Touring Disney Studios

It’s been a crazy year so far in the Williamson household. We’ve been going, going, going! Busy, busy, busy. Sometimes I wish we could find a way to slow life down a lot more. But so far that has not happened.

In March, however, we went on a family vacation to California. We lived in Burbank for nine years, so it was nice to see old friends. In the nine years we lived in Burbank, we passed by Disney Studios over and over again. Both our children were born in the hospital across the street, the same hospital Walt Disney died in. We always wanted to go inside the studio, but they are a closed lot that does not offer tours to the public, so we never did.

Until now.

My husband is a member of the Disney Movie Rewards program, in which you earn points for buying Disney products, specifically DVDs or seeing a Disney movie in the theater. Four years ago Brad set his sights on the grand prize: a tour for four of Disney Studios. Cost: 15,000 points. Now, when you consider that one new DVD is worth 100 points, you see just how many points that is.

Brad earned them, though, and off we went to claim our prize.

Most of the tour took place outdoors, walking around the buildings and getting the history of the lot and the buildings themselves. We saw the sound stages where they filmed so many great things. Sound Stage 1 (The Annette Funicello Stage) is where they filmed parts of Fantasia and was the original stage for the Mickey Mouse Club. On Sound Stage 2 (The Julie Andrews Stage), Dragnet, more Mickey Mouse Club, Mary Poppins, Armageddon, and Princess Diaries, just to name a few. They also built many Disneyland attractions inside this sound stage, like the Mark Twain Riverboat. There are now a total of seven sound stages on the lot. The show Home Improvement was filmed on Sound Stage 4 from 1991-1999.

 

 

We got to see Walt Disney’s original office (from outside the building). These older buildings, the sidewalks, and grassy areas in between were all used in the filming of Saving Mr. Banks. Brad was particularly excited to see the Mickey Ave and Dopey Drive street sign (the only street sign on the lot), which was put here for the filming of The Reluctant Dragon, a movie that gave the public a tour of Disney Studios as a man comes onto the lot hoping to pitch his book to Walt to make into a movie. (A cute film and so interesting to see the way animated films were made, but pretty unrealistic for those of us wishing our books would be made into films. Ha ha.)

 

 

 

 

We got to see the original animation building where Disney’s Nine Old Men worked, the Hyperion Bungalow, the Roy O. Disney building, and the Team Disney (Michael D. Eisner) building in which the seven dwarfs hold up the roof. This is befitting since the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was what made Walk the money to build the studio in the first place. Outside the Team Disney building is Disney Legends Plaza, which is a little like the hand prints down at the Mann’s Chinese Theater. We also saw the Frank G. Wells building, inside which our lovely tour guide bought us all Starbucks, then took us into an archive room where we each got to hold an Academy Award Oscar. They were heavy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ended the tour at the Disney Studio Store on the lot where our tour guide gave us $100 gift cards! I bought two T-shirts with my share. Brad got a new zip-front sweatshirt, and the kids got stuffed animals, of course.

 

This was a fabulous experience to take a look at a place that existed because one man had a dream. He didn’t do it alone. His brother Roy was the money man, and if it wasn’t for Roy’s gift with dollars, Walt might never have seen success. One thing I love about Walt, was that he always wanted to the be the first to do something new in filmmaking. And back then, Disney was always on the cutting edge of technology, for example, his team having inventing the multiplane camera. What a fabulous mission, don’t you think?