The Fabulous Disney Babe
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We missed the Sam McKim lecture in the morning, and half of Tony Baxter's. Alice was still feeling a little punk, but understood that we'd be sitting through a lot of "boring talking". She got a credential, and got to choose her character: Jiminy Cricket, Mickey Mouse, or Minnie Mouse. She thought and thought. "I've got Jiminy, and Rebekah has Min-" "MINNIE!" she said.
We got to the Tim O'Day-Tony Baxter lecture just as Tony was discussing Disneyland Paris. "I want to go there!" Alice said after seeing the presentation. "Maybe next year." I said. Tony said later that it was the same lecture I'd heard him do before, but there was quite a bit there I hadn't heard before. He did include a shortened version of the story I tell about him on my tour, "How Tony Baxter Lost His Lunch at the Tiki Room."
The WDCC convention, I soon found out, is much more interactive and educational than the Disneyana one, as the attendance is smaller. It's intimate, and you get some truly incredible experiences. I'm not a WDCC collector, but, honestly, knowing what I know now about the convention, I'd happily pay to go every year. Why? I honestly can't think of any way that a Disney fan can learn so much and do so much. The weekend was packed with remember-it-for-a-lifetime experiences, and the schwag is incredible. At lunch, after unveiling Bruce Lau's incredibly detailed Gepetto's Workshop piece, they announced that the next one would be on the Disney Cruise Lines (they fooled me so bad, showing all of these scenes and music from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; I was ready for a Nautilus event! - When they said it would be on the Cruise, I said, "well, that's good too.")
After the announcement, they proceeded with an "un-auction". Everyone had been given a ticket upon coming in. The first prize announced was a crystal Sorcerer Mickey WDCC piece. They called my ticket number, and I took a look around my table, and heard the stories of the people there who had come from all over the country for this special experience. I hadn't paid to go, I was covering it. I had guilt. So, I went up, and, getting a hug from David that was worth the prize itself, announced that I wasn't eligible and to please draw again. A conventioneer won the piece and was extraordinarily happy.
A short time afterward, Alice's name was called for a 10th anniversary jacket. She went up, they put the gigantic jacket on her, she modeled it to oohs and aahs and then, the jacket dragging to her ankles, she made her way back to me. "You can have it, it's too big," she said. "If you give it back, I'll buy you any other jacket you want - one that fits." I promised her. "Okay!" she bounded back to the side of the stage, and the jacket was also awarded to a conventioneer who was very happy with it.
Alice's godmother was there and stopped me as I passed: "I'll buy her the jacket you promised her. How much is it?" "I don't know," I answered; "she hasn't picked one yet." I was proud of Alice; this part of the story concludes later - at Target yet. But first:
They kept handing out better and better prizes, valuable, then rare, then completely impossible-to-get WDCC pieces. "One of those will pay for your convention fees for five years," one of the men at my table noted. "You'd sell it?" I asked. "No, no, but it would be worth it, if you were gonna spend the money to buy it." He'd flown out from New York.
The last piece they gave away was the "started by a mouse" first piece, "Little April Shower", showing a cute little mouse from Bambi grabbing a dewdrop. The winner practically wept. A few of the last winners were overwhelmed and emotional. It was really cool to watch.
After lunch, we made our way to the painting class, and handed a green WDCC box with a sculpture inside. It was a bust of Mickey from the Mickey Mouse Club era. We found aprons with the event logo on each chair, and put them on inside out so as not to get paint on the front. Each pair of conventioneers shared five containers of paint and one container of water, and each of us had a model sheet, showing where Mickey should be painted (he was matte gray) in each color. The paints were direct from the ink and paint department, and were the same exact shades used in the Mickey Mouse Club cels. We were shown how to wet our brushes and paint in light layers rather than thick coats.
First, we painted the flesh, which was Salmon. Then we did the yellow shirt, and about this time Alice decided to strike out on her own and do some different color experiments with her Mickey bust. The white buttons and eyes were next, then the red bow, then the black ears and detailing. The eyes were the most difficult. My bust ended up looking like a passable Mickey bootleg and Alice's like an Eric Robison Mickey in 3D. Cool. I gave Alice mine and she gave me hers, which will grace my desk at work.
There was a signing afterward, and Bruce Lau and Patrick Romandy-Simmons were in the display area signing things. We took lots of pictures and oohed and aahed over the displays. Alice still hopes that they'll do a more on-model Jessie, but it turns out that her first WDCC piece was the one I painted instead. ("You get to sign the certificate!" Craig pointed out.)