Walt Disney's plussing turns critique into building on what works

Walt Disney told interviewer Pete Martin around 1956 that Disneyland was different from his films: a picture, once wrapped and delivered to Technicolor, was dead — he could not fix the parts he disliked — while the park was something that would never be finished, alive, something he could keep plussing with ideas.

Plussing was a work rule as much as a goal. In production meetings Disney expected all criticism to be presented as a plus: staff should identify what was good and then imagineer a way to make it better, building layer on layer toward the best version. The same standard applied to details — music on a ride, a prop, a scene — and mediocrity had no place in the process.

The habit outlived Walt. Imagineering still calls today's ride refreshes plussing, and the record shows it in action: the Jungle Cruise gained a gorilla campsite and Trader Sam in 1957, water-spouting elephants arrived in 1962, and Pirates of the Caribbean gained Captain Jack Sparrow figures in 2006. Observers describe the practice as adopted by Pixar and Steve Jobs, and Disneyland's decades of incremental upgrades are presented as the result of Walt's rule that the park was never finished.