Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Marceline Part 3

After touring the area around the former Disney Homestead, Trace drove us down to see the Walt Disney Elementary.


The pictures above and below are of the school's entrance lobby.

Out front is an Official Winter Olympics Flagpole from 1960. Walt Disney Chairman of Pageantry

Next it was time for a visit to the Disney Museum.

Lots of great things to see in here. No pictures are typically allowed so I left my camera outside. We found that pictures were allowed with regard to a Disneyland minature exhibit located upstairs. Many of the shop windows have items in them. This photo is from Lisa's flicker collection. A couple others of hers are posted here today. Thanks for sharing Lisa.

Another room held a large amount of railroad memorabilia. There were many props and lobby cards from the Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase. This is a film that I have never seen. I had hoped that it might be for sale in the gift shop. Sadly it was not. Note to staff, If this film is available this is a missed opportunity.

Here is a brief scene I found online.

After our tour it was time for a little R&R back on Main Street and the Uptown Cinema. Please note the "red carpet" sidewalk leading there. This was a nice touch. Someone in town apparently "gets it."

We arrived just in time for the Cartoon Symposium. This years guest speakers were David Coverly "Speed Bump", Jan Eliot "Stone Soup", Greg Evans "Luann", Michael Jantze "Normal", and Tom Richman.

This was much more interesting that I imagined it would be. Each artist had something unique to offer. Greg, Jan, and Michael are known primarily for comics strips. Michael is currently working with youtube and discussed the difficulties, rising costs, and solutions of bringing cartoon panel charactors to life in a video format. View one solution his studio came up with here. David Coverly discussed the challenges of doing single panel comics. Tom Richman is a free lance artist who's characature work can be found in many magazines including MAD.

During an intermission and again afterward we visited Ripley Park.

The Dancing Grannies were out in full force.

A closer shot of the "original coke a cola corner"

Sometime around 5 we made it down to the Beer Garden and I grabbed something to eat. We just sat around and talked about various things. Lisa had been recording throughout the day and she even interviewed me for Those Darn Cats. Shortly thereafter everyone was heading back to Walt's barn for a tree planting ceremony. It was at his point of the day that I bid farewell to my new friends and headed back to Tundraland. It would have been nice to stay longer but then again there is always next year. Marceline is a wonderful town to visit. You can easily sense why Walt had such a nostalgic love for this town.

I close with this tribute to Walt Disney (from YouTube not my work)

5 comments:

sambycat said...

jeff! what a beautiful and fun series of trip reports on marceline! wow!

Matt said...

Excellent trip reports Jeff! I want to go to Marceline some day. Maybe next time you go, I can tag along...

MikeF. said...

Thinking Toonfest next year!

[rich] said...

Great work dude :-)

Rae! said...

Very cool. So is this where he grew up?? That town "Gets It"