Inside ‘The Wonder Years’ season finale shoot at Disneyland
This Wednesday, on August 16, 2023, fans of the ABC Peabody Award-winning comedy “The Wonder Years” will be treated to a season two finale that takes the Williams family to Disneyland. Recently, Attractions Magazine was invited to a special event inside Disneyland’s Opera House giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the episode’s production.
Unlike most television series that shoot inside the park, “The Wonder Years” doesn’t take place in the current day. The year is 1969, so Disneyland looked different. As we entered the Opera House, on display were some vintage props needed for production. This includes plush toys and other souvenirs, food containers, Matterhorn wardrobe, ticket books and more.
After screening the season finale, some special guests took to the stage to discuss the making of the episode. The panel was moderated by Princeton Parker and joining him was the episode’s director Ken Whittingham, production designer Aiyanna Trotter, and costume designer Barbara Chennault. From Yellow Shoes Creative Group was content programming & synergy manager Kean Almryde, and director of events strategy at Disneyland Chris Sheppard.
When asked why director Ken Whittingham was excited to work on this series, here’s what he had to say.
“The original show back in the ‘80s took place in Anywhere, America. They didn’t really specify where it was…But what was great about this is that it was a different time and a different place. It was Montgomery, Alabama, 1969, middle class family. And we got a real chance to glimpse into what was going on during that time because our creator was actually from Montgomery, Alabama. And being that I was actually the same age as Dean was in 1969…that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do the show so bad. I fell in love with the show from the very beginning”
Shooting a show inside of Disneyland Park isn’t exactly an easy task. It takes a lot of coordinating and strategizing. Chris Sheppard spoke on this matter.
“We’re not exactly a closed set here. It’s a real living, breathing thing, a theme park…One, we want to always make sure our park is shiny, right? Two, we always want to preserve what the cast looks like…Three, it just takes a lot of coordination and time to make sure that we can work around the fact that we’re a theme park. And so, your early hours, your late nights and everything else to bring in a production team, so that this group up here can then put out a fantastic show. So really a lot of time, a lot of coordination, and it starts with just initial discussion… And the other thing I really love about it is just a pride that we take as Cast Members…We want the period piece to look like it did back then because we’re such sticklers on detail. That was all done and that’s with the time and the effort of everybody working together.”
Kean Almryde, Chris Sheppard.
If you’ve never heard of the Disney division Yellow Shoes, these are the folks who work with any production that wants to film inside of the parks. Kean Almryde touches on why “The Wonder Years” was a particular challenge.
“It’s a really fun opportunity because typically if it’s a show on television, like “Home Economics,” we want to feature the latest and greatest of what’s at Disneyland. So, in that case, it was Galaxy’s Edge. This show taking place in 1969, we had to first realize Disney World didn’t exist then. So, a family from nowadays Montgomery would go to Disney World typically. But now this one’s coming to Disneyland. So, then we have to think about what are the attractions, what are the characters, what do the costumes all look like during that time period, and what didn’t exist. So, if you looked at the scene with the Jungle Cruise, for example, all of the scenes that you can see through that part are scenes that existed back then. Because the Jungle Cruise has gone through an update recently. So, we had to make sure that we weren’t showing those scenes. But then if you look at the costumes and the characters that we featured on Main Street, you’ll see the Big Bad Wolf who was a costume character that was here back in 1969. You’ll see the Penguins, which were here in 1969. So that was really fun…We recreated the costumes that were at the Matterhorn back then really, really cool… That all comes about through, you know, working with the archives and chatting with them…It’s really cool to sort of take that trip back in time and then making sure it feels authentic to the story that we’re trying to tell.”
Making it feel authentic comes down to the production designer and other crafts people working on the show. Aiyanna Trotter shared this about the difficulty of working on the episode’s authenticity.
“The tickets was like a whole thing…Every year they changed the color. So, there are different color packets. There are ones for adults, one for kids… Getting the authentic hats with the right symbol. Trying to get the right balloons, which was a whole thing. All of it was really fun, but a lot of work. Especially for the props department.”
There was so much great insight into the episode shared during the panel. You can listen to the full panel in the audio below.
Catch the season two finale of “The Wonder Years” on Wednesday, August 16, 2023 on ABC, and the next day on Hulu.
