A warning up front: this post has a lot of explanation about our costumes for the party and the reactions we got. Sorry for all the text! While I'm sharing these details because they're really fun, I'm also sharing them to brag on my mom for all her incredibly hard and talented work!
As a reminder, to help you keep track of the sequence of posts about this trip, use the column on the right-hand side of this blog called "Blog Archive" to read all the posts that detail this trip in order!
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We ate at a character meal called 1900 Park Fare before the Halloween party. We met Cinderella, Prince Charming, Drisella, Anastasia, and Lady Tremaine (Cinderella's stepsisters and stepmother). The latter three are pretty funny, making it a unique character experience. And the food was delicious!
I love Drisella's expression here. Since these characters have bad manners in the movie, they do at the character meal, too. Drisella walked up, grabbed Hannah's book, signed it, pulled her up, posed for the picture, and rushed off. No small talk, really, at all.
Don't Prince Charming and Hannah look engrossed in conversation?
He's pretty cute, though! :) I wonder how many offers he gets from grown women looking for a prince...
Lady Tremaine waltzed up, signed Hannah's autograph book, and said something to the effect of the following (in a very uppity but low, rushed tone): "Hello there, my dear. Have you been having a wonderful time riding carrousels and eating chocolates and going to royal balls? Now stand up straight, don't slouch, chin up dear, you're a credit to your mother's name." (It sounded like this, though: "Hellothere, mydear. Have you been havingawonderful time ridingcarrouselsandeatingchocolates andgoingtoroyalballs? Now standupstraight, don'tslouch, chinup dear, you're a credittoyourmother'sname.") Very funny!
Anastasia was very whiny and complaining that, had she known Cinderella was going to be there, she would have stayed home. At her age, Hannah was rather oblivious to these jokes, so all this humor was more for our sakes. :)
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Before I go on, I need to explain that we decided to dress in costume for this event. Hannah is very into Rapunzel from Tangled right now, and I thought we should try to match. Long story short, I decided we should go as two of the flying lanterns from one of the iconic scenes of that movie. It took a while to come up with the idea, but with some outside help, we opted to use foam to make the costume. Mom took the foam and then sewed the four pieces together with yarn to make a square, box-like shape. Then we used two colors of material, one yellow, which was the sewed on closest to the foam, and a shimmery, almost iridescent gold color on top of that. The purpose was to make the lanterns look they were glowing. We cut out the sunburst shape that the lanterns in the movie had and glued them to the costume with fabric glue. Last, I used fabric paint (a glittery purple) to paint the swirls onto all 4 sides. We used a still shot from the movie as our guide for how all the little details should look. It required long hours of manual labor, especially for Mom as she did the sewing, and my perfectionism had to be tamed when doing the painting by freehand, but they turned out really great, I think!
We didn't wear our costumes to dinner, so we had to go back to our hotel to change. As we walked back to the Magic Kingdom, we definitely got some odd looks from people leaving the party. I won't lie; we were feeling a little self-conscious by the looks we got. About halfway there, we got our first complement from a 20something guy who said, "Oh, lanterns! Cool - love those costumes." As soon as we got to the Magic Kingdom, though, and encountered the other guests who were dressed in costume, old and young alike, we felt better. One cast member thought we were ice cubes (and we felt pretty dumb when he made that guess), but that was the last weird comment we got.
For the rest of the party, and I do not exaggerate, we got about 50-60 compliments on our costumes! (I so wished our mom could have been there to enjoy how much people enjoyed our costumes.) We had guests stopping to ask if they could get a picture with us, and many asked where we had bought the costumes. That was a big compliment! We had many people - adults women AND men, as well as lots of cast members - tell us how much they loved our costumes, what a great idea they were, how unique and well-made they were, etc. Two 20something women saw us while waiting for fireworks and called a friend to come look at us - that made us laugh that we were an attraction ourselves that night! :) It was fun to dress up in a unique, creative way. Most of the credit goes to our mom, though, for all her very hard work!
Now, back to your regularly-scheduled photo tour of our night!
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Here's a shot of us in costume in front of Cinderella Castle.
Riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority with Karen.
As you can see, since our costumes were made out of foam, they bended as needed. We were able to ride all the rides we wanted with ease.
We can always count on Karen to be a goofball for the camera!
We posed for another group shot in front of Cinderella's carriage, which they only have out at the party.
The fireworks show has a Halloween twist with different lighting and fireworks than the typical show. It's a wonderful display!
At one point, fireworks are shot off in 180 degrees around you. Look at how much brighter that made the park, compared to the previous shot! It's very cool to be surrounded by fireworks and see how bright it makes the park for a few seconds!
There are lots of cute decorations around the park. I meant to get a picture of them during the day, but with time so pressed, I wasn't able to.
After the fireworks, we stayed for the Boo to You Halloween parade. Before the parade, a "headless" horseman rides by on a horse at a decent clip. It's amazing to see a huge horse riding so quickly through the middle of the park and see that the rider's head is very well disguised. (By the way, we wouldn't do things like this with Hannah outside of Disney; in spite of the pictures, the party is surprisingly NOT creepy.)
A couple of people in our party were pretty tired by now...
... and someone else was having fun posing for the camera!
Mickey seemed to look right at us and waved at us during the parade! Doesn't everyone hope for Mickey to look their way when at Disney World?
These men are "grave diggers" from The Haunted Mansion ride, and they do routines with their shovels throughout the parade. They dance, they drag them on the ground and make sparks, etc. - all in unison. It's pretty cool to see!
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Next up are the details and pictures of meeting Rapunzel and Flynn. This is already a long post, though, so I'll end here for now!
3 comments:
Oh my goodness...that night must have been so awesome! And I am very proud that the costumes turned out the way you wanted!
I think the picture of you guys with the pumpkins around is my favorite... although I always love the fireworks pictures. I'm so glad you had so many fun and excited responses about the costumes.
I was so anxious to see pictures of the costumes - NEAT! I'm glad you explained the details because the pictures didn't capture it, but with the details I was able to appreciate it more (and I ALWAYS appreciate hand made costumes - SO much work!)
My fav pictures/descriptions were of seeing the expressions and hearing the characters of Cinderella's stepsisters and stepmother:)
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