Problems with the Pink Princess

Madison, Brookie and I were reading a bedtime story last night, as we always do. We were snuggled side-by-side like sardines in one of their twin beds, as we always are. Madison selected Sleeping Beauty for her story, as she always does. It is well known within our home that Aurora is Madison's favorite Disney princess by far and without question. We read Sleeping Beauty a lot. We also read a spin-off book about "the glade" where Aurora and the prince first met. We also read yet another book about the prince's horse. When Madison's kindergarten class goes to the library, she brings home still more books about Sleeping Beauty. It's a disease, I think. Maybe just a disorder.

Consequently, I've spent a bit of time over the months and years pondering Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty, including her predicament and its resolution.

The plot revolves around a curse pronounced upon a baby Aurora by a sorceress who, understandably so, was not invited to the birth celebration. It seems to me the bulk of the problem and the blame lies with the three benevolent faeries that devise the plan to protect Aurora during the 16 years until the curse reaches its statute of limitation. [Said curse stating that Aurora, at some point between the birth celebration and her 16th birthday, will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die as a result.] 

Aurora's dad, the king, immediately orders all spinning wheels in the kingdom destroyed. Makes sense. The faeries' plan is to hide Aurora inside of the hollowed out tree where they live, deep in the forest. The evil sorceress has a pet crow crony that can detect magic as it is performed, so the faeries vow not to use their magic during those 16 years, to prevent discovery of their whereabouts. Makes sense, too.

Everything goes well for 15 years and 364 days, then falls apart spectacularly. On that fateful day, which is the LAST POSSIBLE DAY that anything can go wrong, the wise faeries throw all caution to the wind and decide to do some magic, and, as luck would have it, the crow learns their location and tells his mistress. The faeries spill the beans to Aurora about everything and come out of hiding to journey back to the castle, still on the last possible day that things could run amok. Upon arriving safely at the castle, Aurora, a royal that has not been seen by her family for 16 years, is left completely unattended. No welcome by her parents. No ladies in waiting. No guards at the door. You know the outcome.

The faeries are, I believe, unjustifiably glorified within the Disney realm. Their plan was severely flawed from the start, but could have been perfected with one very simple modification.

What would have been the harm in allowing Aurora to believe her birthday was actually on the following day? Everyone could have gotten another good night's rest. The faeries could have sent Aurora out to pick berries AFTER she was already 16. They could have made their trek to the castle without fear. Surely the prince and Aurora's parents would have waited just one more day in order to insure her safety. 

Of course it all works out in the end, but why tempt fate?

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While we're on the subject, I also question some of the instruction given to Aurora by the faeries. Case in point - when she meets the (unbeknownst to her) prince in "the glade", Aurora refuses to give him her name. She tells him she shouldn't be talking to strangers. Then, the very next instant, she gives this person, who is only a few seconds less strange, her address and invites him over that evening to where she lives with three little old ladies. That's poor upbringing. 

Come to think of it, I think maybe a better solution from the very beginning would have been for the faerie Merryweather to bestow the gift of steel fingers upon the baby Aurora, thus negating any power once held by the sharp needle of a spinning wheel.

Princess Renaissance

We were at a barbeque recently where a little girl showed up in a Cinderella dress. I've long been fascinated with the gradual, yet sudden, emergence of the Disney Princesses as a leading brand within the Disney empire. Like an old, dilapidated heirloom furniture piece, Disney has been able to dust off, clean up, repair and reintroduce many of their princesses as modern and hip. In conjunction with that, they have developed new princesses of the same mold to join forces with their predecessors and create the now familiar Disney Princesses. It's Voltron for little girls - and we've got the backpacks, coloring books and pajamas to prove it. It's to the point that the movies and merchandise has no real theme or story other than the fact that they include two or more princesses on a given product. 

Snow White was the first. Then came Cinderella and Aurora. Each of them had to stand on their own. In modern times, the new lineup saw the addition of Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine. It was all about the movie, the message. "Someday my prince will come." "A dream is a wish your heart makes." (Uh oh!) Don't pretend to be someone you're not. Miracles cease to be miracles at midnight local time. Love conquers all. A kiss from a stranger can raise the dead. Wait until the day AFTER the expiration date on the evil sorceress' curse before coming out of hiding. 

Then, some genius recognized the assets Disney already had. They didn't need to, and probably couldn't (see Mulan, Pocahontas) keep churning out new heroins with each successive animated feature. By packaging the top six princesses together, making them friends of each other, aligning their historical time lines, ages, and locations so that they can all exist in our present day, Disney has created a all-star team for girls. In the process, the new princesses have given face lifts to the original princesses and, in turn, the originals have provided instant street cred to the new ones. We are judged by who are friends are. Well, Jasmine's friends are Cinderella and Aurora, so Jasmine must be of pretty high caliber herself. Snow White hangs out with Hot Belle, so she must be sophisticated and modern, too. I would argue that the original princesses have earned their almost mythological celebrity by withstanding the test of time, but were fairly simple characters in their films. The new princesses are much more complex, but relied on the reputations of their fore bearers to quickly vault them into rock-star status.

