You want to know Where The Wild Things Are? Check out The Walt Disney Family Museum at The Presidio of San Francisco between now until July 7. The WDFMuseum recently unveiled a traveling exhibit honoring author and illustrator Maurice Sendak on the 50th anniversary of the publication of " Where The Wild Things Are ." Sendak's beloved book revolutionized children's literature in its depiction of Max, a realistic, moody young boy with a fierce imagination. In the story, filled with...

Kingdom Hearts is the lovechild between Square Enix and Disney , with lots and lots of hair gel. It follows the adventures of a teen named Sora, and those who are impacted by him. Sora, the wielder of a special sword named a 'Keyblade,' travels from world to world to fight evil and right wrongs while finding his friends he was separated from. These worlds often house Disney characters, each world acting as universe for a film. For instance, an Alice in Wonderland world has all the characters...

It's no secret that animation played a big role in the life of Walt Disney and the company that bears his name. A visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum offers guests the opportunity to learn about it. And usually, the process of two-dimensional, such as hand-drawn animation, is how the story unfolds. That is, until this new exhibit at the WDFM. " Between Frames: The Magic Behind Stop Motion Animation " offers museum visitors a bit of a look into the process. Now oddly enough, stop...

It's engaging stories, great characters, good acting, lighting and hundreds of things working together that makes a motion picture a truly MOVING experience. One of the most critical pieces is a film's musical score. Even before recorded dialogue, music was there and it's always had the power to excite us, amuse us, to elicit a tear or two. Those musical notes hit our heartstrings and have the ability to spark memories years later as well as certain feelings. Think about the deep foreboding...

The following is an email interview that I recently had with David Tanaka, the creative editor of " Pixar in Concert ." I'd like to thank David for his detailed answers and Chris Wiggum at Pixar for arranging the interview. Q: Please tell me about the process. What prompted the Pixar in Concert idea? How easy was it to get everyone on board and how long did it take from idea to this past weekend's event? Tanaka: The entire process for "Pixar in Concert" actually took around...

Just in time for the beginning of 2012 summer break, Orlando's Wet 'n' Wild water park has replaced its former kids area with Blastaway Beach , a sandcastle-themed family water play area. Blastaway Beach opened on Saturday June 2, with a stampede of excited children trying out the new slides (17 of them!) and playing in the two pools included in the revamped area. Photo by Max Schilling Blastaway Beach is centered around a 60-foot tall sandcastle. Every minute or so, a trough within the...

2012 is a big year for all us Kingdom Hearts fans, given that it was 10 years ago this year that this hugely popular Disney-inspired game first came on the scene (with the Japanese version for PlayStation 2 dropping on March 28, 2002 while the North American version debuted on September 17th of that same year). Copyright Disney / SQUARE ENIX. All rights reserved But for those of us who love the Playstation version of Kingdom Hearts, our hearts have been aching for a number of years now. Given that...

Four years ago today (On May 21 st , 2008, to be exact) Virtual Magic Kingdom was shut down. One of Disney's more popular tries at an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Think World of Warcraft .), the closing of VMK was met with petitions, and a not-so-successful protest at the park. VMK was ultimately closed, and fans to this day still lurk the unofficial VMK forums, reminiscing about their old game. VMK was ultimately meant only to really promote other Disney products,...

Hope you're ready to join in the fun when Walt's Sierra Adventures when it departs for Reno on Saturday, March 17th. Yes, that is St Patrick's Day but it isn't a wee joke of the little folks that has this trip starting in Emeryville that morning. No, that fault lies a bit to the south. The San Andreas Fault to be precise. Before October 17th, 1989. Amtrak trains heading out of the Bay Area stopped at a station in Oakland. In a neighborhood whose prime had passed a long time back....

Family togetherness and memories of shared experiences to last a lifetime ... those are at the heart of Walt Disney's many creations - from cartoon characters and heart-warming movies that have entertained generations to Disneyland, which has delighted guests between the ages of 2 and 102 since opening in 1955. Family meant a great deal to Disney, both personally and professionally. His daughter, Diane Disney Miller, told me in 2005 that despite her father's success, she and her sister, Sharon...

I really should have studied. That was the main thought going through my mind as I walked toward the Anaheim Convention Center on Thursday, August 18th. I had meant to prepare for the Ultimate Disney Trivia Tournament by reading my copy of " Disney A to Z " and any Disney trivia books I could get my hands on, but I never found the time. And by this point, it was too late to do anything about it. I was going to have to hope that whatever amount of Disney knowledge that was floating around...

Fans of the Disney California Adventure (yes, they do exist) have known for some time that the impending Buena Vista Street project would bring changes to the entrance to the theme park. As the Golden Gate Bridge makeover is well underway, the next phase of this project starts to take shape on Monday, August 1st. The shops of the Sunshine Plaza will emerge as a version of Los Angeles that greeted Walt Disney when he arrived from Kansas City in 1923. Several of those locations in the Sunshine Plaza...

I always feel a little bit ridiculous recommending George R.R. Martin 's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series to anyone. Why? They're fantastic books - but the size ... Copyright 1995 - 2011 Random House, Inc. All rights reserved I have an unfortunate weakness for long novels, and the first four in the series have approximately four thousand pages combined. With book five, " A Dance with Dragons " (which was released last Tuesday), the total comes to 5200 pages. So I do understand...

