Chapter 10
Beyond Cartoons

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The Mickey Mouse room had been the first truly overwhelming area of the museum, but we had still done a pretty good job trying to read every plaque, watch every video, and listen to every bit of audio. Unfortunately, we’d already been at the museum for two hours and only had two hours left until it closed. We knew Walt’s timeline and realized that we had barely made a dent. Though we really didn’t want to, we needed to pick up the pace if we hoped to make it through the museum before getting kicked out.

We reasoned that at least we had now really fully experienced those first several rooms, so the next time we visited, we wouldn’t have to spend as much time in them and could instead devote more hours to these next rooms.

Not that we didn’t still enjoy these next displays by any means. They were still fascinating as we traced the evolution of the company through the 1930s, complete with Walt pushing the boundaries of animation further and further.

Silly Symphonies were the next big endeavor.

The museum doesn’t ever shy away from the negative aspects of Walt’s career, so it included a retrospective on how he lost some of his best animators.

I thought this quote was interesting.

The next room went into really interesting detail regarding the entire animation process, from concept to completion. Here are some displays about storyboards.

And this one talks about color.

It’s a little odd, but because of its place in the Presidio, the Walt Disney Family Museum actually has some of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge in the entire city, so we admired it whenever we would pass a window.

Continuing through time, here is the creation of Pluto.

And next, it was time for Snow White. I love how the glare off this window reflects the TV opposite, proclaiming the movie is “Disney’s Folly.”

The whole process of creating the characters for the first full-length animated feature was fascinating.

The formula for which Disney movies would go on to become famous really began with Snow White—including, of course, the music and the merchandising.

You can see just how many artifacts were in each display case at this point in our tour. It was impossible to keep up with all of them, so we kept moving to try to get a good overview.

Past the Snow White room, we entered a wide hallway that covered Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and Dumbo.

Next was another contentious topic—the animators’ strike, which I really didn’t know much about before.

The museum is very pretty and cleverly designed throughout.

Since Walt had such an influence on so many movies, each one of them couldn’t continue having their own room, so the next area of the museum is devoted to his legacy as it relates to animation as a whole.