Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

You might feel lost in New York yourself if you try finding, say, Duncan's Toy Chest, the shop that serves as one of the focal points of Home Alone 2. Not only does the store not exist, the scenes for it were reportedly shot in Chicago. Nevertheless, this sequel to the megahit Home Alone features plenty of NYC settings as it follows almost exactly the blueprint of the original. Our young hero, Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) enters the City in one of the best possible manners—rumbling across the Queensboro Bridge—before setting off on a peripatetic ramble past Radio City Music Hall and the Empire Diner on down to Chinatown, where he picks up some fireworks at now-defunct Quong Yuen Shing & Co. (later known as 32 Mott Street General Store and now Good Fortune Gifts). Much of the movie centers around the Plaza Hotel, one the city's more hallowed accommodations. It's where our young hero is able to snag a large suite. (At Christmas time? Guess there were more rooms for the public available 20 years ago.) There he flummoxes the staff, who are all out to get him. Feel free to enter the hotel’s luxe lobby, which is featured in the film's antics, and the hotel's Palm Court and Rose Club are also worth exploration—especially for taking high tea and seeing live jazz, respectively. Central Park, where he meets and befriends the ‘bird lady’, also gets a lot of play, with shots of Bow Bridge and Wollman Rink. Kevin takes in some music at Carnegie Hall, or at least it's the exterior of Carnegie Hall; only by movie magic is he able to watch for free through a roof window. And if it’s holiday time, you'll want to wind up in a similarly teary moment at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, just like Kevin and his mom do.

Fun fact: Quong Yen Shing & Co., which closed shop in 2003, was originally established back in 1891.