Disney on my mind

It’s not too long (10 more days!) until I’m allowed to walk on my own two feet again, but my days have been feeling even longer than before. I guess it doesn’t help that we’re now in daylight saving time. To the children’s (especially Catherine’s) delight, I’ve been catching up on animated movies and most recently Disney ones. I finally watched Frozen over the weekend and the kids watched it again after that. The weekend before that, Catherine and I watched Tangled. And thanks to Catherine, Mulan has also been in rotation over and over again the past month. With our recent Disney invasion and all this free time on my hands, I’ve not only had the songs Let It Go, I See The Light and Reflection constantly playing in my head but I’ve also had random thoughts about how much Disney has been a part of my life.

I have only just come to realise that I’m somewhat of a Disneyphile. I guess growing up in Southern California this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Like some friends with Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter (I’m a fan), etc, I do enjoy and aim to put on my list the latest Disney fairytale. I recall my first-ever favourite princess story was Sleeping Beauty which may have been because she is my mom’s namesake. I owned a second-hand vinyl record of the story which I remember playing over and over again. Then my best friend bought Cinderella and we would sing Bibbity Bobbity Boo and quote all the lines as we watched the movie for the umpteenth time. These movies were my first introduction to good and evil, romance and dreams.

I went to Disneyland for a couple of my birthdays and there would always be a trip there if a relative or friend was in town visiting. I remember being very disappointed once when I found out one of my aunts and uncles went there while I was at school. The Little Mermaid and Aladdin later became my favourite movies and soundtracks in high school. My high school choir even sang songs from The Little Mermaid, in our choir robes, as part of our repertoire. And high school graduation ended with Grad Night, a late night dance party with all the rides open at Disneyland for all Southern California high school graduates which went from 10pm – 2am . Best. Party. Ever. I even went on to work at Disney Consumer Products (Project Mushu) for a few years and worked with some great people and got a few perks like lunching at The Disney Studios and Disneyland and tickets to The Lion King Musical.

It didn’t end there. I had a collection of VHS Disney movies, which were sadly sold/given away at our garage sale before we moved to Australia. I also collected CDs of my favourite soundtracks which Nicholas and Catherine have inherited. Phil and I got married when I was still working at Disney and for our honeymoon we booked a Disney package which included 4-day passes to Walt Disney World and a 3-day Disney cruise to the Bahamas. My cheesy dreams came true!

I’m afraid I’ve passed on my love of Disney and fairytales to Catherine and a bit to Nicholas. We read Cinderella to Catherine every other night. I am secretly pleased that she enjoys watching Mulan. Now she’s into Tangled just because we recently borrowed it from the library. I’m very tempted to get the soundtrack for it. Frozen was from our DVD hire for the week, which was played a couple of times over the weekend. I didn’t enjoy Frozen (3 stars) as much as Tangled (4 stars). I usually love all the singing in these movies, but it started to bug me in Frozen and I didn’t find the story as interesting. Nicholas and I just had a Frozen conversation this morning which went like this:

Me: I didn’t really like Elsa. I think Princess Anna was a better character. She was stronger and wanted life to be better. Elsa just ran away.

N: Yeah, but Elsa was trying to protect everyone you know.

Nicholas is more of a Pixar/Disney fan and used to watch Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Up many times when he was Catherine’s age. I’m glad he doesn’t mind the musical Disney movies. It was such a pleasure taking him to see The Lion King musical in August – a great bonding moment for us.

So there you have it, Disney was/is my slight obsession. Now if only I can get those songs out of my head...