Another adventurous weekend - Part 1.

We stayed around the Bay this weekend but had lots of adventures never the less.

I found out that if I joined the SF library then once a week we could get a family city pass for free. This entitles us to a free visit to one of 18 attractions throughout the city.This week we chose the Walt Disney Museum in the Presidio, normally coming in at about $45 dollars for the family!! A great deal from the library, thank you.

I was a little apprehensive about this excursion because
1. I hadn't read brilliant things about it and the museum isnt mentioned in the fabulous new book that I just bought - San Fran and Kids or in the San Fran rough guide.
2. It was a Disney museum
.... I was hoping that the best thing about the museum wasn't the very plush toilets but I was very pleasantly surprised. It wasn't 'Disneyfied' at all. Beautifully curated and packed full of history; social, economical and artistic, the museum had got it just right.

We were all captivated by the visual displays from the early Alice comedies, through the birth of Mickey Mouse - Steam Boat Willie and through the addition of colour and feature film animation. Each room used different aspects of technology in its curation to keep us and the children interested, from touch screens to head phones, video screens and moving scale models. We had a go at adding soundtracks to an early black and white Mickey animation using head phones a video screen and musical instruments. In the early years of Disney the entire soundtrack had to be put down at the same time - the voices, sound effects and orchestral score. This meant that everyone involved had to be in the studio at once and were conducted by a metronome so that everyone was in time.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature length animation made by Walt Disney. The museum has a whole exhibit dedicated to the drawing and making of the film with beautifully detailed original drawings.
The world première was at the Carthay Circle Theatre, Hollywood on December 21st 1937.

Owen was delighted to see a few references to Davy Crockett - one of his favourites after we got him the DVD a while back ( Dave used to have a Davy Crockett t-shirt as a child!).  Seems that it was quite a hit in it's day.

The section on Disneyland was quite an eye opener too - it's easy to forget now quite what a big deal this was all those years ago.  There's no doubt about it Walt Disney didn't lack in ambition.  You could say much the same thing about California (and probably the whole of the States).

Love Jo