Source Materials: Heraldry in Fantasyland (Part 2)

Welcome back! Last week, I corrected a trifecta of misconceptions about the heraldic design located just above the arch of Sleeping Beauty Castle, and went on to explore some of the other instances of medieval heraldry used for thematic and decorative purposes in Fantasyland. This week...the latter continues!

Source Materials: Heraldry in Fantasyland (Part 1)

It's inevitable: Take an interest in Disneyland trivia, and sooner or later (probably sooner), you're bound to come across this little tidbit:

Walt Disney's family crest is on the front of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

This factoid is impressive for its sheer density of misinformation—no fewer than three errors or partial errors in only twelve words! The falsehoods are corrected as follows:

1. The design in question is not a crest (though it includes one).

2. Designs of this type do not represent families per se, at least traditionally.
3. This particular design is probably not directly associated with Walt Disney's specific family at all.

Thus we enter the often murky but always fascinating world of European heraldry!

This is Halloween – The Case Against Haunted Mansion Holiday

Let's digress from Disneyland for a bit to talk about Christmas Creep. Even if you haven't encountered the term before, you're bound to be familiar with the phenomenon: the tendency for retailers to start stocking and advertising their Christmas items earlier and earlier in the year. Is it a new phenomenon, per se? Hard to say. The Peanuts had a gag about a Christmas sale in April as far back as 1974, but when I was a kid in the Eighties, people still rolled their eyes over the fact that tree displays went up the instant Thanksgiving was over.* Now, of course, we're shocked if any store waits that long. The standard is to flip straight from Halloween to Christmas, with poor Thanksgiving relegated to an end cap display.

This is understandable, of course. Both Halloween and Christmas are much bigger moneymaking opportunities than Thanksgiving. For Halloween, people like to buy costumes, elaborate decorations, and loads of candy. For Christmas, they buy elaborate decorations,** candy, occasional costumes, and gifts gifts gifts. Unless you're a supermarket or an airline, Thanksgiving just isn't that much of a boost for you...and if you are a supermarket or an airline, Christmas might still be bigger. On the consumer side of things, Thanksgiving isn't capital-F Fun the way Halloween and Christmas are, so most people are content to let it be eclipsed by its feuding calendrical neighbors.

Halloween itself wasn't always so prominent, of course. I think my generation was the one to decisively say “Screw you, adulthood, we'll keep dressing up if we want,” turning what had previously been thought of mainly as a children's romp day into an all-ages cultural phenomenon...and honestly? In light of Christmas Creep, it's a good thing we did. The prominence of Halloween gives us a stick with which to draw our line in the sand: “No, Wal-Mart, we are not shopping for Christmas yet; we are still celebrating Halloween.” And since it's become so easy to capitalize on Halloween itself, the retailers of America aren't too inclined to fight us on the matter. Don't be fooled by the appearance of fake pine garlands on the shelves in mid-October—those are just there so the transition can be made as quickly as possible once November 1 hits.

Now we can get back to Disneyland, which turns the whole thing upside-down by installing the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay in September.

Kidnap the Magic: Talk Like a Pirate of the Caribbean Day

September is here at last, bringing with it (hopefully) cooler weather, quieter households...and on the 19^th of the month, the most beloved holiday that never got its own section in a Hallmark store: International Talk Like a Pirate Day! It's not hard to see why this “holiday” took off the way it did—it asks so little of you. You don't have to buy anyone a gift or a card, or spend hours decorating your house, or sit through a long church service. All you have to do is alter your speech patterns in accordance with a well-known pop-cultural archetype.

But why stop there? Talking Like a (Hollywood) Pirate is fun and all, but maybe a little too easy. The name hasn't changed, but for many people, Talk Like a Pirate Day is also Dress Like a Pirate Day, Fly the Jolly Roger Like a Pirate Day, and Watch Pirate Movies* Day.

Even...perhaps...Throw a Pirate-Themed Party Day! And when it comes to pirate theming, nobody has more vivid mental images than devotees of Disney parks. This is probably because the original version of Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride, installed at Disneyland in 1967, is the best theme park attraction ever built. As an iconic fantasy depiction of piracy in the Age of Sail, it's second only to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. As a first-person experience, it's simply incomparable. It's got its own specific imagery, its own instantly recognizable soundtrack, its own unique smell. If you want your Talk Like a Pirate Day party to take its cues from the ride—and if you consider yourself a Disneyland fan, then you do, no two ways about it—then you have plenty of material to work with that will make your guests go “Hey...this is that ride!”

What you don't have a lot of is convenient shortcuts. Make no mistake—“Pirate” is one of the big themes in your average party store, and you can even find Pirates of the Caribbean branded items...but naturally it's all to do with the film franchise. Use it anyway if you like; these days Jack Sparrow is on the ride, after all. But if you really want to evoke the ride itself, Party City and its brethren will be of very little help. And nor will much of anything else in the retail arena. It's just that unique.

So what can you do?

You can do what brought us the marvels of Pirates of the Caribbean to begin with. You can Imagineer.

This isn't going to be like my other Disneyland party ideas, where I take you through all the major facets of party planning including ideas for food, games, and music. The food should be sumptuous, the games should revolve around treasure maps, and if you follow this blog but can't think of any music that reminds you of Pirates of the Caribbean, then there's simply no help for you. Rather, this post is going to highlight some specific things you can do to create a Pirates of the Caribbean-style atmosphere...be it for a party or any other reason!