Happy 2022

Once again, the year got away from me, and we are now in another year of this crazy pandemic. This weird semi-normal world where things aren't quite back to normal, yet we are still masking and concerned about the new variants cropping up everyday. I personally have had COVID only once, right after Christmas, when my brothers and sister-in-law were alerted to an exposure after a family gathering. I mostly felt like I had a mild flu. Knock-on-wood, I've been thankfully very healthy otherwise, but busy with the years events; moving out of and selling my childhood home, moving as much as humanly possible to my new place in Boston, purchasing my first sewing machine, flying to Raleigh for a family wedding, losing my job on January 28th, among other adventures that have been slightly stunted by the current atmosphere of the planet.

Despite everything, I still managed to schedule some light in the distance with a rogue Disney World trip at the end of February for the Princess Half Marathon. Now those of you who know me personally, know that I am not an athlete. I'd rather spend my time exercising in a yoga, ballet, or pilates class. The one time I played a sport in high school was my senior year and I signed up for track. I initially signed up for shot-put, but after a week of feeble attempts, the coach moved me to sprints. I still fared fairly poorly at this; one of the meets I placed 6th to last in the whole division. Nonetheless, when I saw the 5K theme for the weekend was Cinderella, I found it my impetus to sign up and run. The RunDisney signups pretty quickly, but somewhere along the way, I also found that Give Kids the World also has race registrations and participants can run and raise money for the Village. At the time of this post, I have raised over $750 and am hoping to raise $1000 by the time I hit the pavement on February 25th.

Character Couture Makeover

So it has been a VERY LONG TIME since I last logged some time here, which is partially due to the whole pandemic that happened and shut down the entire world. Then a new job happened and finally the ability to move out of my childhood home. So this post I meant to type out several months after I came back from Disney World in January of 2020...but over a year and half later here it is. This post is mostly to record my feelings and experiences with Disney's realtively new Character Couture makeover at the Grand Floridian hotel in Walt Disney World. This is just my experience and others may vary, but due to the lack of non-sponsored blogs about this, I felt the need to share. Without much ado, this was a birthday gift to myself on my actual birthday in January 2020.

I booked this package for my actual birthday and spent a good amount of time planning down to the littlest detail. I had already planned that I wanted to be made up like Cinderella, my favorite princess, so I ordered custom printed fabric that was the same as that in the parks and made my dress (no, I don’t take commissions). I would have to say that I had very high expectations and ideas for this whole experience, which was a mistake. Go into this with an open mind and you may be more satisfied. Because my dress was a 1950s style, I was hoping for a hairstyle that was down or had curls, and over all much more sophisticated than what I received. a

To start my day, I had a reservation at the GF cafe, then walked over to the salon for my makeover. Upon arrival, I was the only one there for a makeover which was nice and I didn’t wait long. When I told the stylist what character I wanted and my plans for my hair, she hesitated and stated that when she does Cinderella, it’s a high bun. Always. I shared my ideas but she still fought me a bit because she said that something down wouldn’t hold in this heat and humidity. I ended up agreeing (somewhat disappointedly) and she started. She ended up pulling my hair into a high bun and wrapped it over a foam donut to give it volume, curled my ends, then artistically pinned my hair around the bun. To give me a more vintage look, she did wave the front pieces of hair and pinned that too. As an extra option, they do sell $5 tiaras and sparkly hairpieces to enhance your look. For Cinderella, they clearly usually do a tiara, but I felt that was too obvious. If I had planned properly, I would have made a matching headband to wear with my dress.

As another note, a tween and her mom came in after I had switched chairs and she also requested Cinderella and the stylist went about doing the exact same style as mine, although without the front waves. Kind of disappointing that this stylist didn’t really think outside the box for each client.

After my hair was finished, sprayed, and pixie dusted, I switched chairs to have my makeup done. I requested to have something Cinderella inspired but also somewhat natural. The makeup artist was happy oblige and started with some blue shadow on my lid and some darker brown shadows in my crease and under the brow which seemed like an odd choice for colors. I’m not someone who wears a lot of makeup or eyeshadow so I had her tone it down a bit so most of the shadow was on my lid. It wasn’t anything super spectacular, but it might have been better if I was okay with bolder options. Honestly, next time I’d skip the makeup part and do it myself.

Overall, I’d say the experience was okay. It was nice to feel pampered a bit and get extra dressed up, but I think I had extremely high expectations going into it which made me feel like it was a bit of a let down. If you aren’t super picky, you’ll probably have a better experience.

Despite all this, I did have a fantastic day at Magic Kingdom. I didn’t ride too many rides but nearly every cast member I met sprinkled some sort of pixie dust on me that day, from special desserts at each meal (even breakfast!!) to amazing interactions with characters (Goofy danced with me, Donald bowed like a prince, and the Fairy Godmother pulled out her magic wand). It was a fantastic birthday, despite the misgivings I had with the makeover.

#charactercouture #waltdisneyworld #grandfloridian #grandfloridianspaandsalon