While I was in the area, I wanted to explore Burbank a little and see some famous film studios. I was going to have plenty of time to explore the Universal lot on the Studio Tour when I went to the theme park, but before that I had to see Walt Disney Studios.

Here’s a picture I took of the front entrance of The Walt Disney Company’s corporate headquarters in Burbank. Walt and his brother Roy actually founded Disney in 1923 on Kingswell Avenue before moving to Hyperion Avenue in 1926. The Hyperion building was the birthplace of Mickey Mouse and it was where Walt and his team created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but in 1940 after the huge financial success of Snow White, Walt moved his team to a brand new building in Burbank where Disney has remained to this day.

Got a good picture of those Dwarf statues, an appropriate symbol for how Snow White literally was the foundation on which this building was built.

Do not wander onto the property just because those gates are open! I almost trespassed on Disney’s premises because of that. The security guard was friendly though.

Here’s the Roy E. Disney Animation Building on Riverside Drive, which is across the street from the main complex and where most of Disney’s animated films are created today. In 1985 when Disney was at a low point and CEO Michael Eisner came in to turn things around, the animators were moved out of the Burbank lot and relegated to Glendale near Walt Disney Imagineering, but the success of hit films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King was enough to bring them back to Burbank. The animation building with the sorcerer hat design opened in late 1994 and was rededicated as the Roy E. Disney Animation Building in 2010 shortly after Roy E. Disney’s death in 2009. If it wasn’t for Roy’s insistence on keeping the legacy of Disney animation alive in the eighties when Eisner was trying to push it aside, the building may not exist.

More photographic evidence that I was in fact actually in front of this building.

Right next to both the main complex and the animation building was of course also the headquarters of the American Broadcasting Company, the television network Disney bought in 1996. That first picture is the main entrance, and as you can see in that last picture, there is an indoor walkway that connects ABC Studios to Disney Studios. Speaking of ABC, Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show is filmed very close to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, which as I said earlier is where the Academy Awards ceremony is held, so not only was I in the center of show business, but it felt very much like I was in the center of Disneyville.

Warner Bros. Studios, also headquartered in Burbank, is like a half hour away from Disney on foot so I took pictures of that place as well. I took a shot of the iconic water tower as soon as I saw it, but I took another shot when I caught a better glimpse of it at the Gate 4 entrance. And because I grew up in the nineties, I kept expecting to see Yakko, Wakko and Dot being chased around by Ralph the security guard, but no such luck.

WB is known for showcasing their movies, TV shows and characters on the side of their building and when I passed by it was Cartoon Network’s Craig of the Creek that I saw. I also saw big posters for films like Dune and Barbie as well as TV shows like Young Sheldon and The Cleaning Lady and HBO Max shows like The Sex Lives of College Girls.

One more bonus film studio I saw in person that I wasn’t expecting to see was Legendary Entertainment, which is also headquartered in Burbank! Legendary has collaborated with many studios like Disney, WB, Universal, Paramount, Sony and Netflix, with a film output that includes the Dark Knight trilogy, the MonsterVerse films and the first two Jurassic World films as well as 300, Watchmen, The Hangover, Inception, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, Interstellar, Detective Pikachu, Dune and Dune: Part Two. So encountering that place was a nice surprise.

In my next article, I’ll write about my experience at the theme park Universal Studios Hollywood and show you all the pictures I took there.