Disney 100 Exhibit

eeeevah · April 16, 2023, 6:42pm

Took the kids to see the Disney 100 exhibit at The Franklin Institute in Philly today. Thought I’d share a bunch of pics for those interested!

Thought of @OBNurseNH when I saw these two flags lining the entrance right next to each other:

eeeevah · April 16, 2023, 6:43pm

And then a few more for @OBNurseNH

tbarnes06 · April 16, 2023, 6:50pm

I live about 2 hours from Philly but have thought about taking the family to this. They are not huge Disney fans, not anti Disney, just not huge fans. So do you think it is worth the hassle? Like how cool would it be to someone who is a “medium” Disney fan

eeeevah · April 16, 2023, 8:32pm

Tricky question… the exhibit is well done with a good mix of education and interactive things. And representation from all Disney facets (parks, movies, old school cartoons, etc). The tix are $43/adult and $41/child, which does also get you access to the science museum and a planetarium show. For a medium fan, I probably wouldn’t pay $40/person just for the exhibit. But if you’re going to explore the rest of the Institute, totally worth it! Also, we spent the night at a hotel the night before (we live 90 min away), and we booked a “visit Philly” package, which got us free valet parking at our hotel ($55) and two free tickets to the exhibit for only $18 more than the regular room rate. So I effectively paid $20/person for us to go and that was totally worth it for me.

(We stayed in Old City and toured Independence Hall and Ben Franklin Museum and got ice cream at Franklin Fountain and saw a kids production of Frozen, Jr. at the Walnut Street Theater.)

Here’s the package we used in case you’re interested: Book the Visit Philly Overnight Package — Visit Philadelphia

Dreamer · April 16, 2023, 8:46pm

The exhibit looks fabulous. Thanks for the photos.

tbarnes06 · April 16, 2023, 9:11pm

Thanks for the advice, we’ll see maybe I could bill it as a fun weekend away

OBNurseNH · April 16, 2023, 9:40pm

Dang that’s some awesome stuff!!!

And so to not only see two of my faves side by side, but that it made you think of me, too

OBNurseNH · April 16, 2023, 9:41pm

I have that book!!!

amywilkh · April 17, 2023, 1:19am

Thanks for this reminder! I need to plan a trip up there (2 hours away).

Flutegarden · April 17, 2023, 8:31am

We’re in Philly suburbs so it’s a quick trip. I love FI anyway but it actually seems sort of boring for kids. Did the kids really enjoy it? Were they familiar with most of the stuff on display?

eeeevah · April 17, 2023, 10:56am

There are a bunch of screens with cartoons and movie clips playing, so they listened to/watched those pretty intently. Those were the moments I was able to pop around the room reading the information. But otherwise we sort of breezed through it all (still took about an hour).

There are artifacts/costumes from Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty & the Beast, Snow White, Mary Poppins, Pirates of the Caribbean, Cruella, Little Mermaid, Star Wars, Marvel, and then the two park rides (Peter Pan and Space Mountain). They know about or have seen all of those, so they were engaged enough!

There was this neat section about music where they had three different musical clips on screens where you could listen to voice actors in other languages sing the songs. They sat there for a good 10-15 minutes.

But you know your kids best! Sorta why I said I didn’t maybe think it was worth it at $40/each for them. But with the discount I got, it filled a Sunday for us!

galuchies_463555 · April 17, 2023, 11:21am

I am planning to go in July. We are just 45 minutes from Franklin Institute, used to be members when the kids were young. We have friends coming up from DC that also want to go.

Flutegarden · April 17, 2023, 11:39am

Where do you live? We’re in Collegeville near KOP.

Randall1028 · April 17, 2023, 12:09pm

Was it crowded? When we went, it was totally mobbed.

There was a line to get into the exhibit and it felt very “park-like.” I was getting total flashbacks of “get in line to buy merch”. hehe and everyone wearing their disney world/disneyland hoodies and t-shirts definitely helped sell that feeling.

Because it was so crowded, I ended up not being very impressed with the exhibit. I certainly didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t knock my socks off. I woulda like it much better if it had something to thin the crowds out more. It had unique elements that made it very interesting, but I felt it was too small for what it was. We essentially had to skip the whole first phase cause it was wall to wall people and you couldn’t get close enough the exhibits to read anything. (I was ok with it as I know all the history, but for anyone who didn’t and was interested, it would’ve been really disappointing).

Once we got to the movie portions, it spread out a bit, but every exhibit still had a line.

One of the more interesting things I liked was all the concept art for the parks and movies (no shock). They also had a drawn aerial map of Disneyland that had day/night phases. Which I thought was cool. There was also a castle/fireworks mini-show of sorts, but it was slow and the crowd surrounding it made it not worth hanging out for it. So I only caught a small portion of it. There was also a snowglobe from Mary Poppins with projected pigeons flying it in. (it’s a tiny exhibit, but a cool effect)

The opening hologram left me with mixed feelings. They have it setup for a 3D effect, but they wasted the effect on pixie dust and not mickey or walt. Felt it was a bit of an odd choice.

And in true Disney fashion, it ended with wanting to get a t-shirt…but the only sizes they had were mediums and smalls.

eeeevah · April 17, 2023, 12:58pm

Loved the Mary Poppins snow globe!

We got there for “rope drop” and walked right in. (Actually, we got in about 9:40 so ten minutes after it opened.)

The first section was the most crowded but we got to see everything we wanted and the kids got to watch all the things with the headphones with no waits. My guess is that it’s not getting as much fanfare as the HP exhibit did so it’s just not drawing the same crowd levels at this point?! Or maybe just because it was a Sunday morning?

We also really loved the interactive piece where you had to guess the character based on the color palette. I actually got about a third of them right and felt super proud!