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Styling for Dapper Day

April 22, 2023 · Discuss on the GT Forum

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#32: Join cohosts Ariel and Stefanie on their journey for Dapper Day outfits. Immerse yourself in the world of Dapper Day at Disneyland as they explore everything from dressing tips and theme ideas to personal experiences and the pursuit of the perfect outfit pieces. Dive into discussions on vintage fashion, body acceptance, and privilege as they talk about stepping out in style.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Summary

HPOE32
Summary

  • What is Dapper Day? 0:10
    • Dapper Day at Disneyland.
    • Step out in style.
    • Disneyland Dapper Day Expo

  • Dressing for Dapper Day 5:23
    • Disney Bounding is when they use color blocking.
    • Choosing a theme.
    • The value of being complimented on Dapper Day.
    • Different elements of a Dapper Day outfit.
    • Think good and hard about footwear.

  • Ariel and Stef’s Dapper Days of the Past 8:42
    • Ariel bought socks to wear with her heels due to the pain of walking all day.
    • Different park preparation from 20-year-old years to 30-year-old years.
    • Flamingo-themed dress, floral-themed dress, tiki-themed dress, and Moana-themed dress.
    • Tips for where to take pictures in the park.
    • A short girl solution to short girl problems.
    • The many theme ideas for Dapper Day.

  • Ideas for Dapper Day 14:46
    • The Disney Dress Shop in Downtown Disneyland.
    • The difference between making costumes and curating an outfit.
    • Flexibility and intentionality are needed when deciding to go vintage or retro.
    • Embracing culture.
    • Filipino formal wear of The Barong Tagalog, The Terno, and The Maria Clara.

  • On A Mission for Dapper Day Outfit Pieces 22:26
    • Searching Amazon for Dapper Day themed outfit ideas.
    • On a mission for the perfect pair of white boots.
    • Trying to attain that perfect look, even when it hurts.
  • Ariel Does a Star Wars Disneybound for Spring Dapper Day 2023 30:09
    • The fine line between replica and upgraded outfit.
    • Wait, are they getting married?
  • Dress To Your Comfort Level 34:58
    • Acknowledging the element of privilege in participating in Dapper Day.
Accepting the changes to your body.
    • Stepping out or staying in your comfort zone.
    • Attending the Expo instead of the Park to enjoy Dapper Day.
    • Catch Stef and Ariel at San Diego Comic-Con for three different panels.

Transcription

Ariel Landrum 0:10
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Ariel. I’m a licensed therapist who uses my clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma.

Stefanie Bautista 0:20
And I’m Stef, I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:26
And Happiest Pod is where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Stefanie Bautista 0:32
Why do we do this? Because we’re more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums that we consume, especially from Disney. So Ariel, what Disney experience are we discussing today?

Ariel Landrum 0:42
We’re gonna talk about Dapper Day.

Stefanie Bautista 0:47
It has been a minute since we’ve talked about anything. And right before we started recording this, I was 100% shocked that we haven’t talked about tougher day before, because it’s one of our annual traditions, I guess biannual because it happens twice a year, right? Yeah. And it’s one of the things that me and Ariel love doing at the parks. It’s one of the things that brought us together as best friends. And so I’m just like, “Why haven’t we talked about this befire?”

Ariel Landrum 1:14
Exactly! Stef, what is Dapper Day?

Stefanie Bautista 1:17
So Dapper Day. And this is open to interpretation, right? Everybody who’s listening, I know you guys have probably heard seen, or maybe even had friends who participated in Dapper Day, it’s a chance for everybody to come dressed at the park in their best outfits. So as you all know, Disneyland opened in 1955. And in 1955, the fashion was completely different. Everybody was in dresses, men wearing in suits. Even little kids didn’t wear athletic wear. They basically wore really cute things to the park, it was as if they were going out to a special event.

Ariel Landrum 1:51
And the park was more like a park, right? The rides were not as extreme as they are now.

Stefanie Bautista 1:58
It was more like going to a park that had amusement rides, much like a carousel at Griffith Park or pony ride or something like that. So basically, Dapper Day is a way for retro enthusiast, fashion enthusiast, and Disney fashion enthusiast to come together. It dressed up and their best in the park and basically takes a million pictures. Because you when you’re dressed up to the nines like that you’re not really wanting to you know, mess up your hair on Splash Mountain RIP. But you want to just show out and step out and I think the official theme is ‘Step Out in Style,’ right? So that is basically Dapper Day. It happens twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. And since then it’s expanded to different events either at museums or local gardens and they also now have Dapper Day at Epcot in Disney World and they also have it in Disneyland Paris as well.

Ariel Landrum 2:50
So started by the fans and now when we say if is it is it actually officially recognized by Disney or is it like unofficially officially because I remember when you introduced me to it this was back in like 2017 I believe it was like unofficially recognized by Disney in that Mickey would come out and like his like best dress and like his dapper wear on that day. So it was like a nod that they knew was Dapper Day, but it wasn’t featured on their website. It wasn’t acknowledged in the sense that it was an event sponsored, covered or approved by Disney.

Stefanie Bautista 3:23
Right. So here’s the thing. They hold the Dapper Day Expo, which is basically like they’re Dapper Day at Comic Con, have you, in the Disneyland Hotel and they have all these vendors and they sell dapper where they still have they get they do your hair, they sell shoes, all the things that you need to make up an outfit. They have performances, all that stuff, everything that’s like very retro. And they hold that at the Disneyland Hotel and they sell merchandise that says Disneyland Dapper Day or Disney Parks Dapper Day. When I visited Epcot last year. They even had a booth that was in Epcot right in front of I think where the America section was, and that booth had Dapper Day merchandise although we don’t see it on the parks and tickets. It’s not a ticketed event. So it’s not like it would be on the website as a ticketed event like Oogie Boogie Bash would be I feel like it’s recognized by the parks but I don’t think it’s owned by the parks if that makes sense.

Ariel Landrum 4:17
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 4:18
Yeah, correct me if I’m wrong everyone but I thought these are just my observations.

Ariel Landrum 4:22
Yes. And I haven’t seen anything like on the website I feel like we follow enough Disney influencers that if it became like an officially recognized like announced thing by Disney, we would have seen it all over Instagram as like “Breaking news!”

Stefanie Bautista 4:39
And to be quite honest with you, I don’t feel like that’s necessary because it is such a casual, casual but you’re not looking casual event where people just come dressed to the park. It’s not like you have character meet and greets. You don’t have like special theme food like they’re not going to serve your hot dog from the 1950s. But they have been incorporating some of those elements into everyday Park life. For example, you find the retro popcorn bucket in different places at the park in California Adventure, they have performances by a swing band, and they have, you know, things that called back to that era, but not necessarily needing to section out the whole day in order to have the event because it is so casual.

Ariel Landrum 5:24
Yes. And when it comes to dapper, it’s really what you define as dapper. So some people will pick an era like the 1950s, or 1960s, or 1970s. Some people will do a Disneybound. I talked about this in episode before. But if you don’t remember Disneybounding is when you use colorblocking to denote that you are representing a Disney character without actually having a costume. And so we’ll see a lot of people were like very fancy dresses that are red and blue and wait and be there Snow White, and sometimes the theme is just whatever you want. So my first like Dapper Day that I did matching a partner was I was lemons. And that was that was the theme was I had this dress that I bought from Unique Vintage that I’d owned for like two and a half years that I never worn. So and it had lemons on it.

Stefanie Bautista 6:13
And it was a hit. It was a whole hit. How many compliments did you get? I couldn’t even remember, you got so many everybody loved lemons, and they loved just the way you and your partner coordinated. It was very cute and very summery. And I think it was the spring one. So it was very well put together. Bravo, bravo.

Ariel Landrum 6:34
Thank you. Thank you.

Stefanie Bautista 6:35
And another thing you always kind of know, and this is like a side note that you did a good job when people compliment you at the park.

Ariel Landrum 6:42
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 6:43
It gives you a sense of like that you’re like, “Oh, yes, I did it.” If somebody recognize you as a character if you’re Disneybounding. Or if they say, “Oh my gosh, I love your hair or your shoes,” or whatever. People talk to each other at the parks all the time. But when they give specific compliments like that, I think that’s what’s special about Dapper Day is because you know you made an effort and for people recognizing that effort, it brings that sense of community to the event.

Ariel Landrum 7:04
Even with the Disney Bounding this Dapper Day, we met up with our friend who is a psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Han and, and her husband, Benji Han, and they were Aladdin and Jasmine. And it was awesome, because all of the other crew that you would see in that movie. So we saw Jafar, we saw The Genie, they would run up to them and be like, “Can we take a picture with you?” And because they knew who you were, and you knew who they were.

Stefanie Bautista 7:32
Yeah. And shout out to Liz and Benji, they did such a great job on that Disneybound. Oh my gosh, perfect. And they look great throughout the day,

Ariel Landrum 7:40
Some people will just buy things and put things together. Some people will like go through their closet, Elizabeth, she dyed her gloves and like her scarf to match the specific color of Jasmine’s outfits. So go all out, go big. You know, keep it tiny, keep it close to your closet, whatever it is, ends up being just a lot of fun to step into Dapper Day.

Stefanie Bautista 8:01
Yeah, there’s different elements of putting your outfit together. And that is one of the parts of preparing for the parks that is a little bit different when it comes to Dapper Day. Of course, like as Ariel mentioned, it’s either you’re gonna go down the Disneybound route, or you’re just gonna go down the vintage route. Either one is fine. One of the lessons early on that both me and her found out was to really think good and hard about your footwear. Because if you’re planning to stay at the parks all day, if you don’t have the leisure of having a hotel nearby, you’re basically commuting over there and you’re gonna stay there the whole day until you feel like you’ve gotten the most out of your park day. But if you’re wearing heels, it will cut your day short as we have found out in the past, right?

Ariel Landrum 8:42
Yes, yes. I think this was the Dapper Day in 2018 maybe?

Stefanie Bautista 8:47
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 8:48
Oh, no wait, maybe it was 2016. Maybe we started going in 2016, not 17?

Stefanie Bautista 8:52
It was the first one that you and I have done together because I have done one before with my husband. But…

Ariel Landrum 8:57
He was deployed!

Stefanie Bautista 8:57
Yeah, he was deployed at the time. So I picked a very simple dress. I think it just had flowers on I did my hair. But you had a beautiful green dress on.

Ariel Landrum 9:05
Yeah teal green. And it had little flowers around the waist and had a parasol.

Yes, yes. And you also I think there was elements of tulle? Tulle?

Yes, yes, there’s tulle on top and I even had like a tulle, tiny hat. But we took it off after a while because it was it was getting in the way. And then I wore these heeled shoes with like buttons on them. And three hours into the day my feet were hurting, but we were just we just kept going. We just kept going and then by the time it hit like actual dark because we got there at 10 I believe my feet were bleeding basically. And we had no band aids and we ended up going to the Disney store and I bought Ariel the mermaid socks because I happen to be similar color theme. And they were tall socks. And it looked like I was wearing stockings. So it was fine and that like really helped with my feet for the rest of the evening. But man, I don’t know who I thought I was I don’t ever wear heels like ever. So the fact that I thought I could flouts around for again Disneyland!

Stefanie Bautista 10:08
I think they were like Mary Janes. So the heel was maybe no more than two inches I think?

Ariel Landrum 10:14
Yeah, they were short.

Stefanie Bautista 10:15
However the terrain of Disneyland is still concrete. It’s like wood, it is stone. It is not pillows. So if you don’t have like an insole, or if you don’t have an extra pair of flats or like slippers or something, which now in our 30s, we have because we were in our 20s. And again, who did we think we were? Because I had shoes, and I stuck it out. I don’t know how I did that. And not only does the clover anything.

Ariel Landrum 10:49
You did really good.

Stefanie Bautista 10:50
I did. But I remember having blisters, like really bad blisters. And of course, this was 2016 or whatever. I was much lighter. I was probably a little bit more fit. So I could hold my strength a little longer, but…

Ariel Landrum 11:03
Pre pre kiddos.

Stefanie Bautista 11:04
Pre kiddos, all of that stuff. Now. Even if I have sneakers, my feet are dying. But yeah, like I think that’s one of the learning lessons. And even though we went through that experience, I think it made us want to improve the next time because the next time do you remember what your outfit was?

Ariel Landrum 11:24
I believe this next outfit was flamingos. My theme was flamingos. And I had flamingos all over my dress and a flamingo purse. Yes, yes. I don’t remember the shoes at all. But I don’t remember any pain that year. So they must not have been they must have been flats. I think this is I think from the room after that all of my shoes have been flats with the exception of this year.

Stefanie Bautista 11:46
I think I did flats too. That was the one where I did a tiki theme.

Yes. And I shoved you in a bush.

Yes, she shoved me in a bush. She actually likes doing it. You do show me the bush the first time also, but you shoved me in another bush this time.

Ariel Landrum 11:58
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 11:59
And it’s always the same bush. It’s the one right outside the Tiki.

Ariel Landrum 12:02
Yes. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And this was before they expanded it with that outdoor eating area.

Stefanie Bautista 12:07
Yeah, yeah. So as we’re waiting for the Enchanted Tiki Room, which we always tend to do during Dapper Day. I don’t think we did that this past time. But yeah, like that bush is always like really good for pictures if you ever want to take really cool tropical pictures. That was a day that I think I wore flats too. And I think we came out on top that day.

Ariel Landrum 12:25
I even remember I had flip flops with me. So I remember because I can I can see in my mind’s eye now that they were these brown ones that I’ve gotten since rid of, but the dress was so long, you really couldn’t see my feet. It didn’t really matter what shoes I work.

Stefanie Bautista 12:38
You know what? That’s not Short Girl Problems. That’s Short Girl…

Ariel Landrum 12:42
Solutions!

Stefanie Bautista 12:43
Solutions! Exactly. Exactly.

Ariel Landrum 12:46
And your dress it was it was black. And it had floral theme, correct?

Stefanie Bautista 12:51
No, this one was actually the the other version of it. It was green and it had like tiki print on it. It was a skirt. And then I had a like cream colored blouse. And then we’re really big flower in my hair.

Ariel Landrum 13:04
You were you were Moana?

Stefanie Bautista 13:05
Not that year. That was a different year.

Ariel Landrum 13:08
That was another year?

Stefanie Bautista 13:09
That year AJ came back.

Ariel Landrum 13:10
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 13:10
So my husband came back from deployment. And then we were Moana and Maui. But this one was just like a tiki theme. It was the one that had like these 50s sunglasses, and then you shoved me in another bush. I’ll show you a picture later. But we will also in attachment to this when we post about this episode, we will have pictures of all of our Dapper Days of past because we’ve had quite a collection now.

Ariel Landrum 13:31
And because it happens twice a year, that’s the other component is it’s like “Oh, was this spring or fall?”

Stefanie Bautista 13:39
As like, “Did I bring a jacket or did I not bring a jacket?” In spring, it gets pretty hot. Like I know we’ve had a very late winter this year. So it did get pretty cold like both in the morning and in the evening. But before it used to get really hot and so you’d be sweating, your hair would be melting. And you always just admire the ladies who just like have helmets on like they basically hairspray the crap out of your head. And it just stays perfect until like the end. I don’t know how they do that.

Ariel Landrum 14:10
I’ve seen the most elaborate hats. One specifically sticks out one year where somebody’s theme was they were the tiki room. And their hat was a headpiece that had one of the birds inside a cage. And I was just like, what, how do you do this and it all handmade. And this is around the time where you introduced me the actual Expo that they were having. And I started going there and you could buy pieces at the Expo. And a lot. It seems like a lot of people who are vendors or have relationship with the vendors, they tend to make more of their outfits. They aren’t piecing things together that they found they’re creating things.

Stefanie Bautista 14:46
When you’re thinking about putting your outfits together you are thinking like “Am I going to theme this?” If you are Disneybounding you’re going to theme it after movie. You can theme it after a ride you can theme it after the whole Disneyland park you can be with after California Adventure if you want and I think people who have been putting these outfits together have done such a great job. And with the help of social media Dapper Day, the hashtag of Dapper Day, if you just look it up, it has a million ideas. Now Disney has caught on with the idea of not just letting the fans find these pieces, but actually marketing and making these pieces. Hence the opening of the dress shop that you see in Downtown Disney. When you go inside the parks, you’re gonna see 50s 60s themed clothes, whole dresses that have different elements of them popping up. I remember the first time that they tried doing this was the tiki room.

Ariel Landrum 14:48
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 15:11
And like legit, everybody has this damn dress.

Ariel Landrum 15:38
Everyone was wearing this Tiki Room dress made by a Disney officially sold and made by Disney.

Stefanie Bautista 15:43
Great effort Disney in trying to relate. But when it becomes sort of a uniform, it kind of loses its pizzazz a little bit. So I feel like now they’ve like offered different like varieties of what they have at the dress shop. It is at a higher price point. I know if you like just go vintage shopping or if you you know do the extra work kind of like when you’re doing cosplay, right? There’s a difference between getting a costume that’s made for Halloween and using that for Comic Con or whatever, comic book convention. And there’s a difference between putting everything together curating it, finding those pieces and then kind of making it your own. So depends on whichever route you want to take. But there is flexibility but also know that Disney is trying to capitalize a little bit on it.

Ariel Landrum 16:26
Yes, yes. And then if you’re trying to instead replicate like an era and do something more vintage or even retro, that is a little bit trickier if you are buying replicated pieces because you already know the replicated and if you are trying to go actual vintage, there’s the expense portion but there’s also will it last?

Stefanie Bautista 16:48
Or really fit? women’s bodies now are so different from they were before when I used to have illegal vintage shopping I had to really consciously think about my body and how women’s bodies were thought of back then and how they fit into me now so it wasn’t like if I found a piece that was like a large it’s not like saying I was had gained weight or whatever because I normally wear a medium. It’s really because the idea and the concept of size was so different decades ago.

Ariel Landrum 17:15
I’ve noticed even with the size I’m top heavy, there’s just like not a lot of vintage outfits that I can buy that will fit me up where my chest is. So I tend to more buy vintage pieces like earrings, hats, bracelets, necklaces, glasses, things that are an accessory purses a lot a lot of purses. Unless something that I’m gonna wear that might wear out or that I might want to cherish later that might wear out.

Stefanie Bautista 17:43
I’m telling you Ariel one of these days we’re just going to buy those like Tiki momos and it’s gonna be like the most comfortable Dapper Day ever.

Ariel Landrum 17:50
Yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 17:51
They’re coming back into style and they are gorgeous.

Ariel Landrum 17:56
We could definitely buy some authentic ones. So…

Stefanie Bautista 17:58
Yeah. Oh yeah. I feel like…

Ariel Landrum 18:00
Filipino ones.

Stefanie Bautista 18:00
Yeah, for sure. And yeah, there’s that cultural element to it too. As…

Ariel Landrum 18:05
Yeah! Share your your cultural piece that was a huge hit the shocked you!

Stefanie Bautista 18:09
Oh my gosh, super shocked me so we so I am my heritage my I identify as Filipino American. And so in the Philippines there. Instead of wearing suits and dresses, we have two different kinds of outfits that you would wear to either a formal event or to a someone who’s a business event really just any kind of formal event. For the men’s it’s called the Barong Tagalog which is basically a bamboo woven blouse. And it’s very breathable, you normally wear just like a white shirt inside. And it is like a high collar you can even you can either have like Chinese style collar where the it doesn’t like come out on the sides or like a Western style collar that kind of comes out on the sides like you would normally see a dress shirt as. And it has very intricate patterns on it that are woven in. Very beautiful. We will show of course examples on this when we post about it, but my husband has one for every formal event that we go to. And then for women, you have a couple of different options, but they all are very similar to each other. One of them is called the terno, which is basically a blouse that has really big butterfly sleeves on the sides. Not puffy, kind of like Alice in Wonderland but more structured. So it’s very high, very flat on each side, but it has a low neck. And it also could either be a dress, which is called a Maria Clara, and there’s different versions of it. But lately over the years, people have been selling them more because people Filipino Americans and people who are you know getting married to Filipinos they are wanting to incorporate more cultural wear into their formal events. So I thought to myself, I might as well buy one because you know why? I have had like an event coming up my grandma’s 80th birthday. And so we all decided to wear our Filipino outfits. And I had bought a little bronc that I loved for my son at the time. And so we’re like, let’s just wear this a Dapper Day, because it’s coming up, I have major FOMO if I miss a day, every day, I’m like, “Oh my God, I wish I was there.”

Ariel Landrum 20:16
And you didn’t have a lot of time to get the pieces together. So this was part of like, looking at what you have, and just anything that might be missing versus starting from scratch.

Stefanie Bautista 20:24
Exactly. And it was a spring Dapper Day, so I knew it was gonna be hot. And we normally do the California Food and Wine Festival at California Adventure. So I knew it was gonna be walking around. And my shirt came with a just kind of like a silk wraparound skirt. And I was postpartum a little bit still. And I needed something that I could be comfortable in. So I wore that I think it were flats that year, too. And we went into the park, and oh my god, the amount of people are like, “Oh my God, we love your outfits. And we love your Barong Tagalog like, I can’t believe you have a small one for your son.” And even though it wasn’t like anything tied to Disney, or it wasn’t tied to, like an era, because this is something that you can modernly wear, like any sort of formal event either here in the Philippines, you caught the attention of Filipinos who worked at the park. Number one, they were like, “I don’t even think of that.” And also you caught the attention of other people who didn’t know what you were wearing, they asked questions about and they’re like, “Oh, you know, like, is this, like from your culture? Is this from a specific thing?” But really, like, I forgot how many Filipinos actually worked at the park? But that day I was holy reminded about, you know, the demographic of Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, and the surrounding areas of Anaheim. Because yes, there are a lot of us around here. I think the next year afterwards, I saw more people embracing their cultural heritage. For example, I saw this beautiful Vietnamese couple wearing the like a bright red, like just I don’t know the name of it. I’ll look it up in a little bit. But with the really large, beautiful hat, oh, my God, they look gorgeous. And so I think people are starting to lean towards their culture a little bit. And I’m glad that I kind of decided to do that. And it wasn’t even intentional. But I have been wearing that outfit again for more dapper days. And I think I would probably expand upon that maybe and try to Disneybound with it. So I encourage you guys to do that as well.

