Walt Disney Family Museum to Open in San Francisco

According to Michelle Nichols of www.reuters.com, The Walt Disney Family Foundation is planning to open a Disney museum this fall. The opening date is scheduled as October 1^st and the museum will be located in San Francisco.

It sounds to me like it will be similar to the, "Walt Disney: One Man's Dream" attraction located at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida, only on a larger scale. Because according to Nichols, the museum will be focused on Walt Disney's life, all the way from his birth to his death and tracing all of his significant accomplishments in between. Particularly those that impacted the film, animation and entertainment industries.

But his dream for theme parks will not be excluded. The article states, "There will also be a model of the Disneyland theme park he first envisioned, quite different from the park that opened in California in 1955, and a model of the Lily Belle train that ran on half a mile of track around his Hollywood home."

As far as artifacts to populate the museum, the article also mentions some interesting news about the Foundation's partnership with the Walt Disney commercial company. "Richard Benefield, executive director of the museum, said the Walt Disney Co had made their resources and archives available to the foundation and loaned several exhibits to the museum."

Will the museum have mass appeal? It's hard to say. The "Walt Disney: One Man's Dream" attraction has a built-in audience seeing as how it's located in a Disney theme park. The marketing will likely be directed at families, seeing as how the museum is called, "The Walt Disney Family Museum". The museum will no doubt attract animation fans with its inclusion of the history of Walt's animation business, which could also be the key to making the museum appeal to children. But it will likely also be a large monument to those interested in business history.

Disney has not released many details, simply placing a teaser page up on their main website at this location: http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html The site simply reads, "The Walt Disney Family Museum, which tells the story of the life and work of Walt Disney will debut this fall in state-of-the-art facilities in the Presidio of San Francisco. As we put the finishing touched on the Museum, we are rebuilding out website. Visit again soon for the latest updates and information about the Museum and out fall opening."

Even this small announcement will no doubt have the most devoted of Disney fans regularly scanning the internet for details of an opening ceremony. The Reuters article can be seen in its entirety here: http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE55G6O520090617