Today, I visited the National Building Museum in Washington DC, probably my favorite museum in DC, since it usually isn't too crowded, and it is in a wonderfully extravagant building, complete with a huge atrium with marble columns and such(Interestingly enough, the building was originally built as the Pension Building. Yeesh!).
But, enough setup, I saw that their newest exhibit was one called- The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks. If you are at all interested in the Disney Theme Parks, this is a must visit. Unfortunately, there is nothing about Disney's coasters(not at least that I saw), but they have something about almost everything else. They have a very nice room with tons of concept art and approvals for the original Disneyland. Also there is a cool video of the ABC live 1955 TV special for the opening of Disneyland, with speeches by Walt himself. There is so much jam packed into this exhibit I don't know where to begin. They have a scale model of Cinderella's castle at Disneyland Paris. They have a working model of the Rocketship ride(I'm drawing a blank) at Tomorrowland Magic Kingdom. They have lots of pics and a static model of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. I could go on and on. They have concept drawings of things that were never built, like the Russia Pavilion. But far and away, the coolest thing(IMHO) was the section on MGM's Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. They had a scale model of the TV room(Again, drawing a blank). They also had a mostly complete storyboard of the whole experience, which was quite cool.
Anyhoo, I highly reccomend the exhibit(and the rest of the museum) to those who live or who will be passing through DC. The National Building Museum's at 401 F Street NW, which about a block from the MCI Center.........but hurry, as the exhibit will only be open 'till August 5. Finally, the exhibit's website is
http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/Arch_Frame-20.html Happy Coastering!
--Jim