Ariel Landrum 22:26
And the most recent Dapper Day that we had the theme of was a Disneybound and it was going to be Star Wars and the only reason I did that was because Dapper Day has become more and more popular and you can follow the hashtags. I typed in Dapper Day in Amazon. I just typed that. And then there were all these individuals who were I guess you’d call them Amazon influencers? I’m not I’m not 100% sure, because they have their own little like influencer website on Amazon. But they all posted images of their outfits and what pieces they bought on Amazon to make those outfits and there was one that you can get in white or black. And I was trying to decide if it Star Wars do I want to be Princess Leia or do I want to be Vader? Like “What do I want to do with this?” This outfit had these long sleeves that emulated like a cape. And so that’s that’s why it could have been either or, and in talking with my partner who knew that he was going to be able to attend Dapper Day this year, we decided I’ll be Leia and he’ll be Han. Now I remember. I need to wear good footwear. But I also wanted something that might be like kinda fun and make the outfit edgy. And I was talking to Stef about it. And I was like, “I’ve been looking for white boots and for like three days straight.” I’m going to the mall looking for white boots because I thought you know, “Go go boots are back, I should be able to find them.” Could not find white boots. There were cream boots. There were boots that were white and black, but nothing that was just white boots.

Stefanie Bautista 23:50
And that set me on a mission, “Girl, I’m gonna find you these white boots.” And I think, um it was again a coincidence that I had seen this because I think me and my husband just got out of the theater ever had it been what we watched. We watched John Wick, which by the way, amazing movie and then we went downstairs and they had just opened up a Nordstrom Rack and I was like, “Oh yeah, Nordstrom Rack!” Like, I love me a Nordstrom Rack so I go inside. And then I think Ariel you had texted me like, “I still can’t find the boots!” And I was just like “Bitch I’mma find them!| Sorry, pardon my language, but I go in there and because everything is all new, they just had like, so much selection. So luckily, because Ariel is such a petite size. Not a lot of people get things in that size, which kind of works out because you are able to find really good quality things if you aren’t besides that normally more or regular people are I’m a size seven, seven and a half and my section is always sold out like it’s really irritating. So I go over there. And then I see the most perfect pair of white Doc Martens like they could not be more perfect for Princess Leia. They were edgy. They were not laced. So they were just pull ons and they were her size. I have a couple Doc Martens and the only caveat to having them is you got to break them in. So I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna get these for you.” They were the perfect size like the heavens shown above me just opened up like pathway for her to do this Disneybound. And I’m like, “I’m gonna get them, but you kind of break them in some way somehow.”

Ariel Landrum 25:21
So we could never meet up to pick up these shoes from each other so I had to wear them day of. We met at the Dapper Day Expo the day before the official Dapper Day event. Dapper Day Expo is essentially three days and the actual Dapper Day at the park is Sunday. So when you’re going to dress up at the park, it’s Sunday, however, some people will dress up the whole weekend. So we met on Saturday at the Expo. Here I am being gifted these boots that I haven’t even tried them on. And so we’re in the middle of the floor of the Dapper Day Expo…

Stefanie Bautista 25:54
There’s litterally vendors going like around those. There’s link a beautiful like swing band, big band, everyone’s dancing…

Ariel Landrum 26:01
And so we’re sitting on the floor. And I cannot put these boots on for the life of me. And it took a lot of wiggling my feet around like these are my perfect size. I don’t understand maybe maybe I’m just a different size Doc Martens. Again, I’m on and they fit comfortably now that I’ve actually slipped my foot in, they fit comfortably.

Stefanie Bautista 26:20
Slip is a very like, general term, we kind of had to ganker in there to the point where I think one of the Dapper Day workers were like, “Do you want me to get you a chair?” She was so sweet. And then like me and your partner were just like trying to like hoist them into link your foot into there. It was quite a scene.

Ariel Landrum 26:38
It was. And then it was even worse of a scene to take them off. It got to the point where I was afraid we were gonna have to cut these off of my feet. I was pulling and tugging and twisting and another like vendor came by and they’re like, “Do you need some help? Do you want do you need…” Like the everyone was it was worried about me. They were they were concerned about these boots.

Stefanie Bautista 27:00
There were two categories of people one category that was concerned about your health and safety in these shoes. And the other was “Where did you get them? Did you buy them here?”

Ariel Landrum 27:10
Yes, I kept getting asked, I asked “Where did you get these boots,” as I’m trying to like take them off or put them on. The problem was I had just been at Disney all day. And I was wearing sandals I had no socks on and my feet were essentially a little bit more swollen from the fact that I’ve been walking around. So we went and looked around and bought socks. I put the socks on the boots fit beautifully. Once I had socks, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna have to find a way to wear socks tomorrow with these boots.” I was gonna have hideaway socks is what I thought I was going to do. But even in trying to get them up my my leg I need tall socks, we bought some extra ones at the Dapper Day Exo to make it happen.

Stefanie Bautista 27:49
That were like probably a little bit more than I know you were comfortable with paying but at that point you were like, “Eff it,. I just need this to work!” Because we know the potential of what it was gonna look like and we knew it was going to be perfect. So in trying to attain that perfect look, we were willing to do anything. And like you know, buy, whatever it took for you to get into those boots. I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea for you to slip them on without socks. I always wear socks with mine.

Ariel Landrum 28:18
The excitement?

Stefanie Bautista 28:19
I think it was the excitement. I truly think you’re just so hype on these boots because A. found them B. I got them at a deal. Even when I wear them with dresses, I wear stockings, or I wear some sort of like leggings or something. So I don’t know why I thought that was gonna work without all of that. And especially after you were walking at the park all day.

Ariel Landrum 28:34
It was hilarious and humbling. The next day, I have the socks on I fold them a little bit. I wear the boots all day, I feel great, my feet, my legs, everything feels great. The boots are a little heavy. So that’s the only thing is I had to get used to the weight of them. But we were pretty much there till dark, I get home and I take the boots and socks off. And wow, I had so many cuts and blisters and bruises up and down my leg where different parts of the boot was pressing. And it was about two months before like all of those scabs had essentially fully healed. And so even though I didn’t repeat the wearing of the heels I still got very blistered up and that’s because these were brand new shoes. So lesson learned there I don’t know. Again I don’t know who I think I am but I thought that this was going to be possible I should have just come over in the middle of the night and had you leave the boots on the door and like me grab ’em.

It’s not like we live that far from me.

No, no.

Stefanie Bautista 28:37
I think if you wear them now they will be the most comfortable things ever you could dance or whatever have you in them and they will be true to you. So what I love about getting a piece like that for costume or a cosplay is you can wear it over and over again. So it’s not something that was just specific to your Princess Leia outfit you can wear them just as a fashion piece and I think if you are looking to maximize what you wear, because you know, you don’t want to just throw away an outfit. That’s one of those things where you find pieces that you can reuse over and over again.

Ariel Landrum 30:09
The outfit we got for my partner Han is basically you know, a vest and white shirt. I couldn’t find any pants with red stripes on them. So he just wore pants. And then he decided to tie a belt around that kind of was supposed to look like the holster and we were going back and forth on the different pieces he was starting to add to his outfit because it was getting more towards cosplay. That is the component of Dapper Day where there’s a fine line between you replicating an outfit and you trying to upgrade that outfit in dapper s stylish, fanciful, whatever you want to put it, where it’s a nod to that character. It isn’t an exact replica. And so I think it was a good thing that we didn’t end up finding pants with the red stripe or it would have started looking more like a costume. That being said, even though the we went to boot to and took a picture with literally the Millennium Falcon behind us, I don’t know how much more like evident it was. People saw me posing with my partner in a white dress and thought we had eloped. And so I consistently kept getting messages of “Married question mark?” “When did you get married Question mark?” “Such a beautiful wedding photo!”

Stefanie Bautista 31:23
This is news to me. I did not know this. I am dying.

Ariel Landrum 31:26
It was nonstop for like two or three days even from like his family where they’re like, “Oh, is this a wedding photo? Is this a sneak peek? Is this an engagement photo?”

Stefanie Bautista 31:38
I think it’s because it’s so on, brand for you to do something like that. And I think the universe just wants it for you?

Ariel Landrum 31:45
I guess. And like everyone saw a white dress with like a flowy cape.

Stefanie Bautista 31:52
They did not, “Oh, no Princess Leia at Dapper Day. She’s gotten married.”

Ariel Landrum 31:57
And a part of it was I saw this picture on Amazon if someone else who did a Dapper Day of Princess Leia where they were their hair down. And then they wore actual ears that they made with buns on them. So the buns were on the ears. And I was like, “Oh, that is so adorable. I’m gonna do that.”

Stefanie Bautista 32:13
Because really, it is hard to do just buns and you’ve done it before. And to make them last is like there’s a science to it.

Ariel Landrum 32:19
It was gonna fall I knew that it was going to fall. So I was like, I will do that. So I was even wearing Mickey ears. But I think what people saw was a bow and my hair down. And so if they didn’t understand that it was Dapper Day and that I was Disneybounding it had to mean that we had somehow eloped at Disneyland.

Stefanie Bautista 32:38
Which you know, that is okay. I subscribe to this.

Ariel Landrum 32:45
Add to cart.

Stefanie Bautista 32:47
Add to cart and hey if it ever happens, you already have a dress sis.

Ariel Landrum 32:51
Yo, I have watched those Disney weddings on the Disney+ that ish is expensive.

Stefanie Bautista 32:58
It is unattainable. That’s how you do it in times like this. And they just called eloping at Disneyland in the open without them knowing. We are talking about budgeting at Disneyland not just for Dapper Day outfits, but also for life events. So I think that’s really funny how people interpret just by what you were

Ariel Landrum 33:19
I was surprised I was genuinely truly surprised that that was the reaction. And maybe it was like because on Instagram you can put up the 10 photos. But the first one is usually what people see and people hadn’t swiped through and seen like all of us together hadn’t seen other people in they’re dapper.

Stefanie Bautista 33:35
And you looked gorgeous.

Ariel Landrum 33:36
Thank you. It was the boots the boots made it. I think when it comes to trying to find the appropriate outfit for you, you know whether you are going cultural, whether you’re picking a specific theme, whether you’re picking a specific character do this more often, you start to get used to how you want to conceptualize your outfit. I had taken a little bit of a risk with this outfit because it was shorter than I normally go I usually do a long dress and it was a little bit tighter than what I normally do. So I was wanting to step out into something different. And a part of it had to be again, that body piece that we talked about. I want my body’s changed a lot it’s gotten a lot bigger in various areas and I wanted to embrace that and not try and like hide it or shame it and it was fine. Like I don’t know what it was what worry I thought I would have in this dress. I didn’t think people think I was my marriage dress but it it really felt good to have people at the park recognize me as Leia people wanting to take pictures with me that were other Star Wars characters. There was a lot of Rays I saw and lots of Kylo Rens. Another way to be able to embrace the like the park experience and connect with your fellow Park attendees because people who don’t even know about Dapper Day they’re just like, “What is going on? Why is everybody’s like so dressed up and it’s fun to be able to like share that with them and hope that inspires them to join like the next year.

Stefanie Bautista 34:58
Yeah, and it’s not even an element of like, “Oh, I know about this and you don’t.” It’s more of like, “Hey, I will explain to you and I’m more than happy to share with you what this is, so that you can participate next time.” Because I think on the other side, there’s some people who, you know, aren’t a huge fan of the event just because it’s like, there’s an element of privilege because you knew about the event. And, you know, you were able to put this outfit together. But I think over the years, it hasn’t been like that, or, I remember in the early years, there was a little bit of that, but as its expanded to, you know, include Disneybounding, and including, you know, families and things like that. It’s an overall really positive experience for you know, dressing up without actually wearing a costume. I didn’t really have an outfit, but I had, you know, a dress that I was gonna wear for my baby shower that I didn’t. And it ended up having had like, really big, puffy sleeves, and I knew that that was in and it’s very, you know, Disneyland like, it was blue and I knew that my daughter had a really cute Alice outfit. Kids can get away with almost wearing the costume because you know, who’s gonna knock on a kid for like, dressing exactly like. It was an official Disney, you know, bought Alice in Wonderland outfit, so she wore that. And I wore my dress, which was a very similar blue, and I tried to kind of be like a bigger version of Alice, but because I didn’t have an apron, everyone thought it was Wendy. And I’m like, “Do you see Peter Pan around me anywhere?” Like, “I’m not Wendy me but okay.” But again, I wear that dress because it was comfortable. I felt confident in it. My body has changed after two kids. And so I just wanted to, I knew I was gonna be pushing a stroller around. It’s like it was to be carrying just the purse. My purse has expanded now to a large stroller with you know many intricate pieces. And, you know, knowing it was gonna be hot, I wanted something flowy. And yeah, it really worked out. I do love that you stepped out of your comfort zone, because I think the form fitting dress really complimented your curves. And also, yeah, I mean, it was great. It made me want to be like, “I should wear something like that.” And not something so large, because that’s kind of what, that’s what we default to most days. But it really worked out especially for your concept. So I encourage everybody, if it’s your first time, this is your second time, if you’ve had friends participate, like do what’s comfortable for you. And you know, I think don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t find the right elements, because I don’t think this is an event that’s going to go away anytime soon. If anything, it’s going to just continue and grow because like I said, they have these Dapper Day events at LACMA. They have them at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. More and more events where it’s not just restricted to the vintage community, because this is going to be for another podcast, I’m sure but there are people who feel some sort of way about, you know, being in the vintage community. And that goes for, you know, other fandoms.They don’t feel necessarily as comfortable. And I think this is one of the ways that for me and Ariel as vintage enthusiast but not like really serious about it, to be able to participate in it in a way that’s comfortable for us.

Ariel Landrum 38:11
as inclusive for us as possible. Because like we mentioned, there’s no way that we would be able to fit any actual vintage outfits. Given our curvy size and even height. I think being shorter Filipino women as you start to do Dapper Day more, it is a lot more comfortable and more accepting and that you get more joy out of experimenting. That’s when you can take you know a few risks. Like I wasn’t gonna get snares. I wasn’t gonna get people looking at me sideways. The things that I feared that I would get when I thought that I wouldn’t make an outfit look, you know, right, so to speak. There is a layer of privilege if you are going into the park because you’re spending a lot of the day taking pictures. If you are making an outfit that isn’t going to last a ride, you might feel like you’ve wasted a day if you’re not an annual Park holder. So this could be a component where you go to The Expo. So maybe you’re not in the park but there are a lot of people who actually just spend their whole day in The Expo.

Stefanie Bautista 39:06
And I’ve done that before and it makes me feel like I’m participating without actually being in the park.

Ariel Landrum 39:11
Like you said they have a swing bands so you can dance. They have raffles you can get to know the vendors it means that you wouldn’t be buying a park ticket which may not be feasible but you could still participate in the event.

Stefanie Bautista 39:23
Over the years it’s grown so much where you know it’s a multi day event so you don’t necessarily have to go into the park to appreciate it. And then you can explore the hotel you can explore like the places to eat there. I know last time when we went we ate at Tangaroa terrace, which is right next to Trader Sam’s and it was it’s great like. You could also take beautiful pictures around the hotel floor that if you haven’t you know been able to the hotel grounds are open even though you are not a you know a guest to the hotel. I think that’s a really good way if you don’t have the capacity to get into the parks because we all know that the prices are going up. That’s a great way to just get introduced to it or attend one of the off site events. And you know, see how you like it there.

Ariel Landrum 40:06
So if you are going to be attending the fall Dapper Day that’s in November, let us know, tweet us or message us DM us on Instagram. And let us know if you’re gonna go, what you’re going to wear. And if you want to meet up and take some pictures together, our Twitter is @HappiestPodGT, and our Instagram is @HappiestPodGT.

Stefanie Bautista 40:30
And we do have a lot of really exciting things coming up this summer. So in addition to planning for our Dapper Day outfits, which I feel like that seems like a lifetime away right now, we will be attending other events. So I’ll be hopefully we will see you all there very soon.

Ariel Landrum 40:43
Including San Diego Comic-Con where we will be hosting three different panels. So come check those out. We will give you more information about that. So make sure that you follow us on Twitter and on Instagram.

Stefanie Bautista 40:55
As always, thank you so much for listening in and we will see you all next time.

Ariel Landrum 40:59
Bye!

Stefanie Bautista 40:59
Bye!

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Princess Leia
  • Moana and Maui
  • Kylo Ren
  • Ray
  • Jasmine
  • Aladdin
  • Snow White
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • Expectations
  • HAES (Healthy At Every Size)
  • Vintage
  • Retro
  • Fashion
  • Dapper Day
  • Disneybounding
  • Dapper Day Expo
  • Disneyland Hotel
  • Self Acceptance
  • Comfort Zone

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
 | Instagram: @HappiestPodGT | Twitter: @HappiestPodGT | Facebook: @HappiestPodGT |
 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |

Geek Therapy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of advocating for the effective and meaningful use of popular media in therapeutic, educational, and community practice.
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Disney After Dark: Princess Nite

March 10, 2023 · Discuss on the GT Forum

https://media.blubrry.com/happypod/media.transistor.fm/753fe6fd/beb55567.mp3

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#31: In this episode of Happiest Pod, join Ariel and Stef as they recount their magical evening at Disneyland’s After Dark event, Princess Nite. Held for the first time at Disneyland Park on March 7th and 9th from 9 PM to 1 AM, this special event transported guests into a world of princesses and fairy tales. And don’t worry if you missed it, as Ariel and Stef provide an in-depth look at the experience so you’ll know what to expect if you decide to attend next time!

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Summary

HPOE31
Summary

  • Intro 0:10
    • Welcome to the happiest pod on earth.

    • Today’s episode is all about Princess Nite.

    • How Princess Nite compares to Merriest Nite.
    • How to plan a Disney event.

  • Dressing Up for Princess Nite 8:14
    • Dressing up for a Disney event.
    • Dressed up for the gram.

  • Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Rail Way 12:06
    • Rise of the Resistance and Mickey’s Runaway Railway.

    • The El Capitan in Los Angeles.

    • The lack of female representation in Disney movies.

    • How Disney has had to adapt to change.
  • Where are the Princesses? 18:20
    • Where to find the Princesses in Fantasyland.

    • The end of the line sign.

    • No signs saying where the Princesses are.

  • Soaring Melodies Under The Starrs 28:06
    • No projections.
    • A live Disney performance with singing and dancing.
    • Pyrotechnics.
  • The Broken Reservation System 30:27
    • High Tea menu at Cafe Orleans.

    • Special event Cinderella Popcorn bucket.

    • The app kept shutting down and didn’t say anything about the special menu.

  • Dinner During Princess Nite 36:09
    • Dinner at Tomorrowland was Princess themed.

    • All food was sweet and sugary, even the spicy tenders.

    • Magic Keyholders can pick up a special gift at The Landing Bay.

    • Pop Princess Dance Party.

  • Suggestions for Improvement 39:48
    • There could have been more interactive experiences.

    • Examples of different Princess interactions.
    • Confusion over the choice of a mirror for the lanyard gift.
  • Final Thoughts on Princess Nite 43:48
    • Disney Princess culture is a thing.
    • Disney Princess Nite had missed opportunities.
    • The DJ was the highlight of the evening.
Transcription

Stefanie Bautista 0:10
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:21
And I’m Ariel, I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and achieve mental wellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:30
And Happiest Pod is where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Ariel Landrum 0:34
Why? Because we are more than just fans and we expect more from the mediums we consume. So Stef, what Disney experience are we discussing today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:42
Well, it has been a while since we’ve talked about any sort of experience because we’ve been busy busy people lately. But somehow we both carved out time to attend Princess Nite, which is in the realm of after dark events that Disneyland hosts. Other events include Oogie Boogie bash, Sweethearts Nite, I know they did like a Throwback Nite a couple of years ago. So Princess Nite falls into that category. And basically, it’s all Princess themed. This is the first of its kind. And I know in a previous episode, I talked about attending Marriest Nites.

Ariel Landrum 1:17
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:17
Which did not get renewed this year. But in place of that me and Ariel decided, “Hey, let’s attend Princess Nite and see what it’s all about.” So today’s episode is gonna be all about that and what we think of this particular event and all the other night events.

Ariel Landrum 1:32
And I think this is a good time to talk about it not only because we love princesses, but also because it’s Women’s History Month.

Stefanie Bautista 1:39
Yes, it is.

Ariel Landrum 1:40
And so celebrating the heroic women of Disney.

Stefanie Bautista 1:45
And many of you guys know or maybe some of you don’t know that we have done a whole presentation on Disney Princesses and we have done a deep dive on what they mean to us what they mean to women everywhere and how we always want to challenge people to think about what princesses and you know what the role of women play in media, especially Disney movies, media, and you know, I guess music even.

Ariel Landrum 2:10
Absolutely. So in talking about Princess Nite, because you’ve gone to an after dark event, and this was my first one. How does it compare to Marriest Nites? Which is more holiday themed and so you have a different variety than a very targeted type of IP.

Stefanie Bautista 2:28
Yeah, I think the preparation for this one compared to Marriest Nites was a little bit different. There’s a couple stories that I’ve heard about Princess Nite not being popular when it first came out because I think it was released at the same time as Sweethearts Nite when they released the tickets. And Sweethearts Nite is the Valentine’s Day event that happens in February and that one sold out really quickly whereas Princess Nite did not. They kept advertising it on my Instagram ads. And so I was thinking, you know, maybe they didn’t sell out as fast as normal Disney events do. And normally you have to like be on your computer, getting the tickets like ASAP or else it’s you’re SOL basically. But that didn’t happen this time. And I know it. It was pretty open for a while and Marriest Nites was kind of the same thing. But I think going into Marriest Nites, because it is wholly Hollywood. It is holiday themed. You kind of go into it thinking “Oh, it’s going to be one big holiday party.” And everyone goes to Disneyland or many people go to Disneyland during the holiday season because it is magical. And we know that it’s like celebrating the holidays but amplified right? So Marriest Nites was that and more. So I think there was also just a precedent set there. But Marriest Nites was definitely like, I don’t know what to expect. But apparently they they wanted to do a little more marketing around the princesses. And I shared with Ariel a couple of weeks ago that they had released a map of what everything was. Ariel, was that helpful for you that you kind of had that to go off of?

Ariel Landrum 4:03
I mean, it’s sort of was it was really hard to actually plan and I think I remember when we talked about Marriest Nites, one of the things that you said was there’s kind of just stuff all over the place. And maybe now knowing that it would be easier to plan things out. But for me even with the map because Disney so big, it was hard to kind of figure out how I was going to do things. And the things that I even wanted to do, I couldn’t because of the lines. It was actually I was I was expecting it to be popular. It was a lot more popular event than I had realized, especially being during like a week night. I didn’t expect so many people to come with their very young children so late in the evening. Was that similar to Marriest Nites?

