This week is National Princess Week!

Beloved Academy Award-winning actress, singer and best-selling children’s book author Julie Andrews, in collaboration with Target and The Walt Disney Company, introduces the first annual National Princess Week. During this enchanting weeklong event, taking place April 22-28, children across the country are invited to celebrate the sparkle and wonder of every princess—real, aspiring or imagined.

“Throughout my career as an actress and author, I’ve encouraged children to use their imaginations and dream big,” said Julie Andrews. “Joining Disney and Target to create National Princess Week is an extension of my work—a moment in time for children to celebrate their individuality and let their inner sparkle shine.”

Throughout National Princess Week, Target will showcase a variety of products designed to engage every princess, including:

• 10th Anniversary release of a very special two-movie collection featuring two modern-day fairy tales, The Princess Diaries and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, available for the first time ever on Blu-ray™.

• Target guests will also find Julie Andrews’ The Very Fairy Princess: Here Comes the Flower Girl! co-authored with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It is the latest publication in their critically acclaimed No. 1 New York Times best-selling “The Very Fairy Princess” children’s franchise. The book follows a little girl, Geraldine, through her adventures readying for her aunt’s wedding and the magic that happens when she helps others.

• Fans of Disney’s beloved princess characters will find an array of themed merchandise at Target stores and Target.com. Items include Blu-rays, books, toys, bedroom decor, games and more, inspired by Disney’s classic animated films, including Beauty and the Beast, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled, starting at just $5. Guests can view the full selection of products by visiting Target.com/Princess.

“Disney and Julie Andrews have inspired the imaginations of generations of children and families,” said Casey Carl, Target’s senior vice president. “We’re excited to bring that magic to Target guests everywhere and offer them an opportunity to create a princess experience through re-released Blu-rays, books, toys and other merchandise.”

Thanks lexxi42! (I’m assuming this was in response to my post about the stained glass window with the unidentifyable castle, lol). This is actually info about the new Princess Pavillion that will be coming to WDW’s Fantasyland with the new expansion. For more photos of the original Pavillion in DLP, where the photos of the stained glass windows in the previous post came from, visit Character Central. 

You’re right. In the first few scenes, here eyes are all black (no iris or pupil definition).

Then, in the scene where the faries tell her the truth about who she is, they have defined pupils and the irises seem to be a dark gray or even deep violet color.

And of course in the famous sceen where Prince Philip’s kiss awakens her, they are blue.

There could be several reasons for these changes. Some people theorize that the fact that her eyes were a different color was part of the faries’ plan to disguise her, or a part of the curse, and that they changed to blue because the spell was broken. This could work, although after that one scene they change back to the undefined black dots that they were in the begining. 

The most likely explanation has to do with the production schedule. Sleeping Beauty is tied with The Black Cauldlron for for being the Disney animated film with the longest production schedule. The film was in active production from 1951 through 1958, and the animation itself took 5 years to complete. Such was the attention to detail brought about by the widescreen process was that some of the character animators were only capable of producing one drawing of their characters a day (24 drawn images are needed to make up one second of movement on film). Animating the “Once Upon a Dream” sequence was particularly dificult, as Walt Disney rejected the initial 3 attempts, and ultimately had to be animated 4 times, almost bankrupting the studio in the process. More than likely, in the span of 5 years, the animators just plain forgot. The frames of the close up of Aurora waking up after the kiss are the most highly detailed in the film, and they probably thought that her eye details were extremely important for those frames, and figured that there were other more important things to focus on during the rest of the film. They were probably right in assuming that most of the people in the audience would never really notice (I never had, and it’s one of my favorite Disney movies!).

Ilene Woods beat exactly 309 girls for the part of Cinderella, after some demo recordings of her singing a few of the film’s songs were presented to Walt Disney. However, she had no idea she was auditioning for the part until Disney contacted her; she initially made the recordings at the request of a few friends who sent them to Disney without telling her. 

Walt Disney World announced a huge construction undertaking in 2009; the expansion of Fantasyland. Originally, the main part of the expansion was to include an interactive ”home” for each princess. Now rather than just waiting on line to get an autograph and a hug, guests could visit Aurora at her cottage in the woods and help with her birthday preperations, or see Cinderella at her step-mother’s chateau and help her dress for the ball. The expansion would also include Pixie Hollow, the home of Tinkerbell and all of her friends from the new movie franchise.

These ideas were scrapped, however, due to the negative reactions from families without little girls, who weren’t impressed with the princess-centric expansion, as well as families with little boys, who felt downright excluded. The plans were deemed by Disney to be too expensive for such limited appeal, and scaled back. Pixie Hollow is no longer in the plans, and now the princesses will gather in Princess Fairytale Hall for meet and greets.

Some princess themed plans are still in the works, however. Ariel will be getting a new ride, Journey of the Little Mermaid, housed in a replica of Prince Eric’s castle. Riders will board a clamshell shaped omni-mover, like the doom buggies on the Haunted Mansion, and ride through scenes from the movie. 

Snow White’s Scary Adventures will be replaced by The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, a new roller coaster ride featuring mine cart shaped ride vehicles that jostle up and down, replicating the bumpy ride of a real mine car.  The ride will feature music from the classic Disney film along with animated figures of Snow White and the Dwarfs.

The only princess to still be getting her own theme area is Belle, and for one main reason - her part of the expansion plans involved two more food service locations, something the Magic Kingdom is lacking. Gaston’s tavern will be part of Belle’s village, along with the new Be Our Guest restaruant located inside a replica of the Beast’s Castle. The plans also contain Belle’s cottage, with a magic mirror portal to the Beast’s library, which contains a Belle and Lumiere meet and greet area.

In the opening scenes of Tangled you see baby Rapunzel in her crib staring up at a baby mobile. In a little bit of foreshadowing, you see several items hanging from the mobile that come into play later in the story, namely a chameleon (her pet Pascal), a rubber ducky (The Snuggly Duckling that Flynn takes her to), a cupid (also from the Snuggly Duckling), a horse (Maximus) and a blue bird (when she first leaves the tower). 

Ariel was quite deliberately made a redhead in order to distinguish her from Daryl Hannah’s character in Splash. 

The Little Mermaid was the first times since the 1950s that live actors and actresses were filmed for reference material for the animators. Sherri Stoner acted out Ariel’s key scenes.

Not all of Disney’s animators approved the use of live-action reference; Glen Keane, the co-supervising animator of Ariel said in an interview with the Orange County Register that one artist quit the project rather than work with live-action reference. 

In Enchanted, the troll that attacks Giselle in the begining wears a loincloth that consists of remnants of the Disney princesses’ dresses; Snow White’s rags, Belle’s village dress, Aurora’s peasant dress, and Cinderella’s maid outfit. Also, his earrings are the shells from Ariel’s bra