LWer follows Disney’s footsteps

TRAVEL

by Joanna Matos

LW contributor

The kid in me signed up for a informative day tour that had significant importance in the life of Walt Disney, a beloved man among children and adults alike. During his lifetime, he became an entertainment magnate and film pioneer and has been honored with 32 Oscars for his extraordinary achievements in film. Born Dec. 5, 1901, in Chicago, he moved to California in 1923. That year, Disney and his brother Roy started the Disney Brothers Studio, which later became the Walt Disney Company. A longtime heavy smoker, Walt died in 1966 of lung cancer.

Our tour with Good Times Travel began with a visit to the Stanley Ranch Museum, home to someoftheoldesthomesandbusinesses in Orange County. Among several buildings dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s is the Walt Disney Studio Garage.

It was relocated from its original site in North Hollywood after it was saved from demolition in 1984 by the Friends of Walt Disney, who generously dismantled and reassembled the historic building in Garden Grove. The garage was used by Walt as a studio when he came to California in 1923 to live with his uncle Robert Disney, and it was in that garage where he perfected the animation machine to produce cartoons and draw his characters.

Our motorcoach continued to Glendale, where we enjoyed an included three-course lunch at the historic Tam O’Shanter Inn. The food was perfect. The cozy Scottish Inn is located just a few miles away from the Disney Studios in Burbank, and Walt ate there so often that it was commonly referred to as the “studio commissary.” The entry walls are adorned with autographed paintings from Walt Disney Productions; our waitress pointed out Walt’s table, nestled in corner and still bearing faint drawings of his.

Next, we traveled to Walt Disney’s Carolwood Barn, a living showcase of Disney’s passion for railroading that is only open one day per month. In 1950, Disney built the Carolwood Pacific Railroad in the back yard of his house in Holmby Hills and named the railroad for the street on which he lived. The 2,615 feet of track included a 46-foot-long trestle and a 90-foot-long tunnel under his wife Lillian’s flower bed. He had a barn built where he could monitor and remotely control the switches on the track. Before the Holmby Hills home was sold, Walt’s daughter Diane Disney Miller had the barn dismantled, then donated it to Griffith Park in Los Angeles, to be shared with everyone who loved him. The barn is located inside the 1/8th-scale track, the same scale that Disney had at his home, and is filled with trains of all scales.

Also at Griffith Park is the historic carousel where Disney often had his Daddy’s Day, Saturday or Sunday afternoons when he focused on his two daughters, Diane and Sharon. This carousel inspired the much larger carousel inside Disneyland. A wooden bench with their names sits on the spot where Disney would watch his daughters.

A journey through Disney’s life wouldn’t be complete without a visit to his final resting place, the beautiful Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Tucked in a corner on the side of the hilltop building called the Freedom Mausoleum in a landscape of flowers and magnolia trees lies the ashes of Walt Disney, the Father of Imagineers.

Disney’s daughter donated this railroad barn from his Holmby Hills home to the park.