Stefanie Bautista 4:50
Absolutely. And it was winter time still. I know we’re going through a very unusual cold front here in Southern California right now. Which did also kind of take me by surprise. Because I thought by now we would have like a pretty fair night in Orange County, which is like 70 degrees, maybe 60 at like the very coldest. But it was 40 degrees at Disneyland after it had experienced snow for the first time, like two weeks ago, which was bizarre. But yeah, for Marriest Nites like, I knew people were gonna bring their kids but also it is it was during winter break. So it was a surprise, but not too much of a surprise. And I think my event went, if I remember was, I feel like it was like a week, a weekend night, at least like a Friday or a Saturday. Whereas when we attended Princess Nite, we went on a Tuesday.

Ariel Landrum 5:38
Got turnt on a Tuesday.

Stefanie Bautista 5:39
We truly, truly cut Princess wasted on a Tuesday, but I think it also happened last night, the 9th? I think that was the second day. So they were both weeknight events on a time, but normally not a lot of people have off. So interesting choice.

Ariel Landrum 5:58
I think the other thing that surprised me, which I didn’t quite see in advertising people knew so it must have been out there was there were a lot of adults dressed as Disney Princesses, not Disney bounding. Um, so not colorblocking not like the essence of a Disney character. They were in full ball gowns. I mean, the some of these were ornate and intricate. Like it was really people stepping into these outfits and gowns and being these princesses that’s usually not allowed in the park and has aside from Oggie, Boogie Bash, from my understanding has not been allowed. So I was really I was shocked. If I didn’t know and I could have worn a ballgown, I’d a done it.

Stefanie Bautista 6:42
Same and it would have kept us warm because we weren’t for freezing by like 11 o’clock, but I think you’re absolutely right. I sometimes I couldn’t tell whether it was a Disney actor or just a participant of Princess Nite. Because some of these people, they had amazing outfits and they had partners that had matching outfits. And I thought they were the ones who thought they were the Princesses, but they were also in like to take pictures with the Princess. Like, “Okay, kind of confusing there.” But I mean, kudos to them for knowing and just, you know, randomly just having their princess outfit ready and raring to go. But definitely, from the things that I’ve read is, maybe that was like an influencer insider thing in the community of people who cosplay as princesses. Because when we go to WonderCon, you do see Disney Princesses around because normally WonderCon takes place in Anaheim. So it’s like, you know, you double dip by going to Disneyland and you know, going to WonderCon. But definitely, that was the first thing that me and Ariel said to each other when we met up like, “Did you know you could wear a ball gown?” “No. Did you?” “No!” And just that disbelief and like, yeah, because, again, because it was cold. We did not know what to wear. And with these after dark events you it’s a toss up because it’s Orange County, and we’re used to a certain type of weather there, even as regular Disney goers. And yeah, this one was kind of hard to plan around.

Ariel Landrum 8:14
Yeah, outfit wise. We ended up my partner James and I did end up Disney bounding as Ariel and Eric and Eric was so easy. This white shirt, some blue pants and like a red sash, which for the sash, he like used an old uniform from like ROTC I think it was. He’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but whatever. He used an old sash from that, and then for me, I had some mermaid tights or leggings. And then like I tried to wear a tight shirt underneath for extra warmth. That was long sleeve and then another shirt over it was which was from Disney World. And it was the Ariel mermaid jersey from Disney World from when they opened the Grotto. And that was like as Disney bounding as I could get. And then it was jackets upon jackets upon jackets, so.

Stefanie Bautista 9:06
And yeah, as for me, I have the majority of my wardrobe if you know me is black, I wear black everything. I was once you know you’re talking punk rock goth chick, and it just kind of evolved into you know, mom, black clothes.

Ariel Landrum 9:23
Very New York Street esque.

Stefanie Bautista 9:26
Yeah. And so all I had were was this Nike sweatshirt with like a high color that was more pink than I thought it was when I ordered it during COVID. I don’t wear that out at all and I’m like, “Well, this is princessy I guess color wise.” And then I had leggings and then Air Maxes that have a little bit of pink in them that I was supposed to wear for my baby shower but never wore because I dressed up as Alice. So that was you know, totally not what I was planning to wear. And then a big ol puffy jacket because I was cold and I was more concerned of what I was going to dress my children and because they are so young.

Ariel Landrum 10:10
Yeah, you were one of the people who were brought brought kiddos, but yours don’t go to school?

Stefanie Bautista 10:15
No, they do not go to school. So they didn’t have to worry about waking up in the morning. And, you know, no low stakes there. And yeah, my husband did not dress up. I, he just wore a comfy sweater. And you know, we were super laid back. But then I think that’s the thing when you go to these things, and you do love to dress up Disneybound as we do for special events, you kind of feel like you’re missing out when you’re not completely dressed up.

Ariel Landrum 10:42
Yeah, yeah, I didn’t feel as integrated or with the vibe, so to speak, in just being regular clothing. Were not like there weren’t people that works. There definitely were, I think the thing was it. It just felt more fun. I can just see people really enjoying themselves because again, you don’t get to go to the park dressed up in full costume. That’s that’s not allowed. So the fact that they allowed it for this event would have been nice to be a somewhat rule breaker.

Stefanie Bautista 11:14
Yeah, I saw so many cool costumes under huge jackets. And then when people wanted to take their picture in front of the castle or on Main Street, they were like really toughing it out to not freeze over. And like look as cute as possible. So kudos to them. Bravo if you were one of those people, because I commend you for doing it for The Gram.

Ariel Landrum 11:35
Yup. Doing it for The Gram. So Princess-wise the Princess that I didn’t get to see which you never see at the park, which is why I was all excited to see her it was Princess Kida from Atlantis. There was a reason.

Stefanie Bautista 11:49
Yep, so one of the biggest complaints that I was reading in you know, a lot of the comment sections of you know, influencers that I follow is that the lines to take pictures with these Princesses were absolutely insane. I’m talking about like, one to two hour waits.

Ariel Landrum 12:06
You and I both, we took a picture with Moana and then I took a picture with Pluto when we first got there because the event hadn’t started yet. So just like Marriest Nites, you’re able to get in like two hours before the official start of the event to be able to just kind of enjoy Disneyland and the two things that we did that were like off event-type was took a picture with Pluto and then we grabbed some food and then booked it all the way to the actual ride. The new one that they built in Disneyland Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. Say that three times fast.

Stefanie Bautista 12:43
That was not part of the Princess Nite agenda at all. But Ariel went on the ride before I did and she’s raving about it and I knew that it was super super cool. I did not get to ride it when I was at Disney World so I was really excited to see how it was this time and yeah even though it wasn’t a Princess Nite thing I did not regret it at all because that right is so cool.

Ariel Landrum 13:05
Did not regret it. It is essentially based off of the one in Paris Disney for Ratatouille. And then they built one I believe you said in Disney World as well right? Before we even got one.

Stefanie Bautista 13:16
Yeah, at Hollywood Studios.

Ariel Landrum 13:18
So okay, when I say that it’s built similar to the one in Paris, Disney. The actual way that track is made, which is that it’s magnetic. You are on a trackless ride and magnets are what’s moving the vehicle, not it being pulled on a track.

Stefanie Bautista 13:34
Yes, not actual, like tracks that are metal.

Ariel Landrum 13:38
Yes yes.

Stefanie Bautista 13:38
Um very similar also to Rise of the Resistance, which is you know, the second most popular ride right now. Now,

Ariel Landrum 13:45
they created that design or functionality for that specific ride in in Paris, Disney and then they created other rides that use that functionality here in the parks in The States. And so there’s the Rise of the Resistance and then Mickey’s Runaway Railway was essentially themed as if you’re going into a theater, and ours here is based off of the El Capitan, which is an old theater that Disney bought out and shows only Disney like movies or Disney products in. And has we’ve talked about it on the show like really fun entertainment and before the movie even starts. Sometimes it’s an organ player a lot of times it’s 15 Different curtains. Now even though that’s the style they went with, allegedly…

Stefanie Bautista 14:33
Here it comes ya’ll. Here it comes.

Ariel Landrum 14:36
Looks like a 50s diner the colors are 50s diner. It is not look like our deco there was one art deco thing and it was a light and that’s it. That’s the only gripe. The only one.

Stefanie Bautista 14:48
Yes, so the El Capitan is one of the you know, the most iconic and oldest theaters in Los Angeles. And, of course, Los Angeles in its heyday was in the 1920s 1930s when you know all the production companies were booming out here. Silent movies to movies with sound and when you step inside the El Capitan it’s beautiful because it is kind of dark it’s kind of you know their art deco style is a lot of like golds and like blacks and a lot of you know those sorts of themes but when you step into the El Captune Theatre in Toon Town it’s more like flows V8 Cafe at Car’s Land.

Ariel Landrum 15:27
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 15:27
And the one in Hollywood studios that I have not been inside yet is modeled after the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood as well. But even if you go into that theater, it’s the same dark art deco style of you know, the Hollywood heyday so. I mean it’s Tunetown. So we gotta we gotta be a little you know gracious to them for you know, picking colors that are very kid friendly and bright. It’s kind of consistent to the same style as the Monsters Inc. ride when you go inside where it’s kind of bright. You know, that’s supposed to feel like the DMV I feel.

Ariel Landrum 16:01
Which is never bright.

Stefanie Bautista 16:03
Which is never bright. But it feels like the DMV in there because you know, you’re going on Mike and Sally’s car. But anyway, I digress.

Ariel Landrum 16:10
Now, when you’re walking through, you see old movie posters, quote, unquote, for famous films, but they are taken off of other Disney merchandise is and instead of like the actors and actresses that play them, they are as if the toon characters are playing them. So a lot of I think, my our friend Chance and I we were sharing photos that we took, that’s when I first rode the ride of the different movie posters we had. And there was one that was really confusing to us. And it was like a Parent Trap, but it was the Chipmunk Trap. And it was Chippendale as the two Parent Trap children, but still Daisy and Donald Duck. And I’m like, why would Daisy Donald Duck have chipmunk children? Why weren’t they Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Like, I’m not understanding this.

Stefanie Bautista 17:01
That is what we call a reach. It was a reach. They tried.

Ariel Landrum 17:08
There was some good ones.

Stefanie Bautista 17:09
Yeah. I feel like if they really went for it, they would have to pick some pretty obscure characters.

Ariel Landrum 17:15
The one that we really cackling about was the Hocus Pocus one.

Stefanie Bautista 17:19
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 17:19
And it had Clara Bell. It was like, |They don do her wrong!” Poor Kathy Najimy.

Stefanie Bautista 17:31
They needed a third female that was part of the you know, Mickey and Minnie animated series. But once you cross off Minnie and you cross off, Daisy, who do you have left?

Ariel Landrum 17:42
Yeah, we were trying to figure out if there was anybody else in the crew that could have been her and it was like that one chicken?

Stefanie Bautista 17:49
Oh, yes, yes, yes, I think I know who you’re talking about. But see, even that it took me a while. Then I feel like that goes back into, you know, female representation in old cartoons and how when they adapt them to more modern structures, there isn’t an equivalent. So there has to be some sort of a reach, because it has developed over the years, which is great. But I think that’s like a really great example of you know, how Disney has had to adapt throughout the years because there was a lack of female representation.

Ariel Landrum 18:20
Huge lack. Okay, and so in talking about female representation on Princess nights, who were the princesses that were there?

Stefanie Bautista 18:30
The ones that we saw are the ones we read about and never saw. We’re not gonna

Ariel Landrum 18:34
Say that all of them that were said to have been there and then who we got to see and who surprised you who was not a princess.

Stefanie Bautista 18:44
It’s great that they gave up the map because we knew where we were going. But I mean, Disneyland is pretty popular. So I kind of know where I’m going. But I needed I needed a little bit more information on where I could find the special things that were specific to Princess Nite. And I know they like the the outline that were on on the I was gonna call it the menu, the map. They had categories of all the lands and who was going to appear in the lands but they didn’t specify where in the lands they were going to be. So Fantasyland of course, because it’s Princess Nite had like a laundry list of princesses like maybe like 10 of them. You had to find them. So not only was it a scavenger hunt to find where these princesses were. Some of them were out in the open like Sophia the First was in that little theater where they normally do the Tangled Show. Ariel was in front of the pond grotto that King Triton statue is in that makes sense.

Ariel Landrum 19:36
And they had bubbles behind her that cute.

Stefanie Bautista 19:37
That was very beautiful, super cute. And then they had Princess Atta that was like tucked in the corner like on the side that we saw.

Ariel Landrum 19:45
Princess Atta from A Bug’s Life if you don’t remember her.

Stefanie Bautista 19:49
From A Bug’s Life, yes. Love her and you know she’s a huge and so who could miss her and and then after that, it kind of didn’t really see anyone. Oh, Snow White. Sorry.

Ariel Landrum 20:01
Yeah Snow White was in the those wishing well.

Stefanie Bautista 20:03
Where she has her statue.

Ariel Landrum 20:05
Allegedly who else was at Fantasyland?

Stefanie Bautista 20:08
Yes. And that that was the thing. So you found the princesses, but then when you tried to find the end of the line to where you needed to stand in order to get a picture with them, it was almost near impossible because it was just a sea of sneaking around.

Ariel Landrum 20:23
It felt like Comic-Con. And I only ever saw like two people with the end of the line signs.

Stefanie Bautista 20:28
Yes. And that was very Comic-Con esque of end of the line signs because that signifies that the line is so long that you have to have somebody saying where the end of the line is.

Ariel Landrum 20:38
So allegedly, who else was at Fantasyland was Aurora.

Stefanie Bautista 20:42
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 20:42
Bell. Elena of Avila. Kida. Merida. Which I don’t know what she was doing there. Because ended up this is from the map because she ended up being somewhere else. Mulan. Raya. Uh, I didn’t see none of those fools.

Stefanie Bautista 21:02
So we ended up splitting up at one point because we took the kids on It’s A Small World and then on the way back, I saw Mulan, but not as Mulan. It was Ping.

Ariel Landrum 21:13
It was Ping!

Stefanie Bautista 21:14
So she was in her military outfit. It was not Princess is Princess ish, Mulan, it was Ping. And the lines of Ping was crazy, because we don’t see Ping very often, which is, I think that’s cool that you know, she was Ping. However, if you’re saying she was in Fantasyland, that’s really I know, it’s considered Fantasyland, but you’re in like, It’s a Small World territory. I think that should be its own land. Because it’s the huge walkway and then It’s a Small World. And then you have the theater to the side where they do Lion King, which is where Merida was. And we did a cool little game of archery there. That was, you know, a cool little wait, but also not really long, because it was when the event started. So naturally, of course, because there’s archery there Merida was there too. But if you walked into it saying, “I really want to see Merida!” You would have had to walk the far reaches of almost Toontown in order to find Merida in a corner with huge archery sets.

Ariel Landrum 22:13
Yeah, it was weird to the map didn’t have like the actual like dot that showed where each Princess was. And then allegedly the other princesses that are there, I guess. In Disneyland, we saw Moana in Adventureland. And we walked by Jasmine that line was ridiculous.

Stefanie Bautista 22:33
It was the whole line of Jungle Cruise.

Ariel Landrum 22:36
The entire thing and then New Orleans Square Tiana which makes sense, but I didn’t see her. I don’t know where she was. She had to have been on the boat. That’s the only thing I can think of.

Stefanie Bautista 22:43
Yeah, she had to. Yeah, because you even made it towards Club 33. And you didn’t see anybody back there right?

Ariel Landrum 22:49
Nope, nope. And in Frontierland was Pocahontas, which I would love because again, she doesn’t get to come to the park that often. I didn’t see nobody in Frontierland.

Stefanie Bautista 22:58
I saw a line so we walked around from Fantasyland through like were Big Thunder Mountain was there was a line there. But I the princess was not out yet. So I’m wondering if that was Pocahontas because it was right next to Big Thunder Mountain. But I didn’t see. And also, I think that’s another thing you see a line but you don’t know who it’s for, it would have been nice to have a sign saying, “This is where Pocahontas is. Or even just like a backdrop because at Marriest Nites, they had huge holiday postcards that were themed and drawn by many of the artists that couldn’t like contribute to Wonderground. And you know, the Disney Galleries. And that’s how you knew that was a photo op, because it was like a huge backdrop. And I think that would have been something that, you know, they could have incorporated for us to know, “Hey, this is Pocahontas.” Or, you know, not just looking for bubbles behind Ariel, you know? And you think about it right, you’re in line for an hour to an hour and a half for each of these princesses. There’s about at least 20 of them. And you only have from six, nine o’clock until one o’clock in the morning. And not everybody’s out from nine to one in the morning. And then you want to eat you want to do all these things. I get that you’re trying to saturate the event so that there’s something for everyone to do. But I think when you put things that everyone wants to do, all at once it creates like a problem. But you know, again, what would the solutions be right?

Ariel Landrum 24:23
I have a few ideas. But before we get to solutions, the last one which infuriated me was that Princess Leia was there and we never see Princess Leia. She was flipping Tomorrowland. Like, why do we build Batuu that’s supposed to be integrated in the Star Wars universe and she can’t be there? I that boggled my mind. Why should I get the Star core Cruise is in Tomorrowland? But that’s it. That’s it. That’s all it’s there and I don’t get it.

Stefanie Bautista 24:49
Yeah. The Millennium Falcon is in Batuu.

Ariel Landrum 24:52
That could have been in the backdrop of the photo.

Stefanie Bautista 24:55
There’s so many open spaces in Batuu that I think could have been utilized. You could have even had Fennec Shand there, I think, you know, yeah, I’ve been really cool. And yeah, I think that was a missed opportunity, I get maybe that they’re trying to keep all of the traffic into the main Disneyland area for staffing purposes, if I’m thinking, you know, managerially. But I think if you’re really just staying true to the content and the source material, it would have just made sense for her to be over there.

Ariel Landrum 25:27
And I think managerially again, if you’re talking about trying to get people in specific spots, you could have had her be like one of the first princesses that kind of came out both people in the back of the park, and then that area sort of closed down, or they’re migrating towards the front. And then and then it’s like you as an attendee just has to make a sacrificing choice? Do I want to start in the back to and wait in those lines? Or do I want to be more towards the front where I can have some other things to do?

Stefanie Bautista 25:50
That’s another thing that is very tricky about these events is where you start, and where you end up what your priorities are. Because, yes, they give you two hours to enter the park beforehand. But you’re battling against everybody who was at the park already. So you’re already you know, battling lines and battling crowds. And it’s a little bit confusing. So you’re wasting a lot of not wasting, but you’re expending a lot of mental and physical energy, just getting through the parks and trying to situate yourself. And then by the time the event actually starts, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, what do we do?” Cuz you’re in like regular Park mode and then you have to switch to event mode. Which is I think what happened with us because we didn’t want to experience Runaway Railway. And I think that’s a whole nother layer because of what if you don’t regularly go to the parks and you attend this event? And you want to ride the rides? But how do you ride the rides and do all the princess stuff at the same time? You can’t.

Ariel Landrum 26:49
There’s no way you would have had to make a choice. If you were going to do the special event things only or if you were going to do one special event thing in the ride. The things that we did get to do a bow and arrow shooting. And I made my first shot and then the rest two were crappy, but it doesn’t matter because I beat my partner who made no shots. Go me. We also saw like every hour, Giselle just strolling around.

Stefanie Bautista 27:16
Yes Giselle from Enchanted, which I think that was the highlight of many people’s experiences because we don’t see Giselle very often. And if you are listening, Lady who played Giselle, you could pass for Amy Adams impersonator hands down, because so many people were like, “Was that really her?” And you know, she’s waving about and you’re doing things that you she’s so physically animated that and we’re all tired at this point, people it’s like 9, 10, 11 o’clock. So we’re delirious. It you coulda fooled me. I would have thought that was Amy Adams, and they just probably paid her a fat check to be there.

Ariel Landrum 27:51
Yes. I If someone had told me that, that was her. I’d have been like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, bet.”

Stefanie Bautista 27:57
Bet. But that was a nice surprise. And they did a little fanfare for her. There were projections right on Main Street and The Castle.

Ariel Landrum 28:06
Okay, so there were actual projections. And then there was supposed to be like a projection show on the water. But there wasn’t projections really. And it was Soaring Melodies Under The Stars. So they were pulling all the Disney Princesses ‘I Want’ songs. And I was expecting Fantasmic I didn’t get it. But it wasn’t bad. I think from the way the map read and the stuff that I was reading. It said inspiring musical performance. But it didn’t put live. So I had no idea I was gonna be sung to.

Stefanie Bautista 28:35
That was when we split up and Ariel’s like, “Oh, we’re gonna watch a projection.” And I’m thinking it’s a projection because that’s what they do during fireworks. They project things onto Tom Sawyer’s Island. And, I mean, that’s just what I expect. When we were walking up, I hear a theme song, and I think it was it was, “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana. And I was like, “Oh, okay, cool. It’s it’s Moana time.” I hear her singing, and I’m like, “Oh, I hear breathing. And I hear someone’s singing.” And I’m like, “Oh, this is a live performance.” And they did have the Princesses come around the Rivers of America in like that float I guess you wanna say.

Ariel Landrum 29:12
The first song they did was “Colors of The Wind,” with Pocahontas. And she actually was dancing on the island.

Stefanie Bautista 29:18
Oh, okay.

Ariel Landrum 29:19
So she wasn’t even on those weird tiny boats, like she was she was feeling all the colors of the wind all throughout that island. Like, she was leaping like it was very, it was very gorgeous. But so far away, it would be hard to it was hard to see her if you weren’t like actually at the fence, and I was at the fence like I could put my phone…

Stefanie Bautista 29:37
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 29:37
through it.

Stefanie Bautista 29:38
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 29:38
And then it was. It might have been Moana first and then Merida and then Tiana. And I think that was it.

Stefanie Bautista 29:46
It was a live performance, which was lovely. I think it was great. The performance did a fantastic job and they had pyrotechnics.

Ariel Landrum 29:53
Yeah, they did. They did.

Stefanie Bautista 29:55
It wasn’t full on fireworks, but it was to the extent of like that Fantasmic fireworks, not as not as much, but there were pyrotechnics. So I don’t think that was said anywhere in the map, right?

Ariel Landrum 30:08
No, it wasn’t. And I’m looking at it right now the map literally says, “An inspiring musical performance with special appearances by Disney Princesses.” So that and it says it’s on Rivers of America. So that makes it sound like, again. I guess performance could have meant like dance, but I would have not thought live singers.

