Day 7 - Thursday June, 18 - Walt Disney Family Museum
All right, up next is one of the things that we had most looked forward to on this trip… A visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum.
I’m sure everyone knows by now that we are not only Disneyland and Walt Disney World fans, but we are big fans of Walt Disney himself too. I loved the idea of starting this trip in Marceline with a visit to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum, then visiting the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, then visiting Walt’s Barn in LA, and then finally Disneyland. Needless to say that this was one on the top of our “Must See” list for San Francisco and we were amped that this day finally arrived!!!
Turns out that we were the only die hard Disney fans in our group, because no one else was interested in joining us. No worries, we had planned to meet up with Tracy and Minh for dinner and we would be spending the rest of vacation with everyone else. We decided to sleep in a little to avoid some of the morning traffic. I think we arrived around 10:30 AM or so.
The museum is located in the Presidio, which is a former military base that was converted to parks and office space. It’s really, really beautiful and most of the businesses and residential areas are in old historical buildings.
It was fun winding through the roads as we made out way to museum. There was a parking lot across the street. Super convenient!
It was still fairly hazy/foggy in the morning, but you can see the bay off in the background. Such a beautiful location!
We’ve arrived!!!!
Right when you walk in the front door, you are greeted by a cut out of Walt.
We purchased our tickets, and the girls decided to take a bathroom break before we got started. I have no idea what the men’s room looked like, but I guess the ladies room made an impression on Stephanie as I found this photo on her phone. Love the hidden Mickey and the supporting splashes of red!
A few notes… I forgot to swap out memory cards in the morning and I was running out of room on my main camera, so I started to use it sparingly. Most of the pictures from the museum are from my iPhone… which doesn’t take half bad photos... but not always the best. I took hundreds of photos. In hindsight, I wish I had taken them in a more organized manner because I can’t really tell a good story with the ones that I have (at least in the sense of giving a good idea of how the place is laid out and the path you take from the museum.)
Oh well...
You start off in a sort of open area with a lot of photos and awards. (I was too busy looking at everything to remember to grab a photo showing what the room looked like.) You browse around this entry room for a while before you pass the admission area where they take your ticket. I’m not going to share everything, but a few highlights from here and there.
I thought these portraits of Sharon and Diane Disney were cool. They were done by Norman Rockwell around 1942!
In the middle of the room, they had some original furnishings from Walt’s apartment in Disneyland. Cool!
Lots of cases full of awards and trophies...
So yeah, we looked around in that area for a while, and then headed into paid part of the museum. It sort of follows Walt’s life starting from his birth in Chicago, through growing up, the army, time in KC, and then on his way to LA, his career, and his accomplishments… all the way to his passing.
You first start in a darkish room with a lot of old family photos. Some background on Walt’s parents and grandparents… where they came from. How they met. Etc...
There was some information about Walt’s early years in Chicago, and then a fair amount of back story and info on Marceline. (yahoo!)
Love this old photo of main street. Hard to believe that we stood in practically that same spot less than a week ago!
They had some audio recordings going of Walt being interviewed about Marceline in his later years. It was fun hearing him tell his stories about the barn, exploring the farm, and the family apple orchard.
And his stories about working on the Santa Fe railroad too!
Next they had an area about his time spent back in Chicago and KC. With more audio and stuff.
They had a lot of his early drawings on display too...
And then a cool section of stuff from the time he spent in France during WWI.
Here are some of the small treasures that he collected during his time overseas. Cool!
Next up, you enter a small room that focused on his early Laugh-O-Gram animations and film experimentations while he was still in Kansas City.
Then you follow him on his journey to Hollywood. Via a Santa Fe train of course. (Actually, the elevator downstairs.)
Stepping out of the elevator...
Looking down the hall, they had a lot of information about the original Alice films.
OK….. I’m running out of time for the evening and need to take care of some chores. So I’ll have to leave you here. I’m guessing that I’ll need at least three or four more of these posts before we leave the museum. Stay tuned because Oswald and Mickey are next
(Things are settling down at home after a super busy couple of weeks, so hopefully, I'll be able to keep this trip report rolling with more frequent updates.)
Lots of them here in Denver....make me jealous every time I see one!
