Walt's Restaurant

Report by Tom Drynda

This restaurant is a must for serious Disneyphiles. It is packed full of interesting memorabilia, and various restaurant rooms are themed to the lands in the park. You also get quite a good view of Main Street from upstairs at Walt's.

The restaurant is L shaped, with the entrance being on the corner of Main Street and Flower Street. Incidentally, for Disneyphiles only, the address of the restaurant is the same as the address of the Imagineering workshops in Glendale, California (1401 Flower Street). According to the official guide book, the logo with the initials W.D. appearing on the gas lamps, some furniture, and windows was designed for the balcony of Walt's apartment in Disneyland. Also, there is a tin plate in the pavement across the street from Walt's which says "Elias Disney, 1901 contractor". So, the story should be that the turn-of-the-century Main street was built in the year Walt was born, with his father as the contractor.

There are two floors in the restaurant (ground and upstairs). The ground-floor rooms are just elegant rooms surrounded by Disney memorabilia. The upstairs rooms have separate themes linked to the different lands. Some rooms have separate tables catering for couples or families. Other rooms have just a single banqueting table clearly catering for larger parties (conference guests, VIP's, etc.).

When you enter the restaurant the whole feel of the place seems to be that of a luxury apartment or hotel (or maybe even restaurant!) in Paris at the turn of the century.

The entrance lobby is quite interesting, containing hand carved wooden furniture and nice stained glass. To the left is what I'd imagine is the Maitre d's desk which is interesting in itself. It has one of those spring-loaded message-passing systems. For the technical persons among you, this is the system where you plonk the message in a box, yank a handle, and the box containing the message whangs up through the ceiling to the upstairs desk and vice-versa. The message-whanging system is very ornate in heavy scrolled brass.

Ahead of you are the lift and the stairs. The lift is what really gives the impression of a turn-of-the-century Paris interior. It is constructed (or appears to be constructed) in ornate black cast iron scroll work with multi-coloured stained-glass windows. The lift is fully functional.

The upstairs rooms are themed, as mentioned before, to coincide with the various lands in the park. The rooms have to be seen to be believed. I will not describe them fully here as I wouldn't be able to do them justice. However, they are as follows:

• A Gothic style room represents Fantasyland.

• An Edwardian style library represents Frontierland and is supposed to be a library in a western mansion. A number of indian/cowboy-on-a-horse sculptures can be seen to enforce this.

• One corner of a large room is draped as though in a fine Arabian tent and is clearly supposed to represent Adventureland.

• Probably the most detailed room was Captain Nemo's room. See this. I cannot describe it. This represents Discoveryland.

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