Stefanie Bautista 30:26
Vague. Yeah, we got to watch that. I got to eat one of the featured foods. I wanted to eat more, but I did not get to

Ariel Landrum 30:34
Something else we did not get to do like we want to to.

Stefanie Bautista 30:39
First of all, there was a high tea advertised that you had to make a reservation for and Ariel Do you want to kind of elaborate on what that process was? Because we sent you on that mission.

Ariel Landrum 30:51
Yes. So while you and the kiddos were on, It’s a Small World, my partner and I just like booked it straight to Cafe Orleans. In order to try and do the high tea service. It was it’s a prefix tea service. And it had a variety of things, including like short ribs, caviar, a crab avocado toast. They had plant based option if you are somebody who is vegan or vegetarian and strawberry shortcake. They had blueberry almond scones, like all these lovely, wonderful things that like we are all about. We get there and they said “The walk up menu is already full. You have to make a reservation.” However the app isn’t working. I was like, “Okay.” And they’re like, “Just come back at 10.” My partner gets in line for a popcorn bucket that was special for Princess Nite, which is Cinderella in her wedding dress in her carriage. Popcorn bucket is the carriage

Stefanie Bautista 31:43
Yeah, also did you know they started selling them today in the parks?

Ariel Landrum 31:47
Disrespectful. They said it was her Princess Nite.

Stefanie Bautista 31:50
That’s what I thought too. But I just wanted to sneak that in there. But anyway, go on.

Ariel Landrum 31:53
A disrespectful. Well, I got one first so there.

Stefanie Bautista 31:56
You did it’s beautiful. It was beautiful. It like knock people over. It was great.

Ariel Landrum 32:00
The performance for Rivers of America is at like 9:30. Yes, yes, it was okay. Okay. I’m getting my timelines, right. So it’s a 9:30. So I want to save the spot. In front of the Rivers of America, my partner is getting popcorn bucket, you and AJ are coming back from It’s a Small World. You and AJ stop to get the yummy treat, which we’ll talk about the only yummy treat. And then my partner cannot find me at the Rivers of America. So he just decided to get back in line at New Orleans Square. Because almost it’s now like 9:45, 9:50. The shows been going on and he wants to be able to try and get the walk in menu or whatever. Because the lady did say come back at 10. The woman is at standing at the podium. He’s there at 9:50. So that’s before 10. And she goes “Oh, well, the reservations are back open on the on the app so we’re not taking in any more walk-in ones, you have to do it on the app.” He tells me that and we’re both frantically looking at the app. And I’m like sending messages to Stef while I’m trying to like listen to these beautiful performances about like, apparently we can make reservations the app. I don’t know how we were expected to do that. I really don’t because the app definitely kept shutting down. It didn’t say anything about our special menu. I don’t know where it was supposed to go. So this is another one of those things where it’s like it people seem to have hidden knowledge. It doesn’t say anywhere were that we were allowed to like have this as a thing that we could reserve. In fact, when we locked when we went in at 6pm. And I was just looking at reservations for dinner. They all stopped it at 8 like there were they weren’t taking any more after that on the app because it was a private event after that. So I don’t know if there was like a special like button.

Stefanie Bautista 33:42
Was there a Google form that we had to fill out? Like, I don’t know. Was there like a Survey Monkey that was put out that I didn’t know about? I think it was kind of crazy because she told me that “Yes, it’s on the app.” So I’m frantically pushing a stroller trying to look at this app, but also try to listen to Moana. And I have these two churros in my hand. On our way back, we’re passing by where the Casey Jr. train is. And we see the Churro Stand, and we’re like “Ooh churros!” We haven’t gotten one. I think there’s a special one. And then I see the tiny tiny sign that’s in front of the registered that says “blueberry cheesecake churro.” And AJ loves blueberry and I so do I, but he loves blueberry and I love cheesecake. So I’m like, “No, we’re getting this.” And, you know, I’m texting Ariel like “Hey, do you want a churro?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” And so we get in line super quick. And then we get churro but the churro comes with like us. It’s like a dipping cream Yes, dipping cream. So it was dipping cream so I’m like holding these things and like putting into my stroller trying to like hold up these, churros because there’s no way to, you know, sanitarily is that’s even a word and put a churro down without holding it up. So whatever I’m holding it and I’m trying to check the app to like, find out what High Tear is or where High Tea is. And it’s so dark around the Rivers of America that I could not find remotely where Ariel was nor where James was. Apparently I had passed him and stood like four people away from him without even me knowing. And he was wearing a white shirt. So I was looking for Eric like colorblock Eric, and I couldn’t find him. Because it was so dark. I truly don’t think it needed to be that dark. Because it wasn’t a projection that we expected because it was a fully lit live show. I think it was a little too dark. And they were doing construction in the back in New Orleans squares, which is why we all couldn’t find each other. By the time we all reunited, we were just like, “We’re tired of trying to figure out this High Tea thing. Forget it. Let’s just eat this churro.” Because I took one bite of that churro, and I don’t know if it was because it was tired. I needed sugar or something. But wow, was it the best churro that I’ve had?

Ariel Landrum 35:43
It was the best churro ever. I think it was because we were starving. Because before that the only thing we had eaten was the like tots. Tater tots.

Stefanie Bautista 35:54
We all the four adults and one toddler shared a poutine tater tot plate at the Rose Tavern. Yep, yep. So that was like at 7 o’clock. And now it is nine and we are starving.

Ariel Landrum 36:09
And none of us had dinner because we were expecting a wonderful meal at the park that was that was Princess themed.

Stefanie Bautista 36:15
Cuz I’ve made the mistake. And Ariel’s made this mistake too. When we go to the Food and Wine Festival, we eat beforehand. And then we don’t have space for anything at the Food and Wine Festival. So we’re like, “We’re not gonna make that mistake again.” And we didn’t get to eat anything. So we were starving. But to go in a little bit into detail with this churros. So it’s a regular churro it has like blue and you know, sparkly dusting on it. The star of the show was that dipping cream, because it was as if it was whipped cheesecake with like blueberry in it. And it was so good. You guys, it was so good. And taking away the fact that were tired and you know, kind of upset. I think when desserts are really good, they make your mouth water. And I think it made my mouth like water in it, it made a churro juicy, which I don’t know if that makes sense. But it I love that churro it was really good.

Ariel Landrum 37:06
It was really really good. And looking at some of the other menu items. The majority of them were actually all mostly desserts. And I think this is part of when you think of the trope of a princess you think of very sweet and sugary and all of these things were sweet and sugary. Even of the things that were maybe more savory we have like Cajun honey glaze check. Yeah, we had.

It was spicy wings, right? Oh, yes, yes. The hula hula. Yep.

Stefanie Bautista 37:34
And that was at Tomorrowland, you would have thought from that description that Ariel just said they would have been an adventure land because you know, when you think of huli huli or anything that has like some sort of Polynesian connotation to it, you’d think it’d be there but no, it was in Tomorrowland

Ariel Landrum 37:48
It was at Galactic Grill. Spicy Huli Huli Loaded Tenders. And even though they were spicy, they sought a sweet tank to them.

Stefanie Bautista 37:56
Yes, they were good.

Ariel Landrum 37:57
And the reason we started one over there was because the Magic Keyholders can pick up like a special gift over at the Star Wars Landing Bay. And it was a sticker. So that was cute. I mean, aside from that, I never saw Leia over there. So I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on there. And then there’s the dance party, which I thought was a lot of fun. Pop Princess Dance Party featuring of Vanellope von Schweetz. And there are a lot of different people cosplay costumes as Vanellope von Schweetz.

Stefanie Bautista 38:24
Yeah, I was very surprised. I didn’t know she was such a character that people love. I mean, I think she’s great. But she doesn’t strike me as maybe it’s because she invited all the Disney Princesses like over in WreckIt Ralph Two that like automatically gave her a you know, street cred.

Ariel Landrum 38:39
I was wondering like if it was because her clothes are like comfy? And it’s like, you could wear that jacket and not and you still look like the character.

Stefanie Bautista 38:48
Or it’s really easy to just put your hair in a ponytail and put a bunch of charms in it. Um I yeah, I mean, the the accessibility of that costume is very high.

Ariel Landrum 38:57
And then there were a bunch of other photo ops that we didn’t get to do. I didn’t get to take a picture in Cinderella’s… Well, it’s like a cardboard cutout. So I thought it was going to be her actual crystal coach that I’m climbing into. It’s cardboard cutout. There was a giant storybook that in between walking to Batuu and Critter Country. And then when where we sat down on to have food, area that had these windows with glow in the dark marker that people were writing on and it was supposed to be like leaving your mark.

Stefanie Bautista 39:27
Like you know, affirmations and you know how you celebrate yourself and you know others and I think that was kind of cute. Again, a lot of these things had lines and if you didn’t have the patience or just retired from the night or if you had little ones it’s very hard to justify. I’m gonna stand in this line for 45 minutes to take a picture in front of a cardboard cutout as cute as it is.

Ariel Landrum 39:48
I really think there could have been more interactive stuff like the and this is where I’d say the things that could have helped spread things out. The like the leaving your mark that immediately actually makes me think of Rapunzel because she paints. Like they could have had a Rapunzel like painting and dancing around painting. And then you know, you can’t really stand and take pictures with her. But similar to the dance party, they could have been other people like drawing and painting. And you would have gotten a picture of Rapunzel doing those things, it would have been very interactive, that would be like one way to integrate that. I think another thing would have been, instead of just taking pictures of Tiana, they could have had a lot of the restaurants have windows where you can watch people cook, I think they could have had Tiana like baking, or like being the head restaurateur and like pretending to like tell people what to do. Ah I think there would have been that those interactive experiences would have been very different than just taking a picture with a character in a park and would have helped with creating more space. Especially if you know that that’s just where they’re gonna stay. And you can’t really go up and take a picture with them, but you are seeing the interacting, you are gonna get a picture, I think that would have helped honor the actual Princesses and their characters and who they are. I think that’s what I was expecting, which I don’t know why I was expecting that. But that’s what I was expecting.

Stefanie Bautista 41:08
Well, I think it’s, you know, you’re bringing the P+rincesses to life, right, you’re taking them out of their characters in the movie, where that’s where they live. And you’re seeing them out in the open where as we don’t normally get to see that at Disneyland. They’re just really there for photo ops. For me, I thought that they could have utilized things that they already do for Lunar New Year or, you know, California Food and Wine Festival where they have a coloring station for kids, like, girls could have colored a princess crown, or you know, a fan or a mirror or something like the lanyard that they gave us. For Princess Nite was essentially a cardboard thing with a mirror on it, saying, you know, “You are the princess kind of thing.” And I’m just like, again, a reach.

Ariel Landrum 41:50
Ah reach because to me, the it made me think of vanity, which was disrespectful, or the Evil Queen, but…

Stefanie Bautista 41:59
I was like, “Is somebody gonna pop out of my mirror and say, ‘Who is that fairest one of all?'” Like “What?”, it was kind of weird. And yeah, my toddler loved it because he likes seeing himself in the mirror. But other than that, it was kind of like not too sure if this was the move. For Marriest Nites, they gave you Christmas lights to wear around your neck, which is makes sense because it’s a holiday event. And they lit up and they gave it to you for free. Whereas if you had to pay for it, it’s like upwards to $30. So you feel like you’re getting value out of something that they’re giving you for free. And they had like a booklet of details of what the event had. Whereas this one was just a digital map that you had to download prior to the event or know where to get it in your app, which is not easy to find.

Ariel Landrum 42:50
Despite the fact that they make so much money off of the princesses and like literally it was it was Cinderella that saved that save the company. I feel like they could have done Princess Nite a little bit better. I feel like they did some of our Princesses a little dirty. Again, in thinking about embodying the princesses as certain characteristics. When I think of Ariel, I think of being very curious. Like there could have been a scavenger hunt of like Dingle hoppers like for Ariel, like Mulan’s strength and having like a sword class or something like that. But even with Princess Leia, like lightsaber class. I knew they used to do even like remember the Jedi training. With Belle, like having a library of books that the kids could have picked out or a living book, maybe that was digital. Those are things that they could have incorporated. I don’t know.

Stefanie Bautista 43:39
Yeah, or maybe even like finding your way with Moana like reading a map, or like getting a free map of the islands or something like that, or there’s easy ways of doing this. And these are things that they have done before in the past. So I don’t know if it was just a disconnect of you know, what they do at California Adventure and how to incorporate that at the Disneyland or if it’s just from what I heard from other people have thought this too is? Did they just try to fill an After Dark event with a theme and not really think it through? Because…

Ariel Landrum 44:09
Because that’s what it feels like?

Stefanie Bautista 44:10
Yeah. Disney Princess culture is a thing. And you know, the fact that we have dissected it enough. As you know, women and fans of Disney, I think this was kind of a missed opportunity, especially during Women’s History Month. Give them the honor and the light that they deserve. I hope they learn from this experience, because you know, After Dark events are really fun. And I know the most popular one is Oogie Boogie Bash, because that sells out and like t-minus 10 seconds before people are even thinking about it in like May. And we have yet to attend one of those. But I know that they’ve knocked it out of the park with that event. So maybe take some of those elements. And these are Disney villains that are kind of obscure too. So they’re not even as much in the forefront as our Disney Princesses are and yet they’re able to make them shine.

Ariel Landrum 45:00
Now I do not they do have two upcoming After Dark events, one’s Throwback Nite. And the other one is Star Wars Nite and Star Wars Nite takes place during May the Fourth actually. So there you go. Hopefully they will learn from this experience. My frustration is that I will find out that the other two experiences were were well thought out. And that this one will feel like it was just a spot filler.

Stefanie Bautista 45:29
Yeah, it’s just one of those things that they just tried. And we’re like, “Okay, I guess it didn’t work. So we’re not doing it again.” And that was the one that we experienced.

Ariel Landrum 45:35
Yes, yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 45:37
Umm, remind us of the price point of this particular event.

Ariel Landrum 45:41
Princess Nite, two tickets, $129 each. That’s basically the price of one day pass.

Stefanie Bautista 45:47
A one day pass, however, you only have from 6 to 1 o’clock in the morning. If you’re thinking about it. And, you know, for future events, I would say don’t bank on going on all the rides, because that’s not going to happen. Like we are managing expectations when it comes to what we want to do and what we actually got to do. I did not get to eat the escargot thingyamajig that I wanted to eat. Because it was so far and yeah, it was a little disappointing. But I think even at the end of the night, Ariel, I remember you asked like, “Did you get everything you wanted out of Princess Nite?” And I think at that point, cold and tired and like just happy that at least I got one quarter of a wing in my stomach. I was like, “Yes, I got everything that I needed.” I don’t know if you still felt the same way?

Ariel Landrum 46:39
I am still sad that I didn’t see Kida. I don’t know what I’ll get another opportunity. We’ll see if they bring her back for some other thing for that Princess Nite again. And I just like make that my priority just like stand in the line before it even starts. But other than that, I did enjoy it because I loved seeing everybody in costume. I think for me, the the most enjoyment I had was seeing all of the children dressed up. And little princesses, little princes, just all these people running around in their full costume and garb. I really, really enjoyed that. And I think the other thing that I enjoyed was the archery again, an interactive experience that I think they could have expanded in other ways. And then DJ was really good at the dance party.

Stefanie Bautista 47:29
The DJ was killing it, that DJ was killing it.

Ariel Landrum 47:32
And a woman. Woman DJ, she was doing good with the crowd engagement song choice, the mixing of the songs.

Stefanie Bautista 47:40
That dance floor was packed. I don’t know if it’s because people want it to be warm. But yeah, no, that was really good. It really set a good vibe over there, especially in a place where it’s kind of almost dead, I feel in that area because Star Wars has moved on to Batuu. And they’re just trying to fill in things that Tomorrowland that you know desperately needs kind of a makeover. So it was nice to see a little life over there. And people embracing that, I think for what we experienced and you know, we’re learning as we go, it was good. But obviously things to improve on which is you know, always the case. And I think even in our planning, there’s things that we probably could have improved on. However, you know, it was really nice to do an After Dark event because of the space that was available. I really enjoyed not being body to body with everyone like normally we do. I think the space was really good because you know, you get to breathe and you get to experience the park in a different way. I just wished that they you know could tighten up a few things and maybe not run out have some food. I hope you guys enjoyed our little breakdown of Princess Nite and let us know in our comments on Instagram or tweet at us @HappiestPodGT if you want to let us know about your experience. It felt really good to talk about this again because I know it has been a while.

Ariel Landrum 48:53
Yes. Catch us also at WonderCon. We will be doing a panel that Sunday and we hope to see you on the next podcast.

Stefanie Bautista 49:01
Yep, thanks for listening.

Ariel Landrum 49:02
Bye!

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Princess Kida
  • Princess Atta
  • Mulan
  • Ping
  • Pocahontas
  • Princess Merida
  • Princess Ariel
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • Expectations
  • Women’s History Month
  • Room for improvement
  • Food
  • Maps
  • Navigation
  • Disneybounding

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
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 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |

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Navigating Pop Culture Conventions

August 5, 2022 · Discuss on the GT Forum

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#30: Pop culture conventions, where fans and geeks gather to celebrate their fandoms, are often the most anticipated experiences of the year. This year, Stef and Ariel were blessed with the opportunity to speak as panelists at both WonderCon and the mega San Diego Comic-Con. In this episode, they share the ups and downs of navigating pop culture conventions.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Transcription

Stefanie Bautista 0:10
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef and educator who uses her passions and fandoms to help her students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:21
And I’m Ariel, I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental unwellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:29
And here at Happiest Pod, we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Ariel Landrum 0:33
Why? Because we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume. So Stef, what Disney Experience are we discussing today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:40
So it’s been a while since we’ve, you know, recorded and we’ve gotten back into the game. I know, as we always say, in our practices, mental health is number one. So we decided to take a little break for ourselves pay attention to what we need, the things that we need to do on our lives. But we went back into it full force with conventions. So it’s not necessarily a specific Disney experience. I think this is more of it encompasses everything that has to do with all geekiness all nerdiness anything fandom, definitely Disney is a big driving force in a lot of these things, because of all of its franchise acquirements. But conventions is our topic today. And we have done a lot of conventioning, haven’t we?

Ariel Landrum 1:27
Yes, yes. We have gone to a lot of conventions, I think maybe more you than me. Because I went to WonderCon and Comic-Con.

Stefanie Bautista 1:36
Yes. And I went to Anime Expo, which is one more than you.

Ariel Landrum 1:39
Yeah. And then we didn’t do Midsummer Scream because that’s always right after Comic-Con and I need like a break. And we are I know that both of us are going to try D23.

Stefanie Bautista 1:51
Yes, we are going to try with all of our minds and all of our Disney magic to do that. Because as you all have probably been seeing a lot of these in person conventions are coming back for the first time in 2022. So many people are eager, they’re willing to come back to the convention space to be with their communities, and also be with their tribes basically. And so what we’re finding is that a lot of these conventions are selling out. I know for myself, when I was preparing for Anime Expo this year, I did not realize that I was going to see many posts on Instagram saying they were sold out which is beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced before. I mean, for all of you con convention goers you all know that these things never sell out.

Ariel Landrum 2:35
I mean, with the exception of San Diego Comic-Con

Stefanie Bautista 2:37
With the exception of the big one. These almost never sell out. They’re usually still very niche communities that come together cosplay. But I think over the pandemic with the releases of so many platforms and so much accessibility to content. We’re just getting fans from everywhere. And it’s not a niche community anymore. As they say it’s cool to be a nerd now, right?

Ariel Landrum 3:02
It’s cool to be part of the geeky community.

Stefanie Bautista 3:05
It is it is so yeah, we attended quite a bit of conventions. We went into it. I know, both me and Ariel had been a little hesitant to be in the public space, especially since you know we are still in the middle of a pandemic. But we have been given some great opportunities, right?

Ariel Landrum 3:20
Absolutely. So So previously, before the pandemic, we would go to conventions every year, and on a different platform that’s been archived we actually went as press. And then even before that we were attendees. And even before that, I worked as a booth babe, which is somebody who passes out free things and stuff.

Stefanie Bautista 3:37
Ohh! Booth babe! Booth babe! I did not do that. I was always an attendee.

Ariel Landrum 3:43
So we have had many types of experiences of the convention. I think, the only experience that we haven’t had is being an exhibitor. I haven’t.

Stefanie Bautista 3:51
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 3:52
You?

Stefanie Bautista 3:53
But accidentally you were going to be an exhibitor this year at Comic-Con, right?

Ariel Landrum 3:56
Yes. And the other new experience that we had at WonderCon. And Comic-Con was we were panelists.

Stefanie Bautista 4:03
Yes. And I feel for us, it was just like a dream come true. I never thought that we would be at the level at this stage of I guess, in our geekiness that we would be presenting topics that people really wanted to hear about connecting with people who think just like us and share the same passions and fandoms as us and having some really meaty and meaningful conversations that lasts beyond the 45 minutes that they allow us to have.

Ariel Landrum 4:32
Yes. Being a volunteer or working at a booth working it’s essentially a W2 two or 1099 job you have to apply. When it comes to being a volunteer you also have to apply but usually volunteers. If you particularly San Diego Comic-Con because it’s so big. If you apply early and get approved, then you get passes for the whole shebang. So you end up not having to pay but you have to be prepared to work you have to be Be prepared to answer a lot of questions about the convention floor where things are about the panel’s. Really good volunteers who get chosen again next year are ones that create that connection and do the deep dive to learn about the convention and its size and where to walk around. But when it comes to doing something like press, being a professional, doing a panel, that’s it’s a whole other bar, where you have to, like, fill out paperwork, do a proposal. And when we had done it for press, you had to prove that you had a following you had people reading your content, or if you’re a podcaster, are listening to your podcast, or, you know, watching your YouTube channel, if you were saying that you were public, like a publication of some sort, you have to prove that. So for anybody who wants to have a press pass, if you don’t already work at a…

Stefanie Bautista 4:35
Like an established publication…

Ariel Landrum 4:48
You have to be willing to put in the work to make your own which means consistency, because that’s usually what garners the most attention.

