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Castle Couture A few months
ago, a shop in Fantasyland was boarded up while repairs were undertaken, and
recently, Castle Couture has emerged from behind the walls. This shop,
dedicated to the princess garb and gear so desperately needed by multitudes
of young visitors (and not all of them girls, I have to declare), sports
fancy new cabinets and shelving units, and I have to admit that I'm a fan of
the attention to detail.
They created space for the desired dress,
and I appreciate that.
It would have been all too easy to slap in non-descript paint and molding
around the room, but they opted for a more opulent, refined, princess-y feel
to the space, and it shows. Presumably, they will harvest greater sales as a
result of the increased theming, so it's not like their intentions were
entirely altruistic, but it's hard to argue with a fully-realized thematic
vision.
Despite my inner cynic, I applaud this change. But is that roofline just
not finished yet?
The roof to the left here is "unfinished."
Pin Trading Update
I've used this space in the past to detail my learning curve with the
world of pin trading, one I only reluctantly entered (not quite "kicking and
screaming," but you get the idea). We've covered such things as the proper
etiquette to asking about pins, mystery pins that are turned around
backward, CM-exclusive pins that have hidden Mickeys on them, to detailing
what it's like the first time another guest comes and tries to trade with
you. In the spirit of disclosure, I have more first-time occurrences to
share with you.
I may have mentioned that I've started to zero in on "something to
collect." You could just trade for the sake of trading, or trade for the
character you like. I loaned my lanyard and several non-critical pins to my
wife's aunt, who visited us in November for her first trip to Orlando, and
she just delighted in trading for Tinker Bell pins. I ended up letting her
keep the lanyard and the pins she got, figuring I could get new ones, but
her memories were hard to replace.
In any event, I've started to collect Disney Cruise Line (DCL) pins,
about as much proof as I can muster that my initial trials with DCL were
hiccups, not roadblocks, in my enjoyment of the cruise (I've been back about
three times since). What I like about DCL pins is that they are relative
rare--I don't see them on every CMs lanyard, and thus it has the zing of
discovery when I stumble across one. I feel like I must get it (which, I
suppose, is the lure of this entire enterprise to begin with).
My lanyard isn't yet full of DCL, and I round out the rest of my
collection with items from Disney park attractions. I'm not a fan of Disney
studio characters (including the Fab Five, which are all over these pins),
so I choose pins instead which show what I call "Imagineering characters,"
ones invented for the parks. I've got Ezra from the Haunted Mansion, and the
five-legged goat from Mary Blair's mural in the Contemporary. Nothing says
"geek" like the five-legged goat.
And speaking of collecting, I've become a bit protective of my DCL pins, so
when other Guests approach me for trading, I have to explain that only three
or four pins on my lanyard are really up for grabs. It's enough to make me
consider a new strategy. On some days, I've left my lanyard in the car, and
only brought along a pin for trading in my pocket, should an important pin
make an appearance on a CM (I scored a DCL bus just yesterday via this very
method).
That avoids messy confrontations with other pin traders, but I can't help
feeling I've crossed a line somewhere, and turned into something I wasn't at
the start of this adventure. All three pin traders in my family have now
maxed out the space on our lanyards. Should we buy a second lanyard? (we see
people wearing these sometimes). A vest? A hat or jacket to affix the pins?
This wasn't supposed to be about hoarding. Perhaps I should re-label this
column as some kind of descent into madness.
But I was talking about other "first time" experiences with pins. This
weekend, I got to see my wife take a sudden perpendicular detour from our
route through Innoventions as she spotted a pin from afar. Apparently, when
you start to collect pin sets, you learn the general outline of your pin and
can recognize it at a distance. She has been partial lately to the Year of a
Million Dreams pins, which have a drum-like shape perceptible from some feet
away. This discussion led to a realization I should have had long ago: they
sell entire pin sets (as "starter sets") at the Pin Central shops in each
park. Duh. I feel dumb.
