Instead of traveling to Disneyland, a Californian architect has built the happiest place on Earth in his own backyard, allowing visitors entry for free.
David Sheegog, 65, has spent 25 years creating a miniature replica of a Disneyland railroad in his modest suburban Anaheim Hills backyard, calling it Castle Peak and Thunder Railroad.
Sheegog grew up just a stone’s throw from Disneyland, watching the fireworks shows from her front yard with her parents, and when she had children of her own, she was inspired to create a magical experience for them.
It started with a model on her dining room table, but over the years it expanded to cover every inch of her garden, adding Snow White’s house, Splash Mountain, and Sleeping Beauty Castle.
He told DailyMail.com: “My favorite thing is not something we’ve built, but seeing how people enjoy it.” When we have open houses and I see families interacting with each other, sometimes I just sit on the bench and watch the people.’
Sheegog began building the exhibit in 1999 and began welcoming visitors in 2015.
He built some of the pieces from sets, others from scratch, and some he 3D printed.
He has recreated fan favorites including Splash Mountain and Haunted Mansion.
The Haunted Mansion: As an architect by training, Sheegog approached his dream with a meticulous and planned approach.
The project has been expanded piece by piece until it covers its entire patio.
A trained architect, Sheegog approached his dream with a meticulous and planned approach.
His first step was to ask his wife, Frances, if he could take over their backyard.
She agreed and made a rule: there had to be space in the middle for her now-adult children to play.
With the permission obtained, he dedicated himself to designing.
He said: “We were homeschooling our children and I thought the railway might appeal to them and it might be something they would want to pursue.”
‘As they get older, I thought they might become interested in electronics or gardening. It was intended to be a kind of living laboratory.
“But it turned out that everyone was more interested in playing with their friends, so it became dad’s project.”
He told the Orange County Register: ‘I built a model of everything that occupied our dining room for a year. We had to eat in the kitchen.
Luckily, the entire Sheegog family is obsessed with Disney. Sheegog once worked at Disneyland on Davy Crockett’s Explorer canoes and the couple even named his daughter after Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
At first, Sheegog started with a commercially produced model train, modifying it to create detailed miniatures of Disneyland’s five trains.
He was so obsessed with the details that he even color-matched the paint samples to the real trains.
He started with a commercially produced model train that he modified
It included a miniature version of the famous statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.
Mickey and Minnie Mouse are key features of mini Disneyland
Sheegog had big ambitions for his designs, he said. Los Angeles Times: ‘On most of the garden railways I had seen, people had bought prefabricated kits of small plastic buildings measuring about 12 inches by 8 inches.
‘They look like small prefabricated buildings, like a barbershop. No.’
He added: “I wanted to build this from scratch and I wanted them to be impressive, like 5 feet wide and 4 feet tall. Or in the case of one of our castles, 7 feet tall.
“I had to plan them as to where the main buildings would be.”
He began construction in 1999 and showed the first version to his friends and family in 2000.
Over the years, as the project expanded, its techniques became more technological.
Some of the features he built from sets, others he made from scratch, and some, in recent years, he 3D printed.
He added Sleeping Beauty Castle, the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain and Snow White’s town, as well as references to almost every Disney or Pixar film from 1937 to 2021.
He has been expanding the set piece by piece over two decades with the help of his family.
The railroad runs through the center of the set, with five trains identical to the real-world Disneyland.
In recent years he purchased a 3D printer that allowed him to perfectly recreate the features.
The couple doesn’t like to discuss the cost of construction, but they estimate it has added up to about the same price as installing a pool.
He told the LA Times: “We’re not rich people here and I’m trying to find a way to retire because there’s no way to retire right now.”
From time to time visitors ask how much it would cost to hire him to build them Sleeping Beauty Castle.
He said, “They think it can be done for $300 or $400, and I say, ‘It’ll probably cost about $70,000 to build that thing again.’ It takes someone six months of their life to build that.”
In 2015, Sheegog and his wife began opening their garden to the public a few weekends a year and sold out almost immediately.
Admission is free, in part because the family doesn’t want to attract the attention of corporate lawyers.
Sleeping Beauty Castle is one of the outstanding pieces of the set and measures more than two meters high.
Guests can visit for free on select weekends throughout the year; Details can be found on their website.
He has even built working water fountains and light shows.
He told the LA Times: ‘There was a woman here once, and she was about 100 years old. She worked at the park on opening day, when Walt Disney was there, and she worked at the park her entire life.
‘He had a whole crowd around him, listening to stories about what he was like. She started to cry. As she spoke, she was reliving her life when she was 20, her first love, where she met her husband.
“All these memories come back, and a lot of people who come here are like that because we’re in Anaheim.”
Although Sheegog hopes to retire this year, he has no plans to stop expanding the project.
He’s designing two interactive experiences, complete with laser shows, hologram animations and live actors.
He said: ‘We grew up with the park and it has a certain sentimental niche in your psyche. “People just want to be close to it and our place offers an outlet for that.”