The Beauty and the Beast Music Box Is a Musical Memory Keeper

When my aunt and uncle took me with them to Disney World earlier this year, I knew that there would be one souvenir I would have to purchase, even if I didn’t get anything else. That was a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, which I would then wear around the parks in order to immerse myself in the experience as completely as possible. I got those ears on the first day, but after that, I found myself pretty overwhelmed by all of the merchandise for sale. How would someone as indecisive as me ever choose?

In the end, I mostly stuck with a few small goodies, and I bought the Belle music box both as a reminder of the trip and an attractive way to store mementos. This box is made of hard cardboard, but it feels more substantive than that. Until I did a little checking, I thought it was plastic or perhaps wood coated with shiny yellow paint. Despite being dressed in blue when we first see her, yellow is the color with which Belle is most readily associated. This shows her in her iconic ball gown twice on the outside of the box and once on the inside, and the box itself is yellow and features a delicate pattern of yellow roses.

For the most part, the outside is flat, but the top of the box is textured, and Belle , visible from about the waist up, stands with a red rose in her gloved hand. Near her is the name “Belle” scrawled in cursive, and it seems we are supposed to see this as her signature. She stands in the middle of a pale yellow heart, and her pose seems rather flirtatious; one side of the collar on her dress is falling down her shoulder as she tilts her head coquettishly. I prefer the head shot on the front, in which she rests her chin on her hand and seems to sigh happily.

On the front of the box is a brass clasp. Lift it up over the knob and open the box, and you will find a yellow interior and a tiny plastic Belle in her ball gown spinning gracefully in front of an oval mirror with brass trim. Three sides of the bottom of the inside of the box are pale yellow with printed hearts. The rest of the box is a brighter shade of yellow and has a slightly fuzzy texture. Assuming that you have turned the key in the back of the box, a tinkly version of Beauty and the Beast will play when you lift the lid. It will also play if you turned the key last time and put the lid down before it wound down again.

This music box is about five inches in all directions, a good size for a jewelry box. I’m sure that there are lots of young girls who use it for that purpose. As for me, I use it to keep trinkets of sentimental significance. I keep the box on my nightstand, so whenever I want to, I can reach over, turn the key and get a snippet of that iconic song. While I actually find the light-hearted Something There to be more romantic, in part because it is more personal, the movie’s title song is definitely the right choice for this music box, and it would make a great keepsake for anyone who loves that Disney masterpiece as much as I do.

Get Acquainted With the Ghosts of Disney World's Haunted Mansion

Earlier this year, I joined my aunt, uncle and cousin on a trip to Florida that included Universal and Disney World. We spent one full day and one evening in the Magic Kingdom, where I went into a bit of sensory overload at a place I’d wanted to visit all my life. There was too much to take in on even two trips, but one ride I definitely experienced to the fullest was the Haunted Mansion, which we rode three times – the first time because it was on the Must List, the second and third because the line was so short when we happened by and the ride was just so much fun.

Our first time around, there was a bit of a wait, partly because we opted to go the long way around in line, which allowed us to see more of the grounds. The spooky but comical statues erected outside the mansion itself are a lot of fun and present plenty of photo opportunities. I especially liked the ornate organ that we encountered about halfway through our wait. It was a leisurely walk, and we didn’t mind the wait because there was so much to see. On the other hand, it was nice to be able to get on the ride almost immediately by going the other route the second and third time.

The inside of the Mansion, like the movie it inspired, is creepy but in a purely fun way. I don’t think any guests but very young children are likely to find it truly frightening. The first portion of the ride is walk-through as guests are ushered into a large room with portraits on the walls, which expand as the ghostly narrator speaks. The paintings are comical, with each deceased person having a strong personality that comes across in two-dimensional form. The host’s voice is suitably spooky, and with the room changing and the lights turning off and on, I’m pretty sure I jumped a bit while I was standing there, and I know I grabbed onto my aunt’s hand when the room went pitch-dark, at least the first time.

