Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Disneyland isn't just a theme park—it's a meticulously engineered system of automation born from wartime innovation, factory efficiency, and Cold War-era technological ambition. In his groundbreaking book, art historian Roland Bettencourt reveals how Walt Disney didn’t just borrow from industry—he reverse-engineered the logic of the Ford assembly line to create rides that function like invisible conveyor belts, where visitors become the product being 'manufactured' through immersive, standardized experiences. The book uncovers how technologies developed for military applications—like magnetic tape used to record animatronic movements—were repurposed to bring Disney’s characters to life, while safety systems like 'Anti-Fred Logic' were designed to prevent human error, laziness, or malice. Bettencourt shows that Disneyland’s magic lies not in fantasy, but in the invisible infrastructure of control, feedback loops, and programmable logic controllers that make every ride feel seamless, safe, and repeatable. This is a story about how the future of public space, transportation, and entertainment was shaped not by dreamers alone, but by engineers, electricians, and the quiet labor of making machines think. The book also reframes Disneyland as a cultural laboratory, where ideas from the 1964–65 World’s Fair, the art world’s obsession with movement and theatricality, and even Byzantine theology—all converged.