depending on your viewpoint, functions as a home movie and time capsule.
The Pitch
“Disneyland Around the Seasons” is not entirely what it sounds like based on the title, if only because only one segment of the episode is seasonally focused. As I discussed when talking about “The Plausible Impossible”, this hour is a remnant of the Walt Disney anthology TV series. That phrase may sound like a mouthful, but it’s also the most accurate way to call out the show. In 1956, when “The Plausible Impossible” aired on ABC, the show was simply called Disneyland. But in 1966, when “Disneyland Around the Seasons” aired, the show had changed titles twice and was on a new network. It was now known as NBC’s Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. (The program as it exists in 2019 is ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney.)The show was so renamed, and switched networks, for the same reason. In the early 1960s, ABC didn’t air its programs in color, but NBC did. For a studio that had long since embraced Technicolor, it was a necessity for Disney’s program to air in color. Of course, it didn’t help matters that the ABC network had waffled on selling its stake in the Disneyland theme park until 1960. (For those of you who didn’t know that a television network owned part of Disneyland back in the day…well, it’s a conversation for another time, but times were different back then.) Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color was otherwise a very similar program to what aired in the 1950s. Each episode could explore one of the four lands you could find in the Disneyland theme park: Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. Although that was true, by 1966, the show’s overall thrust had changed slightly. That year, the show was in its thirteenth season, with 25 episodes. (As of 2019, the show has aired 53 seasons’ worth of more than 1,100 episodes.) Of those 25 installments, seven were serialized versions of recent live-action films and ten others were new films split into serialized installments, films such as Gallegher Goes West and Willie and the Yank. (I promise you, those are real titles.) The earlier iterations of the show also made time for serialized content like Zorro and Davy Crockett, but they also had aired more episodes exploring topics in nonfiction form, from space exploration to the principles of animation.Every so often in that first decade-plus of episodes, the show would travel to the theme park whose existence was inextricably connected to it. “Disneyland Around the Seasons” followed in the footsteps of episodes themed to the holidays, nighttime entertainment, and more. But the episode stands out for a much bigger, much sadder reason — though you wouldn’t know it from the Disney+ presentation.
The Movie
The Legacy
“Disneyland Around the Seasons” is just the second episode of the Walt Disney anthology TV series to make its way to the Disney+ streaming service. Just like “The Plausible Impossible,” it was once available on a Walt Disney Treasures DVD collection, the kind of set that always appealed to the true superfan. But now, anyone can watch it. And since I’ve very publicly advocated that Disney+ feature all of the episodes of the anthology show, I sincerely recommend that you check this out.For now, there aren’t other plans to add more episodes of the Disneyland TV series to Disney+. (I will note here that plenty of other episodes of the TV series were available on the Walt Disney Treasures DVDs, so hopefully they’ll get the HD treatment soon.) But episodes like “Disneyland Around the Seasons”, even if they wind up in the Movies section of Disney+ are well worth a watch. It’s not just the morbid connection to Disney’s passing — these episodes represent entertaining time capsules that showcase what it was like to see Disney Imagineering in action in one of their most creatively fertile periods.
