So our last full day with my parents, we had planned to visit the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco. Our entry tickets were for 12:00PM, this meant we needed to be on the road by 10:30AM which was somewhat of a stretch for my father. The rest of us were up early and the femme types made sandwiches for their butches out of the leftover roast beef. We packed our lunches in coolers and drove to the city.
We made it in good time, we were about 20 minutes early which gave us time to eat our lunches in the parking lot. I knew that there were picnic tables up by the museum, but my parents seemed to want to just sit in the car so I didnt argue! This is my only picture from the museum as pictures were only allowed in the entrance room. I didnt take any as we were anxious to get in and by the time we got out, we were dead tired!
I was sure glad that I had the
scooter though, I never could have enjoyed all the exhibits if Id had to stand up the entire time. So for a place where pictures arent allowed, I sure found a lot online! So this is where the entrance queue is located. There is a replica of the sitting area from Walts apartment in
Disneyland pictured here.
And another view of the room
This is the first gallery about Walts life in Marceline. It has changed since this picture, there are a lot more screens where Walt tells you about his early life, but I can tell it is the same room.
Through TV screens and other video and audio media, Walt guides you through his museum.
After you arrive on the second floor, they chronicled Walts move to Hollywood. I wont spoil the magic of the ascension for any of you that are going there, not a big deal, but it was nicely done.
And his creation of Mickey Mouse
This entire wall is filled with drawings from Steamboat Willie and I think it was about 1.7 seconds worth.
The next galleries focused on Walts desire to create the first full length animated feature and all the techniques that he and his animators perfected during the decade prior the release of Snow White. They also talked about the other characters and their development.
They talked about his development of the Multiplane camera and had one with Walt describing its use. There is also one of these in the exhibit at DHS.
After some galleries with information on many of the other movies Disney produced they covered his war time productions. The rest of the galleries covered Walts many diverse efforts, and moved pretty quickly. The walkway was slanted to gradually take you back to the main floor while viewing the remainder of the exhibits. These television screens were playing all sorts of things that Walt produced, worked on and accomplished.
The walkway turned into a descending spiral which contained panels describing the events leading up to the creation of Disneyland.
The descending spiral ended with a replica of Walts Disneyland, there were a bunch of discrepancies as all kinds of attractions that never were there at the same time were present, but it was neat to see.
There were a few more galleries highlighting Mary Poppins, some of his philanthropical efforts, and his participation in the Worlds Fair. The last gallery was narrated by his daughter about his cancer diagnosis and last days. The final gallery had reproductions of cartoons that had been printed in papers around the world, all were in remorse of the loss of Walt Disney. I cried in this gallery.
Of course every good Disney attraction spills out into the gift shop.
We were in the museum for four hours and the suggested time to allot was two hours. We were pretty exhausted and had a dinner reservation in downtown Saratoga for 6:45 so we decided we better get home pretty quickly.
They have lots of kid friendly activities in there too. In the room with Steamboat Willie they had a game where you got to play an instrument in time with the music. There were other fun activities...I hope that you get to go despite his lack of desire. He would probably like it once he gets there!