It’s after this point that we loaded up into the buggies and got to the riding portion of the ride, which is full of intricate displays of ghosts engaged in all sorts of different activities. There are so many displays that it’s hard to see everything on the first go-round. Bibliophile that I am, I especially liked the ghostly library, and the ballroom where so many of the ghosts converge for some musical revelry is the most raucous part of the ride. Tombstones, candelabras and other eerie props help to set the mood. Parts of it put me in mind of my hometown park’s dark ride, the Whacky Shack, but the Haunted Mansion is much more sophisticated, and it is character-centric rather than relying mostly on loud noises and disorienting lighting effects. There’s a bit of twisting and turning, but nothing likely to cause much trouble for the sensitive rider. I’m prone to motion sickness, and I didn’t have any problems.

When my mom went to Disney World on a choir trip in the 1970s, this was one of the only rides she had a chance to go on, and she sang its praises. Having finally gotten a chance to ride it for myself, I have to agree that it’s top-notch, and the scary factor is outweighed by the fun factor. I went in March, and it felt like I was getting a foretaste of Halloween. I would imagine that the Haunted Mansion is particularly popular with guests at the park today, but no matter what time of year it is, this ghostly ride is grand and shouldn’t be missed.

It's a Small World But a Big Ride Fit For a Big Dream

If there is one ride that I have always associated most with the Disney parks in California and Florida, it would have to be it’s a small world (un-capitalized on purpose). I believe my introduction to the song that plays throughout the ride came in the form of a small toy television I received as a toddler. As I recall, I turned the knob and the music played, albeit only an instrumental, music box-ish version, and two-dimensional versions of images from the ride paraded before my eyes. I also had the book and record inspired by the ride, and I’m sure that was where I heard the song with lyrics included for the first time. It’s one of those songs that, once you’ve heard it, you never forget it, and just a snippet of it will be enough to lodge the song in your head for a week. Many people consider it one of the most annoying songs they’ve ever heard – The Lion King even slipped in a self-deprecating joke about it – but I’ve always liked it.

This past December, I saw The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, a documentary about perhaps the most legendary songwriting duo in Disney history, and a fair bit of the movie involved the creation of this attraction. I was moved to hear Richard Sherman discuss his reverence for the project and how he really saw the song as an anthem of peace and global understanding. Yes, the words are simple and the tune is maddeningly catchy, but really, isn’t this the sort of message that’s worth getting stuck in people’s minds? “There is just one moon / and one golden sun, / and a smile means friendship / to everyone. / Though the mountains divide / and the oceans are wide, / it’s a small world, after all.”

My mom went to Disney World once with a choir, and she only had enough free time to go on three rides while she was there. This was one of them. I tend to think of it like Hershey’s Chocolate World; if you’re going to go to Hersheypark, that is the one ride you absolutely must go on. (Of course, unlike it’s a small world, it’s outside the actual park entrance, so you can go on it without actually paying park admission…) When I went to the Magic Kingdom with my aunt, uncle and cousin last month, this was my one essential ride just as surely as the pair of Walt Disney World Mickey Mouse ears was my one essential souvenir.

We spent one full day and one evening at the Magic Kingdom. The first day, we waited quite a while to get on this iconic ride. I would estimate that we spent about an hour waiting in line, in part because we happened to hit it at what seemed to be the busiest point in the day. When we rode it the second day, we only had to wait about ten minutes. The line winds down toward the waterway, where a series of 24-passenger boats wait to take visitors on their leisurely trip through the world.

I’ve seen enough representations of the ride on film and in books to have a pretty solid idea of what to expect, and there was a definite air of familiarity about it as I slowly gazed around to admire the displays. However, my first time through, I couldn’t help thinking that it may be a small world, but it’s an awfully big ride. Every time I thought that we had come to the end of the attraction, we turned a corner and entered another room just as vibrant and joyous as the one before it.

The animatronic figures all look extremely similar in basic body and facial structure, which emphasizes the common ground we all share. Yet the costumes are completely distinct from each other, as are the props filling each section. Several prominent Disney artists, including Mary Blair, Marc and Alice Davis and Walt Disney himself, were involved in the design of the original attraction, which started out at the 1964 World’s Fair and then moved to Disneyland, and although it didn’t come first, the Disney World edition still feels like a labor of love. It’s a 15-minute cruise that is meant to encourage children and adults alike to see the beauty in other cultures and contemplate our similarities while celebrating our differences.