Stefanie Bautista 6:02
Yes, definitely. And with those different levels, it’s kind of like, as an attendee, yes, you want to have fun a little bit. But when you have a purpose there, it’s all of a sudden, a different game, you have to make sure that you’re working having trying to have fun at the same time. But also, knowing that you have a responsibility there and knowing that you have to have a game plan coming in. Because when you’re making that jump from attendee to either volunteer or attendee to even press, you have to make sure that you’re getting what you need to get done. Because as you all know, who do attend conventions, the day just slips by, and it goes by so fast, and all of the sensory overload all of just the people overload, everything just kind of ends up getting in the way. So I know for myself making the jump from attendee to at least press, I had to, like totally prepare myself in a different mindset. I know for sure, I didn’t want to be a volunteer, because I didn’t want to work. I wanted to have fun. I didn’t want to work. But this type of work was a little bit different, because then I could put my perspective on things. But I did run into the problem of gathering all that information into a digestible way. And putting all of those things because there’s a lot you’re looking at a lot of things, a lot of things are being thrown at you, you’re experiencing a lot of different like either panels, Artist Alley, all that stuff. And then to be able to condense all of that information into something that’s digestible is not easy for a lot of people to do. So, like Ariel said, there’s many different avenues to be part of what is essentially a convention, but you just have to find the one that works the best for you.

Ariel Landrum 7:42
And burst a little bit of a bubble. Just because you get the press pass doesn’t mean that you get access to all of the things. There are even tiers, if it is a bigger convention, like San Diego Comic-Con, sometimes press gets special seating, but at smaller conventions, they don’t get preference in seating at panels. And they don’t get to automatically interview whoever they want. Obviously, larger press publications will get access to celebrities to be able to do sit downs, and Q and A’s. Whereas general press that comes from like blogs or YouTube channels that aren’t well established, but are still enough following that they can get a press pass, you’re probably just going to be able to just attend for free, which you know, is a money saver. So it’s not something to sneeze at. But don’t step into wanting to do those things thinking, “I’m going to now have these magic doors open to all of these and I get I get to meet like my you know, Chris Evans?”

Stefanie Bautista 8:39
Yes. Don’t think because you have a press faster, you’re automatically going to be IGN. And then you’re going to just give a sit there and people come to you. That’s not how it works. Although that would be great. That is definitely not how it works.

Ariel Landrum 8:53
We did press and we talked about being a volunteer and certainly being attendee is you just enjoying yourself. And we will focus on the attendee experience in a little bit, because that’s going to be everyone’s more general experience. But the next thing is being sometimes what they call a professional and the professional are usually individuals who get to be on a panel. Who either are running or moderating the panel, or are the key panelists in either a workshop or q&a format. And that was the the new thing that Stef and I were able to do this year starting with WonderCon and which is the sister convention of Comic-Con, so a little bit smaller, known as like the TV convention around here and is in Anaheim. And then we actually were able to because of that score, doing a panel at San Diego Comic-Con like the mothership of all geeky conventions.

Stefanie Bautista 9:49
Yes. And I think because there are sister conventions like that that is a way to get into the big leagues, right. I didn’t really think of it at first because is when we were at WonderCon, I was like, “Oh, this is it. We made it ya’ll.”

Ariel Landrum 10:03
“We don did it!”

Stefanie Bautista 10:05
“We don did it. We’re here in Anaheim, this is great.” Like, and they were coming out with so many cool things at WonderCon. Like people were actually like, bigger panels because I think I’ve only attended one or two WonderCons prior. And I think that was when Shazam first came out. And I remember this, like the size of it, because it was small, it wasn’t as overwhelming as Comi-Con, it was so much more accessible. And you know, of course, we’re next to Disneyland. So it’s always all good. And the people who normally would be Disney fans were there. So it felt a little bit more like home. We were, I felt very comfortable there. And I felt that it was a great foray into being a professional and a panelist because it didn’t feel foreign, even though we haven’t been in that space for a very long time.

Ariel Landrum 10:51
Well and then we’re talking about so for you and I, how the process went was we put in a proposal at WonderCon.

Stefanie Bautista 10:59
Months prior.

Ariel Landrum 11:01
Yeah, we put in, we put in each our own proposal, because what we’ve found out from peers who had done panels was that volunteers are the ones who look over the proposals, and they just get a pile. So we’re like, “Oh, well, we can increase our chances, if we each put one in. We didn’t think that they would both get chosen, where one of us had to do like you had to change the title of your panel and some of the goals.

Stefanie Bautista 11:26
And it was funny that I had to do that. And it was so nonchalant. They were just like, “You could just tweak it a little bit. And you know, we can we can accept it.” I’m like, “Oh, it’s that easy.”

Ariel Landrum 11:35
“It’s that easy?” And then we also had a friend Lorran, who also had a panel approved that she had asked me to be a part of and I was just like, “Oh, well, if our panels don’t get chosen, then maybe hers will.”

Stefanie Bautista 11:48
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 11:48
So I went from like thinking I’d be on one to being on three.

Stefanie Bautista 11:53
And you’re really only preparing to be on one because I mean as as an attendee, you don’t even think you’re gonna get to that level at that point, or like, “Why? Why would they choose me?”

Ariel Landrum 12:03
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 12:04
However, all these conventions, their goal is to connect with the people who love the content, right? Yes, they want to involve as much of the general public as possible. That’s what conventions thrive on. So knowing that they want to have real life people who can, you know, explain and talk about things that the general populace loves. So it is not that much of a surprise when you think about it from that perspective, because they do want a variety of programming. They just don’t want people going to a DC or Marvel or a Disney panel. They also want people who are consumers of this media, whatever platform you have, talking about why they love it, and in different angles too.

Ariel Landrum 12:46
And I think it’s worth it to note that a majority of these conventions, at least when it comes specifically to WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con, they’re nonprofits, they’re huge. They look like they’re profitable. They’re nonprofits and, and not in their their mission statement involve education on pop culture media. So having panels that focus on learning about how to create a comic book learning about comic book law, learning about what it’s like to be a podcaster, learning how to voice act, all of those things are what make it rich. So for us, we we had three, I have three panels, Stef had two panels. And when we were chosen for our specific panels, we had to decide how we were going to do moderating, if it was going to be like co-moderating who we were going to have how we were gonna split it up. So the first panel was Lorran’s panel that I was a guest on and it was, Why Diverse Stories matter: Voices from the BIPOC LGBTQ+ Neurodiverse Community. And so the what we learned from Lorran, who had been doing panels at SDCC and WonderCon, consistently for a few years now, is that you want a variety of panelists, if yours isn’t niche, like we’re only talking about creating a comic book, then, you know, make it as diverse as possible. So she had actors, she had producers, she had comic book creators and graphic designers. So when we were thinking about the panelists for our panel, we had Coming Together on an Honoring AAPI Voices in Pop Culture, which was Stef’s panel, and then Celebrating AAPI Voices in Media, which was my panel, we wanted to do the same. So we had chosen panelists who were diverse in their professional background from our own.

Stefanie Bautista 14:39
Yep, exactly. And in doing those different types of panels, we had to make sure that the content had variety and that you know, we were attacking you know, the subject in different angles that were pretty much similar but a little bit different. And I think in crafting that it’s kind of like your writing up a podcast episode, or you’re writing up even just like a short essay, like, “How are we going to split up the subject in a meaningful way where everybody’s voices are heard?” And that is all dependent on your moderators, the people on the panel, their level of comfort of talking in front of an audience, because we also do want to honor that not everybody is great with public speaking, and they don’t have to be. And many of you know, the professionals that we had on our panel either had a lot of experience in that or maybe had little to no experience and that. For us, we were coming in as newcomers. So we are used to talking to each other on this podcasting, the resume, or also just talking with a bunch of friends. I think, finding the balance between those two is what we had to navigate and learn. And by the time that we did our San Diego Comic-Con panel, I feel like we kind of achieved a lot of the goals that we wanted to achieve. Because not only was the content, of course, all of our content, we love talking about all of it. But talking about different different subjects really impacts the flow of the panel and the flow of the conversation.

Ariel Landrum 16:09
And with our two specific panels being on the AAPI experience, the Asian American Pacific Islander experience, we had, of course, wanted panelists who were part of the community because it was meant to uplift the voices and celebrate the voices and honor the voices of our community. But we also wanted a diversity even in the AAPI. Oftentimes, you when you hear Asian American people immediately think of someone who’s East Asian. So we had a lot of Southeast Asians. And we didn’t have anybody who’s Desi or or Indian, but, you know, maybe something for the future. And we had a for my panel, a specific Creator, who was like, featured on all of the WonderCon like, advertising.

Stefanie Bautista 17:01
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 17:03
I was talking to her sway about like, I have to pick some people for a panelist and he was like, “Why don’t you just tweet at some people?”

Stefanie Bautista 17:10
Yeah. And honestly, that’s like, a felt like a reach for us. I remember when we were talking about it. We’re like, “Could we just try it?” And that is how we got Trung Le on our panel, because Ariel tweeted at him. And we’re not big tweeters, like, we’re not on Twitter all the time.

Ariel Landrum 17:28
Nope.

Stefanie Bautista 17:28
So this was totally like, shot in the dark.

Ariel Landrum 17:31
Yes. Yeah. And I did the same for our San Diego Comic-Con panel, which was titled,

Stefanie Bautista 17:40
“From the Screen to Your Plate: Food In Pop Culture.”

Ariel Landrum 17:42
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 17:43
I said it enough times.

Ariel Landrum 17:45
Yes. However, nobody responded to that. I was hoping Binging for Babish would want to be on. Or Feast of Fiction.

Stefanie Bautista 17:52
Or we got our panelists in very different ways for Comicon. And I think, see, and this is the power of the geek community and the power of our subject, which was food and pop culture, we were able to get some amazing artists and amazing collaborators, just by chance.

Ariel Landrum 18:15
Yes. Okay, okay, so for WonderCon I had asked individuals who I had known personally, they were my friends or individuals that Lorran knew. So these were these were all close friends and they had been on panels or her her friends had been on panels before. And then my my friends who was a psychologist and two app based creators, so they were in the graphic and and programming and web design art community. They were flying in from San Francisco, but they were someone that I had been collaborating with on creating apps. However, when it came to Comic-Con Stef and I did the divide and conquer where we both submitted proposals, we actually submitted five.

Stefanie Bautista 18:59
We did. Each.

Ariel Landrum 19:02
And with San Diego Comic-Con, only one got accepted. And even though we submitted the exact same thing with different names,

Stefanie Bautista 19:10
So we thought, “Oh, for sure, like our AAPI is gonna get picked for like something,” like because, okay, when we did the WonderCon panel, we had some meaningful conversation about what it is to be Asian American. I was like, I was so emotional, because I really feel like it’s a subject that I don’t get to talk about a lot, let alone with other female Asian American Pacific Islander creators, and to have a platform and to have people say, “Oh my gosh, I never thought that I would see like a whole full panel of female Asian American Pacific Islander creators and people who just liked the same things that I like, talk about what it is to see themselves represented in media.” That’s a deep topic y’all like 45 minutes could not contain the amount of knowledge and amount of just emotion and also real life situations that we could have dived into and we need like a part 1-234-567-8910 for it.

Ariel Landrum 20:02
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 20:04
So going into Comi-Con we’re like, “Oh, for sure that’s gonna get picked.”

Ariel Landrum 20:07
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 20:07
Of course, lo and behold, the one that gets picked is the one about food.

Ariel Landrum 20:10
Yes, yes. So, when we were coming up with ideas, we thought about a Geek Therapy one, we thought about different AAPI ones. And we did we did one on Disney princesses, which we presented before, The Evolution of the Disney Princess, and then we’re like, “Hey, I don’t like the number four. I want the number five.” Number four is bad luck anyway. So let’s do five. “What should we do? We’re like we food.”

Stefanie Bautista 20:36
And I was like, of course, we can do food, there is so much to be said about geeky food. And we are always at a pop up, or we are always going to a themed ice cream day. Or we’re always like ever since you mean, me and Ariel have been friends. We’ve been doing pop ups and like consuming all sorts of foods that are themed from the time that it existed. So we were like, “Okay, no brainer, let’s do this.” And we came up with like, a really quick description was the last one that we submitted. And of course, that is the one that got picked. And we’re like, “Okay, well, then our approach is going to be a little bit different because we don’t have to have super professionals on this panel. This is going to be a different approach from all the other panels that we’ve done.” Which is like four.

Ariel Landrum 21:18
Which is four.

Stefanie Bautista 21:19
Four.

Ariel Landrum 21:20
the the thing about the food panel and proposals in general to be a panelist or to host a panel, yes, is that you need to request months in advance. And so as soon as WonderCon ended, Stef and I just put in our paperwork for San Diego Comic-Con, simply because one, we knew we were going to be busy and we didn’t want to forget the deadline. And two, we were just fresh off of that like glow from a convention.

Stefanie Bautista 21:45
Oh for sure.

Ariel Landrum 21:45
And like we just wanted to get do all the things.

Stefanie Bautista 21:47
Oh, yeah.

Ariel Landrum 21:48
Do all the things.

Stefanie Bautista 21:48
We can conquer the world.

Ariel Landrum 21:49
Conquer the world. And we just need to harness that energy. And so it had been like two or three months had gone by before we even heard anything. And a whole other thing of a Vegas trip happened with me and my friend Malaysha. That’s that’s its own thing. But I met someone on the plane, who, Joon and he is a shoe designer, and was also like opening up a K-popcorn chicken restaurant with his cousin. And I was like, “Oh, hey, we I made a proposal with my friend to San Diego Comic-Con. Would you be interested in being a panelist if it got chosen? And we just like exchanged Instagram and that was a thing. Low and behold, four days later, that was the one that was chosen. I told him about it. And he was our first agreed upon panelists.

Stefanie Bautista 22:38
Our first agreed upon panelists and I happened to be in San Diego visiting family at that time. And I was like, “I wonder what happened to our proposal?” Because I am literally across the street from the convention center at the Children’s Museum with my family. And I was like, “I wonder if I just searched Comic-Con and they ever responded?” And there it was, we were approved earlier that day to have our food and pop culture panel and I told Ariel, she was like, “I already have a panelist!” And I was like, |Get out of here!” And so we’re like, “Oh my gosh, we’re actually doing this like this is actually happening!” And so we had Joon on board, we had our good friend chance on board…

Ariel Landrum 23:15
Which you may remember him from the villains episode.

Stefanie Bautista 23:18
Yes. Fantastic. Fantastic human being also goes with us to many, many pop ups and you know, loves to eat just like us. So we were like, “Okay, great. We have four people, but two of them are moderators. So we kind of need a little bit more.” So we were, you know, kind of searching through, you know, our network of people. And we knew that as Asian American Pacific Islanders, Filipino Americans specifically, we knew that there were a lot of great Filipino projects that were going on around, Lumpia With a Vengeance,” which is a Kickstarter movie that had a part one, but is now advertising a part two. And we met a lot of the really awesome people over at WonderCon ironically, because of Chance as well.

Ariel Landrum 24:00
Yes, it’s a Chance. So what we’ve learned about panelists setting up is it’s oftentimes who someone else knows.

Stefanie Bautista 24:06
Yes it is who someone else knows it. I mean, it truly goes back to it’s who you know. And in this industry, even though we don’t consider ourselves to be mega part of the entertainment industry, there is bits and pieces of that. And I think we can definitely say as geeky professionals, we are in that industry now. It is definitely who you know, and the people you want to support and with the platforms that you have. So definitely as Filipino Americans, we did want to uplift our kababayan which is our, you know, our kin, and pretty much have people that are represented because they have a lot of really great projects happening. Like I said they had a part one now they’re gonna have a part two.

Ariel Landrum 24:46
A comic.

Stefanie Bautista 24:47
Yeah, a comic book as well. And ironically, they were doing a screening at San Diego Comic-Con. So we were like, “Hey, let’s see if we can get somebody on board from their team.” I was linked up to their PR person who was amazing and awesome. And I didn’t realize that we also worked around the same area because I work in historic Filipino town in the daytime. And we were able to get a Earl Baylon, which is one of the he’s a voice actor, he is on Netflix. And he is also one of the producers for Lumpia with a Vengeance. So he is also a very big foodie. And he also had a podcast and a YouTube channel where they would recreate recipes, and he was a perfect fit. So he was our number three. Yes.

Ariel Landrum 25:29
When it comes to going to conventions, one of the things that Stef and I love the most as Artists Alley. We love celebrating people who are creative fans that recreate our fandom, and also incorporate their own culture, their history into their artwork. I remember that when when we went to WonderCon we stopped by a booth where I had bought a Jollibee pin.

Stefanie Bautista 25:56
Genevieve Santos, she’s amazing.

Ariel Landrum 26:00
And so in doing that, you start to make connections. And sometimes you become a fan of even these artists, like there are regular artists that I visit regularly. And then there are actual like artists creators, so I had like signed comic books at San Diego Comic-Con. So creating connections with them ends up being a vital part of the community development when you go to conventions.

Stefanie Bautista 26:22
Definitely. And also seeing like, your culture represented. I think there are so many of us AAPI creators that are really starting from the ground up because you know, we weren’t always encouraged as young kids to be artists and you know, to love what we do and, and also represent ourselves in our craft. So like Ariel said, we love going to Artists Alley because that is where the grassroots of fandom like pretty much start off. Because I I myself, I’m an avid pin collector, I love collecting pins. I have so many pins everywhere all at once.

Ariel Landrum 26:55
Disney pins specifically.

Stefanie Bautista 26:56
Disney pins Yep. Disney pin pins specifically Anime pins, all of it. And going to Artist Alley. So timeline goes we did WonderCon. Anime Expo was next that I only went to. And I decided to go with, of course my family and I also decided to bring my little niece with me because it was her first convention. And she dressed up as Nezuko. And there were like 1000 Other Nezukos out there from Demon Slayer because everybody loves Demon Slayer. And that was my day to chill. Because like Ariel said, we always try to now have a day where we buy a lot of stuff our day to chill our day to you know, be with family or be with friends, what have you. So we go to Artists Alley, but then that was our chill day without my niece and we were like let’s go and see what we can buy pin wise. I had just bought a new Ita bag. And for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a clear bag that you can basically display all of your pins and buttons on. And it’s kind of like a walking advertisement of you. And everything you love. So if you see somebody who likes like Anime or like something that is similar to you, you can strike up a conversation with them, be like, “Oh my god, I love your pin!” And that is part of community building. So Artists Alley this year is kind of like other years at Anime Expo where it’s located in the basement of the convention hall because it used to be a small part of the exhibit hall but it has grown so much because anime content creators are its own thing. And like all artists from all source all parts of the country come to Anime Expo to have a booth and people can buy their items and not have to pay for shipping. Or back then before shipping was even really a thing you could only find them in Artists Alley. That’s why that is one of my favorite things to go to Anime Expo because you’re not always going to find official Japanese merchandise at a price point that you can afford anywhere. So artists are really what saved the day. So I’m walking through these halls and it is the Saturday of convention it is the most packed it is almost near impossible to get through one aisle, let alone I think they had 10 aisles of Artists Alley because people are packed like sardines and I am here with a stroller. My son’s asleep thankfully my my husband goes out to use the restroom or whatever. And so I’m like inching my way I live this is like worse than a busy day at Disneyland. I have literally walking inches to get to the end of the hall. And I happen upon this. This booth that look like a little cafe. I love coffee y’all.

Ariel Landrum 29:29
Oh no, no wait. She loves coffee so much that the one we worked as baristas at Whole Foods. They made a large cardboard cutout of her that people would hide in the freezer of her loving her coffee.

Stefanie Bautista 29:40
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 29:40
She was the lead coffee specialist.

Stefanie Bautista 29:42
I was the lead coffee. I bought all the coffee there so I I knew all of the coffee bars and I was we were getting coffee for free all the time. It was good times. So I love coffee a lot and so this booth automatically catches my eye because it has little awning. It has like a little cute pin display. Bored. And I’m like browsing around as I do. And mind you, there are people everywhere. So I can’t even move at this point. So I have no choice but to look. And I see that they had little pins that looked a lot like soda in a bag. And for those of you who have visited Southeast Asia or any, anywhere in Asia, really, when you buy street food out there, soda doesn’t come in a can. It doesn’t come in a cardboard box, it comes in a bag.

Ariel Landrum 30:25
A bag with a straw in it, and…

Stefanie Bautista 30:27
A bag with a staw in it.

Ariel Landrum 30:28
And if you go to Storytellers Cafe you can get a cereal milk in those bags in the straw. So what’s what has been what was street food is now bougie.

Stefanie Bautista 30:41
Is now bougie at the Grand Californian. That’s so funny. Um, but yeah, so I see it in a bag. And I asked the guy behind the counter like, “Is this Royal True Orange, which is the orange soda in the Philippines in a bag?” And he’s like, “It is!” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cute. Like, who makes the pins?” He’s like, “Actually, my cousin makes the pins.” And so I’m like, “Oh, that’s really awesome.” And then I’m browsing a little bit more. And I’m like, “Hey, you know what, I’m gonna get a couple of these pins.” I got that. And also polvorón which is like a really sweet dessert that’s kind of powdery that comes in a little wrappings. That meant a lot to me, because I used to make those with my mom when I was younger. And it was like a really sweet treat that I love. And I still love to this day. And I was like, “I’m gonna buy some of these pins. But also, would your cousin be willing to talk to me because I actually have a panel…” And then I go into my whole spiel about how we have a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. And we would love to have creators like her who are artistic and use their craft to express themselves and their culture through food. And he’s just like, “Wait, are you serious? Are for real? Let me text her right now!” And then so he texts her and then the next day I set up a meeting with her her name is Celena, Sacramento, also known as Celine, Celena Bernice, and she is from LA. Ironically, she was, I think, getting lunch or something at that time, so she wasn’t there. But she had to step away from the booth a little bit. But Anime Expo was the only place that she would sell her things at that time. And she’d only been to San Diego Comic-Con as an attendee, and she was just like, “I would love to be on your panel.” She migrated here from the Philippines not that long ago. And she had some amazing stories to tell about being who she is in that space as a graphic designer. And it she said it also helped reinvigorate her craft. So I think it was like a win win situation. And I was so happy to have her on the panel and have her perspective, because it was such a unique one. And it made the conversations just so awesome.

Ariel Landrum 32:42
Yes. Now we have talked a lot about the panels that we did, and they will actually we’ll be putting the audio on the podcast and or if you want to actually watch them, we’ll be putting them on YouTube. I think that you all will enjoy sort of that adjunct to what we do.

Stefanie Bautista 32:57
Yes. And forgive us. We do not have professionals recording us. So if the audio is a little wonky. Forgive us we will improve…

Ariel Landrum 33:04
One was recorded on a phone my people we are not like, like, it looks like we’re that life. But we’re not that life.

