Walt Disney Birthplace

During my first visit to Chicago this past October, I was fortunate enough to go on a guided tour of the Walt Disney Birthplace on the outskirts of the city. Built by Walt Disney's father Elias in 1893, it was in the upper-story master bedroom of this house on December 5, 1901 that Walt Disney was born. Although the restoration of the home is not yet complete, it was an incredible experience to walk through the home and imagine Walt Disney living there as a young child. If you're not aware, the home was a private residence until 2013, and this Yesterland article gives good insight into the restoration process and the state the house was originally in.  Unfortunately, my camera battery had died the previous day, so I have to make do with phone photos for this post. But it's all good!

The part of the house with the cream-colored siding is the original portion, with the two additions in the rear added after the Disneys left the house. As a result, these parts are currently used for work and storage space.

Purchased by Brent Young and Dina Benadon in 2013, a decade of restoration work has brought the house back to its 1893 appearance, the year Roy O. Disney was born. The reconstructed porch fronts the street just as it did 100 years ago, replacing the aluminum siding that covered what was once a plain duplex.

The house sits along Tripp Avenue, but the city has rechristened the street as Honorary Disney Family Avenue.

The birthplace has started doing public tours on the last Saturday of every month, but this was a private tour with the National Amusement Park Historical Association.

Our tour guide said the house was likely a model for other homes built by Elias’ carpentry business. A few other Disney-built homes remain in the area and provided a model to replicate the Birthplace’s stair balustrade. The stairs are believed to still have their original wood. Elias also worked as a carpenter during the construction of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which occurred shortly after he moved the family to Chicago.

Looking out the front door, you can see the front walk with engraved pavers from people who supported the birthplace's restoration.

Two of the bay windows have plaques with the names of Alice Davis and Bob Gurr on them, another example of the naming opportunities for people who donated to the house's restoration.

Completed efforts include reconstructing the front porch, reconfiguring doorways, and molding replica trim. As only one photograph exists from the time the Disneys lived in the house, the restoration required careful attention to scars left behind from previous renovations.

The next step in the restoration is refurnishing the interiors to evoke their appearance during Walt Disney’s childhood.

This is the only known photo of Walt Disney when he lived in the house. I do not know the history of when the front porch was added or removed, as it doesn't appear to be in this picture.

Plaques around the house allow people to take a self-guided tour during open days when the number of visitors exceeds the capacity to do guided tours.

Most of the rooms are unfurnished, but there is a guestbook to sign.

Here are Brent Young and Dina Benadon who purchased the house in 2013. I used to listen to Brent on the Season Pass Podcast, and I remember him talking about the restoration. Who knows how long this house would have remained a private residence if they had not purchased it!

Future plans for this room include a scrim placed over the former window frame on the right that is now blocked by a later addition to the house, depicting the former backyard and street with atmospheric noises.

One of the first impressions upon entering the house is the small size of the original floorplan. Ignoring the additions that were tacked on to the house later, this picture was taken at the rear wall of the original floorplan and essentially captures the entire ground floor.

Here's Walt's tiny bedroom on the second floor! The Disneys moved to Marceline, Missouri in 1906 before Walt's fifth birthday, so he was no more than four years old when he lived in this house.

As the stairs are original, it is pretty cool to stand at the top and imagine Walt Disney running up as a toddler to his bedroom.

The plaque says that we are "reasonably sure" that Walt was born in the master bedroom, and that's the case with most of the historical info--it's largely guesswork.

The master bedroom is by far the largest room in the house.

The candle in the window is lit annually by the winner of an art contest at neighboring Nixon Elementary School during a caroling event on Walt Disney’s birthday.

This trapdoor has an interesting backstory, as explained by the plaque. The hatch's purpose was unknown until Rebecca Cline, archivist at the Walt Disney Archives, came forward with a box that is known to have once contained Disney family documents. The box would have fit in the compartment, making it likely that the Disney family kept their valuables in a box underneath their bed.

With the aid of a $25,000 grant from the Walt Disney Company, the Birthplace was able to complete additional projects, including the front door. Animatronic firm Garner Holt Productions was contracted to build a door identical to the one in the picture of Walt and Ruth on the front porch, with the transom featuring the Disney family crest in stained glass. Elias could only wish to afford a touch as stylish as this.

This unrestored cubby underneath the stairs is likely where the original toilet was located.

Here's the background on Walt Disney's toilet!

Hope you enjoyed this visit to the Walt Disney Birthplace! I was not expecting it to be so cool. More posts on some of the other places I visited in Chicago will come later.