It all comes down to merchandising. There are a few extreme people that obsess over a particular subject. People that collect everything with a cat on it, or Star Wars. There's a commercial running right now about a Pittsburgh Steeler fan with a room in his house where everything is Steeler-branded, except the table lamp. In the Disney realm there are a few people that collect Mickey Mouse stuff and flaunt it. I think in most cases we would view those people as outliers - not the norm.

But in the case of the Disney Princesses, Disney has positioned the brand as mainstream. They've made it acceptable and actually normal for every girl to obsess. Every other girl at Disneyland has a princess dress on. Entire shops and restaurants are exclusively devoted to them. There are series of DVD based on their collective star power. The nightly parade is designed around their popularity. New attractions, shows, and ice-capades are based on their joint stardom. There is even a closed circuit television channel at the resorts that runs all-princesses, all the time programming. There is also a "Dream Suite" contest where someone can win a night's stay inside a princess castle-like hotel suite inside of Disneyland (It is located directly above Pirates of the Caribbean.)

At our house we've got board games, toys, DVDs, storybooks, clothes, hats, shoes, pajamas, pillows, stickers, coloring books, chairs, jackets, jewelery, dolls, costumes, crowns, and wands, all with "Disney" and "Princess" marked somewhere on them. I'd really like to think that my girls aren't as odd as some of the other obsessive aggregators of themed items. Maybe they are and we're facilitating that behavior. 

At lease we already know and accept that we are suckers. We decided early on that we would allow this obsession as long as the girls were only cuckoo for one thing. We don't have Barbie or Care Bears or My Little Pony. We're exactly the kind of people Disney is looking for - chasing look-a-likes all over Disneyland for their signature instead of riding rides, paying Ariel's Grotto prices for lunch, watching the princess channel every waking hour even though it repeated the same 10 minute program all day long, and spending an entire half day standing in line at the Princess Faire all for the right to shop at the Princess Store.

Mickey Mouse Hats

We knew before we arrived that we wanted to do something fun as a family to mark our vacation. We had noticed previously, and on this trip, that some families all had matching hats or custom t-shirts made for their group. We decided we would all get mouse ear hats.

The problem is, a mouse ear hat is not the kind of hat that can be worn outside of Disneyland. It is basically a one-time-use product - like a $15.00 yogurt cup - except that afterwards you've got figure out what to do with it. It cost too much to throw it away. Five mouse ear hats take up a lot of space on the bookcase. We're probably not smart enough to take them with us on our next trip to Disneyland. Or too proud.

Brooklyn and Madison chose matching Princess mouse ear hats, which is just as well. They always want what the other one has, so by getting the same thing, there is little incentive to covet. I wanted a Captain Jack Sparrow hat, but it failed the ears requirement, so I found the manliest ear hat I could fine, a white one with embroidered character signatures all over it. Karsten chose the classic, standard issue Mickey Mouse hat. Sara's was the best. She got a Pirate Princess hat, complete with a silky bandana. I'm not kidding, it looks great. I think she should wear it more often.

Djeryd, Erik and Anna also got hats. Anna got a Minnie Mouse hat (correct me if I'm wrong, My) and Erik got a baseball hat with included sunglasses. This was also the day Djeryd was first smitten by and mind-melded with - you guessed it - the skunk hat.

We posed for pictures in front of the castle. 

Then we tried to figure out how to get them home without crushing them.

Too Late To Bed, Too Early To Rise

We started before sunrise. Had to make our reservation at Goofy's Kitchen for 7:00 AM because the only other option was 11:00 AM on Tuesday, which would have cut into playtime severely. Two surprises: Brookie and Anna are considered infants and therefore ate for free, and my AAA membership scored a significant discount for both families. We didn't even have to ask for either - just told them how many adults and the ages of the kids and they asked if we had AAA. This is the goofiest buffet-style dining I'm aware of. Part of your complete breakfast includes hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly pizza, cupcakes and ice cream sundaes. Oh, and Gummy Worms. Then the parade of characters begins. Brookie got Pluto, Chef Goofy, Baloo, Chip, Dale and Alice to sign her autograph book and we made the kids pose for pictures with all of them. Pre-princess Belle (blue Mormon dress, not yellow gown) was there also but she never made it to our table while we were there.