"Squee!" was my word for 2007. The ultimate fan girl sound, made all the more appropriate by the fact that I picked it up from Pottercast , one of the hour-plus long Harry Potter podcasts that I listened to immediately upon release every week. Not only was a I huge Harry Potter fan, I was a fan of the Harry Potter super-fans - those leaders among geeks who founded the two most popular Harry Potter fan websites out there, Melissa Anellli , webmistress and one of the early writers for The...

Whenever Walt was asked about where he got the idea for Disneyland , he'd always trace that project's origin back to ... ... when my daughters were very young. And Saturday was always Daddy's day with the two daughters. I'd take them to the merry-go-round and as I'd sit there, sat on a bench, you know, eating peanuts, I felt that there should be some kind of an amusement enterprise built where the parents and the children could have fun together. So where did the idea for Epcot...

Gene Roddenberry 's " Star Trek " is often admired for its appeal to the fans. Who can blame them? Looking back to the times when the show first aired, there was a great deal of uncertainty in our lives. The USA was fighting an increasingly unpopular conflict in Southeast Asia. Racial tensions were unsettled at the least. The future did not look all that rosy. The Star Trek cast. Image courtesy of Garfield Lane Productions Yet, here was a television show that gave hope for future. A...

Happy Mardi Gras Day! Although the festivities in New Orleans officially end tonight at midnight (as Fat Tuesday gives way to Ash Wednesday), the party's just getting started at Universal Orlando . So if you find yourself in desperate need of "Beads, Bands and Good Times" now through April 23 rd , Universal Studios Florida is the place you need to be. For Mardi Gras lives on at that theme park . Thanks - in large part - to Universal Orlando's attention to detail. Making sure that...

With Fat Tuesday just around the corner, Disneyland recently unveiled its own Mardi Gras celebration as part of the park's Family Fun Weekends programming. The event runs through March 6, with Princess Tiana and other characters from Disney's The Princess and the Frog leading the New Orleans Square festivities. So it seems like as good a time as any to "dig a little deeper" and tease out the mythic source code of the 2009 animated release. Ready? Then let's hop to it! Princess...

You've heard about love at first sight, right? Well, how about love at first sound? Well, that's what happened to Kelly Asbury . As a teenager in the 1970s, he was walking by his brother's room and heard this amazing music coming from the stereo. It was the Elton John song, " Levon ," from his " Madman Across The Water " album. Copyright Island Records, Inc. All rights reserved "From that moment now, I was a huge Elton John fan. I listened to his music all the...

Without " TRON ," there wouldn't be " TRON: Legacy ," and without former Disney CEO and producer Ron Miller , "TRON" may have never been made. Writer/director Steven Lisberger 's "TRON" project had been rejected by at least three other studios before he submitted it to Disney, hoping for the best but not really expecting the positive reaction he received. Miller, Walt Disney's son-in-law, is listed as executive producer of "TRON" and,...

So it's the time of seasonal giving and you're looking for something a bit unusual for that special Disney fan in your life. Photo by Mark Gibson. Courtesy of The Walt Disney Family Museum Nothing says Disney any better than items related in some way to "Walt and his life" and the Walt Disney Family Museum has a few things worth considering. Here's the direct line to the Museum's onsite store, (415) 345-6859, where you can place a phone order if you're unable to make...

Well, it looks like Christmas is coming a little early not only for fans of Walt Disney the man, but also for the Walt Disney Family Museum at The Presidio in San Francisco . Today, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is releasing a combo Blu-ray / DVD collection featuring both " Fantasia" and "Fantasia 2000 ." And if that wasn't reason enough to celebrate - both films look marvelous in high-definition Blu-ray and sound superb - the company is also releasing on Blu-ray...

At heart I'm just a kid, and one of the things I most look forward to every year is trick or treating with my young daughter. The first year we took her out, age 2, I realized how much I had missed it. Seems silly, doesn't it? One of the nice things about having a child is that you get to reclaim parts of your own childhood-if for just a few years. It's a short-lived gift, but a rich one. The Walt Disney Company has been slowly figuring out the same thing: adults like Halloween just as...

As Halloween 2010 draws near, it's normal to expect to hear the sound of leathery wings flapping ominously in the night. But this year, those wings might belong to a dragon rather than a bat. Perhaps a Monstrous Nightmare...or maybe a Hideous Zippleback...or possibly the intelligent and incredibly stealthy Night Fury. At least that's the hope of the honchos at DreamWorks Animation , who would like you to purchase a copy of How to Train Your Dragon following its October 15 release on DVD and...

Earlier this month, the Universal Orlando Resort invited JHM to take part in their Media "Boo" Camp. Meaning that one lucky representative from this website got to be a Universal scare-actor at this year's Halloween Horror Nights for one evening. The last time I went to HHN for JHM, things did not end all that well for me (I had weeks of nightmares afterwards. Not days. Weeks). But my husband, Max, really wanted to do this assignment for the site. So I agreed to go along and take pictures...