seacastlexstech:

Photo courtesy of ‘little—creeper’ here on tumblr.

When the Blue Fairy turned Pinocchio into a real b—- err…a real girl, she let her keep her old head.

Here’s a good quality video of the transformation. The rock that Ariel is sitting on has two holes in the top; one is for the actor’s legs, and the other is the hole the transformed tail gets pulled through so it disappears from the stage. As you can see, the actor is already wearing the ‘transformed’ dress, and her legs are not actually inside the tail. The tail sits on the outside of the rock by itself, attached around her waist. The tail is actually a full skirt that fastens at the back. When the lights dim, it’s pulled under the stage through the second hole in the rock (the gap towards the front).

When King Triton ‘changes’ her, she gets pushed up by a mechanism inside the rock, and the tail is pulled off when the lights go down. It’s a very, very quick transition. You can see how it works pretty clearly in this video, where things don’t quite go as planned during the change.

More details on this would be appreciated.

The only mention I’ve ever seen of that is on hiddenmickeys.org, which is not the most reliable source — all it took (when the site was active) was for two people to agree on something for it to be “confirmed.” And even there, this particular rumor was never confirmed.

Back in 1996, someone anonymously submitted the following to that site:

Near the end of the Jungle Cruise there is a head hunter who is named “Trader Sam.” Well, as I’ve been told by a former Jungle Cruise cast member, the head hunter is actually as we may say, “anatomically correct!” Anyone know about this?

Nobody ever confirmed it, and even the submitter had only heard it from someone else (and we all know that telling jokes is kind of normal for a Jungle Cruise skipper).

I think we’ve got some skippers following this blog. Can any of you confirm/deny for your particular park? If you provide photographic evidence, we’ll put it under a Read More and maybe add a drum roll or something for the reveal.

We promise not to give away your identity — we don’t need you getting teased by your fellow skippers for peeking under Sam’s skirt.

(photo source)

Just be sure to ask Sam’s permission first — consent is sexy.

Submission- Backstage Photo

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. My guess (and this is only a guess) is that these were maybe piled up after a parade to be cleaned, but when I saw heads taken off after parades behind Main Street, they were laid out one by one on a plastic sheet (like what the piles of clothes behind the heads are on), not in a big pile. But then, at that point, there’s still one parade to go so maybe they have to be more organized. I’m thinking this is behind the park.

In case you aren’t as familiar, the first parade starts by It’s a Small World and ends at Main Street, where the floats park for a while backstage and performers get out of costume and take a break in the shorts/t-shirt that they wear underneath the costume, Then the second parade starts on Main Street and goes to It’s a Small World, and then the floats go back to the warehouse where they’re normally kept. And this doesn’t look like it’s anything behind Main Street, unless it’s at WDW.

Oh, and between parades, all of the costumes get hung up like the ones you can see in the background of the picture. The piles of clothes also lead me to believe that this is the end of the day for those outfits.

So while I’m thinking this is a warm-up/rehearsal area behind Toontown at the end of a day of performing or rehearsals, I’m really not sure.

[EDIT: We’ve heard from several people that this is from a character audition. Thank you for the updates!]