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By Michael - October 17th, 2009  One of the things I’ve been most remiss in covering recently has been this month’s opening of the Walt Disney Family Museum. Sadly, due to circumstances beyond my control I was unable to attend the previews at the end of September, so I’ve had to miss out on all the historical goodness that Diane Disney Miller and her family have been whipping up in San Francisco. Have I missed my only chance to meet Ron Miller? Oh, I hope not.
Thankfully, the Walt Disney Family Foundation has really raised its visibility lately with a number of high-profile projects as it continues its mission to increase the focus on the man behind the mouse. The end result has been some great new research and scholarship about the talented artists and filmmakers upon whose work the Disney reputation was founded, and a number of books and film projects to help tell these stories. The end effect is to shine a light on the truly great work that Disney oversaw in his time, and to remind us all why we share this strange obsession.
It’s hard to explain to someone today about why one loves Disney, when to them that means High School Musical, cheesy pop divas, or G-Force. Even I need to be reminded sometimes about Walt and Roy, Marc Davis and John Hench, Mary Blair and Herbie Ryman, or The Three Caballeros and Project Florida. As the Walt Disney Family Foundation increases their efforts after the long, hard struggle to bring this museum into existence, hopefully it’ll be easier for us to remember why we care in the first place.
In any case, they’re off to a great start. The museum looks incredible; Diane and her crew, which included a who’s-who of prominent Disney historians and scholars, have crafted a thoroughly modern museum experience that blends wonderfully into its restored facilities in San Francisco’s Presidio. There’s very little I can tell you here that can’t be found in the barrage of press coverage from earlier this month, or the coverage provided by any number of Disney-related blogs this month; I encourage you to take a look at that coverage if you haven’t already.
One of the great things about the museum is that it’s providing a range of activities and programs that have, so far, focused on a number of topics dear to Disney fans. This November will be no different, with a slate of fascinating programs and screenings that are sure to fill me with angst that I’m 3,000 miles away. Most of these take place in the museum’s 140-seat theater. Check it out, and consult the museum’s website for more information:
November 2009 Events Calendar
FILM
Film of the Month: Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty runs until November 20th
12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6:30pm, Theater
tickets available online at www.waltdisney.com
The classic fairy tale of a princely kiss awaking a beautiful princess from a deep sleep is the subject of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Throughout the month of November, relive or discover for the first time the visually stunning animated feature, Sleeping Beauty as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this incredible film.
November 14 – International Animation Festival and the Screening of the Alice Comedies
Landmark Theatres Embarcadero Center Cinema
tickets available on the SF Film Society website at www.sffs.org/content.aspx?pageid=1394
Walt Disney’s first successful series of films, the Alice Comedies, were built around a clever special-effects idea: a real little girl entering a cartoon world and interacting with the cartoon characters. The Walt Disney Family Museum will partner with the San Francisco International Animation Festival to present these charming films. A selection of the Alice Comedies can be seen during the Festival on Saturday, November 14 at the Embarcadero Cinema.
November 27 – Christmas with Walt Disney (Special Holiday Film Begins)
12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6:30pm, Theater
tickets available online at www.waltdisney.com
Walt Disney’s Christmases past are remembered in this special holiday screening that includes Walt’s “Nutcracker Suite” from Fantasia (1940), Pluto’s Christmas Tree (1952), scenes from the television Christmas specials, and rarely seen home movies of Walt at home with his family. See how Walt celebrated this beloved holiday at the Studio, at Disneyland, and at home.
LECTURE
November 21 – The Art of Sleeping Beauty with Lella Smith
3:00 pm, Theater
tickets available online at www.waltdisney.com
The rich tapestry appearance is the visual hallmark of Sleeping Beauty and the primary vision of animator Eyvind Earle. Lella Smith, Creative Director of Walt Disney Animation Studios Research Library, will discuss the unique art and design that brought Princess Aurora and her magical world to life 50 years ago.
November 22 – Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and Beyond: The Designs and Art of Herb Ryman
3:00 pm, Theater
tickets available online at www.waltdisney.org
The first glimpse of the gleaming white towers of “Sleeping Beauty’s Castle” is a moment that few forget. But, who designed Disneyland’s most recognizable landmark and the dream home of many a prince and princess? Here is the opportunity to discover the creativity of an early Imagineer, Herb Ryman, from Marty Sklar, former International Ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Mr. Sklar, who was with the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney Imagineering for 53 years, will talk about the extraordinary talent of Herb Ryman that went beyond his work at Disneyland by sharing his art and designs.
Who out there, besides me, is dying to shell out some cash for a DVD of Christmas with Walt Disney?
