Walt Disney Family Museum
Steve and I have been Disney fans since we were kids. We grew up visiting the theme parks and even spent part of our honeymoon at Walt Disney World. We saw The Little Mermaid debut at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood, and years later we fed our kids a solid diet of Disney films, from Toy Story to Mulan to Ratatouille. I had Disney as a client in both California and Florida. So we knew that the Walt Disney Family Museum was something we couldn’t miss.
The museum was an ode to the life and legacy of Walt Disney, presented with the clean style, high quality, and skilled story-telling that we’ve all come to expect from the global brand. It was not a big museum, but the exhibits were comprehensive, and we spent two hours there, fully absorbed and entertained.
Looking back at the life of Walter Elias Disney, who lived just 65 years, it’s truly amazing how much this one person was able to conceive and create. He was drawing by age four, fell in love with Vaudeville at age ten, and drew patriotic cartoons for his high school newspaper. He lied about his age to join the Red Cross, and drove an ambulance in France. He worked briefly as a commercial illustrator, but was soon laid off, and began experimenting with animation. He was just twenty-one years old when he moved to Hollywood to join his brother Roy. Together, they founded an animation studio. When Disney lost the rights to his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, he was undaunted; with his collaborator Ub Iwerks, he created Mickey Mouse. The rest, as they say, is history.
It was fun learning about the making of the animated films that are now iconic. Disney was a pioneer in advancing the technology for synchronizing sound to moving images and adding dimensionality to animated scenes. He took big risks to make Snow White, the first full-length animated feature film, and it won an Academy Award and launched a new industry. Though Disney was reportedly shy, he inspired others to share his vision and enthusiasm. He collaborated with conductor Leopold Stokowski on Fantasia and befriended artists Salvador Dali and Diego Rivera.
Though Disney started as an animator, he was ultimately an innovative entrepreneur with a passion for entertaining people. A rekindled love for trains led to his building an elaborate 1:8 scale railroad in his back yard. It featured a fully operational steam locomotive.
Walt’s enthusiasm for giving guests rides on the train in his backyard eventually led to his vision for Disneyland. The idea was met with plenty of skepticism and opposition; in the 1950s, amusement parks were considered dirty, disreputable, and unsafe. We all know what eventually happened: Walt created “The Happiest Place on Earth.”
The Walt Disney Family Museum is free with membership in a NARM institution. It’s worth a visit for fans of Disney films or theme parks, those interested in the history and science of animation, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and the evolution of a global media and entertainment giant.
