Oct 5, 2026 · 14 min · 7 segments
There's a tiny hidden house tucked at the base of a tree in Disneyland, built for a leprechaun who was never real. There's an empty enemy camp outside a starving city, packed with food nobody touched…
Are you familiar with the little man of Disneyland? When Disneyland opened in 1955, a little golden book story came out that same year called The Little Man of Disneyland.
It's about a leprechaun who lived in the orange grove trees that used to cover Anaheim.
And when he finds out Walt is turning his orange grove into a theme park, he strikes a deal so that he can stay and live inside the park.
And kids loved the book so much they started showing up at the park asking where the little man lived.
But Disney got flooded with enough requests that they eventually built a tiny hidden house inside the park just so kids had somewhere to look.
Now, that house got torn down during a renovation years later, but in 2015, it came back.
And if you know where to look, you can still find it tucked at the base of a tree in Adventureland right by the sign for Indiana Jones.
I love little details like that, the kind of thing that you'd walk right past a hundred times and never notice until somebody points it out to you.
He's a huge Disney fan, loves Halloween, loves The Nightmare Before Christmas, and so we planned the trip to be inside Disneyland on Halloween.
I wanted his first time in the park to be everything that he had built it up to be in his head.
I knew Chris loved the classic Disney movies, and so I made sure his very first steps into the park were straight into Fantasyland.
We walked down Main Street USA through Sleeping Beauty's castle, then made our way to the Alice in Wonderland ride since Alice was his favorite.
While we waited in line, I pointed out the big yellow mushroom near the entrance.
Back then, getting into Disneyland only cost you a small entry fee, but riding the actual rides meant buying a separate book of tickets.
You'd tear a ticket out and hand it to an attendant at whatever ride you wanted to go on.
That was the first fun fact I gave Chris that week, and it was nowhere close to the last.
I showed him the hand-painted light bulb above Coke Corner, half red and half white, there to balance out the pattern of colored bulbs strung along the shop's entrance.
Are you familiar with the little man of Disneyland? When Disneyland opened in 1955, a little golden book story came out that same year called The Little Man of Disneyland.
It's about a leprechaun who lived in the orange grove trees that used to cover Anaheim.
And when he finds out Walt is turning his orange grove into a theme park, he strikes a deal so that he can stay and live inside the park.
And kids loved the book so much they started showing up at the park asking where the little man lived.
But Disney got flooded with enough requests that they eventually built a tiny hidden house inside the park just so kids had somewhere to look.
Now, that house got torn down during a renovation years later, but in 2015, it came back.
And if you know where to look, you can still find it tucked at the base of a tree in Adventureland right by the sign for Indiana Jones.
I love little details like that, the kind of thing that you'd walk right past a hundred times and never notice until somebody points it out to you.
He's a huge Disney fan, loves Halloween, loves The Nightmare Before Christmas, and so we planned the trip to be inside Disneyland on Halloween.
I wanted his first time in the park to be everything that he had built it up to be in his head.
I knew Chris loved the classic Disney movies, and so I made sure his very first steps into the park were straight into Fantasyland.
We walked down Main Street USA through Sleeping Beauty's castle, then made our way to the Alice in Wonderland ride since Alice was his favorite.
While we waited in line, I pointed out the big yellow mushroom near the entrance.
Back then, getting into Disneyland only cost you a small entry fee, but riding the actual rides meant buying a separate book of tickets.
You'd tear a ticket out and hand it to an attendant at whatever ride you wanted to go on.
That was the first fun fact I gave Chris that week, and it was nowhere close to the last.
I showed him the hand-painted light bulb above Coke Corner, half red and half white, there to balance out the pattern of colored bulbs strung along the shop's entrance.
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