Destination: D

We enjoyed a wonderful trip to California recently, which I will have to blog about in several separate entries because there are a lot of photos! This one is about the conference we attended while we were there. Destination: D. This was a conference for D23 members. D23 decided to only hold their Expo (which they started last year) every other year so they designed this conference to keep us fanatics busy until 2011 when they hold the next Expo. We had a wonderful time and learned all kinds of new Disney info, including seeing a video of Walt that was taken just before his death. It was just recently pulled from the archives and had never been shown to the public. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take video but we got lots of great photos from the event.

Steven Clark, President of D23 & Editor in Chief of 23 Magazine kicked off the conference

A funny promo idea

Woo-hoo! We can't wait for the Expo next year!!

Becky Cline (the new chief archivist) and a Disney author (Sorry, I forget his name!)

Some of the original costumes

Walt and Lillian

Members of the original Mickey Mouse Club

A very young Tony Baxter and George Lucas discussing Star Tours

Dave Smith giving one of his final presentations as the chief archivist before his retirement

Walt Disney reading to his daughters

A cool old Disneyland shuttle from when they were building the park

Neil Armstrong with Mickey Mouse

Garth Kemp interviewing George (Disneyland President)

The new Mickey Mouse costume for the parks - it blinks and everything. It's really cool!

The Disney Legends Concert featuring Richard Sherman and some of the wonderful music that he and his brother created for Disneyland...

Jeffrey (the Disney Geek) performing a duet with Ana Ortiz

Richard Sherman

Some details from the suite we were upgraded to - woo-hoo!

This was a panel discussion with imagineers spanning several different generations - including some that worked with Mr. Disney himself! These amazing minds were the brains behind a significant amount of Disney characters and rides.