the love for disney runs deep

it's no secret that the girls and i love all things disney.  and not just disneyland/disney world, either...we've made pilgrimages to visit places that have some sort of disney-related historical significance.  the old lady and i were just talking about how we'd love to go back up to the walt disney family museum up in san francisco, so we can take our time to scour through every exhibit and really take in all of the information there.  probably won't happen anytime soon, but it's definitely on the list of things we want to do again.

facebook alerted me to an upcoming auction at van eaton galleries out in sherman oaks where they'll be taking bids for hundreds of vintage and commemorative disneyland items.  there's everything from merchandise to cast member costumes to pieces of disneyland itself, and the biggest ticket item up for sale is a hand-drawn presentation map of disneyland that walt and roy disney used back in the 50s to sell investors on the idea of the park.  it's expected to attract bids in the six figures...crazy.

it sounded like a fun idea to head out to the valley to check out the items up for bids, even though we'd be out in the gross heat and potentially driving through traffic.  this is the last week of the items being on display before the auction this weekend, so we got in the car and headed out.  it was a little later in the afternoon, but luckily the traffic was going in the opposite direction for most of the way there.  parking on ventura boulevard isn't an easy task, but we managed to score a decent spot right across the street.

we weren't really sure what to expect when we got there, but as we walked in the door our efforts were rewarded with an entire room dedicated to the disneyland auction.

i guess it doesn't really look like much, but there was a ton of fun stuff in there.  there were pieces of rides and lots of signage from the last 60 years of disneyland:

 this sign is from 2007...just ten years ago.  if you want to park at disneyland now, it's $20.

cast member uniforms:

and check out this hand drawn concept design for a fantasyland operations member, complete with fabric and trim swatches.

this is a park guidebook from disneyland's opening day signed by walt himself.  if you have $7,000-$9,000 to drop, it can be yours.

a piece of wrapping paper that they used in disneyland's early days is available for a minimum bid of $500.

this little "mouseorail" model was part of the swag given to disney VIPs back in the 90s.

an old bench from fantasyland.  i didn't even look at the price tag on this one.

and the display cases held all sorts of souvenirs and fun stuff from practically every decade that disneyland has been in existence.  these were really fun to look at.

original cast member badges and lillian disney's club 33 membership card.

and there were complete sets of the old attraction ticket books.  these were still in use during my first couple of visits to disneyland when i was little...too bad we never saved the extras we had left over.

in the other room, we found more disneyland treasures.  look at this original poster for the skyway, a ride that's been gone for years.  $7K!  yikes!

and here's one for the peter pan ride.

this was an invitation given to cast members for the rededication of fantasyland when it was renovated back in the 80s.

a catalog of every item available for this auction was for sale, and just flipping through it showed us that what we'd gotten to look at in the other room was just a small sampling of what will be up for bids this weekend.  the old lady thought it would make a fun coffee table book, but since we don't even have a coffee table and the entire book is available online anyway, we passed on taking home a copy.

there were lots of animation cels and actual pieces of animated movies for sale, and not just disney but from all of the other studios.  it was fun to go through some of them and see drawings from familiar scenes in our favorite movies.

look at how old this particular drawing is!

not to mention, that's back in the days when they used to just throw all those pieces of paper away.  even that presentation map i mentioned earlier was destined for the dumpster if not for a cast member who asked walt if he could keep it as a souvenir.  he then took it home, where it stayed out of sight for 60 years.   and now it's going up on the auction block for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  sheesh.

there's a bus tour that goes through burbank, glendale and l.a. narrated by bob gurr, who's one of the last two original imagineers hired by walt disney.  he's one of the "disney legends" and is responsible for designing a lot of the rides at disneyland.  he even has his name on one of the main street windows.  the old lady and i are considering taking the tour while it's still available...because doesn't it sound like it'd be right up our alley?  it sure does to me.

a whole other level of disney freakishness

still somewhat fresh from our visit to the walt disney family museum, i decided to take the old lady out for a dinner date, just the two of us.  dine l.a.'s restaurant week was going on, and there was a restaurant out in the atwater village area that i thought she might be interested in.

the tam o'shanter is one of the oldest restaurants in l.a., built in the 20s by a couple of guys who went on to start van de kamp bakeries and the lawry's chain of restaurants.  it also happens to be located down the street from walt disney's first studio, and where he dined on a pretty regular basis.

so because we are disnerds, i put in a request to be seated at table 31...which, of course, was old walt's regular spot.  and because we got there at a somewhat early-ish hour, the table was available for us when we arrived.

as you can imagine, the restaurant looks like an authentic scottish pub.  there's a collection of family tartans and other scottish and english decorations everywhere.

the menu gives you a little history lesson about the restaurant, which i always find interesting to read.

and here's the special dine l.a. menu:

just like at any other lawny's-owned restaurant, their special seasoning is on the table.

i ordered an adult beverage and sat in the very spot where walt used to hang out and peoplewatch as he chatted with his imagineers and planned his eventual world domination.

we decided to share a charcuterie plate, because meat and cheese.  duh.

and my starter was the summer salad, because burrata.

as we ate, we realized that the table was decorated with etchings that looked like cartoons and things. i asked our server about them and he said that because this was walt's favorite table, disney imagineers took it to the studio a few years back (who knows if this is 5, 10, or 50) and disney'ed it up.  other folks online have mused that these etchings were done by walt himself, but it seems that was not the case.  they don't photograph very well, especially with just an iPhone, but you get the gist.  otherwise, you should totally go to the tam o'shanter and request table 31 so you can see for yourself.

the prime rib was served with mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and yorkshire pudding just like i'm used to seeing at the lawry's restaurant in beverly hills.  it's always delicious and filling.  i gotta say though, since they post a lot of their recipes online, it's pretty easy to recreate this at home.

dessert was a c.c. brown's hot fudge sundae.  c.c. brown's was another old l.a. eatery that was known for its celebrity clientele, sweet location on hollywood boulevard, and apparently where the hot fudge sundae was invented.  this one was good, although nothing particularly special other than where we were eating it, i guess.

we saw this framed cartoon on the way out, given to the restaurant by disney studios when they celebrated their 75th anniversary.

when walt came to l.a. back in the early 20s, he lived in a little garage in the los feliz area that belonged to his aunt and uncle.  he eventually started working on cartoons there, making short films and pretty much building his first "studio" in there.  the garage itself has since been relocated to a museum in garden grove, after the new owner of the house initially decided to demolish it.  and the property has changed hands a few times over the years, mostly used as a rental to young couples and college kids and such.  i'm betting that most of those renters had no idea as to the history of the place.  anyway, the home was recently purchased by a couple who put in an application for a permit to level the place so that they can build a new house on top of it.  it was actually declared eligible for the national register of historic places, but maybe it slipped through the cracks since it hasn't officially been deemed as such yet.  once the disney fans and conservation-type people got wind of it though, a 75-day hold on that demolition permit went into effect right away and now they're all trying to figure out what to do.

it was getting late when we found the house, so this is all we were able to see:

and then we decided to go see the location of disney's hyperion studio, where he opened his first actual studio outside of that garage.  it wasn't very far away and has since been turned into a grocery store.  i'd read that there was some sort of signage that would tell people what used to be there, but we walked around the entire interior and exterior of the place and found nothing.

there are lots of other disney-related spots around town to see, like the side-by-side homes where he and roy moved with their wives and the barn where he tinkered with his toy trains.  his carolwood estate, where he and his wife lillian built their forever home, was demolished a year after lillian died, although we would totally still go just to see where it used to be.

wow, we really ARE nerds.  sheesh.