Disney's life savers and big projects

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Some of Disney's animated features have been successes and others not, but only a few of them can really be called lifesavers, meaning that the studio would have closed the doors if they had turned out to be flops.

1) Snow White. Had it not become a success, it would probably have been the only animated feature from Disney.

2) Cinderella. Relatively cheap to make (even if it contained some innovations, lilke the scene with the bubbles), but it saved Disney.

Two I'm not sure about:

Dumbo also made a lot of hard needed money when it was released, but for all I know the studio could have survived even if it hadn't.

101 Dalmatians was a success as well, and was a welcome change after Sleeping Beauty which almost bankrupted Disney.

3) The Great Mouse Detective. From what I have heard, Eisner considered to close the animation department when he entered Disney, but Roy Disney succeeded in convincing him to make it another try. The animators moved into an empty building and made two movies; The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective. It was the last one that was the reason why Eisner decided not to close the doors, which he would have done if that too had become a failure.

Any others?

Then we have the big projects (big with a big B). Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty (this one actually had the biggest budget of all films produced in the later half of the 40's, and the whole 50's, 60's and 70's), which were all expensive and risky. If 101 Dalmatians should be included, I don't know. Animating over 100 dalmatians with individual spots sounds like a huge job. After these we have The Black Cauldron and The Litttle Mermaid.
Any others from the cel animation era?

After The Little Mermaid and the introduction of digital ink and paint, big budgets became the norm rather than the exception, so I'm not sure about which ones to include. At least we can mention Treasure Planet.
Another Disney movie which is not in the canon that can be worth to mention is Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[blackcauldron85]

Well, "101 Dalmatians" was the first DAC to use Xerox, so animated all the dogs was less hard than it would have been to draw each spot individually every time. And, Xerox was used in many other DACs, so that technology helped save time, effort, and money, even if Walt wasn't so pleased with how the Xerox made the films look.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Which is why I'm curious about how much the movie would have cost without using the xerox process. Drawing over 100 individual dogs must still have been a challenge.

A related subject;

Snow White, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid and some other movies are sometimes referred to as "one of Disney's crown juwels". Is there some kind of official crown jewel list, or is it just what the movie popular Disney films are called?