Stefanie Bautista 33:10
No we’re not. We are grassroots just like you all. If you have tips and tricks about recording panels, we would love to hear about that. Because like I said, are like we said, being on these panels we are, they kind of just leave you to your own devices. And you kind of have to figure out how you want to record it. When you want to take your pictures. I know everybody has like the cute picture in front of like the in front of the panel and like the background, but you literally have to like take two seconds to do all of that stuff. Because you have like no time to prepare, and you have to just get it in or else you’re just not gonna get it in at all.

Ariel Landrum 33:45
And when it comes to managing expectations, some of it is some of your panelists might not show up, because their previous panel ran late or they aren’t able to attend anymore. Joon’s cousin who owns the K-Popcorn Chicken with him couldn’t come. So that’s why we had four instead of five, which was totally fine, because four ended up being the perfect number. And at San Diego Comic-Con, the slides wouldn’t load any of the images, because the internet was wack.

Stefanie Bautista 34:12
Beautiful, this beautiful slide. And because we were talking about food, you wanted to have recipes. And we wanted to like tell everybody how much because you know food, there’s so many different ways to communicate that and we wanted to attack it from all levels. And we had a QR code for everybody, which we will have hopefully on the podcast website for all of you guys to see. And none of it showed up. So we had to describe every picture.

Ariel Landrum 34:38
Which grateful that the QR code worked because people on their phones were able to see what you’re supposed to be able to see.

Stefanie Bautista 34:44
So yay for accessibility. We did it. Yeah, so things are not gonna go the way you want it to for all my teacher friends out there, you know, you can prepare a lesson to the tee to the minute to the second and have it be perfect. And then once you get up there at all falls apart. So this is just one of those things that it’s just the reality of it. And at the end of it, we all just had really fulfilling conversation that the audience was so engaged. Thank you for everybody who attended. Hopefully, we will see you all again. Because the guy there’s so there’s a guy in there who click click clicks away to see how many people are in the panel, and homeboy on the side just kept clicking away. And I was like, “Oh, whoa, there it is.”

Ariel Landrum 35:28
Yeah, the first three panels we did at WonderCon, WonderCon one a smaller convention. So we didn’t expect a lot of people. And then they were very niche. They were on AAPI experiences, or diversity. And so the the panel rooms, I would say, maybe like 40?

Stefanie Bautista 35:45
I would say, yeah, for WonderCon. Definitely, Maybe no more than 50?

Ariel Landrum 35:49
New Yeah, no more than 50 in the room. So we were just kind of expecting the same thing at San Diego Comic-Con. While there are more attendees at San Diego Comic-Con, we really factor that in. And oh my god, everybody loves food. And the interesting thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a food panel. So maybe people were like, mind my phrase, hungry for this panel.

Stefanie Bautista 36:10
Oh, yeah.

Ariel Landrum 36:11
How many people do you think that we had in that room? And they just kept coming? My my my….

Stefanie Bautista 36:15
Oh, they just kept coming. And I was like, Are you lost? Did you Okay, so that was a couple of things that I thought about, actually, since it’s happened, because now I’ve had time to digest…

Ariel Landrum 36:24
Haha digest!

Stefanie Bautista 36:26
For me, I totally forgot how big the rooms were. And our room is 24 ABC. So I was like, okay, ABC. That means there’s three sections of a room that’s all compact together. And this is at the San Diego Convention Center. So we’re just right above the exhibit hall. Our panel is at 6:30. All the exhibit halls close at six o’clock. So afterwards if there isn’t a major panel in Hall H or like ballroom 20, which are the two big ones are the Indigo ballroom over at the San Diego Bayfront Hotel. If those are not as popular as people think they are, they’re going to want to just chill out before dinner. So I’m guessing a lot of people who were A just registering because it is the first day of convention center.

Ariel Landrum 37:09
Yeah, ’cause it was Thursday.

Stefanie Bautista 37:10
Registration was just down the hall from us. We were very accessible. And we were very fortunate to have that time slot because there weren’t a lot of big things going around. People just want to see what the convention is all about. And that is when you go see whichever panels are happening. And they always have a little agenda in front of every single room to see which panels are going on. And because some of them are niche, most people did gravitate, I feel like towards arts because it was a subject that everybody could relate to. Because people were dressed up as your friends and Good Burger costumes and.

Ariel Landrum 37:44
Ahh yes!

Stefanie Bautista 37:46
Your your little adoptees that you umm…

Ariel Landrum 37:49
We will talk about that in a little bit.

Stefanie Bautista 37:51
Yes. And it was right before dinner. So maybe people were a little bit hungry or just wanted to hear something a little bit different because like you said, I’ve never seen a food panel ever, and we’re not chefs, you’re gonna We’re home cooks at best; home bakers. We’re just foodies, and have lovers of foods. So I think maybe that also compelled people to just come check it out. And we were hyping there. I don’t know about anybody else. But that was the most hype panel that I’ve been on because the subject wasn’t so heavy. But it was very meaningful. But we were so excited to talk about it. I think that resonated in the room as well. So I would say maybe at the end of it, I would say near one about 100 people were in that panel?

Ariel Landrum 38:37
Well that day. So the the thing about our QR code and where our slides are, it counts, like how long or how many people have viewed or accessed it in that day, there was at least 120 people who viewed it. Just that day. And since then, I guess people are are viewing it afterwards, because there’s been over 300 people who have now viewed our slides to get the recipes.

Stefanie Bautista 39:02
That’s madness. I love that.

Ariel Landrum 39:06
What? You are accessing slides?

Stefanie Bautista 39:11
Slides that didn’t even work.

Ariel Landrum 39:12
Yeah, so thank thank you to those people.

Stefanie Bautista 39:16
think yeah, thank you to all of you.

Ariel Landrum 39:19
Rolling back a little bit. Okay, so, in talking about conventions first, do you want to hyper focus on this year’s conventions, and maybe starting off with Anime Expo because I didn’t go so what was that experience like for you?

Stefanie Bautista 39:33
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I go to Anime Expo every year, whether it’s just for one day, two days, all four days if I have the stamina, and also because Anime Expo always falls on the Fourth of July. There’s always a lot of family stuff going on. And it’s like the first. It’s the first holiday for all of the schools. So I always try to go in any way shape or form and I’ve been going since 20 a 2006, 2007.

Ariel Landrum 39:57
Wow!

Stefanie Bautista 39:57
Back when it was in Anaheim, where WonderCon actually is at the convention center. But man, it was Weeb Central. Like, you’re getting like the super niche…

Ariel Landrum 40:08
You’re like an Elder Weeb.

Stefanie Bautista 40:10
I am an Elder Weeb now I can say I mean, I feel like now a lot of a lot of people have been calling us Professional Geeks, which is awesome. Because we have achieved that level of success. But an all thanks to you all. But anyway, Anime Expo to me has always been home convention because A it’s always been somewhere in and around LA, whether it be Anaheim or the Convention Center where it now lives. And it always had a lot of opportunities for me to connect with anime that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to because we live in America, right anime is Japanese based. A lot of their products are just simply not here. I am very fortunate to live in Los Angeles where we do have a big Japanese American population. And so I can always travel to either Little Tokyo, Carson, Torrance… Any one of these enclaves even San Francisco, they have a big Japanese population out there to try and connect myself with merchandise with you know, like any little sort of thing to help me represent the anime that I love. So this year, was Anime Expo’s 30th anniversary. I had no idea. So there were a lot of cool things happening with Anime Expo because it was the 30th anniversary they were really hyping it up. It was back at the convention center in LA. And so…

Ariel Landrum 41:23
Okay the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Stefanie Bautista 41:24
Yes, the Los Angeles Convention Center right next to what is now called the Crypto.com Arena used to be called the Staples Center, not anymore…

Ariel Landrum 41:31
Dang crypto.

Stefanie Bautista 41:32
As a native Angeleno, I’m never going to call it the Crypto.com Arena, but that’s…

Ariel Landrum 41:36
Staples Center.

Stefanie Bautista 41:37
That’s a personal opinion of mine. It’s always gonna be Staples Center, always Kobe’s House. But they implemented a lot of different things that I feel like could have been done better. I understand that, you know, at first, when they were first advertising it, they said they were not going to verify COVID vaccinations. A lot of people were very upset about that, because they just said, “You know, you just have to monitor your health and make sure that you’re not sick.” But a lot of the panelists a lot of people who were coming from Japan, because Japan is still a closed country right now, they are not accepting any tourist, they are going to have a lot of they were or are going to have a lot of professionals at Anime Expo. And they didn’t want to risk exposure, which for all of us, especially for anime and the reach that it has now for younger audiences, a lot of parents and you know, me, myself, having my son, you know, having his first convention being Anime Expo after WonderCon. I didn’t want to risk that exposure either. And they realized that they needed to do a shift. So that’s when I first realized that we needed to do COVID vaccine verifications. And how they did that was they made you walk around the Convention Center, pretty far from where the actual entrances were, at the main Convention Center around the Staples Center, and into there’s like a street. It’s called Figaro. And it’s right between LA Live, which is like a shopping entertainment district, and the actual Staples Center and Convention Center. You had to walk all the way over there, get your COVID verification, and then come back. So it was a lot of walking. And mind you this is like the beginning of summer. So it’s just getting up into the 90’s here in Los Angeles. And so if you didn’t take advantage of that first registration day, all conventions, they normally have a day zero because there’s usually four days of registration. And Day Zero is when you get registered, especially for professionals, anybody setting up for the convention that has your day set up, get situated, get all of your credentials, everything that you need to have a good time at the convention to do what you need to do, basically. So if you didn’t take advantage of that day, you’re kind of screwed. Because you…

Ariel Landrum 43:43
Did you take advantage of that day? Did you know?

Stefanie Bautista 43:45
I definitely did I knew… because I had been doing this for so long. I always know to get my badge not on the day that I want to start doing convention things like going to the exhibit hall like seeing what I want to buy seeing what panels I want to attend. So luckily for me, because I don’t work too far from downtown. I was able to go get my badge first. But then with the amount of walking that I saw that I was going to do and the amount of walking people are going to be doing…

Ariel Landrum 44:10
Yeah…

Stefanie Bautista 44:11
In cosplay.

Ariel Landrum 44:12
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 44:13
I was like, “Oh, I don’t know about this one.” So not only that, but they were also filtering out the lines that came into the convention center. I know for San Diego Comic-Con and WonderCon. You basically just walk into the doors, you verify your badge and you go in. This one they wanted you to be in a singular line and two entrances. And so these lines would snake around the Convention Center, around the Staples Center loop all the way back around… It was like being in line at Disneyland but like way more score connected. So for me, I know if you have been attending our panels, I am currently six months pregnant. So I am expecting a little one very, very soon. And convention going for me has definitely given a mama perspective as a different perspective altogether. But yeah, expecting Mama is definitely a even more different perspective because you have to think about how you are feeling. And if you are up for conventioning. Because for a lot of our friends who are considered disabled or it’s hard for them to get around, they have to think of other ways for them to be comfortable during convention because it’s a lot of walking a lot of sweating a lot of people around you, and you just want to be comfortable and enjoy yourself at the convention too.

Ariel Landrum 45:34
And I know even like prep work wise before attending a convention, at least the two or three weeks before I will start increasing my step count to be able to tolerate the amount of foot traffic and depending on the convention, like at San Diego Comic-Con this year, they didn’t renew the carpeting. So you were just walking on cement unless a booth had its own special carpeting or its own padding, at which the Star Wars’ booth had the best padding right next…

Stefanie Bautista 46:06
Oh I didn’t go to that one..

Ariel Landrum 46:07
Oh it was one right next to the Naruto bowl.

Stefanie Bautista 46:09
Oh!

Ariel Landrum 46:09
I just likes I would like slowly lean into those like costumes. Stand on the plantform.

Stefanie Bautista 46:15
That’s why you are standing over there. “I was, why are they, they’re not moving?”

Ariel Landrum 46:18
Oh. It was so good!

Stefanie Bautista 46:22
Yes, yeah, that’s definitely something that you have to take into consideration because not everybody can go full force 4 days straight. It’s like doing Disney World in a sense, because you have to make sure that you are your stamina is up to speed to be able to withstand and not be, you know, just dying at the end of the day of exhaustion and what have you. But anyway, I was actually able to be tipped off by somebody because I didn’t really want to walk again around the Convention Center to be in that line to get in because I was tired. I was with my two year old and my husband. And I was like, “I’m not gonna stand…” and pregnant. So I was like, “Is there another way that I can get into another line?” And they’re like, “Well, since you are pregnant, you can technically get an ADA badge, which is American Disabilities Act badge, because you are considered in the category of people who need assistance.” And so I’m like, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” I was able to get that badge and my husband was my helper. And because of that convention, the convention was so much more easier for us to navigate because I did not have to extend myself or overwork myself to the point of exhaustion.

Ariel Landrum 47:31
So in getting the badge, so you didn’t have it essentially, like the first day you got it the second day?

Stefanie Bautista 47:37
I did get it the second day.

Ariel Landrum 47:38
Okay. And then what were some of the accommodations that you received at Anime Expo? And how like, how did it change your experience?

Stefanie Bautista 47:48
Oh, absolutely. So the first day when I did not have the badge, I went into the general line. And people are just like, kind of like, shoveling you through kind of like cattle. It’s like, “Okay, scan your badge, make sure you scan it,” all that stuff. And that is a very stressful process. Because if you don’t know how to you have to scan your badge to the RFID scanner to make sure that you paid for your ticket, all that stuff. And that whole thing just to get it right. With my ADA badge, I went to a different line with much more friendlier people. And it didn’t seem like you know, they were hating life at that point. And, yeah, they were very accommodating. They were like, “Oh, it’s okay, you can take your time, we’re not rushing you.” There was no line to get in. They were very friendly. They made small talk with me. And then I was able to go into another entrance next to the main entrance. But it led right to the elevators to go up because there’s a lot of stairs around the convention center. But because of that, we had special seating for certain things. If you wanted to play video games, there were always like a separate section for people with the ADA badge. And if they saw that you did have an ADA badge, they would let you go into different entrances that made it easier to access certain things like panels, and also just special things that like giveaways and things like that.

Ariel Landrum 49:10
Okay, so I think maybe because Anime Expo is smaller than San Diego Comic-Con, it sounds like they gave you more accommodations then what it seemed like what we saw at SDCC.

Stefanie Bautista 49:22
Yeah, definitely. And on top of that, I guess it’s worth mentioning that even though you did not have an ADA badge, they did have special rooms that were quiet rooms and like manga reading rooms for people who wanted to just get away from the convention floor. And those were accessible on the second level of the convention, the Convention Center and all you had to do was just you know, go in there would just monitor how many people were in there. And if it was too loud outside you could go in it was air conditioned, quiet. Everyone’s just kind of on their phones with their headphones on. And yeah, you could you did not have to have an ADA badge to access that. And also a quiet manga reading room where you could just go in, and it was just a room full of manga. And if you didn’t want to be on the convention floor with all of the hullabaloo, you could just sit down and read manga and get your fix that way. And so that was really good, because you did not have to have a certain special badge if you just really wanted to get away and unwind, but also not leave the convention, you could utilize one of those two rooms as a regular attendee.

Ariel Landrum 50:30
Yeah, I think that accommodation is the one that one access to general public because you know, everyone kind of needs a moment to be able to decompress. And I know in talking to Josué, the Geek Therapy Podcast, and obviously founder of our network, he has worked with the Take This at conventions, and they have an AFK room Away From Keyboard.

Stefanie Bautista 50:57
Oh I love that!

Ariel Landrum 50:59
Where you get access to you just sit with a mental health professional, you get access to decompress, you’re given sort of additional supports, and it’s volunteers, as well as clinical staff. They don’t provide mental health services, like you’re doing therapy, but they help, you know, give you some emotional support, or maybe give you some support tools if you are becoming overwhelmed by the convention floor. And that is something that they had it like more gaming conventions. I think that is something they should implement at every convention.

Stefanie Bautista 51:29
Every convention. Especially the big ones!

Ariel Landrum 51:32
There’s just too much stimulus too much.

Stefanie Bautista 51:35
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 51:36
There is a lot going on, and particularly for new people. But I also think of like kiddos who could just like need a place to like nap in their in their stroller or something.

Stefanie Bautista 51:44
Yeah, definitely, I know of just a thing that happens at conventions, you see people sitting everywhere, everywhere, any nook and cranny or wherever they can sit they will sit, because it is exhausting. Just doing all that walking constantly, you’re wanting to see everything you’re wanting to go out every floor, you want to go to every like experience. You just need a break sometimes. And you will see you know, people in cosplay just lying out on the floor or you know, just taking a break finding a place to eat. Because there’s very limited seating in front of where you can get food or the food trucks are outside or what have you. And so a normal thing is just seeing people laid out everywhere. But if we implemented something like that quiet room, or maybe even just like, even setting aside half of one of the halls just for a bunch of tables just to sit down, you don’t have to sit on the floor for those of us who can’t sit on the floor, or it’s hard for us to get up from the floor. That is definitely something that would encourage more people to go to conventions.

Ariel Landrum 52:43
Now, when it comes to accommodations, San Diego Comic-Con does a really good job. And they also do a very bad job. And this is where I think some conventions need to create like a pamphlet. So you you get a sticker or a special badge, you get something that markers that you are that you’re utilizing accommodations. And so for those who don’t know, I have a lot of severe allergies, one of them being Cholinergic urticaria. And what that means is I’m allergic to my sweat. Like, like y’all, San Diego Comic-Con in the heat…

Stefanie Bautista 53:27
It’s sweat city!

Ariel Landrum 53:28
In line. So I not only use a fan, I actually have a cool gel patch that I wear fairly regularly, I have an asthma inhaler to help me breathe, because what will happen is if my body gets too warm, and I start sweating, I will not only break out in a rash, but I will actually go into like an anaphylactic shock where I can’t breathe. So I finally decided this year that I would access the accommodations. That because my condition had just gotten so much worse, it was less manageable. I’m older, you know, it’s a thing you have to accept.

Stefanie Bautista 54:01
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 54:01
And you will go in and they will say, “Who needs accommodation?” You say “Me,” they’ll give you a sticker. And that’s it.

Stefanie Bautista 54:09
That’s it. Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 54:10
You have to figure the rest out. I don’t understand why they don’t have a pamphlet that says like, so there were outside activations that you needed to pre check in at the ADA booth. I didn’t know that.

Stefanie Bautista 54:21
I didn’t know that either. I thought you could just show up and then it just happened.

Ariel Landrum 54:24
So some of them, some of them you could show them and they have a separate line for you. But others like this year was the Game of Thrones, the House Targaryen one you needed to check in and some sort of virtual type check in at the booths. There were exclusives that had a specific line for individuals ADA again, you would have had to check in the booth. They didn’t tell me any of these things. They also didn’t explain how many people your handler badge could be given out to. Because what if your handler isn’t there that day or doesn’t have a badge? So remember that to get an San Diego Comic-Con you will are on a lottery. So you may get Thursday and Aunday but not Friday and Saturday. So who was going to come and assist me if I needed assistance?

Stefanie Bautista 55:08
Correct yeah.

Ariel Landrum 55:09
There were temporary day badges that you can get. But of course, I wasn’t aware of that. And so unless you are integrated with the community that has used these accessibilities, you would not have been aware. And then even when it was time to check in for you, we had asked, is there a decompression room and there wasn’t! How is it that small Anime Expo which isn’t a small anymore, but still a lot smaller in San Diego Comic-Con has a decompression room and yet San Diego Comic-Con doesn’t? They did have a nursing room. But it was literally a fake wall with curtains…

Stefanie Bautista 55:43
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 55:43
Behind the ADA check-in.

Stefanie Bautista 55:45
for those of you who breastfed not as comfortable as some other nursing rooms. I’ve been in nursing rooms in many different stadiums, and at least they have a plant in there’s, and a reclining chair.

Ariel Landrum 55:56
Nope, nope, none of that. And then even with some of the like the areas on the hall, like we talked about the decompression room is somewhere to sit. There, there’s nowhere to sit and they will tell you to stand up, they will tell you to get off the ground. If you were if you look like you’re blocking traffic, which makes sense. We don’t want to, you know, make a hazardous environment in case there’s crisis. But part, like part of the accommodation is that you can’t stand for long periods of time. And yet we have nowhere for people to sit?

Stefanie Bautista 56:28
Yes, exactly. And you’re right, they do a great job. And they don’t do a great job. Because although the verification process to get an ADA badge, of course, they’re not going to interrogate you and ask you lately, let me see your proof. They’re not going to do that. But the follow up to that is kind of like you said, you have to figure it out on your own. And unfortunately, for a lot of people who do fall into the ADA category, a lot of their lives are already figured out on your own. And so without that prior knowledge, you it can either make or break your convention experience. And so I think, you know, having that decompression room, or having a pamphlet of saying, you know, I feel like even and correct me if I’m wrong Disney, they have a specific like, they tell you where all of the ADA accommodations are on the map, I’ve seen that before, when you open it up, you see the little ADA little symbol that’s blue, and it tells you all of the different ways that you can access ADA accessibility through those things. So I think that system can be easily implemented into a four day convention where you’re not doing it every single day. Just a little thing like that. Because yes, there is a program guide that has, you know, it’s pages and pages of like descriptions and things like that. There’s also a map that is like, has all of these different explanations and things. So you know, these little tweaks could make a convention goers experience all the more better. And although more comfortable seeing that it’s already a pretty stressful situation.

Ariel Landrum 57:57
So just like our an older episode about managing expectations, when you’re going to Disneyland, you need to manage your expectation when you go to any convention, and particularly the bigger ones like WonderCon or San Diego Comic-Con. And the reason why is because in particular with San Diego Comic-Con, it is wider, it is longer there is a lot of like foot traffic you have to go through to get from one area to another. So if you have a panel that is at the San Diego library, which they do, then that’s part of Comicon. And then you’re trying to get all the way to Hall H that’s literally the other side of town, essentially.

Stefanie Bautista 58:37
Yeah. And when you’re on foot, it’s like and you’re walking outside, you’re not walking in like air conditioned vents.

Ariel Landrum 58:43
And so this is where I would say people who aren’t from SoCal and who don’t live in this area. I don’t think that they they immediately think San Diego, nice, cool, consistent weather in the 70s. And I think what you’re forgetting is that you’re in an area where a lot of the ocean breeze is being blocked by large buildings because it is in the Gaslamp District, and you are doubling the amount of people outside which just increases the heat. And then Comic-Con is always in July. And so the sun is just blaring on you. There’s where there’s barely any clouds and there certainly isn’t any like rain or cool mist.

Stefanie Bautista 59:20
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 59:20
So you have to prepare for it being hot.

