Week of December 13th 2010: Walt Disney Family Museum

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation came about (I was a few hot buttered rums deep at a holiday party), but when my friend Oleg asked me if we could “get culture” together I was really excited. He apparently didn’t know that I was into checking out the city and doing touristy things like going to museums and parks. It’s something he’d wanted to do too and didn’t know who to go with until he saw my blog. 

A week or so later, Oleg reached out to me and asked if I was free for some culture that weekend. I agreed and we made plans to go to the Walt Disney Family Museum.

As you know, I love Disney so when I heard there was a Walt Disney museum in the nearby Presidio, I knew I had to check it out. I wasn’t sure how Walt Disney related to the Bay Area or why this museum was here so I was rather skeptical about it. I wasn’t expecting much more than a few family portraits hanging on the walls.

Boy was I wrong.

 

We walked into the red brick building (fitting with the Presidio architecture – don’t worry about missing the building though, it’s covered in big red “Walt Disney Family Museum” signs) and were greeted by a cute little café and gift shop. We bought our tickets and looked around the first room which was filled with cases of all of the awards that Walt won in his lifetime. The most memorable for me was his Academy Award for Snow White which was one normal statue and 7 little ones. Adorable.

A lot of the other awards looked cool and Oleg had fun trying to find the Russian or Eastern European ones. I really wanted to find a Brazilian award but was unsuccessful until I saw this one. I was wondering what weird caveman award this was until I saw from the caption that it was for the Brazilian Children’s Award. Way to bring us forward guys…

We then went into the actual museum exhibit (which unfortunately did not allow photography). The first room went through Walt’s family and early history. There was a train track that went around the room to show his movements from place to place around the country. There were also little videos that went through each part of his early life. 

The next room was simple and showed some of his very early videos and introduction to cartooning and movie making. The rooms started to get more complex as the next one went further into his career. There were movie posters on the walls and a giant Hollywood sign that signified his move to Southern California. The posters and a few letters of the sign would occasionally start playing movie clips and videos which was cool to watch. We learned about his first character, Alice, and the movies he created using a little girl playing a role in cartoon shorts. 

From there the galleries showed how he went from Alice to Oswald to Mickey. Once Mickey was developed, there was a whole room on Steamboat Willie. There was one wall completely covered in cells that represented 15 seconds of the famous cartoon. A few of the cells were also videos that would show different clips from the cartoon. 

The history then went into how he went from short cartoons to Silly Symphonies (many of which make up Fantasia) to his first real masterpiece – Snow White. The galleries continue to go through his subsequent Disney movies and the concurrent history that simultaneously took place while working on these projects such as wars and strikes. 

One of the coolest parts of the museum was (of course) the Disneyland room. The room is two stories. You start out on the top and walk down a ramp that slowly wraps around a giant model of the original park. I had a great time comparing the original rides to what I remember as a kid to what the park is like now. 

The museum then went through Disney’s beginnings in television and the plans for Epcot and Disney World. The exhibit only goes through his lifetime so there wasn’t too much more after that.

I really want to highly recommend check it out. I glossed over 90% of the details just to keep this post at a reasonable length (and leave something to the imagination if you do choose to go). Even if you’re not the biggest Disney fan it really is interesting to see the story of a man with humble beginnings creating an empire just out of his own creativity and passion for drawing. 

The museum also follows the Disney tradition of putting a lot into the details and creating an interactive environment. It’s one of my favorite things about Disneyland and it was nice to see them follow the same idea here. They definitely could have presented the same information in a much simpler way but it would have severely detracted from the enjoyment of the visit.