January 31st, 2014

Chapter 8
Pilgrimage to the Presidio

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I won’t pretend that we didn’t have plenty of reasons to be excited about visiting San Francisco, but they all paled in comparison to the one attraction we were most excited to see. Of course, no avid Disney fan can call a trip to the City by the Bay complete without making the “pilgrimage to the Presidio” to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum.

Before we headed over there on Friday, however, we wanted to go to Chinatown and grab a quick dim sum lunch. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Chinatown, we discovered that practically every restaurant was closed. Lo and behold, it turned out that today was Chinese New Year—a fact that we were completely oblivious to until we saw all the confetti littering the streets and heard sounds of firecrackers echoing every which way. The few Chinese restaurants that were open had lines out the door because everyone was looking for a bite to eat.

We gave up on Chinatown after much hemming and hawing, and we took a bus in the direction of Fisherman’s Wharf instead. When we got there, Tracy decided to go in search of a lobster roll at one of the stands by the piers, and I resigned myself to eating In-N-Out Burger (not particularly exciting, but always delicious). Finally sated after more than an hour of trying to find food, we were ready to start heading toward the Presidio.

Trying to avoid spending much money now that the rest of the trip was on our own dime, we intended to take public transportation to the northwest corner of the city where the museum was located. Of course, another “benefit” of Chinese New Year was the fact that the buses were operating on a holiday schedule, which made getting across town next to impossible. After waiting for far too long, we finally gave up and called an UberX to take us the rest of the way. It was our first time using the cheaper version of the car service, and we were happy with the experience.

Since our car could take us into the heart of the park, we were able to get out right in front of this gorgeous redbrick facade.

The building is surrounded by pristine grass and lovely views of the water.

Something about the museum itself is just so welcoming. We were beyond excited to step inside.

 When we walked through the doors, Uncle Walt was there to greet us, so Tracy and I both posed with him.

The lobby was filled with awards of all shapes and sizes, honoring achievements in film, television, humanitarianism, and all sorts of other things.

Even Seventeen magazine had presented Walt with a few awards.

Here’s an Emmy for the Disneyland TV show.

This one has something to do with dogs (though I have no idea what it has to do with Walt).

And here’s the creme de la creme—the infamous Oscar and seven little Oscars presented by Shirley Temple to honor the way Walt revolutionized animation with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

It was interspersed among several other Oscars for various other achievements.

Here are a couple other interesting awards that I can’t exactly identify.

My favorite is the llama award.

I got a little choked up seeing this tribute to Diane Disney Miller, who had just died a couple months before we visited.

We still hadn’t gone through the doors into the first actual exhibit, but we were already so enthralled with the museum that we walked back up to the ticket booth and asked to upgrade our admission tickets to an annual membership. At the time, we had no idea that our days living in California were numbered, so we were almost certain we would be back in San Francisco within 12 months (which didn’t actually end up happening)—and the cost of a membership would pay for itself with just one more visit to the museum, so we decided to go for it. Was it a bit impulsive in hindsight? Sure. But even if we didn’t make it back, I still think our money was well spent because it went to support this great place. And now we were ready to actually go inside and check out the museum proper.

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