20 Magical Disney Movie Locations You Can Visit In Real Life

Belle may not have enjoyed life in her rural backwater, but she was probably the only one. The real-life inspiration, France’s Alsace region, is so beautiful not even the presence of a Gaston could ruin it. Eguisheim, the village which bears perhaps the most resemblance to Belle’s, even has its own stone fountain in the town square.

Eguisheim is very small and also not particularly tourist-focused, so if it’s unspoilt charm you want, then you should totally drop by if you ever get the chance to visit France. It even has its own castle, Eguisheim Castle, just to really drive home that this is Beauty and the Beast-land. Just don’t forget to bring books with you to read by the fountain!

The Château de Chillon, which sits on Lake Geneva, is one of the most famous castles in all of Switzerland. It’s incredibly old – first mentioned in historical texts as far back as 1005 – and it has a rich history. Lord Byron visited it in 1816 and his name is carved on a pillar in its dungeon. And it helped inspire Prince Eric’s castle in The Little Mermaid.

The similarities are pretty clear, not least the presence of so much water around both the real castle and its animated counterpart. And indeed Little Mermaid fans sometimes show up there in full Ariel cosplay and take photos with the Château de Chillon as their backdrop. No reports of any talking crabs yet though.

Regent’s Park in London has a lot to recommend it. It’s green, open, covered in flowers and dogs are allowed there! If you can visit and you’re a 101 Dalmatians fan, head for the area named Queen Mary’s Garden. That’s the spot – pun not intended – where Pongo and Roger meet Perdita and Anita for the first time.

Regent’s Park is so photogenic it was also used in the much-later 101 Dalmatians prequel, the live-action Cruella. And of course multiple real-life spotted dogs walk through it with their owners every day! Absolutely ideal if you want to make like Roger and Anita and do some Dalmatian flirtation on location. Sorry, got carried away there.

Upon being suddenly transformed into a frog, Disney’s Tiana finds herself at home in the bayou of New Orleans. It looks pretty inhospitable in the movie, even if you are an amphibian, but you can easily visit via boat. Watch out for the alligators though: there are plenty around and few of them are as friendly as Louis.

Of course, thrill-seekers probably love the idea of seeing alligators up close, and to be fair they’re rarely interested in humans. But if that’s not for you, Tiana’s beautiful bayou is actually being recreated in Disneyland. It’s going to form part of the revamped Splash Mountain ride with its Princess and the Frog theme.

Paradise Falls, the land Carl Frederikson visits in Up, just so happens to be a real place. It’s really Angel Falls in Venezuela, and the artists behind the movie visited it and took thousands of photos before creating their own CGI version. They were really keen to show off the beauty of that part of the world.

In a 2009 interview with the Associated Press, Up director Pete Docter said he hoped the movie would increase tourism to the gorgeous hidden areas of Venezuela. But he also pointedly added, “I hope everybody is respectful of the location and [they] don’t ruin them ‘cos they are really beautiful places.”

If there’s one thing Disney does better than probably any other studio in the world, it’s making castles. There are so many Disney castles and they’re all gorgeously distinct from each other. Artist Laurent Ben-Mimoun told the website Animated Views about his brief for the Tangled one: it was “a Renaissance [-era] castle on an island, reminiscent of Mont St Michel in Normandy, France.”

Ben-Mimoun’s creation is stunning, but so is the real-life Mont St Michel. It’s one of the most-visited destinations not just in France, but in the whole of Europe, and it enjoys UNESCO World Heritage Site status as well. When you visit, be aware you’ve got a lot of steps to scale – unless you can get someone to pull you up with their hair.

The Emperor’s New Groove was almost a completely different movie – a much more serious animated feature called The Kingdom of the Sun. Among the things that inspired it was Machu Picchu and its buildings which stretched up into the sky. So when The Kingdom of the Sun was scrapped, those locations were reused for The Emperor’s New Groove.

Peruvian culture continued to play a big role in the making of the movie. Indeed, according to Roger Allers, the original film’s director, actress Eartha Kitt only agreed to take a role after being presented with a gift of Peruvian textiles. The Emperor’s New Groove may not have been an easy film to make, but it spectacularly shows off the history of the country.

That Parisian restaurant in which Remy the rat takes up residence? It’s a real restaurant, and you can go and try the food! Yet in reality it’s not named Chez Gusteau, but La Tour d’Argent – which translates as "The Silver Tower." And well, chances are you won’t find any rats in there at all, let alone one creating dishes in the kitchen.

La Tour d’Argent is famous for its speciality dish, pressed duck, its wine cellar – reportedly one of the world’s largest – and its stunning views of Paris. You can see what seems like the entire city from there, including the River Seine and the Notre Dame Cathedral. With all these beautiful landmarks it’s not surprising Disney sets so many movies in France, is it? 

The Alcázar in the city of Segovia in Spain looks every bit the typical fairytale castle. So it’s easy to see why Walt Disney had a very similar version of it appear in his classic movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Alcázar – which means fortress in Spanish – even has a wishing well in its grounds, just like the one in Snow White’s song.

That being said, many of the stories in the castle’s history are quite a bit darker than Disney’s take on the Snow White fairytale. The fortress was once a prison, too, so it goes without saying people have died there. And watch out for ghosts, because there are said to be some connected with the place. But it’s also just so pretty!

Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany looks like it’s straight out of a fairytale and well… it is. Despite having been through several wars, it survives to this day as an incredible example of medieval-style European architecture. Walt Disney drew extensively on it when creating the village in 1940’s Pinocchio.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber’s fame didn’t end with the Disney association, though. Nope, the town’s virtually a bona fide movie star in its own right by now. Scenes were shot there for the 1968 flick Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and more recently parts of the Harry Potter franchise were filmed there too! It’s even appeared in music videos and comics.

How do you recreate a place that doesn’t actually exist? That was the problem which faced the Disney artists working on 2001’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire. So they sought inspiration from the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It’s considered one of the largest and most famous monuments ever built.

Lots has changed since 2001 though. In 2013 Australian scientists reported that they believed an Atlantis-like city did indeed once exist in Cambodia, and was older than Angkor Wat to boot. So if Disney ever does a live-action version of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, who even knows where they might film?

It seems only fitting that one of the places which inspired Frozen would be called a church rejoicing in the name of St. Olaf’s. Believe it or not though, it’s not actually dedicated to the franchise’s snowman sidekick. The church stands in the village of Balestrand and its lovely interior informed the graphical design of Arendelle’s chapel, where Elsa receives her crown.

The church was erected in 1987, and it has a sweet story behind it: a man named Knut Kvikne had it built in honor of his late English wife, Margaret, who wished for an Anglican church in Norway. So that’s another thing to bear in mind if you want to go visit it!

Of course Brave, being a film about a princess, would feature one of the traditional Disney castles. This one’s arguably a little less traditional though – just like its princess, in fact. The imposing building was created from the design of Scotland’s Eilean Donan Castle. Even the banquet table is in there.

The Scottish tourism board was delighted when Brave came along, and Eilean Donan Castle got in on the action too. It became part of a self-guided driving tour along all the main landmarks of the movie. The movie has long gone from cinemas now of course, but you can still visit the castle and even have your wedding there.

China boasts some pretty incredible buildings and the animated Mulan reflects this very well. The residence of the Emperor of China, the Imperial City where Mulan wins her final victory, is actually based on Beijing’s Forbidden City. It’s a bit of a misnomer these days though: you can actually visit it.

The Forbidden City was opened up to regular, non-royal folks in 1925 and now it gets millions of tourists every year. If you go you’ll get to see lots of stunning art and decorations, plus images and statues of dragons everywhere you look. Alas, none of them talk or offer wisecracks like Mushu.

Neuschwanstein Castle was originally built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who bore the very appropriate nickname of “The Fairytale King.” And the castle was fairytale-like too, with its isolated location, tall towers and beautiful surroundings. Long before Walt Disney came along, King Ludwig wrote that he was delighted with it.

Unfortunately, King Ludwig didn’t get to enjoy his castle for long. Just a couple of weeks after it was finished, suddenly the king’s body was found floating in a lake. To this day no-one’s exactly sure how and why he died, but the castle remained – and many years later in 1955 Walt Disney visited and was inspired to recreate it for Sleeping Beauty.

One of the lesser-known Disney animated films here. Basil the Great Mouse Detective has its final fight scene inside Elizabeth Tower, which most people know by a different name: Big Ben. In fact, Big Ben is really only the name of the bell inside Elizabeth Tower, but these days the whole clock is known as Big Ben. And, like Basil, you can actually go inside the clock part!

Unfortunately only United Kingdom residents can go inside Big Ben, and even then they have to pre-book it. It’s a seriously regulated area, but well, that’s probably fair considering its status and the danger inherent in a lot of moving cogs. But of course no such rules apply to talking mice! 

Of course we’ll never know precisely how Ancient Greece looked for certain, but we have a pretty good idea due to the amount of ruins that still remain. One of these is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which features in the movie. When Hercules makes his way there, he finds his father Zeus in the form of a massive statue.

In real life there were two huge statues in that temple, one of Zeus and one of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. But they’re long gone now, and sadly so is most of the building. All that remains are some marble columns, one of which fell down a century ago. But it’s still very much worth a visit if Greek mythology interests you.

During the making of The Lion King Disney’s animators headed to Kenya to observe their main animal characters in their natural habitat. They visited a section of the Great Rift Valley called Hell’s Gate. It’s named that because of the geothermal activity there; it’s not hell-like at all – the exact opposite in fact.

This beautiful part of the world is home to plenty of the animals you saw in The Lion King. Don’t expect to see plentiful prides of lions inside the actual Hell’s Gate park though – the King of the Jungle is rarely seen in this particular region. Still, at least this gives their usual meals of zebras, antelopes and so on the opportunity to thrive. It’s the circle of life after all.

Obviously Notre Dame itself is the main attraction of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, settings-wise. But the movie also features a lesser-known and much more spooky part of the city – well, it’s not even strictly in the city, it’s under it. These are the Catacombs of Paris and yep, they really are filled with human skulls.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the catacombs serve as a hiding place for the gypsies. They call it the Court of Miracles – a real name used in the Paris of that era. These days, the catacombs are just as creepy but no-one, luckily, has to live in them. Instead tourists queue for hours for a glimpse inside.

The creators of Moana used a whole country for their inspiration, namely Samoa. Even though they were creating a fictional island for a story taking place thousands of years in the past, they wanted the story to be true to Samoan culture. Especially since Dwayne Johnson, one of the stars of the movie, is actually the grandson of a Samoan High Chief.

The 2017 movie was a big boon to Samoan tourism by all accounts, with the Samoa Tourism Exchange even holding a Moana-themed closing ceremony that year. It’s still an absolutely stunning place to visit, every bit as beautiful as it looks in the movie. As Maui would say, you’re welcome.