Roland Betancourt, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN: 978-0-691-25587-3. $35.00.
Roland Betancourt’s newest book Disneyland and the Rise of Automation, published by Princeton University Press, makes valuable contributions to industrial history and Disney studies. Theme parks in general, and Disney properties in particular, offer fertile ground for analyses at the intersection of automation and entertainment.
Disney studies has taken off in academia, leading to the launch of the International Journal of Disney Studies and numerous books including Why the Magic Matters: Discovering Disney as a Laboratory for Learning, an edited volume from Bloomsbury. Betancourt’s exploration of how Disney incorporated industrial technology into its theme parks positions the theme park as a factory, relating it directly to post-World War II automation and the development of operations research to optimize those processes. As with social media companies, traffic matters—the more efficiently you can move people through your attractions the more money you make and the more data you can collect.
After setting the analytical frame, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation builds a chronological history of technologies and techniques used to build Disney attractions, such as servomechanisms used on the assembly line Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant, through computerized programmable logic controllers used in contemporary systems. This analysis offers significant value to industrial and Disney historians, in no small measure because of Betancourt’s attention to detail and the bountiful historical record from Disney publications, employee recollections, and patent filings the author incorporates into the text.
Walt Disney viewed his parks as a form of edutainment, offering a glimpse into the workings of the parks’ attractions. Automata such as those used in The Hall of Presidents are one example, but putting attraction control systems in full view rather than hiding them behind set pieces is another. This effort to “denude” the technology of its mystery normalizes its place in popular culture and offers at least the appearance of accessibility and comprehensibility.
As someone who’s interested in the intersection of technology and society, I enjoyed Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. It’s not meant for a general audience but the broad interest in Disney studies and ongoing business and societal focus on efficiency through operations research expands its audience well beyond academic specialists. Highly recommended.