Walt Disney is a name known to millions, though not many really know much about the man behind this name. On October 1st 2009, a Walt Disney Family Museum opened in San Francisco with an aim to tell the world about a once poor farmer boy who changed our lives.
For decades, children have loved cartoons and it seems they cannot get enough. Probably the single most famous name associated with them, Walt Disney, seems to have become an impersonation of the entire brand rather than a memory of just one man. To remind the world of who Walt Disney really was, how he became the mastermind and creator of his famous cartoon characters, a $110 million museum has opened at the beginning of October by the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco.
As Diane Disney Miller, the daughter of the cartoon wizard, admits, this museum is aimed rather at adults. It is not another Disneyworld in the corporate sense. This museum reveals the stories behind the creation of what was to become the Disney Empire. It introduces the life of the man who fought for his dreams and made them come true; and they were not only his dreams – dreams of millions little children around the world as well.
Located almost at the foot of San Francisco’s most famous landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge, the museum features many previously unseen works of Disney, including sketches of Steamboat Willy, who later evolved into the infamous Mickey Mouse, and a room-size replica of the Disneyland theme park as well as hundreds of audio tracks made by the artist himself.
Visitors will get a chance to explore a series of telegrams and cartoons mourning Disney’s death in 1966, doodles by Salvador Dali and also a replica of the ambulance car Disney drove after WW I in France. There are monitors all over the museum replaying numerous interviews by or about Disney introducing who he really was and how he worked.
Younger visitors will love the interactive display, which offers them a unique high-tech chance to synchronize music with the cartoons, similar to the way Walt Disney himself once used to. The museum is really a tribute to Walt Disney as a man, a dreamer and a great artist who won over the hearts of millions.
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