Cedar Point 2024

Despite living within a day's drive of one of the world's most famous amusement parks visited by people from around the world, it had been three years since I had last visited Cedar Point. It's a great park, but it was even better to re-discover it after several years. This month's post will be a short trip report showing some of my favorite parts of America's second-oldest amusement park. 

"We apologize for the inconvenience" is in reference to the park's failed 2024 investment, which operated for a total of eight days and was then closed for the rest of the season. A bit more on that later.

Gatekeeper was cleverly designed to interact with the main entrance, and it has these cool "keyhole" moments where the train threads the needle, so to speak.

One vintage ride maintained by Cedar Point is a 1962 Von Roll Sky Ride.

I believe all the gondolas received a fresh paint scheme for this season, and one neat touch they added is the Von Roll logo on the car doors.

In 2003, Cedar Point opened the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster, Top Thrill Dragster. With a complex hydraulic launch system, it was plagued by issues for years until 2021, when a piece of the coaster train flew off and hit someone in line. It was closed indefinitely after that, but in 2023 it was announced that the ride would be reborn as "Top Thrill 2."

The major modification made to the ride was the addition of this "reverse spike" tower. The hydraulic launch system was replaced with a less maintenance-intensive magnetic launch, but that means the train no longer has enough momentum to make it over its 420-foot hill in one go. It now launches forwards, backward up the spike, and then a final time forwards over the main hill, which remains the same as the old ride.

I took these pictures in May, and by then the ride had already been shut down for re-engineering due to problems found with the train wheels. It never reopened for the rest of the season. I don't know what they were expecting by going with Zamperla as the ride's manufacturer, who is notorious for malfunctioning rides and had previously only designed roller coasters as tall as 50 feet or so. It's definitely a bad look for Cedar Point.

Although the park has experienced countless issues with its newest piece of roller coaster technology, one of the earliest modern steel roller coasters continues to operate flawlessly. The Arrow Dynamics-designed Corkscrew opened in 1976 as the first coaster with three inversions. Its maintenance bay is placed under the station with this interesting piece of sloped track to reach it.

You can't go to Cedar Point without riding the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad, and if you board at the Frontier Town station, you'll be treated to a ride through Boneville.

It's been a staple of the ride since it opened in 1963.

In this picture, you can see one of the skeletons falling over in a mock shootout that includes blank gunshots.

The Cedar Creek Mine Ride is a vintage mine train coaster that skims over a small lake next to the train trestle.

You always need a moonshine still for these types of displays.

More gunshots are in this scene. The skeleton on the porch is shooting at another skeleton scurrying over the fence to the left.

Cedar Point debuted an elaborate boat ride in 2021 called Snake River Expedition, yet it only lasted for three years and did not return for 2024. The scenes can still be seen sitting along the waterway in the center of the park. The ride featured several live actors, and it's a shame that they couldn't find a way to make a slower-paced ride like this sustainable. I guess they decided that the crowds only wanted roller coasters.

Only a video clip can do justice to the animation of this tableau.

And with that we're back at the main station!

The Coliseum was built in 1906 and still features an Art-Deco ballroom on its second story. It's a strange time capsule left untouched in the middle of a bustling theme park.

Perhaps Cedar Point's rarest ride is Cedar Downs, a classic derby racer carousel that previously operated at Cleveland's Euclid Beach Park from the 1920s until 1969.

It runs substantially faster than any normal carousel, and the horses jockey back and forth for position during the ride. It's always a treat to take a spin on this huge ride, which sits in the same building it sat in at Euclid Beach.

The first few times I went to Cedar Point, there was an antique car ride in Frontier Town. That ride was retired after 2021, and the bridge that the cars once traveled through was replaced with a walking path. The rest of the ride's plot was replaced with a large restaurant.

Although the park maintains one classic Von Roll Sky Ride, it used to have two. The defunct Frontier Lift ran from the main midway to Frontier Town, and its station remains today. The entrance and exit ramps to the ride remain intact, and I'm sure there are more remnants inside the building itself.

A sentimental favorite of mine is Gemini, a dual-tracked roller coaster built by Arrow that has been in operation since 1978. Its space-frame station is straight out of the 70s. 

This is one of the few coasters where you can still reach out and clap hands with the train you are racing against. During one of my rides, our train blew right through the brake run seen in this picture, while the other train seen here ground to a halt. It was pretty funny watching everyone's faces as they stopped abruptly and we kept coasting along. When we got back to the loading station, the attendants seemed pretty confused as to what happened. Hopefully the stranded riders got down eventually!

Along with practically everyone who visited the park this year, I will have to come back to ride Top Thrill 2. But there are so many more rides to enjoy here than just that.

Before we left, I couldn't help but admire the vintage pennants in the gift shop. Until next time Cedar Point!