Stefanie Bautista 59:23
Yeah. And there is a level of humidity to your you’re physically walking. So depending on the amount of sweat that you produce in a day, whether it be doing 10 minutes of exercise or hours of exercise, which you are essentially are doing when you’re walking around Comic-Con you have to take that into consideration and know when to take your breaks. I know for myself I took a lot of breaks even just from walking to the parking from the parking lot where I parked which was near Petco Park where the Padres play and going to the Convention Center. I took a break at the Hilton just to decompress because I knew I needed it. I wasn’t going to make it all the way to the Convention Center. And even if I did, would it really be worth it because once I got there, would I be even able to enjoy what I wanted to enjoy because I was so exhausted.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:09
Absolutely.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:10
So I mean, that. And parking is a whole nother thing too if you’re not from the area because San Diego Comic-Con is the only convention that I know that does not have super accessible parking right away for somebody who does not know how the process works beforehand.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:27
some of the things you have to be mindful of is how you’re going to get parking how you’re going to get around, and what you’re willing to carry. So what any convention if you can bring at least water and snacks, you are pretty good. However, most conventions have free swag, and your bag starts to fill fairly, fairly fast, and it starts to get tiring to carry. And if your car is nowhere near the Convention Center, if you had to park off site, like if you went to WonderCon had to park in a completely different parking structure, then you have to be willing to know that either, “I’m going to carry this around all day. Is it worth it? Is this is this swag worth it for me?” And when it comes to the scheduling, if you are wanting to your what I have found, I should say what I’ve found successful is having a specific day that is like your convention floor day and having a specific day that is your panel day and just sacrificing on my floor today, I’m not going to those panels on the panel day, I’m not going down on the floor. So I’m probably not going to collect every day’s buttons for something or enamel pin. And I know that I’m not going to see whatever it is a large panel for whatever TV shows going on. So I have to after really be willing to sacrifice so that’s part of managing my expectation.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:42
Yes. And of course, as it happens, whatever you have to do at the Convention Center, something’s always going to collide with it, something’s always just gonna be either 10 minutes into what you wanted to do, or 15 minutes into, you know what you are doing. So you just have to manage those expectations. And you have to just say to yourself, you know what, I’m going to try to do my best, I’m going to try to enjoy what I need, enjoy, get whatever I need to get done, and enjoy everything else. Because everything becomes way less enjoyable when you have these high expectations for yourself. And you know, logistically, it’s just not going to happen. I know for for WonderCon. And this is kind of going back to the different levels of convention participation. You you are nervous to you know, be a professional, you want to do your best you want to show up for both your panelists, your audience and everything. So even from me that’s nerve wracking…

Ariel Landrum 1:02:36
Oh, people know that you’re professional, because your badge says so…

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:41
Yes to you, you have to kind of change your mindset a little bit. And for me doing WonderCon for the first time, I was definitely butterflies in my stomach, I did not know if it was gonna go off well, or if people are gonna like me, or if people are gonna, you know, be engaged with what I want to say. And all of that, you know, me and Ariel, I feel like we’re very, you know, good in preparing most of our content. And even with that level of preparation, there’s still a lot of anxiety that comes around it like, is everyone going to show up on time, like, there’s a lot of moving parts to that. And I think managing the expectation of let’s just get up there, do what we need to do, and enjoy it afterwards. Definitely, I had to keep that in the back of my mind in order to survive.

Ariel Landrum 1:03:27
Okay, so my Comic-Con babies. Here’s the thing big. Because San Diego Comic-Con is so large. And I think for people who don’t go to conventions, they don’t understand. It is so large, it literally takes over all of San Diego. If I go to the Ralph’s grocery store, everybody’s dressed up as a superhero. And they’ve got Excelsior, like on the windows and cardboard cutouts. And they have like Monster Energy drinks that they’re handing out because they’re know that there’s going to be more people. And they that’s a great way to advertise, give out free swag.

Stefanie Bautista 1:03:55
For sure.

Ariel Landrum 1:03:56
If you even if you don’t get into the convention, you could just go to the town and walk around and get so many free things and see so many experiences that aren’t exclusive to badge holders.

Stefanie Bautista 1:04:06
Yep.

Ariel Landrum 1:04:07
And pretty much every three years or so, if you go for three years in a row, you kind of got the idea of what you need to do. And that’s around the time where you meet new people who it’s their brand new time and you do something called you adoptees where you adopt someone into your group you into your fold. And so my my friend Alex, he his adoptees are these two really cool Canadians, Ravi and Shawn. And so this year apparently was my adoptees because I adopted Xavier and Greg and they weren’t new to conventions, but they were definitely new to San Diego Comic-Con and we spent almost every single day together once we adopted them the very first day on Preview Night and there was there’s some benefits of being essentially adopted or or at least included in the fold right for From your Comic-Con attendees. One of them being this year because of COVID. And needing to get the bat, the wristband that says that you’re vaccinated, they had two areas where you can get verified. And so there was the one right out front of the Convention Center, which snaked around the entire Convention Center like…

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:22
Oh, yeah…

Ariel Landrum 1:05:22
Four times.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:23
I’m sure that’s those are the pictures that you all probably saw on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook of just like the madness of what that line was because it was right in front of the Convention Center where everybody takes all their pictures of cosplay everything.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:35
And what ended up being as if there was another one that was actually a lot shorter than not a lot of people knew about, and it was at the Marriott Hotel. So we immediately told them, “Go to the Marriott Hotel, get get your vaccine verification there, because the line is gonna be a lot smaller, and you’re gonna get into the convention sooner.” And remember, these tickets are very expensive. So you want to make use of as much time as you can. And if you have Preview Night, Preview Night only lasts I think from like six to nine so you don’t have a lot of opportunity to go into the convention floor and check it out. So that was our one of our first tips. Our other tip being the free shuttles. What most people don’t know is that Comic-Con has free shuttles that will take you from different hotels, so even if you’re really far away, you don’t even need to get a car or parking if you don’t plan on carrying too much stuff or you do the check in like we talked about.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:29
They’re like huge charter buses to they’re not just like, you know, short buses…

Ariel Landrum 1:06:32
Short but yeah, they’re not they’re not they’re not like, like passenger vans.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:38
Yeah, they’re not passenger. We’re not like like shuttles you would think they’re like big charter buses.

Ariel Landrum 1:06:42
Yeah, huge charter buses. And then the other suggestions that we’d given them was ways to get onto the different activations. Ways to get into Hall H we didn’t get into Hall H on the big mega Saturday. And we we stayed out in that line till 2-am ya’ll.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:02
Oh my gosh!

Ariel Landrum 1:07:03
2, 2am There were some shenanigans happening and lots of our group was honestly the noisiest I’m sure there’s a Twitter Thread out there of someone who’s just trying to like sleep. And yeah, I think that, remember that that’s part of the culture and the community. I hope that if any of you decide to go to conventions, you can find an established group that looks cool that you can integrate yourself with because having convention friends, friends you only see at convention, it’s like a whole different vibe. It’s a whole new level.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:33
And just a disclaimer, I was not in that line until two o’clock, I tapped out early because since yes, I am six months pregnant. Me and our friend Chance, who was kind of my my handler, like all of my handler, we were each other’s handlers. Because you know, we both have accommodations that we needed to take into consideration. We tapped out early. So we were kind of on a different trajectory as everybody else had had been a couple years earlier. I would I was right there with Shawn Ravi and our friend Alex and I would be at those lines, just you know, having a blast because like Ariel said, having convention friends that you only see at convention is very special because it is something unique and special to you. And you know, that sense of community is just irreplaceable.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:16
In switching to Disney specifically because the Disney podcast there is a Disney convention.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:25
Oh, yes.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:27
Called D23 which basically as mega San Diego Comic-Con, because Disney owns so many of the franchises that we love. Have you ever been?

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:35
I’ve never been I do have friends who are part of D23, which is a club. It is a fan club that you have membership to not as exclusive and not as exclusive as Club 33 where you have to be invited in and it’s just like, you know, a whole thing. But D23 is where you get special releases. You get like a newsletter in the form of a magazine with like special art. There’s a lot of different perks to being a detail D23. Member. Yes. But yeah, D 23 was founded in March 10 2009. So it’s not very old, not very new. But I think as a convention that has grown over the years, because of all of its acquisitions, it has become something that is now its own entity. I know, being a part of San Diego Comic-Con and being a part of WonderCon they would always have like a Marvel panel, they would always have like, you know, some sort of Disney panel or Pixar or whatever. They have slowly been pulling away from these conventions because they want to focus on their own. So every year, just like this year, “Marvel’s not going to do a big thing!” And you know, “Marvel’s gonna do it all at the D23.” Yeah, this year at San Diego Comic-Con Marvel did the most and had like literally everybody under the sun for Phase Five and Six and yeah, total lie.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:45
Lie.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:46
So now I don’t know what they’re gonna do for D23. It has to be something big because it is their own thing. So it is that is definitely the next milestone for us as a Disney podcast.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:57
Neither of us have been and it is a September this year. And we have a goal to, to get there in whatever way possible, but preferably, we were hoping to try and do press. I just I don’t think that we could create and propose a panel at this point. It’s actually too late. Like we’re recording this episode in August and it’s in September. So I’m assuming that that is, that’s close.

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:26
And, like we, it’s, it’s nearby, it’s in Anaheim. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we can get there. But if you know you have any experiences with d3 23 Please shout us out and tell us your experiences because we’d love to know we’re going into this blind.

Ariel Landrum 1:10:46
So if you have any ideas of how we can get into D23.

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:51
Shout us out. Let us know.

Ariel Landrum 1:10:54
If you have some convention experiences or if you’ve incorporated people to your group, some adoptees, just, you know, tweet at us @HappiestPodGT or DMS on our Instagram @HappiestPodGT.

Stefanie Bautista 1:11:07
Yes, we are so excited to be back. I know that we have a lot of content coming up. I know we’ve been pushing out a lot of episodes that we are kind of backlogged on, you know, life gets in the way. And that’s totally okay. We are all for taking care of ourselves and taking care of yourselves. In this new season. Now that we are coming semi out of this pandemic a little bit into more normal times, we understand that when we first started this podcast, it was a whole different world. So now we are navigating this in a different space. And we would love to hear your experiences, or maybe even at our next panel whenever that happens. Let us know and if you have any ideas of what other things we can think and talk about, we would love to hear from you. Because if we learned anything from these conventions is that creating a network of geeky professionals like you and I really makes this community so special.

Ariel Landrum 1:12:04
Yes. All right. Have a great rest of your summer. Buh bye!

Stefanie Bautista 1:12:09
Alirght bye, everyone.

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Good Burger
  • Demon Slayer
  • Lumpia With A Vengence
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • ADA
  • Accessibilty
  • Pregnancy
  • Nursing
  • Chest feeding
  • Conventions
  • Community
  • Integration
  • Friendships
  • Friend groups
  • Scheduling
  • Managing expectations

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
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 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |

Geek Therapy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of advocating for the effective and meaningful use of popular media in therapeutic, educational, and community practice.
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Behind the Magic: Up Close with Lady Tremaine

July 15, 2022 · Discuss on the GT Forum

https://media.blubrry.com/happypod/media.transistor.fm/47215077/f474de4b.mp3

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#29: Ariel and Stef had the honor of interviewing the terrifying and regal Jessica who played Lady Tremaine at Walt Disney World. In this episode, we learn the joys, the frustrations, and the horrors of being a face character at the happiest place on earth.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Transcription

Ariel Landrum 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Ariel, I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental unwellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:21
And I’m Stef, and I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 0:28
And I’m Jessica, also known as TramaineTok, I am a TikToker, Instagrammer and former Disney performer for several years.

Ariel Landrum 0:39
And at Happiest Pod, it’s a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Stefanie Bautista 0:44
Why do we do that? Because just like we’re more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Ariel Landrum 0:50
So everybody, what are we discussing today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:53
Well, we have a special guest!

Ariel Landrum 0:56
She’s so special.

Stefanie Bautista 0:57
Thank you, Jessica, for joining us today. What an honor it is to have you and thank you for taking the time. And we are so excited to hopefully pick your brain a little bit about your experiences and you know, just another side of Disney that we personally do not have any idea about so.

Ariel Landrum 1:18
Yes, yes. Okay, so for our audience members, as Jessica mentioned, she is a TokToker. She is also a former face character at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. She’s also an actress and dancer for Universal Orlando Resort, and was a character performer even at SeaWorld in Orlando. So she’s going to share with us what it’s like to be a character at the parks and some of the do’s and don’ts in regards to character interaction.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 1:49
Awesome.

Ariel Landrum 1:50
So starting off the character you played with Lady Tremaine, who, for some of our audience members, in our villains episode, we talked about Lady Tremaine’s a very scary villain because she’s a realistic villain. Like I could see me walking up and actually interacting with somebody who has a very similar tendencies. Did you mean to be a Disney villain and specifically her? How does that sort of process go?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 2:14
No, essentially, the audition process is very generic. It’s what us in the entertainment industry would call a cattle call. So you go, there’s hundreds and if not 1000s of people at one audition, and they’re looking for kind of everything, or they’re not specific about what they’re looking for. And Disney is very good about being very ambiguous with what they’re asking for. So So I went to a general audition. So I was not setting out to be a villain. I didn’t even know that like, I kind of fit that type.

Stefanie Bautista 2:49
I guess that’s something you don’t really think about, like, which one? Do my features represent? I would. Now it got me thinking.

Ariel Landrum 2:58
Well, and even like that word, like type, like, how did they present to you like, “Hey, we think this is who you fit the best, or what you should be doing.”

Jessica Lady Tremaine 3:06
Well, I found out over the course of not only my audition process, but my callback process with which is what they call a face fitting. Essentially, I am you haven’t seen me in person, but I’m five foot 10. So I’m, I’m pretty tall. Um, they had me measured a little bit shorter. So I could do more fur characters, which we can talk about later. But so I’m very tall. I have a very long face with a lot of angles. So I have very strong jawline, very narrow cheeks. And I also have just like very long features. They were very particular about my eyes, my eyes are very large in relation to the rest of my features. And they really noticed me in the audition based on my facial expressions, I very extreme facial expressions, just naturally talking not even when I’m really turning it on. So that was kind of what I found out later was what they were looking at.

Stefanie Bautista 4:09
Interesting.

Ariel Landrum 4:10
I I’m like I’m hearing you describe your facial features and how detailed it is. And I’m I don’t even think I could describe myself in such detail, does it? I mean, I guess that’s part of being an actress. Like you have to kind of be able to really describe yourself and be able to understand what you might fit.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 4:31
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say that a lot of it comes from I mean, you’re therapist, it comes from a place of being criticized. So one of the most criticized industries is the entertainment industry. You know, I wasn’t just an actress, I was also a dancer. So I spent my entire life being told you’re too tall or you’re not thin enough or your proportions aren’t right. You know, all those said in polite ways are not really great to hear, but it resonates with you when you’ve heard it for so many years, so it’s easy for you to point it out.

Ariel Landrum 5:08
Okay. Okay. I think that’s really interesting to note that you have to sort of pivot your mind around what criticism is going to be because you’re stepping into a profession where it is part of the profession. There’s no real like, gentle way to say things. And I can see that being a level of self awareness, but also so like, do you feel like you have to have like a tough skin to be able to enter entertainment?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 5:35
Yeah. And actually, it it actually is helped with now being on social media. But when you especially are a villain, you are heckled from the moment you walk out onto set until the moment you walk back/

Stefanie Bautista 5:48
For sure.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 5:49
And it would happen to my face. Like I’ve told this story on my Tik Tok, where a dad told me, I was a size four at the time. And I’m 5’10”. So it’s pretty tiny. So I am, I was a size four, and a dad told me that I was fat and ugly, to my face in front of his wife and children, and a hashtag came out of it on a video that trended for a while, called “Cinderella is Savage,” Because my friend was Cinderella, my friend was Cinderella for at the time, and I told her, and she went over and said something to him. And I don’t know what she said to him. But he came over and apologized to me. So I don’t know what she said.

Stefanie Bautista 6:33
She said something.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 6:34
Yeah. So so. So so in order to cope, you have to either disassociate or something like almost have like an out of body experience? Because if you don’t, you’ll you’ll go crazy.

Stefanie Bautista 6:49
I mean, it seems like you use that as a strength for you. I mean, and that carries in your social media, because I mean, a lot of your followers do say, you know, you’re really brave for speaking up and speaking out on behalf of cast members. And I think that’s the most I mean, you can say that for any profession, but especially in a profession where you’re being scrutinized from every single angle, to be honest like that. I mean, I really appreciate it. I know all your followers do. And I mean, did that did those stories inspire you to share your experiences as a cast member just to kind of get it out in the open? Or what really was the spark to say, “Hey, I’m going to just give a little bit of truth to this.”

Ariel Landrum 7:30
Yeah, make it really public, because a lot of the things that you’ve shared on your Tiktok, they were like, shocking to me. But then it made sense. Like, okay, you’re a public, you’re in the public. I should have, I shouldn’t be shocked to yet I am shocked.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 7:45
Yeah, so I actually started to share my story on accident. So I created my Tiktok. Honestly, I had a friend of mine who wanted to send me videos, and she was like, “Oh, I can just send them through the app easier.” So I wasn’t really making content. And so I did end up making my first real video, back in April, like April 29 of last year. So it’s fairly recent, where I told the story about my first time going viral as a character. So I was the character that went viral on YouTube, to the tune of like 18 or 19 million views. And that was several years ago. So a long time ago, but um, I essentially talked about that interaction. And from there, it sparked like that went viral in a matter of two or three days. And I all of a sudden had all these questions that I didn’t know anybody ever wanted answers to. And so I just started answering them. I know it’s silly, but I just started answering them. And then as I kind of went through, I was able to process things that had happened to me that were really, really damaging in a way that my therapist hadn’t really been able to walk me through them, because he just didn’t really it’s not that he wasn’t able to understand because he was doing his best, but he had never been in that position. So the coping strategies are not. They don’t fit in with a lot of other issues that people would have like unless you have experience treating people who are in the entertainment industry, it’s very hard to understand.

Ariel Landrum 9:39
No, I think that’s important that you point that out. I work with a lot of actors because I am here in Los Angeles and a lot of the boundary setting techniques we have to go over aren’t ones they can use. There’s a certain level of expectation in regards to professionalism and performance that is very different than just traditional customer service. Because your, your your name and your ability to present, whatever the brand is that you’re presenting, is your resume is your docket, and particularly for, for women or female presenting individuals, there’s even more scrutiny, because if you’re considered hard to work with, that becomes your label.

Stefanie Bautista 10:26
Yeah, you’re X out. Yeah. And I mean, I’ve worked in schools that are a little more affluent here in LA. So I work with a lot of parents who are in the industry, whether it’s, you know, script writers, or actors, actresses themselves, and this whole kind of the switch being turned on all the time, kind of carries into their real life and to their kids. So it’s very interesting to see, you know, just the world that, you know, they build around themselves, and, you know, having dealing with that in real life, and kind of like, learning how to draw those boundaries to you know, protect their mental health. So….

Ariel Landrum 11:02
And you mentioned, like sometimes needing to dissociate, it’s like, really like, “When is my mask get to take off? Like, when do I actually get to take it off?” And I would say that, it seems like at least for your responses to the questions and the videos that you’ve made, you’ve been able to be very authentic and genuine probably in a way that is, is different than trying to remember and process like going backwards and then actually having answers now very different.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 11:31
Well, that but also, when you’re in it, when you’re doing it, like there were weeks where I’d work like a 60 or 70 hour week was the same character. So as Lady Tremaine so think. Now granted, we have offset time, we have breaks. But you know, you’re still in the wig and makeup, you’re still, you know, largely on because it’s all improvised. I tried to explain it to people. It’s like you are method acting for 70 hours a week for years at a time. And I say that, because when you are doing a script for a movie, because I’ve done I’ve done, you know, some indie film stuff, I’ve done commercials like local, I’ve done small things. But you’re and I’ve done a lot of musical theater, when you’re performing a script and you step into that character, there is a time where you are no longer that character for the night, because you are following a script. But when you’re improvising as a character, and you’re not sure what people are going to ask you, what they’re going to want to talk to you about, you have to cross that method boundary to becoming that character. And if you are in I found that I was having a hard time after I finally left the company like fully letting her go, if that makes sense. And and I came to find out through the process of doing my Tiktok that I I had let her go. But I hadn’t like really processed what I put myself through in order to cope if that had made any sense.

Ariel Landrum 13:07
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 13:08
Absolutely. Yes.

Ariel Landrum 13:10
I think that it really makes me think of like, nerdy, but like d&d bleed. Where are you, where you have some of your character become you are some of you become your character and finding where the the distinction in the end is, is very difficult, because it’s so now integrated in part of your daily experience. And even with that, like you said, there’s at least you know, there’s going to be an end to the game for you, like, you have this part of your job is how you have to make money. And the scrutiny that that you’ve mentioned in your videos of if someone thinks you did it wrong, even though you’re the one playing the character.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 13:49
Yeah. And it happens. There’s, you’re regularly observed by performance specialists. And you are never told ahead of time when that’s going to happen. So you’ll just be out on set one day, and they’re there. With their little notebook.

Stefanie Bautista 14:07
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 14:08
Can you clock em?

Stefanie Bautista 14:09
Yeah, can you tell like who they are?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 14:12
Oh, yeah, they’re the same people over and over again. But at the same time, you see them out of the corner of your eye, and you’re supposed to ignore them. But it’s impossible.

Stefanie Bautista 14:20
That reminds you of a lot of teacher observations where like your administration would just pop into your classroom at like, the absolute worst time. And you’re just trying to like, keep it together and make sure no one’s like stabbing each other hurting each other. But also, I was thinking about what you mentioned, all of the questions that you may or may not get, you have no idea where this is coming from, or you have no idea like what’s in like a guest mind. And I can really relate because it’s like when kids ask me questions about something I’m trying to teach. I don’t know what they’re gonna say what’s going to come out of their mouth. So have you gotten a very interesting question or a very just left field question that sticks out in your mind that you We’re just like, “Hmm, interesting. Okay.”

