Fun Find Friday
April 15, 2011
Location: Fantasyland, Magic
Kingdom (Extinct!)
Ahh, Tinker Bell! How we love
you! Funny thing is, the little pixie that we
have all come to know and love never would have
been as popular as she is today if it weren't
for some crazy turn of events.
Back in the 1950's Walt came up
with this crazy idea: build a theme park! Sure
that idea doesn't seem crazy at all, but back
then a theme park was unchartered territory.
Walt realized this could be a huge flop. Keeping
this in mind he decided the last thing he would
ever want to do is associate his big stars
(Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie, Pluto) with a
failure so he called in some recruits: Tinker
Bell and Jiminy Cricket.
Both of these characters had had
limited screen time so if they failed it would
be alright since they were very minor
characters. Luckily for us, Disneyland was a
huge success, but along with that success came a
new popularity for Jiminy Cricket, and more
importantly, Tinker Bell.
If you wanted to meet Tinker
Bell today it'd be fairly easy to find her. You
head over to Pixie Hollow and say hi to her and
(sigh) Rosetta. Ah Rosetta. Sorry, got
distracted for a second. Before the Tinker Bell
films and Pixie Hollow existed it was a tough
task trying to meet Tinker Bell. Sure you could
see her on Soarin', the American Adventure, or
the roof of World of Disney, but was there ever
a place you could truly meet this iconic
character?
Why yes, yes there was. There
used to be a store in Fantasyland called Tinker
Bell's Treasures and Imagineers came up with an
ingenious way to incorporated everyone's
favorite pixie into the store. There was a desk
with a drawer (similar to the one the Darling
children had in their bedroom) in the back of
the store and when you looked through the
keyhole you could see a light inside and the
drawer would start to shake!
Pretty cool, right? Well, when
the technology advanced, Imagineers stepped it
up to a brand new level where you could call
Tinker Bell with a bell and she would literally
appear behind the cash register!
It's amazing looking back at how
far Tinker Bell has come from a secondary
character that was used as a could be
forgettable character, to one of the most
popular characters in the Disney family!
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