Baby Wheels Stroller Rentals Orlando

Where Did She Go?

A lot of parents who are interested in booking a stroller rental at Disney World have a small girl (or two or even more) who are into the Disney Princesses. If this sounds like you, then you probably already know the names of the main (or official) Disney Princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Belle and Jasmine. It’s easy enough to find Cinderella – there’s no way that anyone visiting the Walt Disney World Resort can miss Cinderella’s castle with its tall turrets in the middle of the resort, marking the location of the Magic Kingdom attractions. But how do you go about finding Sleeping Beauty (also known to her fans as Aurora, as the person riding in the stroller rental at Disney World will probably be quick to tell you)?

Aurora, the main character of Sleeping Beauty, is the third of the older princesses. This is because after Walt Disney’s death, it took the Disney team quite some time to get around to making another fairy tale. Prior to the 1960s, they made Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The next fairy tale and the next princess didn’t come out until 1989 with The Little Mermaid. This means that there’s a gap of about thirty years between the older princesses and the younger ones. It’s interesting to speculate on the reasons for this big gap. Was it because of the death of Walt Disney? Was it something to do with the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s that saw some feminists frowning on the passive heroines of the old fairy tales? Was it because the Disney empire was focussing on developing the Walt Disney World Resort (it opened just after Walt Disney died) more fully?

Sleeping Beauty is a good film if you want to help introduce children to classical music, as a lot of the music in the film is based on the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name, although the Disney film version puts some words to one of the waltzes (it’s the one that Aurora and Prince Phillip dance to in the woods when they first meet). Incidentally, along these lines, one tip for parents planning on booking a stroller rental at Disney World to help small children to stay patient in long queues is to set up an MP3 player or similar for your children to listen to (better for those over toddler age who still need to ride in a stroller but are old enough to know that you don’t stick speaker ear pieces in your mouth and try biting them).

There are a couple of interesting and quirky things about the original film. The first quirky thing is that Prince Phillip is the first of the Disney princes to actually have a name – both Snow White and Cinderella’s men are just “The Prince” or “Prince Charming”. Sleeping Beauty’s prince, however, was given a name – and yes, it’s not a coincidence that he’s got the same name as the prince that had just married a real queen when the movie was made, the queen being Queen Elizabeth II of England. The second quirky thing about the film is that it used several ideas that were originally trialled for Snow White and for Cinderella but were discarded, namely the sequence where Maleficent captures the price and he later escapes with the help of the fairies (originally planned for Snow White), and the scene where the forest animals “dress up” as a prince to help Aurora learn how to dance (originally planned for Cinderella involving mice, mops and buckets). The film is also notable for the villainess, Maleficent, who is one of the most notable and memorable of all the Disney villains. It’s not every wicked fairy who can shapeshift into a fire-breathing dragon!

There are plans afoot to use modern technology to make a live action version of Sleeping Beauty, and it’s supposedly scheduled for release in 2014. Rumour (and more than rumour) has it that Angelina Jolie will be playing Maleficent (which lets Anjelica Huston off the hook – she’s played enough witches and villainesses), and the film plans on digging into some of the evil fairy’s past to find out what makes her become what she does. This film, hopefully, will generate extra interest in this particular Disney Princess. It won’t be called Sleeping Beauty – that belongs to the animated cartoon that you probably remember from your own childhood and only the animated cartoon – but is named after that iconic villainess instead.

So where in the Walt Disney World Resort can you find Sleeping Beauty? You can find one of the park actors (shhh – don’t tell the kids this) playing this role and she’ll wave to the small person in your stroller rental at Disney World. Keeping an eye out for her can be a good way of passing the time in a long queue. But Sleeping Beauty/Aurora isn’t as prominent at the Walt Disney World Resort as she is at some of the other Disney Theme parks – she’s certainly the big star of Disneyland Paris and “owns” the castle there. At the Walt Disney World Resort, the main place you’ll find her is the Disney Princess meet and greet facility in Fantasyland (of course) and in the souvenir shop, along with all the licensed Disney Princess gear. But, at least at the moment, there aren’t any rides or the like at Disney World with a Sleeping Beauty theme. At least not yet – the Fantasyland attractions are constantly being improved and changed (which is great for those who come back to Orlando year after year to take their children to Disney World several times). Who knows what will happen after the release of the live action movie?

One thing is certain, no matter what happens in the future after the live action film comes out: parents will still be taking their children to the Walt Disney World Resort, little girls will still love all of the Disney Princesses and we’ll still be providing stroller rental at Disney World at very competitive rates.