The tour is brilliant. Next time you're there, just take it.
I won't spoil most of it for you, I'll just tease you with a few items of interest I recall off the top of my head.
First of all, the original Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood was named such because its original proprietor was named McCarthy, and he basically anglicized his name into Carthay because he thought it sounded fancy.
This is why the street that lead to the theater is still today named McCarthy.
One relic of the original theater is still in place: the statue of the Prospector. You'll see numerous photos of this statue in the restaurant's foyer.
One delightfully morbid detail of the restaurant is the replica of the original fire curtain painting from the original theater. This painting has been replicated just over the stairway that leads to the main dining room. This painting depicts the Donner Party.
If you're not familiar with the reference, the joke here is that guests are lead upstairs to eat under a painting depicting one of history's most notable incidents of cannibalism.
If you take the tour you'll be able to visit the Hollywood Room, the only room in the restaurant that can be reserved outright, and for a deposit of $1,000. The room seats 10 to 12 comfortably, and if that many people are dining in one party then a thousand bucks is a very easy target to hit.
Somewhere in the upper level of the restaurant is a hidden replica of the wishing well from Snow White. Take the tour and you'll get to see it.
Back downstairs in the Lounge area, on the wall opposite the reservation desk, is the first unaltered photo that Disney has allowed the public to see in which Walt Disney is holding a cigarette. The image is of him walking through the doors of the Carthay Circle Theater, possibly during the premiere of Fantasia.
Walt Disney died of lung cancer in 1966 at the age of 65. If he had lived another decade millions of people would now be living in entire cities that he had designed. That is what "The Florida Project" was really about: Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow was meant to be a functioning town in which people would live and commute, its infrastructure made with efficient mass transit at its core - it was never meant to be just another theme park. But of course with Walt gone there was no one with the vision to see the project to its intended fruition, which is why EPCOT Center is just another ticket-taking venue built on a swamp.
Anyway, I strongly recommend taking the tour while it is still offered. Sooner or later someone in the musical chairs world of management will look at a schedule and say: "Now what's this - why are our hosts being scheduled for a 'tour' when the restaurant isn't even open?... History behind the building?... Context of Los Angeles as it thematically links with Buena Vista Street?! Does the tour at least deposit these suckers in a gift shop when it's over?... What do you MEAN there's no gift shop in the Carthay!? Get some goddamn Elsa dolls and Jack Skellington sweatshirts in there NOW before I toss you idiots in the street where you belong! And don't you start giving me that Malt Disney shit again! I went to business school! Did Malt Disney go to business school?! No, he didn't, so I don't want to hear that goddamn name again!"