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By Michael - October 16th, 2009 Disney World hates and mocks you. From 1971:
All that was missing was the countdown voice-over and the mushroom cloud. And is that Orson Welles at the end?!
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By Michael - October 14th, 2009 There are a lot of things that I’m dying to write about, which only makes me more sad that I’ve spent the entire day in bed due to some insane illness and haven’t wanted to sit up, much less blog. I thought I’d take a break from my fever dreams to give you one, with some of my favorite (?) old-fashioned nightmare fuel from Disney’s past:
This clip, from 1978’s Christmas at Walt Disney World, shows that no matter how much we despair at Disney’s current state of affairs, it could be worse. Sure the specials they air today are full of fluff and nonsense, and are filmed and edited with the finesse of an MTV commercial on meth, but at least they don’t cause night terrors like this.
There’ really so much here to both confound and enrage (please enjoy the acting! of all the background players), but I’m too wiped out to know where to begin. Enjoy the footage of the Fort Wilderness Railroad, though…
And, as I say, please forgive me for inflicting this on you. It’s the fever, I swear.
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By Michael - October 13th, 2009 
Back in the good ol’ days, Disney fans didn’t have to shell out big bucks to get quality discounts on rooms at Walt Disney World. The Magic Kingdom Club was created as a benefit that companies nationwide could purchase for their employees. If your employer had an agreement with Disney, and very many did, you could sign up for a free membership that got you a subscription to Disney News magazine and a number of discounts on rooms and tickets in Orlando. It was always exciting when the new MKC cards showed up, and as a kid it was one of the few things that I carried around in my silly velcro wallet.
But enough history – time to book a room! What package do you choose? I’m torn between staying on the monorail line at my favorite resort, the Polynesian, where five days and four nights would set me back $165, and going hog-wild and shelling out a whopping $214 for a five-day four-night World Vacation in a Treehouse Villa. Those soggy bus rides back from River Country might be a problem, though…
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By Michael - October 12th, 2009 For many a young techie in the early 1980s, one of the many highlights of visiting EPCOT Center was getting to use the WorldKey Information System. Developed by the Bell Labs in concert with Disney, the WorldKey was an interactive guidebook to the park, which guests could access from kiosks in both Future World and World Showcase. Video content highlighting the various pavilions was streamed over fiber optic cable from centrally located videodisc players, and guests could also connect via a live closed-circuit video system to Guest Relations hosts in order to make dining reservations or ask other questions. The simple, touch-screen interface seemed sleek and futuristic, and was the first time that most EPCOT guests had probably experienced the now-commonplace technology.
Sadly, like many great EPCOT innovations the WorldKey is long-gone. Since its content was not generated dynamically, but instead had to be created by hand and recorded to videodisc, it was not easily updated or reprogrammed. It’s content grew more and more stale, with the patchy latter-day additions painfully obvious, until it was removed. Planned upgrades, like the promised inclusion of French and German language options, were never realized.
Bell Labs, which had become AT&T soon after the park’s opening, didn’t give up on the idea so easily. Witness this ad, from February of 1986, for AT&T’s Ariel system – the commercially available version of the WorldKey technology. It offered a “centralized source of information in a variety of public locations,” and promised applications as diverse as “a tenant directory in office buildings, an entertainment guide in hotels, a product and service guide at retail locations, and a point-of-information terminal in financial service institutions.”
 All for the low, low price of $11,000! What I love about this is that it truly is a rare example of executing the intended purpose of EPCOT – testing and prototyping new systems and technologies that would then be introduced to the free market. The Ariel system, released four years after WorldKey debuted, advanced the design and increased its flexibility. The 3B2/300 computer mentioned as the heart of the Ariel came onto the consumer market in 1985; it was a 32-bit UNIX-based system and was priced at around $10,000 for the model with 512K of RAM and a 10 megabyte hard drive, and $15,500 for the deluxe version with 1 megabyte of RAM and 32 megs of hard drive space. Networking hardware and software, of course, would cost a few thousand dollars extra. The 3B2 series would stay in production into the 1990s, and many remain in use today.
What’s funny, of course, is that the technology inside any given handheld device today would wipe the floor with the Ariel, and content that would have had to be painstakingly created in the old system could easily be recreated in Flash. This begs the question – where’s today’s version of the WorldKey? Why can’t any given hipster with an iPhone enter the park and, via free wi-fi, access an interactive park map with featurettes on each attraction and dynamically updated information about show times, dining reservations, attraction wait times and Fastpass windows? And Handwich stands?
It’s these elements of gee-whiz innovation that made EPCOT so exciting in 1982; technology has come so far that a high school student could probably whip up in a long weekend what most likely cost millions in 1982. Time to push the envelope again…
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