4. Los(t) Angeles Landmarks (Los Angeles, California)

The Los Angeles that Walt Disney arrived in in summer 1923 looked a whole lot different than the one we know today… Unfortunately, many of the real Los Angeles landmarks of Walt’s time are long gone. The city’s rapid expansion has seen so much of historic Hollywood demolished, and icons of Walt Disney’s life and legacy left unpreserved.

For example, in October 1923, Walt moved into the back half of a real estate office at 4651 Kingswell Ave, renting out the back half of a real estate office. By the end of the year, he’d made enough money to rent the vacant space next door to the real estate office at 4649 Kingswell Ave. – the first official home of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

Today, the space has been subdivided into a skate shop and a print shop, both of which are used to Disney fans coming in for Mickey tattoos and prints. (The Kingswell Camera Shop on Disney California Adventure’s Buena Vista Street pays tribute to to this original studio.)

Walt and company outgrew the space on Kingswell quickly, and in 1926, upgraded to the “Hyperion Studio” as The Walt Disney Studio at 2701 Hyperion Ave. This iconic campus grew and expanded a lot between 1926 and 1940, and served as the place where everything from Steamboat Willie to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were animated. Disney moved to its current Burbank location in 1940.

Today, a supermarket sits where the Hyperion Studio once did. (My build-out concept for Disney’s Hollywood Studios includes recreating this studio as one of the park’s lands!)

Perhaps the ultimate landmark of Walt’s early Hollywood history, the Carthay Circle Theater is one of the most iconic of Los Angeles’ historic movie palaces. Built in 1926, the theater – with its iconic Spanish-style octagonal bell tower and its circular auditorium – was located at 6316 San Vicente Boulevard. Commissioned by developer J. Harvey McCarthy to put his Carthay Circle neighborhood on the map, the theater debuted countless classics over its lifetime, but none more important to Disney than 1939’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – the first full-length animated film, and a tremendous risk for Walt.

The Carthay Circle Theater was demolished in 1969. A small, scale model was built along the Sunset Blvd. streetscape of Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 1994, with a full-scale recreation serving as the park icon of Disney California Adventure upon its relaunch in 2012. In its place stands an office building. Long story short: if you’re touring Los Angeles for icons of Walt’s time or history, prepare to see a lot of urban sprawl.

More to the point, you’re better off finding Los Angeles icons of Walt’s time recreated in Disney Parks than in the real world!

5. Walt Disney’s Carolwood Barn (Los Angeles, California)

You don’t have to read very far into Walt Disney’s life to know that after his wife Lillian, his next greatest love was probably trains. In fact, the miniature, 1/8 scale, steam-powered “Carolwood Pacific Railroad” (above) Walt built in his own backyard in 1950 likely inspired his plans for a Mickey Mouse Park, which eventually grew into Disneyland!

Located in the iconic Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Walt Disney’s Carolwood Barn is dedicated to Walt Disney’s railroading legacy in part by “encouraging the continual appreciation of railroading.”

Operated by the Carolwood Foundation on behalf of the Walt Disney Family Foundation, the Carolwood Barn is generally open every third Sunday of the month in the early afternoon. The mini museum includes many artifacts from Walt’s time, donations from his close friends, and pieces of Walt’s own train collection including the Carolwood Pacific and the full-sized combine of the Retlaw 1 train that ran at Disneyland from 1955 to 1974.

6. Walt Disney Family Museum (San Francisco, California)

Aside from Disneyland itself, there’s really no more of a Mecca for Disney Parks fans than the Walt Disney Family Museum, located in San Francisco’s Presidio. Founded by Diane Disney Miller (Walt’s daughter), the Museum is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company but instead is a standalone nonprofit dedicated to telling the story of Walt’s life and career.

At 40,000 square feet, the exhibit features ten main galleries, starting with “Early Beginnings” and “The Move to Hollywood” and concluding with “Disneyland & Beyond” and “Remembering Walt Disney.” The Diane Disney Miller Exhibition Hall provides a space for major temporary exhibitions focused on particular films, filmmakers, animators, artists, or aspects of Walt’s life drawn from the archives.

Throughout the galleries, there are also interactives allowing guests to experiment with synchronized sound, color, animation, Audio-Animatronics, and more. Now overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge (from second floor of the museum’s enviable real estate) is the very bench from Griffith Park where Walt once sat, watching his daughters on the carousel and envisioning a place “where parents and their children could have fun together.” (See me, on that bench, above!)

Interactive, colorful, emotional, and filled with artifacts, the Walt Disney Family Museum includes opportunities to see Walt Disney’s personal Academy Award collection, the earliest known sketches of Oswald and Mickey Mouse, one of three surviving multi-plane cameras, and the Lilly Belle train (the sister to the Carolwood Pacific).

All that said, the centerpiece of the museum for many Disney Parks fans is a 12-foot wide model of Disneyland as it existed in Walt’s imagination. A dreamy, mid-century interpretation of the park as Walt expected it to exist in the late ’60s – complete with New Orleans Square, New Tomorrowland, and Space Mountain. The walkthrough ends in a gallery filled with the world’s condolences for the loss of Walt Disney on December 15, 1966. Altogether, it makes the Walt Disney Family Museum an experience that will leave even those without an engrained affinity for Walt feeling emotional. And more to the point, it helps to turn Walt Disney from a legendary media figure and often-cited corporate namesake into a person; a real person whose spark really did change the world… Speaking of which…

7. Disney100: The Exhibition (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) ​

Having made our way west – from Chicago to Marceline; Kansas City to Los Angeles; Anaheim to San Francisco – our cross-country roadtrip through Walt’s story now zooms back East to a landmark that’s quickly made its way to the top of many Parks fans’ bucket lists.

Debuting at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute science center, Disney100: The Exhibition will serve as a definitive encapsulation of Disney’s first century. The 15,000 square foot experience is organized by nearly every branch of The Walt Disney Company, including contributions from Walt Disney Imagineering, D23, Disney Animation Research Library, the Walt Disney Archives, Walt Disney Studios, and more…

The exhibit promises over 250 rare artifacts, original artworks, costumes, props and behind-the-scenes memorabilia spread among 10 galleries. Though there’s no doubt that a heavy emphasis will be on Disney Animation and Disney’s modern, ever-expanding portfolio of characters, brands, franchises, stories, and worlds (this was, after all, a celebration engineered by former CEO Bob Chapek) promises of tributes to Disney’s parks and – of course – to Walt himself make the Disney100 Exhibition a nice last stop on our trip.

There’s no doubt that this experience will be a spectacular bookend to Disney’s first hundred years; a celebration of everything that Disney represents today.

But hopefully, our Disney100 Road Trip to off-the-beaten-path, historic, even “unofficial” locales in Disney’s history serves as a reminder that even before Mickey, it all with the real story of a real person shaped by the real places and people of his time. These are the places that made the man who made the mouse. And if you’ve got a bucket list, these places might just deserve a spot on it…