My Trip to the Walt Disney Family Museum: Adventure Recap

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco with a small frozen yogurt company I work as a brand ambassador for. Every year, the city hosts the Winter Fancy Food Show in the Moscone Center, and I was able to attend for the second year in a row. The show is amazing. It's absolutely chock-full of food brands, new and old, all wanting you to do one thing and one thing only; Try. Samples.

It's heaven. It's everything good about Costco times one thousand, and every year I've managed to scurry away with a very satisfyingly plump tote bag filled to the brim with goodies. Love.

This year, I traveled without the company CEO or any other employees. Just myself and my boyfriend, Dyllan, who the company head was kind enough to allow me to bring. Another lucky turn was the fact that I would only be working half a show day at our booth as we were sharing with other companies. Awesome. So, we had a good chunk of a day for a few days to explore San Francisco. And what does any Disneyfile in their right mind do when they're in the bay area?

They see the Walt Disney Family Museum.

And we did.

I have wanted to visit the WDFM ever since I heard about it's groundbreaking, and was absolutely crushed when I learned it would be a 6+ hour drive to get there. Why not friendly Burbank, which has just as much historical significance and is much much closer? However, on arrival my previous griping was eliminated. The museum is absolutely beautiful. Located in the Presidio, an old army base just off the bay with STUNNING views of the golden gate bridge. It was hands down the most secluded place we found in the city, not to mention the parking was incredibly reasonable.

After working a half day, we headed to the museum around 3. I braved the streets of San Francisco in my car, something I would normally never want to do, but the museum didn't seem to be very accessible by bus and anyway, we were on a time limit as the last admission to the WDFM was at 4:15. The journey down was surprisingly smooth, and before long, we were in the warm, inviting lobby. I'm horribly inconsiderate because Dyllan hadn't eaten all day and was looking a bit pallid. We detoured to the museum cafe to avoid mishap and picked up a tuna wrap. Yummy. YUM. SO YUM. The food there was way beyond any pre-made sandwich I had ever tasted, and the combinations were so unique! I remember one in particular, the ham and persimmon sandwich, really called my name. Seriously guys, if you're visiting, the cafe is worth it.

After our late lunch, we headed into the main entrance to purchase our tickets. We each paid the student price of $15 (even though I graduated two months ago! Bad Jen! No!). Normal adult tickets run $20, which is crazy expensive, so the discount was greatly appreciated. We briefly wandered the area around the ticket counter which had several awards given to Walt on display, as well as a nice little tribute to his daughter, Diane, who recently passed away.

Seven Dwarfs Oscar(s) + bonus reflection shot of Dyllan and I.

In we went! I sobbed internally from feelings. Every detail was there. The tour began with Walt's early life. His family in Missiouri, his schooling, his paper job, his stint as an ambulance driver. There were some severely cool videos he had taken with an old camera he bought. At a young age, Walt was already experimenting with film reversal and double exposures where he acted out a scene with himself. There were some great in-depth displays about the Alice shorts, along with details of his development (and loss) of Oswald. I was having a coronary. I could have easily spent hours on the first floor alone. Easy. But alas, that was a luxury we just didn't have that day. We moved on to an elevator which took us to the higher floors. Oh, which also happened to be fully decorated like a train car that played a sound byte of Walt talking about his train ride to California while you ascend. No big deal, just some of the most effective elevator storytelling ever. So cool.

By now, Mickey is alive and well. We learned about Mickey's rapid rise to fame after Oswald left Walt's hands, and studied some of the early cartoons the Mouse is famous for. There was a fun (but confusing) game where you and some friends can sync the music and sound effects to "Steamboat Willie" just like they did back in the old days. We failed, and the Disney company crumbled in our inefficient hands. This was a neat idea, and a great way of showcasing how difficult it was to put a cartoon short like SW together back in the day, but it felt a little harder than it had to be due to the lack of sensitivity in the brass "instruments" designed to respond to your touch. No big, though. Leave it to me to blame the sophisticated technology for my incompetence. Now, if it feels like I'm leaving out details, I am. There is far too much in this place to cover in full. The sheer amount of letters, telegrams, storyboards, artifacts, renderings, sound bytes, and other memorabilia is enough to give anyone a headache. Props to whoever compiled all this, because my head is spinning just trying to remember vague details about it. I truly apologize.

