Sleeping like Cinderella

One of the “Year of a Million Dreams” prizes Walt Disney World is giving is sleeping in Cinderella’s private suite in her castle in the middle of the park. The question everyone has, though, is what Cinderella’s private suite is like.

Of all the prizes Disney is giving away in its big, 15-month “Year of a Million Dreams” campaign, perhaps none is more tantalizing than a night in Cinderella Castle, the signature icon of the Magic Kingdom.

It’s also the one prize that seems to have most taxed Disney officials’ imaginations. What’s a fictional 17th-century French princess’s home like, anyway?

Is it haughty and opulent, or does Cinderella draw on her humble roots to mix luxury with down-home comfort? Is there food? Would a night in her room be boring? Does Cinderella have her own butler — pardon — her own comte du cierge? Is there a good view from her castle windows? Would Cinderella herself drop by for a visit?

Sou, visiting Magic Kingdom Monday with husband Tony, son Kyle, 4, and daughter Kayla, 2, loves the idea of staying in the castle. But she’s a mom. So she’s practical. “Do they have television? I mean, what is there to do up there, for kids?” she asked. “Especially overnight. That’s going to be a long night, you know.”

Of course, the reason nobody knows the answer to these question is, before this summer, there was no such suite …

The plan to give away stays in the Royal Suite of the Cinderella Castle provided a challenge: The suite never existed. There is a roughed-in living space halfway up the castle, which was once envisioned as the Disney family apartment. But it had never been finished.

So since the campaign was announced, planners have been trying to sort out the logistics of putting a family into a single, lonely hotel room in the middle of a closed theme park. And Disney’s designers are trying to create a royal suite worthy of a 17th-century princess living in a 21st-century fake castle.

And they’re having a ball doing so, insisted Disney Imagineer Stephen Silvestri, who’s overseeing much of the design. The project was dropped on Silvestri and his team without much warning in June.

Among the other questions faced: do they lock the family into the castle at night so they don’t wander around the closed park ..?

(via The Disney Blog)