While in Southern California after visiting Disneyland we had one more stop before heading back North and home. My husband has a former Mission companion who is an exective at Disney. He was willing to let us come and visit him at his office which is at the Disney Studios in Burbank.
Security was pretty tight. We had pass through the gate and receive passes to enter.
We parked near this cool building being held up by the seven dwarfs.
Hey isn't that the same statue that we just say at Disneyland?
This is where his office is. It is in the old Animation building. He actually had an office just down the hall from where Walt himself had his office.
We visited in his office and talking about his latest project (He is the producer of a live action Jungle Book. He said live action but the animals will all be computer generated but there is an actual little boy who will play Mowgli).
He thought it would be fun for us to go to the Disney Archives. This is a little museum like area inside one of the other buildings on the lot. It had a bunch of Disney memorablia to look at. Lots of books along one wall and a few rooms full of "other things" that they didn't really let us see but said was used for research.
One thing he did pull out for us was this Academy Award. Walt won this one for one of his Wilderness documentaries.
Of course the kids had to take turns holding it.
It was pretty heavy!
I guess I was too busy looking at everything and forgot to take pictures but we were able to see an animator's desk from back in the day when animation was actually hand drawn. We were also able to see the multiplane camera that they used for filming the early Disney movies.
I guess we can claim that we actually visited the Disney Vault.
We were told this building is where the Marvel comics people work. Security is even tighter there and we couldn't get anywhere near it.
We walked a bit through the lot and looked around. I kept thinking of the movie Saving Mr. Banks as I walked through. It all looked so familiar because they have tried to preserve the look the buildings had back in Walt's day.
We visited the company store. They had much of the same stuff we had seen at Disneyland but at much more normal prices. I guess we could have waited to buy our Mickey and Minnie souveniers.
The theater had a huge poster of Anna and Elsa above the entrance.
We also walked down to the actual studios where they film shows like Once Upon a Time and one called Blackish? (I haven't ever heard of that one!) We couldn't go inside of course but did see some of the props men setting thing up inside.
That was about it for our tour. We walked back by the seven dwarfs.
Said farewell to Walt and Mickey. All along the walls of this plaza were plaques with the handprints of famous Disney artists. We tried out the hands of musicians, actors, animators and other important people of Disney History. It was a really fun visit.
Molly even took a rest with Roy Disney and Minnie Mouse.
So what did we do after this?
We found a theater in Burbank and watched Big Hero 6. The perfect way to finish off our week of all things Disney.
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