Nearly 500 animated figures fill the ride, including both human and animal dolls as well as a variety of toys and contraptions. Every room is bursting with activity. Hula dancers offer a welcome in grass skirts; Arabian children fly on magic carpets; leprechauns linger on golden harps. In each land, you can find children dancing and playing and taking to the land, sea or sky in a variety of whimsical vehicles. Creatures ranging from kangaroos to giraffes lurk nearby, adding more unique flavor to the countries that host them. And each time the boat takes you through a different part of the world, the language on the recording of the song changes, so you hear it in a variety of different tongues. The basic nature of the song makes it ideal for translation, and the words and melody are so memorable that you always know pretty much what they’re singing no matter how unfamiliar you are with the language at hand.

I understand that at Disneyland, it’s a small world now includes several prominent Disney characters mixed in with the characters specific to this ride, much like certain characters are scattered through Epcot’s International Village. While I’m not used to thinking of familiar Disney faces like Pinocchio and Peter Pan populating it’s a small world, I imagine that this new twist would add another layer of fun, as would the holiday version of the ride, which includes lights, decorations and festive music. In any incarnation, I can’t picture myself getting tired of this attraction. With so much to see in every room, I think I’d have to ride it several times before I even managed to catch everything that was happening, and I don’t see the wonder wearing off even then. This ride is a beautiful artistic feat and the representation of Disney’s dream of a future in which children all around the world could live in harmony, a dream that the Sherman Brothers shared when they wrote the song that is one of the most performed and recognized in the world.

“There’s so much that we share / that it’s time we’re aware / it’s a small world, after all.” Yes, indeed.

Embrace Your Inner Took By Braving the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

When I went to Florida recently with my aunt, uncle and cousin, one of the rides my aunt was most anxious to get me on was the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We hit this park toward the end of our trip, and a couple of its big attractions were closed. As we entered the park, she expressed disappointment that it looked as though the Tower of Terror was one of the rides not in operation at that time. I confess I felt slightly relieved at the thought that I might not have to brave the Tower of Terror after all. I’ve been trying to embrace my inner Took lately, but the same old Baggins keeps bubbling up to the surface. In other words, I have a pretty wimpy disposition. I wasn’t sure if I could handle this infamous ride.

But it wasn’t closed after all, and since this is the most lauded ride in the park, I knew I had to give it a try. As we were getting in line, a woman came up to us and randomly handed us a trio of Fast Passes for the 200-foot-tall Tower of Terror, so we only spent about five or ten minutes in line, just enough time to catch a glimpse of some of the fancy props adorning the waiting area in this most unusual hotel. “It’s better that we don’t really have to wait,” Aunt Barb told me. “There’s less time to get nervous.”

She said that when she had ridden it before, the ride employees, all bedecked in snazzy bellhop uniforms, had gone out of their way to creep passengers out as much as possible beforehand. Our bellhops really didn’t have much to say, but Aunt Barb did a sufficient job of letting me know just how creepy the ride was. Plus there was the ever-present distant sound of screaming… Preceding the ride is a video in which Rod Serling introduces the curious circumstances of this hotel, which sets the stage well. As we approached the elevator where we would be getting our ominous tour of the hotel, we saw several families with young children. One parent exited the ride with her kids before getting on; another tried to convince them that it wouldn’t be so bad. It does strike me as a ride that’s best for older riders, though the personality of the child makes a difference.

The ride itself has a fairly small capacity, with several rows of seating and room for a few people on each bench. I sat between my aunt and cousin in the front row, and after buckling up and listening to a bit of ominous narration, my aunt and I clutched each other’s hands and held on for dear life. I can remember going to Cedar Point with my family and watching my dad and brother go on the drop tower ride at Cedar Point, which looked pretty terrifying to me. You can’t really see what’s going on inside of the Tower of Terror from the outside, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But with a name like Tower of Terror, I figured it had to be pretty scary.

The ride is very well done, definitely capturing the feel of a Twilight Zone episode as it slowly raises you and then drops you, giving you glimpses of the ghostly family said to be residing within the hotel before plunging you into darkness again. It’s quite disorienting, especially when you suddenly find yourself staring out at the park with bright sunshine streaming in after all the blackness of that elevator shaft and try to figure out how high up you are. There are several quick drops on the ride, and the first one startled me a fair bit, but by the time we got to the major one, I felt kind of used to it, and it barely freaked me out at all.