My and Sean went swimming prior to meeting Timmy by the dog kennels at 11:00 to gain park entry. We headed out to cross off one more item from our long list of everything princess: the Princess Faire, where little princesses and knights can meet their favorite princesses, learn to wave like a princess, learn to bow like a prince and curtsy like a princess, learn to dance at a ball should they ever attend one, and shop at the princesses' own store and beauty salon. Brookie added Mulan to her collection. Ariel, Aurora and Hot Belle (yellow gown) were there as well, but they were yesterday's news. It turns out some of the princesses are available outside of Ariel's Grotto. But I'll say this: we waited about three or four times longer in that line than we have for any other so far. Longer than Space Mountain. Longer than Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. Longer than Autopia or Grizzly River Run. Ariel's Grotto was worth the expense compared to waiting in that line, considering we got to eat and sit down. I hope a huge promotion went to the guy that figured out how to exploit the princess characters at the expense of parents of little girls (see future post about the Disney princess revival).



We stopped for ice cream on Main Street USA in the early afternoon. We're being told that the temperature only reached 82 degrees, but it felt like 102. The ice cream cooled most of us down, Erik being the exception as the ice cream merely turned him into human fly paper. The "infants" were getting cranky so I reluctantly volunteered to watch over them back at the hotel while Sara, My and Sean went out with the three kids that didn't earn us breakfast savings to do some of the rides that I can't stomach, namely Space Mountain and Star Tours. They have added a bunch of lights to Space Mountain - like stars and a hyper-space-type feature - and those really mess with my eyes and brain. Before our non-Disney dinner we caught the Parade of Dreams.

Sara and Sean both recorded new personal bests in the mad dash. First Sara when she ran all the way back to our room to get our park passes after bringing the babies back for naps. The passes were in my pocket. Then Sean when we walked all the way to our cars in the self-parking lot after the parade before realizing that neither of us had our car keys with us. Upon returning from Kris and Vicki's Sunday night we had both stored them safely away so as not to lose them in the parks during the week ahead. Sean owed me big-time for being able to use my AAA discount, so we gave him our room key and he ran for two.

As we were approaching the cars to go to dinner, this time with keys, Brookie turned and waved, "See you tomorrow, Disneyland."

Magical Meals

There is a restaurant on a fake wharf alongside a man-made lake in California Adventure by the name of Ariel's Grotto. Yes, it is a Little Mermaid-themed restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's expensive as kid-friendly restaurants go; $32 per adult and $18 per child (infants are free). Adults choose from one of six entrees, children from three. Everyone shares an appetizer spread consisting of a small salad, a variety of vegetables and cheeses, breads and Jello laced with shredded fruits. A dessert sampler platter of eight or so different items completes the meal. Soft drinks are included in the price, though apparently the kids' lemonade is not ($6.50 each!!!). The food is far from ordinary and probably on par with many upper-echelon restaurants. But nobody pays for the food.

At Ariel's Grotto, diners, especially little princesses, are treated to personal visits from each of the five major Disney princess icons: Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Aurora and Snow White. The princesses enter the dining room and talk to the people at each table. They sign autograph books and pose for pictures with whoever wants one. $32 and $18 is the price to see all of those princesses - not just in one location but exclusively, as far as we can tell; they are not available anywhere else in either park except in the parades. The food is just a footnote. I, however, am of the opinion that the beef tri-tip I ordered, in conjunction with the appetizers and chocolate-laden dessert offering (and free pop w/ refills), was well worth my $32. It was the $18 for the girls' macaroni and cheese that left me questioning my judgement - at least until I saw our girls' faces as their favorite princesses spent time with them.



That was lunch!

For dinner Aunt Kathy had arranged a mini Locken family reunion at Kris and Vicki's house. Aunt Vicki, with only a tiny bit of help I'm told, prepared an enormous barbecue for our enjoyment with every imaginable food item present. It would have fed 50 people easily. The only people missing were Uncle Larry, Kiffy and his wife, and Todd who is on his mission. Even Aunt Vicki's parents, the Stevensons, were there and spent quite a bit of time talking with Sara in particular. Djeryd and Erik had a great time playing some sort of trampoline dodge ball with Brian's girls and Kris' boys. Erik, justifiably declared himself "the best". Madison found a huge stockpile of Barbie stuff and spread out all over the living room floor. Anna adhered herself to cousin Emily. Brooklyn was the rover, wandering around from person to person, doling out instruction and filling the air with nonsense. For his part, Karsten was the only one of the six that would let Uncle Kris near him.



After a few very satisfying hours, Brooklyn made her rounds and informed everyone that she was tired and was "going hotel" (as opposed to going home) to take a nap. And so we did.

Tomorrow will mark the beginning of our full-scale assault on the Disney properties of Southern California.