When you imagine a Disney employee – what job do you picture? An animator? A parks employee? A Disney store salesperson? While those are all definitely cast member positions, there are actually a ton of different departments and roles within Disney, many you’ve probably never heard of. Thus, One Day at Disney, a series designed to take you into the wide world of the Walt Disney Company.
The documentary includes the stories of 10 employees across the company:
- Eric Baker – Imagineer specializing in props
- Ashley Girdich – Imagineer focused on research and development, particularly with robotics
- Eric Goldberg – Animator best known for creating Aladdin‘s Genie
- Mark Gonzales – Disneyland Railroad conductor
- Grace Lee – Illustration manager at Disney Worldwide Publishing
- Zama Magudulela – Actor in the Madrid tour of The Lion King
- Ryan Meinerding – Head of visual development at Marvel
- Dr. Natalie MyIniczenko – Veterinarian at Walt Disney World
- Jerome Ranft – Pixar artist and sculptor
- Robin Roberts – broadcaster and co-host of Good Morning America
Additionally, the documentary expanded to include 52 shorts – one each featuring another employee at the company.
MY REVIEW: ★★☆☆☆
The Good
- Seeing such a diverse group of roles and employees was really great; I went in assuming they’d focus too much on execs and not enough on creatives/boots-on-the-ground cast members
- Sterling K. Brown’s narration – I saw a lot of reviews were mixed on him for being too serious for the subject matter. But personally, I think it worked. If he had been too chipper it would’ve put an already corny documentary into overdrive.
The Not-So-Good
- As I mentioned above, cheese cheese cheese. It seems silly to say, but this documentary just felt like watching a commercial for Disney. Obviously everything they make is designed to make the company look good, but if you’re aware of that while viewing, it’s not doing its job effectively.
- Based on the title, I expected each segment to show a day in the life of each role at Disney. Instead, each segment focused more on their “Disney backstories” and memories. I also think aligning closer to the title would’ve helped a lot with the point above about the commercial feel to it.
Overall Impression
Overall, I unfortunately think One Day at Disney missed the mark. The concept was really a winner – follow different jobs over the course of a day at Disney and see how many diverse people do such wildly different things to make magic. But in execution, this was PR fluff that swung between corny and just boring. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this documentary to anyone on the fence about watching – there’s too much other good content on Disney+ to spend your time on this one.