A starter set.
Although there is no conclusive proof of it, we've had our first
boomerang pin. This is one which we trade early in the day, only to find it
somewhere else in the park later that same day. My wife traded away a
semi-precious pin to another Guest (a young one, without much likelihood of
knowing what is harder to find), only to find that pin later that day in the
same park on a Cast Member, despite not seeing it for months previously. It
could be coincidence, I grant you, but it seems more likely that we've had
our first boomerang.
I've noticed new lanyards for the Guests buying in for the first time.
They look softer (the old ones scratch on your neck sometimes), but they
also look thinner, almost flimsy. Would those new ones show the old pin
holes worse than the old ones? It looks like it.
No discussion of lanyards would be complete without mentioning the other
find we've made recently: there are kids-only lanyards. Most CMs sport a
lanyard that is blue in color, but the green ones are ostensibly for trade
with kids (under 12, I think?) only. A neat idea, but one which most Guests
probably don't know. They have balance "fun" with "too many rules" here, so
it's no surprise that most CMs will trade with adults too, even if they are
wearing the green lanyards. It really is amazing how little of this
subculture I knew from the outside.
And since we're on the subject of my ignorance, can someone please point
me to a place where I can buy some "locking backs" for my permanent pins?
The Mickey-shaped rubber backs are better than the metal "lapel pin" clasps,
but they still fail from time to time. I've heard mention of "locking
backs", but have no idea what they look like or where to buy them. Help,
someone!
More new discoveries: over at the Fantasia shop in the Contemporary, we
ran across a CM who had an entire cork board (and I mean a big one) full of
pins for trading, permanently located at her cash register. This was mind-blowingly
overwhelming for my five year old, who pored over the choices for a good 15
minutes (I could actually the see the argument against such a board for
reasons of CM efficiency). But it's a certainty that the visitor will find
something here of interest, since there are so many pins, and I
choose to see the positive in this encounter. Everyone came away happy, so
that counts as a positive guest experience in my book.
It only looks like a million pins.
We saw something similar, on a smaller scale, over in Epcot's Disney
Vacation Club (DVC) booth next to Canada a few weeks ago. The girl there had
her lanyard of pins of trading, but she also had a felt board of "personal
pins" (not Disney property, but hers) that she would show off, and possibly
trade for. With her Disney lanyard, she'd agree to any trade. But the
personal board was her stuff, and she was discriminating in her choices.
It toes the line, certainly, as to what ought to be allowed in park, in
costume, and on the clock. But this girl explained that her unique pins
brought all kinds of attention to the DVC booth, and she was asked by
management why she was able to "write so many tours" of the DVC presentation
recently, and her answer was that her personal set of pins drew folks in.
Once again, I sense a line being crossed here, but as always I have mixed
emotions about it. We got ourselves a great DCL Mediterranean crossing pin
from this exchange, and didn't get particularly badgered about attending a
DVC presentation in the process.
Bay Lake Tower continues to rise, but I
got no hard sell about DVC.
In fact, it occurs to me that many CMs at WDW engage in pin trading in
their spare time. Several have admitted as much to me, while expressing
admiration or jealousy about pin trading when on stage. I recall hearing
about college program CMs who spend as much money as they earn, right back
on the Disney product. I expect some of them do this via pin trading!
Lastly, we ran across coupons for free pins on December 24th at Epcot,
which were given out to everyone who paid for parking. Have they always done
this? It turns out the free pin was one for High School Musical (we'd seen
this pin many times over the recent months), and nothing special. But we
traded it away happily, and I imagine that Disney's loss per pin (a few
cents at most) was more than offset by new converts to the pin trading
lifestyle.
A brilliant stroke, if you ask me. They get rid of the old overstock (HSM
pins) and in the process, lure new converts to this lucrative enterprise. If
people leave happy (if a bit poorer), that's par for the course, isn't it? |