I’ve never really been on a ride like this one before, and my conclusion was that, for me at least, it sounded a lot scarier than it was. Not to say that it was disappointing; I was quite fine with not having a heart attack while I was on board. And when I’m nervous, I tend to be even more quiet than usual, which is something of a feat for me, but my aunt screamed enough for the both of us. We didn’t buy the photo they snapped of us on the way down, but it’s fun to sneak a peek at those on the way out. You see some pretty interesting expressions. The shop you enter after the ride ends also offers an array of other Tower of Terror souvenirs from t-shirts to pressed quarters, and the ride is clearly visible from several points in the park, so it’s easy to get a picture of it from a distance.

While I would never really call myself a thrill ride enthusiast, I seem to be finding that anxiety before the fact usually exceeds fear during the ride itself. Tower of Terror certainly delivers a thrill, but it’s not as chilling as I expected, and that’s okay by me. If I ever make it back, I’ll gladly ascend the elevator again.

Don't Let Skipper Dan Get You Down; Jungle Cruise Is Terrific!

A couple years ago, Weird Al Yankovic released a song entitled Skipper Dan about a disenchanted actor who believed he was on the path to theatrical greatness but took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up stuck as the skipper of a jungle cruise amusement park attraction. “I’m laughin’ at my own jokes, but I’m crying inside, ‘cause I’m workin’ on the jungle cruise ride,” he moans. It’s my favorite song on Al’s Internet Leaks EP, an endearingly melancholy little number, and the fact that this guy is an actor just makes his melodrama a little more understandable. He probably has an inflated sense of his talent, and in any case, he’s exaggerating his misfortune. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to be in his shoes. But I get it. He hasn’t won a plum role on Broadway, I haven’t written a hit song or the Great American Novel. I can relate.

I thought about Skipper Dan when I went to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on my recent trip to Florida because the first ride I went on in the park was the Jungle Cruise. It was also the last ride I went on. We had two very different guides each time we rode, and our first one seemed very much like a female version of Skipper Dan. I couldn’t tell if it was an act and she was going for deadpan humor, or if she hadn’t quite woken up yet, or if she was a sad shell of an aspiring starlet who felt she’d been condemned to a purgatory of cheesy puns on endless repeat. As much as everyone wants to visit Disney World, I would think that working there would be an absolute dream for most people. But maybe not… “Stay in school, kids,” both guides warned us as the ride wrapped up. How inspiring.

While I really couldn’t tell if our first guide was enjoying herself or not, our second skipper, an older guy who at first glance seemed a little crotchety, really seemed to be getting a kick out of his shtick once we got going. That made the second time around even more fun than the first even though we saw most of the jokes coming this time – or maybe partly because of it. Our first guide played it very detached, almost as though she were a recording, while the second was more interactive, and it made for a livelier experience. Both times, we scarcely had to wait to get on a boat, though I got the impression that lines were much longer around midday.

The Jungle Cruise is a very relaxing, enjoyable ride that’s just right to ease you into or out of a long day of ride-hopping. It has a retro feel to it, with all sorts of charming animatronics, most of which have a humorous edge to them. You’ve got elephants spraying water out of their trunks, a rhino getting uncomfortably close to an explorer’s posterior, a band of gorillas trashing a base camp… There’s not much danger of mistaking these creations for flesh-and-blood safari creatures, but the likenesses are still strong, and it’s fun to imagine that one of them might venture toward the boat at any moment. Additionally, because the boat moves so slowly, it’s easy to snap pictures while you’re out on the water, so go ahead and get your camera out.

When I was in high school, I volunteered at the Erie Zoo every October during ZooBoo, the nighttime Halloween event. My favorite of the many volunteer jobs was serving as the narrator for the train ride, which took visitors through the creepily decorated Safariland, which had a different theme each year. The one consistent thing about the spiel was that it was extremely corny, and after almost every ride, somebody would holler to me as he got off the train, “Hey, you could use a new script!” But I loved it, and I never got tired of making those punny wisecracks. Hence, riding the Jungle Cruise had a pleasantly familiar feel to it. Almost like coming home.

So Skipper Dan might not appreciate his job much, but it sure doesn’t seem like a bad gig to me. This leisurely trip through the jungle is one of the most sedate, family-friendly rides at Disney World, and as long as you approach it with the right attitude, it’s a tour to tickle the funny bones of young and old alike.