Disney Dresses

Over the past couple of months a couple of dresses have been acquired (don't ask me how) and put on display throughout the store, and thankfully I've managed to get pictures of all of them to share with you guys!

Beauty and the Beast


A couple of days after Beauty and the Beast performed it's last Broadway show on July 29th (after a 13 year run), these dresses mysteriously appeared in the gallery. According to the little signs that were put up, each Belle dress has been different with every actress who played her, although the color scheme has always been the same. These 2 particular dresses were worn by Toni Braxton when she played Belle. The ballroom dress weighs over 50 pounds.

Even though it's pretty much common courtesy and common sense (especially since there are signs saying that these are authentic and signs that used to say "DO NOT TOUCH"), a lot of guests at the store go over the velvet ropes and touch the dresses, take pictures with them, and go behind them and put their heads on top of the manikins. That's why the ballroom dress is a little messed up. It irritates me like crazy. Thankfully these are no longer on display (everyone kept saying that by next year the dresses would have probably been destroyed from all of the rough handling). Good thing I got pictures when I did, because I had no idea that in the place of these would come...

Enchanted


Enchanted!!!! Sunday was host to the holiday overnight so when I went into work in the morning, I spotted these in the front display windows! I seriously did a double-take. I have absolutely no idea how we managed to get all of the key costumes. And I say all of them, I mean all of them. 5 costumes. Five.


I heard way back in the summer that the store was going to have a huge campaign for the release of Enchanted, but I had no idea we would actually get our hands on the original costumes. Thank god these are behind glass =P. I took these pictures this morning right before I went in for work. Sorry if the photos aren't so great; it was raining and because the store is on 5th avenue, you can see the traffic reflected in the glass.

Here are some really bad shots of the storefront so you have an idea on what the windows look like to the average pedestrian:


Gahhhhhh!! Stupid traffic. Hopefully the weather will be nicer later this week so I'll actually make an effort to get good pictures. From the right to left windows the costumes are: Prince Edward and Giselle, Giselle wedding, Giselle ballroom and Robert ballroom.

Oh yeah, Giselle's wedding dress also weighs over 50 pounds. It just doesn't look that ENORMOUS in the trailers, ya know? I can't imagine trying to get through Times Square night traffic in THAT. I wonder how often it got dirty from being dragged all over the streets....

Disney Autographs

It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for my lack of updates!

Anyway, this post is about my Disney-related autographs. No, I don't mean the characters at the parks... for some reason I never really got excited about those, even when I was little. I mean real people involved in the film's creation. Woot woot!

The first one that I got was from Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel. The Little Mermaid dominated close to myentire childhood so I had to basically pick my jaw off of the floor when I saw that she would be doing an autograph signing to promote the movie's Platinum Edition DVD release last year. I bought a lithograph the day before so I wouldn't have to waste time buying it the day of. Unfortunately I had a physics exam so I couldn't skip to go to the signing (all though if I knew I would wind up failing physics then I might have.. even though I did really well on that exam), so I wound up getting to the signing an hour after it had started (it was advertised to be from 12 to 2, and I got there at 1). To make a very long story short, after a LOT of begging with the store Cast Members and their manager, I got onto the line after they had cut it off.

This is absolutely one of my most prized possessions. I especially love it because she was writing "God bless! -Jodi Benson, Ariel" for everyone (that's what she wrote on my DVD cover). When it was my turn to go up to her I just stood there and said, "I just want to thank you so much for all of the work that you've done." She told me "Thank you so much, that means a lot to me." and on my lithograph wrote, "With love + God bless! -Jodi Benson, Ariel." To me that "With love" makes all the difference in the world.

Next story!

2 weeks ago in the gallery both of my managers and a whole bunch of other managers called us all over to the entrance of the Friendship Room (where the character meet and greets are) saying that they wanted to talk to us. We're standing there for at least half an hour and at first I was like "what did we do wrong?" and they were all laughing and having a grand ol' time doing nothing. After more waiting they decided to send me on my break, then as soon as I got my Swedish Fish out of the machine one guy from gallery comes and gets me and is like "they want you back now." So we all go in the Friendship Room and there's this elderly woman in a knitted hat talking friendly to the managers (and Snow White, who was there even though there was no meet and greet that day) and the 3 of us from gallery are just standing around like "okay..." It turns out that the elderly woman in the knitted hat was Marge Champion, the live action model for Snow White.

At first I was like "no way!" because Snow White is from 1937. Marge Champion filmed for the movie when she was 14 (makes sense, since Snow White is 14 in the film), making her 84 years old. I found out that she was at the store to sign some artwork for an event not related to us, but the managers thought that it would be nice to have an autograph signing session for a small group and figured, "well how about the gallery people?" because there are only 2 or 3 of us working at a time every day. So all of the managers and the 3 of us who just happened to be in the gallery at the time all got autographs from her (they even gave us lithos that normally cost $15). The rest of the store didn't even know that she was there! Talk about lucky.

Since working there I've found out that a lot of other people who I would have KILLED to meet were at the store in the past. Ming-Na Wen (speaking voice of Mulan) I would have camped out on the street to meet. And within the past year Kathryn Beaumont (voice of Wendy and Alice) and Margaret Kerry (live model for Tinkerbell) came together. Oh, and the actors for all 4 Pevensie children came for an autograph session to promote The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe's premier a couple of years ago.

If I'm ever lucky enough to stumble onto more events then I'll be sure to let you know!