I love a good visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum and today we are focusing on my favorite things in the collection that belonged personally to Walt, or his wife, Lillian. The family was very generous in what they chose to include in the Museum.
Just after you buy your ticket, and you are walking to the official entrance to the exhibits you see Walt's chair from his apartment at Disneyland above the fire station. Lillian's chair is to the right of it. The rest of the furnishings, including the paintings, also came from the apartment. Lillian's chair is so much smaller than Walt's.
It's hard not to include a charm bracelet filled with miniature Oscar statuettes on a list of my favorite things at the museum. It turns out that every time you win an Oscar you can order a little Oscar charm to match. Every time Walt won, which was quite a lot, he ordered the matching charm. He had this sweet little bracelet made from all of them for his wife Lillian.
Below is the Lilly Belle, or rather a much smaller version. Walt used to take people on rides on this on his estate but it's more chair size than train size. People rode on top of the train rather than inside.
Here's a copy of Mary Poppins inscribed by the publisher Eugene Reynal. It says,
"To Walt Disney – Not another ‘Mickey’ but I think you should like our Mary.”You can read about this history here, or go and rent the excellent movie, Saving Mr. Banks.
Here's Walt on the cover of TIME Magazine with models of the Seven Dwarves. TIME chose to list Disney's name after all of the dwarves as if he was the eight dwarf.
There are so many other wonderful treasures at the Walt Disney Family Museum. Next time you are in San Francisco, you may want to stop by... It also has a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I didn't know about this the last time we were there.
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