New York Home Alone 2 Audio Walking Tour (Self-Guided)

A boy gets on the wrong plane at the airport and lands, all by himself, in New York City at Christmas. That's the setup of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, from 1992. Kevin McCallister checks into the Plaza Hotel on his father's credit card, sees the sights, and keeps bumping into a pair of burglars, Harry and Marv, who have escaped from prison and are now calling themselves the Sticky Bandits. He makes an unlikely friend in Central Park, foils a Christmas Eve robbery, and is finally found by his mother at the most famous Christmas tree in the world. This walk follows Kevin's New York south, from the heart of Central Park down to that tree, so it can end where the film does. Along the way you'll hear which scenes were really filmed here and which were quietly shot in Chicago or on a Hollywood backlot. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 3.1 kilometers, or just under two miles, from Bethesda Terrace to Rockefeller Center.

Before you set off

Allow about an hour, with roughly 45 minutes of easy, flat walking. To reach the start, take the B or C train to 72nd Street on Central Park West and walk about ten minutes east across the park to Bethesda Terrace. The walk ends at Rockefeller Center, beside the 47th-50th Streets station on the B, D, F and M lines. Midtown sidewalks get very crowded in December, especially around the tree in the evening, so keep a hand on your bag and your kids close. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree usually goes up in mid-November, is lit in late November or early December, and stays until mid-January; the rest of the year the final stop is still worth it, and you'll hear what to look for. Wollman Rink is open from October to April. Going inside the Plaza for tea at the Palm Court or into Carnegie Hall for a concert is a lovely add-on, but book ahead and check times before you go.

Bethesda Terrace

You're at Bethesda Terrace, the grand two-level terrace in the middle of Central Park. In front of you is the fountain, and on top of it stands the Angel of the Waters, by the sculptor Emma Stebbins, dedicated in 1873. Stebbins was the first woman to receive a public art commission in New York City. Behind you, down the stairs, is the arcade. The terrace was designed by Calvert Vaux, with carvings by his assistant, Jacob Wrey Mould. If you step into the arcade, look up. The ceiling holds nearly 16,000 Minton tiles from Stoke-on-Trent in England, restored between 2002 and 2007.

We're starting near the end of Kevin's adventure, with a flash-forward. It's Christmas Eve. Kevin has just foiled Harry and Marv's robbery, and now they're after him, chasing him all the way into Central Park. Somewhere near this fountain, Kevin does the smart thing. He ducks into a horse-drawn carriage and hides, and the two crooks go blundering past.

It doesn't end there. The chase goes deeper into the park, and Kevin is saved by the friend he made earlier in the story, a homeless woman known as the Pigeon Lady. We'll meet her properly at the next stop, because that's where Kevin met her too.

A little honesty to start as we mean to go on. Part of the chase runs from Uncle Rob's brownstone, and the front of that house was a facade on Universal's backlot in Hollywood, mixed with real footage shot on West 95th Street. And parts of the park scenes themselves were recreated on a set. This fountain, though, is the real thing.

Now let's rewind and see how Kevin got here. Walk south down the Mall, the long tree-lined promenade, and keep heading south through the park toward the Pond and the stone bridge at its north end. About eleven minutes.

Gapstow Bridge

You're at Gapstow Bridge, the rustic stone bridge arching over the north end of the Pond. It was built in 1896, replacing an earlier bridge whose cast-iron details had deteriorated. Look south beyond the trees and you'll see the rooftops of Fifth Avenue, including the Plaza Hotel's. It's the same view the film uses.

This is where Kevin meets the Pigeon Lady. The Central Park Conservancy itself names this bridge for the scene. When Kevin first sees her, he's frightened of her. Once he gets to know her, she turns out to be one of the kindest people in the film. In a story about a boy whose family forgot him, she's the person who understands what it feels like to be forgotten.

Now turn around and look a little to the north. That's Wollman Rink, built over the northern tip of the Pond. It opened in 1950, paid for with funds from Kate Wollman. In the film, this is where Harry and Marv go skating while they plan their big job: robbing a toy store on Christmas Eve.

That toy store is Duncan's Toy Chest, and here's the biggest myth in the whole film. Duncan's isn't a real New York store, and it isn't FAO Schwarz, whatever you may have heard. It's invented. Its outside is the Rookery Building on South LaSalle Street in Chicago, and its glittering inside is the lobby of Chicago's Uptown Theatre. You could spend a whole day in Midtown looking for it, and you'd never find it.

Before any of that, though, Kevin needs a place to stay, and he has expensive taste. Follow the path south around the Pond and leave the park at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. The Plaza is right in front of you. About four minutes.

The Plaza Hotel

You're standing in front of the Plaza Hotel, looking up its front stairs. It opened on the 1st of October, 1907. In the film, this is where Kevin walks in on his own, with his father's credit card, and checks into a suite. The lobby, the check-in, and the outside of the hotel with its front stairs and the limo pickup were all filmed here at the real Plaza.

But not everything. Kevin's room is a puzzle. Sources disagree about where the suite was filmed, so we won't pretend to know. And the hotel pool where Kevin swims was really the pool at the Four Seasons in Chicago.

Then there's the cameo. When the film was made, the Plaza belonged to Donald Trump. He bought it in 1988 and sold it in 1995 at a loss, with the hotel facing bankruptcy. In the film, Kevin asks him for directions to the lobby in a corridor next to the Palm Court. The whole appearance lasts about seven seconds. How it got there depends on who you ask. The director, Chris Columbus, told Insider in 2020 that the crew paid the location fee and that Trump also made appearing in the film a condition. Columbus said test audiences cheered the moment, so he kept it, and he described Trump as having bullied his way in. In late 2023, Trump answered on Truth Social that the filmmakers had begged him to be in it. Columbus stood by his account in 2025. One more detail: in 2014, Canada's CBC trimmed the cameo when it bought the film, and the reason, according to fact-checkers, was running time.

Today the Plaza is partly private residences. Film-location researchers say the lobby where Kevin checks in became the residents' entrance in the 2005 to 2008 renovation, so you can't retrace his check-in exactly, though the hotel still has a public lobby. The Palm Court is still open for afternoon tea.

Kevin's stay doesn't last. When the hotel catches on to the boy with the credit card, he runs. And out on the street, he keeps running into the wrong people. Walk west along Central Park South to Sixth Avenue and the park entrance, where a general on a rearing horse stands guard. About four minutes.