We shuffled into the animated motion pictures portion, which covered Snow White, Fantasia, and the like. Again, drawings and designs galore. Each section telling a different story about how the piece was created, and how painstaking the process was back then for the animators. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. There was a very cool display of old paint left over from the glory days that reminded me so strongly of the display in Ink and Paint at California Adventure I got giddy. I wonder if it would be easy to recreate for an apartment one day. Each paint jar has a unique name of what they were used for which is the coolest. I couldn't even begin to remember some of my favorites so I'll just recommend you do some research on these because it's a very cool detail.

After rows and rows of history about the Walt Disney Studios films and a brief portion on the artist's strike, which I found pretty fascinating, things got a little more familiar. I will readily admit, I'm a much bigger aficionado of the Disney parks (namely Disneyland) than I am of the Disney films, an imbalance I would very much like to even out. So once we started on the creation story of Disneyland, I got even more excited, which was probably harmful to my health. Guys, they had everything. All the folklore I grew up dreaming I would one day lay my eyes on. Walt's train was there! That train everyone has seen him sitting on. There were concept sketches aplenty. I hate that I didn't get more pictures because it was pretty great. The grand daddy of them all was this giant, GIANT, scale model of Disneyland. It was massive, yet tiny. Perfect in every detail. I'm a little hazy on the exact year the model is set in since it featured rides like Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion, yet also housed the Carousel of Progress and Adventures through Inner Space. A plaque said it depicts Disneyland as Walt dreamed it, which explains the rides not in place before his passing I suppose. Very, very cool anyway. My eyes were glued for nearly half an hour, I'm sure of it.

Tiny Jungle Cruise! 

I ripped myself away eventually and explored the tail-end of the museum. There was still so much left, but it was so overwheming, I honestly can't remember what all came in what order. I know we covered a good bit about Mary Poppins, as well as the sodium vapor process used to film Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", and some details of Walt's plans for Epcot, which always felt a tad bit dystopian to me. After about another half-hour, we moved on to the section of the museum dedicated to the end of Walt's life. I knew it was coming. They really built up to it well, and it hit me right in the gut. This is actually odd for me, I respect Walt quite a bit for all he's done, but I'm more of a supporting imagineers fan and therefore don't really get emotional about the thought of his passing. I cried you guys. I did. Straight up. Maybe the museum just did such a great job at making you feel the whole "Uncle Walt" persona? Whatever it was, I was a wreck when they showed video of the news broadcasts, and the articles about it. Don't even ask me what my heart did when I realized they were playing "Feed the Birds" over the loudspeakers. Since I saw "Saving Mr. Banks", I've already become more prone to developing a lump in my throat when I hear it, but in that context after I had already been on a roller coaster of different emotions for the last two hours, forget it. It really was lovely though. A very nice tribute, and not at all a sob story even though I decided to make it one.

We finished the tour and I made a bee-line for the gift shop. Dyllan went to rest his feet and I dawdled through the overwhelming selection of books, DVDs, pencils, sweaters, and the usual museum fare that I should never buy but always do. Eventually I settled on a pretty cool trinket exclusive to the WDFM, a necklace with a vial of reproduction animation paint on it at $25 each. They were all named after original paint colors which was a neat touch and looked pretty authentic. If I could, I would have probably taken them all home, but in the end I decided on "Lips Red as the Rose". I haven't had a chance to wear it yet, but it's taking up some real estate hanging on a wall in my room presently so I get to enjoy it every day.

I can confidently say that my experience at the Walt Disney Family Museum was an excellent one. They really seemed to spare no expense in it's construction and every detail was just as wonderful as I would have imagined. The staff were all friendly and provided a nice sprinkle of pixie dust in the middle of a busy, crowded, hectic cityscape. Without a doubt, this was the highlight of my trip. If you have the chance to visit at any time, I recommend you do. I only wish I had more time to fully look around, but that just wasn't possible for me this trip. I'm already dreaming up my next adventure when I'll allow unlimited time to browse this amazing facility. You've done it again, Disney!

I apologize for making this SO INCREDIBLY HUGE, but you really need to just look at the detail of this. Hopefully posting the original size will allow you to do that better. 

Have you been to the Disney Family Museum? What was your experience? What were your favorite displays? I'd love to hear in the comments!

Thank you all for reading!


xoxo


I should mention that I am not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company or the Disney Family Foundation in any way. I purchased my ticket for this experience.