Jessica Lady Tremaine 15:04
So, um, the weirdest one actually was asked of me, but it was not about me. So I was leading Tremaine and I got asked a question because somebody got the kid got me mixed up with the Queen from Snow White. And we in Disney, we call her The Snow Queen. That is not her name as just what we call her. But her name is just The Queen. So somebody’s, like, their wires were crossed. And so they looked at me, and they’re just like, “I thought you died at the end.” And I’m like, and then and then I said, I said something to that. “Oh, you must be mistaken. It certainly wasn’t me.” And then they were like, “No, you were that old lady who fell off the cliff and died at the end I saw.” And like yelled at me, but they are nasty. Right. So like, like, taking me to task that I was dead. But, and I do know from people who have played that character, that is a very common thing for people to say, I have played the hag version of that character, which is a fur character costume, but nobody ever asked because she doesn’t talk. So like, nobody ever asked me that.

Stefanie Bautista 16:27
She kind of just hobbles along.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 16:31
They were this child was very aggressively asking, like or not asking, yelling at me. “You died at the end, didn’t you?” Like I was on cross examination. I was being interrogated by the FBI. |You died at the end!” Exactly. So that’s like the weirdest one I’ve ever been asked because like, what do you say to that?

Stefanie Bautista 16:59
“Yes, child. You are right. I am deceased. I am here talking to you now.”

Jessica Lady Tremaine 17:02
“I’m dead. But I didn’t actually die.”

Stefanie Bautista 17:04
Yeah. In the multiverse of Lady Tremaine.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 17:09
People think that Lady Tremaine actually dies at the end. But she obviously doesn’t. But it’s just because they get the movies mixed up. That’s very common.

Ariel Landrum 17:16
Yeah, sure.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 17:19
They get Lady Tremaine and Maleficent mixed up all the time.

Ariel Landrum 17:21
Just for some audience members who don’t know what is the difference between like a face character, a cast member, and then a fur character.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 17:29
So cast member is like the general term for anybody who works at the Disney parks, or works really, for the Walt Disney Company, I think it technically encompasses all of them. But fur character performer, or just a character performer is somebody who performs in for character costumes. So you’re thinking of like Mickey, Minnie Pluto, and the like. And a face character is within the character, performer, family. So everybody who’s a face character is also a fur character, but not every fur character is a face character if that makes sense. Like all rectangles or squares are rectangles kind of thing. So it’s a very specific example.

Stefanie Bautista 18:12
No, I got it right away. I was like, yes.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 18:16
You’re an educator, you get it so. So face characters is like a specialized trained role within the character department.

Ariel Landrum 18:26
Okay, and what sort of like training do you go through.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 18:30
So you go through your standard character training, this is a four character training, it’s a five day training. You know, how to animate quote, unquote, the costume, so how to move in it, how to sign your autographs, things like that, essentially, how to move your characters eye focus, make sure your character’s eyes are looking at the camera, things like that. And then the face character training is an additional week. So an additional five days where the first day or two you are watching the movie, you are working indoors with your trainer, again, learning the signature learning the makeup learning, all the things that go along with that, and then days three through five are in park meet and greets. So you are put out into the park and you are doing meet and greets with guests and your trainer is there watching taking notes and you are getting feedback after every set.

Stefanie Bautista 19:26
Yeah, I mean, that’s all stuff. I’m like just trying to processess on like okay in my brain like drawing this chart of like the family and you know, the different types of cast members. I was really intrigued by your Disney College Program videos. I applied and did not get in because I want law. I think it was because when they asked like have you ever lied or something like that? I honestly said yes, of course. I’ve lied before. And they were like, “I’m sorry, you don’t fit the mold of what we are looking for at Disney”, and I’m like, “All right. So Oh, there’s that.” And I was just so curious to hear you talk about how it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like an apprenticeship that people are severely underpaid for, and that they are basically thrown to the wolves. And it’s like having your first job, but on this grand scale at the Disney resorts in Orlando, so there’s like millions of different jobs you can have. And it’s basically and it makes sense a way to capitalize on that labor, but keeping costs down. So thinking about all of that, and thinking about the way that I guess labor is moving now. Because, you know, there’s lots of, of course, unionizing and all that stuff, but also, for young kids and youth who are starting in the workforce, they’re pushing for a lot more opportunities and fair opportunities for them. So in your opinion, do you think that might change in the next couple of years? Because they are trying to get people back into the park and keeping up appearances and things like that? Or do you think it’s just going to kind of stay the same?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 21:03
I think it’s going to stay the same as long as the college program is as competitive to get into as it is. Now, when I applied for the college program, it was not as competitive to get in, as a general college program to get into entertainment. Yes, it’s just as competitive. But back then, like 2009, was when I applied and I got in January 2010, much less competitive. So that that was that. As far as conditions improving within the college program, I really don’t see that happening. Because there is still going to be a steady stream of kids, young people who want to do a college program, regardless of all of that.

Stefanie Bautista 21:52
I mean, I always, like when I talked to some of my middle schoolers, and these are like, the oldest kids that I deal with. And I love giving them options, because you know, you don’t always have to go the traditional, like, be a teacher, be a doctor, all these routes, I’m like, there’s so many different jobs out there. It’s just what are you willing to put up with? Having worked so many jobs, and I and of course, like working for Disney, like, that’s such a like big dream, and you know, they can’t even like imagine working for like, you know, such a big company like that. So I always try to keep it real with them and say, “Hey, you know, you’re gonna go through the same BS, essentially, wherever you go. It just depends on you know, your willingness to put up with that in order to achieve whatever you want to achieve.” So I think, yeah, I mean, your experiences, would you say, majority was it like worth it?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 22:43
I actually just did a video about this, I, I really do believe that it was worth everything that I went through. I just was recently speaking with someone about it. Honestly, it set me up for so many opportunities that I otherwise would never have had. And it really gave me a lot to teach my students because I’m still a dance teacher, I still work with students. So honestly, it really set me up with a lot of real world advice that I could give to them. And really, a lot of stories like, I can’t tell you how many times I get DMs, from people who are saying like, “I’ve always wanted to be a Disney performer. And they’re like, you’re making me have second thoughts.” And I always encourage them, they really want to do it to still do it. The purpose of what I do and my content is to share the realities, because I think what was the most harmful for me and a lot of other face characters who are on TikTok is that we were sold a fantasy, which is what Disney does, yeah, we were sold a fantasy as a job. Instead of these are the problems that you will face, this is what you’re actually getting into. So that is that is what I see my space in the world as.

Ariel Landrum 24:11
With the training that you received, because it just seems like like five to 10 days just doesn’t seem like enough is do they talk about you know how to address interactions with the community that aren’t favorable or what your have a like what rights you have as a cast member?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 24:35
Can I ask a clarifying question or so do you mean within like, interacting with guests or interacting with other cast members?

Ariel Landrum 24:46
With guests.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 24:47
Okay. Yes, they do go over things like that. And that is a part of your training that you’re doing behind the scenes with with those, those trainers. A lot of times they will say things like, “Okay, what would you do if a guest came up and tried to touch you.” And they’ll give you an example. So I’ve had it happen a lot to me, where a lot of male guests have have assaulted me and in different ways. The problem is, is that it happens so fast, that a lot of times you cannot control. It’s not You’re not meet, doing a meet and greet in a bubble, right? There are factors, there are children running around, there are people taking pictures, there are autographs being done. And they do teach you how to get out of it. But getting out of it assumes that all other factors are not involved, right. So if a man comes up and tries to grab you, you would then offer your arm, you would move you what your attendant would say something, but they don’t tell you or really, there’s really no way to teach you how to do that, while you have two children’s teeth talking to you, and you’re signing an autograph book while this person is doing this to you. So it’s there’s a lot of extra factors that they don’t, they can’t prepare you for even as much as they would want to. It’s just really not possible.

Ariel Landrum 26:17
As, as a clinician, I have to do this thing called informed consent, where I have to know let my clients know what they’re going to expect out of therapy, even so much so that I will tell them that you may not feel good right away. In fact, we’re unpacking so much stuff, you might feel worse, you might change and the people around you may not like it, the it may not always be good. Do you feel like you got full informed consent on what what the interactions would be? Or what it would be like?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 26:48
No, they they did not. And I will say that back when I started, that was not a thing that people really discussed. I have since learned in my many years in therapy, that a lot of a lot of things were really done that that that could have caused more issues than even just the job itself. So for example, not only the informed consent, but ongoing support from management just was not there. Some you would experience sexual assault, and then largely either be blamed for it blamed for not controlling the interaction. Or umm told you still had to get back out there and complete your set or you would be receiving a discussion or reprimand. So there theoretically, even if there was not informed consent, there should have been systems in place to fix that. And they’re largely weren’t.

Ariel Landrum 27:59
Do you see that changing now? Well, like do you know, people who are active characters now that have more preparation or more support from management? And I also do want to highlight that also, it’s kind of a society thing, right? Like here, I’m telling you that I need support because I’ve been assaulted, and I’m not getting it.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 28:19
Well, I think that people take sexual assault more seriously now than they did. Um, so I will say that, but I I think that the rise of character vlogging and character interactions on social media has actually made the problem worse because it has caused a lot of internet personalities who don’t know the characters really don’t understand what their life is like to go and get sensationalized viral content from the character which can cause a lot of mental distress and can cause potentially job loss. And management largely has not caught up with supporting the cast members in that way. And I get DMs from performers on a weekly basis saying that they are still getting discussions and reprimands for viral videos of them.

Ariel Landrum 29:14
Which is not within your control. And so do you think that former cast members like yourself, advocating on behalf of the community does that create some sort of change or pretty much upper management and higher ups are not looking at that stuff and probably don’t care?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 29:36
I don’t think they’re looking at it but what it has done and I’m sure you’ve seen I get a lot of flack for this. It has made it much less socially acceptable. So a lot of these vloggers will post a character video and people are now starting to if not, not watching the video, they’re flooding the comments saying, “This is inappropriate. You should not be sharing this.” But I was seeing some vloggers recently their character content is content is just not doing well, like it’s comparatively since you know, in the last few months they have really kind of taken a nosedive in views and engagement. And I hope that me speaking out is making it and others speaking out, not just me is making it less socially acceptable.

Ariel Landrum 30:24
I’m, I’m curious because there’s an intentionality to get views, right? Are there interactions that you just see with characters that people post or that isn’t a objective and happens to be a good interaction, or as a general rule that if it’s a video, it’s probably going to be scrutinized either way, so kind of avoid that.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 30:46
So it’s a gray area, and my philosophy Ariel is that if it’s a gray area, don’t post it. That is just my, because Tiktok has made it so easy to go viral, even if you’re not intending to go viral. And it is causing issues, but it’s not people necessarily doing it on purpose. Because, as you know, you know, as a as a therapist and clinician intention does not, it doesn’t really matter, because the implications are what matter. And so the intention of the poster is not the thing that I am concerned with, it’s the implications of this being posted. So the implications.

Ariel Landrum 31:32
Not intent but impact.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 31:34
Right, so the impact is, more people are going to performers trying to get viral content, they are posting characters more and more, they’re bombarding them with cameras on a regular basis, which is stressful, which is stressful for the performers. As cute as it is, um, it can be very stressful to have a camera on you all day, in addition to the job being as difficult as it is.

Stefanie Bautista 32:01
I mean, I can only imagine it’s just like a different set of eyes. And you never know where and I feel like it almost infringes on your privacy almost. And even knowing that you are a performer, you are entertainer, you are putting yourself out there. But you would think that there would be still a layer of protection. I mean, I’m wondering, because during the pandemic, we saw a lot of the characters very far away. They were like, you know, in that, like Winnie the Pooh was like in the forest, or like in a clearing or things like that. Do you know of anybody who has played those characters very far away that? Do they like that a little bit better? Or do they kind of wish it like stayed that way? Or do they miss that face to face interaction?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 32:46
I do know a few people who have done that. And I would say it’s, it’s it. On one hand, they do like the freedom of wandering and for knowing that they’re not really going to be knocked over, they’re not going to experience some of the physical problems that come with interacting with guests. I will say, though, that a big part of the enjoyment for the actual performer is interacting with children, it’s fun for us at the end of the day, like all of the issues surrounding it, are what they are, but at the end of the day, it’s still fun for us. So I would say that they are enjoying that. They were enjoying that, like new type of interaction. But I think some of them are anxious to get back to some modified form of meet and greet.

Stefanie Bautista 33:38
I mean, I guess moving into sort of like the same topic. I know that you talked about weird Disney adults, I mean, like the super super fans, when, you know, if somebody asked like, do you and your fellow characters go to the break room and be like, “Girl, I got to tell you about this, you know, person, that person or whatever.” Because, you know, in every job I’ve worked, you know, we do that. I mean, as educators, we do do that as well. So, do you have a memorable interaction with somebody who really loved you as a villain who just like adored you, and like, kind of was just like, in awe of you like whether it was an adult or a child and like how did that make you feel knowing that you know, you are playing a villain? And like you said, Because you are a villain you’re automatically viewed as something but did you get like the opposite effect at any point?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 34:30
So first, I want to I want to that’s that’s got a couple levels. Let’s start at the beginning. So um, I would not say that the Disney adults even like the really fanatical ones get talked about because characters are so preoccupied with talking about like, the weird guests and I say that like, like you’ve worked in a in a place where you’ve interacted with someone who just made it weird. Those are the things that we would talk about, either are treating us strangely, or just like, those are the ones that we talk about, but not necessarily in a malicious way, just like, “Hey, did you see that?” Like, like that kind of thing? Um, the ones that get talked about in a malicious way are the ones who are either just mean or honestly, a lot of the vloggers that are not very kind, and they get talked about a lot. But on that, so second half of that, yes. So I will tell you a quick story. So when I would often be at Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party. The two remains were a big part of that. There was a family where the there was a mom and an Aunt, Aunt aunt. And they were dressed as the stepsisters. And they’re like nine or 10 year old, one of their daughters was dressed as Lady Tremaine. Now, she was not only dressed as Lady Tremaine, I mean, she was in her blue dress that she wears to the ball. So if you go back, watch the movie. It’s like that bluish gray dress that she wears to the ball…

Ariel Landrum 36:22
Deep cut.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 36:22
She had her hair slicked back and rolled up like in those those victory rolls and a bun the back and had her hair sprayed gray. And she had a stuffed Lucifer with her. And she was fully made up like, looks like a little baby drag queen. It was super cute. And I still have a picture with them. Actually, I have it. It’s great. But so that interaction was fantastic. Because the mom and the aunt who were the stepsisters, they just like so leaned into the step sister vibe. And love and the little girl did not know what to say what to say to me. Like she was just like, “Okay, I’m going to take a picture now I’m gonna hold this cat.” She did not know what to say to me. But the mom and the aunt were having so much fun that it just like, it just took it to another level. I also loved for the Not So Scary when I would get a drag queen Lady Tremaine that would come see me that happened a couple of times, those were always the best, because they always wanted to talk forever. So I was absolutely happy living in that space, for sure.

Stefanie Bautista 37:40
I love it when parents dress up their kids, as you know, these complex characters, they really fully understand, like, who they’re playing. And so when they meet that character, they’re just like, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to say. And I see that a lot in cosplay conventions, and you know, comic book conventions, where, you know, you have a kid and like the coolest costume ever, but then it’s like, they’re just hobbling, walking around like a little kid like normal. So it’s very interesting to see the different avenues. And of course, when adults around them hype them up, it just creates that magic.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 38:17
It’s adorable. It’s it honestly, is one of my best memories is all of those, those fun ones.

Ariel Landrum 38:24
Kiddos.

Stefanie Bautista 38:27
I know that for myself growing up, I wasn’t the one to go up to a character, it was very hard for me to you know, know what to ask. I wasn’t when I would take a picture with them. But I wouldn’t like know how to interact. Would you use different strategies to help a kid kind of interact with you a little bit more if they were reluctant? Or was it just more so like, I’m not going to force this on a kid if they if they just don’t want to engage.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 38:51
So it’s two sided. I, if a child was clearly uncomfortable, I did not want to interact, but then the parents would often force me to interact like they were not willing to accept like me walking away. So I would often just start narrating which I do with my son now who is Autistic. And like, I would just essentially do some sort of like narration so I would sit like just talk and answer a question that I asked as if they had answered it. So for example, “Are you doing well? Are you having a wonderful day? I’m having a wonderful day as well. Thank you so much for asking.” Like I would just keep the conversation going as though they had answered. And I think it disarmed them a little bit, because if they didn’t feel like I was standing there waiting for an answer. They just were like, okay, like they just kind of dealt with it. I also I didn’t speak very loudly as my character the stepsisters have a harder time with that. But I, I was already largely quiet. But the problem with Lady Tremaine is if she’s too quiet, then she becomes terrifying. So I tried to live terrify. So if I wanted to be terrifying, I just stopped talking. That was like a thing. You just stop talking and people are terrified of you. Because there’s nothing scarier than something that you see as scary. That is not making noise or moving.

Stefanie Bautista 40:31
That’s a total mom move. That’s a teacher move.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 40:34
And I was 21 years old, like I was 20 to 24. So like, you know, I was very young when I was doing it.

Stefanie Bautista 40:42
Yeah. Actually, I did want to ask you about that. How was it playing a mother with two adult children? As the age that you were? Did you really have to, like, study a little bit or even pull from your own experiences? Because, you know, she’s she’s, she’s a mom with a lot of baggage.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 41:03
She’s a mom, but she’s not a mom. So she’s a mom in the biological sense, right? But she’s not nurturing. So that was easy. She’s not nurturing. She’s not motherly in any of her interactions. Really. She’s not patient. She’s not kind she’s not compassionate. So she’s not any of these things we associate with mother’s. So honestly, her her short temper, her kind of stoic nature, her sarcasm, her quick wit are things actually associated with a lot of younger people a lot of times, and, and since I was a trained actor at the time, I just leaned into the funny parts of her. I know I’ve talked about this before, but I played her. Almost like, like Dorothy from Golden Girls, or, or Jessica Walters character in Arrested Development, Lucille Bluth. Like I kind of played it like that just like very, like, Country Club, old lady. And that’s kind of like what I leaned into, if that makes sense.

Ariel Landrum 42:23
No, totally makes sense. I actually like Dorothy.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 42:28
I do too. I vibe with her very well. But that’s kind of like the character that I like leaned into.

Ariel Landrum 42:34
I think that’s really important that you highlight the that she isn’t the like the mother archetype. Because if we’re talking about the mother archetype, that is usually seen as like this intrinsic feminine ancient energy of Safe Space nurturing, and protection, and creativity. And she really wasn’t those things, there was a lot of just hardness there was a lot of what we would call the shadow part of that mother archetype. Where there there isn’t there isn’t nurture, there isn’t presence, there isn’t willing to problem solve, oh, no collaboration.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 43:17
I will say that there is a certain part of her character, though, that I did find a lot of compassion for and that is, like, you have to imagine, they gloss over it in the films, but they, you have to imagine a woman in France in that time period. Having lost two husbands within a few years, really. Her entire livelihood is based on being married to a person of wealth, she’s lost her first husband, who presumably she was very, we are closer with right has two children had two children with and her second husband I know they touched on this in the live action film was clearly a marriage for security and wealth and, and things like that, which was common back then. But um, you have to imagine the amount of fear number one that is instilled in in a woman of that time period, who is losing her ability to feed herself and her daughters. And then the reality that you mean, you may become destitute and not marry again, and so you your entire survival is wrapped up in your daughter’s marrying someone of that caliber. So you can see where her level of obsession grew at that point. So that is essentially where I found a lot of compassion for her. Because a lot of people are the victims of their own circumstances, you know, victims of things that happen to them in their lives. And I think that that can be said for most villains is they are all the aftermath of a lot of negative happenings.

Ariel Landrum 45:07
Yeah, yeah. Aftermath of the patriarchy.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 45:10
Exactly. Exactly.

Stefanie Bautista 45:13
For sure, and you know, all of those things are very important to consider and I’m glad that you know you, you do take time period into consideration even though you’re playing her in real life, you still have to be consciously living in that time period when you do play her. I know that one of the things that I I was thinking about watching your your Tik Tok videos was when you were talking about the costumes, and how there were like, the costumes of before, like when Disney first started, like the really scary Mickey heads and you know, like terrifying like, Donald like, Who would want to, you know, I mean, having a gown evolve, even though it is set in a certain time period. Did they make adjustments to make it comfortable for you, since you are working these crazy hours and in the heat, and you know, what the elements of Orlando, I mean, did you really have to think I need to play this, you know, French woman in, you know, the 1700s and kind of live with that, or was there like a reprieve?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 46:21
So honestly, the dress is very uncomfortable, it is very thick satin, and it’s long sleeved and comes up to the neck, it goes down to the ankles, there was a hipcage element that is not film accurate. That they added just for silhouette reasons. But I will say it did pull the bottom half of the dress away from your body. But you do have to wear all of the corresponding undergarments bloomers tights, and the like. And it is Orlando, and it is often 95 degrees with 100% humidity and you are doing a parade route. But I will say that the discomfort of the costume and the makeup and the wig and everything else made it very easy to be unpleasant. I would say the princesses probably have a harder time because they have to be pleasant. I was able to lean into the time. Yeah, I was able to allow myself to be annoyed. Because clearly I was uncomfortable. Like I mean, you can like I know that people listening can’t see this. But I have a picture behind me of a painting somebody did of Lady Termaine of me as Lady Termaine. And you can just see, if you go back and look at photos of me. On my Instagram, you’ll see like the costume just looks unyielding. And it is.

Stefanie Bautista 47:49
Yeah, I mean, you had the RBF on and it was part of your character. And it worked for you. And I love that that was a silver lining, because I feel for those princesses every single time they are just standing and waving and pretending everything is great. But ooh sweat, I cannot.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 48:08
Absolutely.

Ariel Landrum 48:09
And I’m curious for all the parks. Is the training the same? Like even just internationally? Or is there a difference in the way that the cast members and particularly the characters are supposed to interact? Or is it very formulaic?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 48:26
It is very different. So it’s not like in the American parks, it’s fairly similar because it’s, there’s similar social norms in the US. When you go to Hong Kong Disneyland, or Tokyo or Disneyland Paris, there are other social customs that they need to make you aware of now, I’ve not gone through the training myself, but I have heard about it secondhand, they do have to talk about certain things that are considered inappropriate in those countries. Like, you know, like, in some countries, like a peace sign is inappropriate, depending on how you have it. You know, I mean, there’s like a lot of local social and cultural things that you have to learn.

Ariel Landrum 49:05
Did Stef when you went international did you notice a difference?

Stefanie Bautista 49:09
I mean, I remember them not being around so much when I was in Tokyo and in Paris, but at the same time, I always traveled there in the winter. So I could only imagine how difficult it would be to be standing out there in like, almost snowy weather, and you know, being in character, but I mean, I did appreciate that when I did see them like in a parade or something they would be, you know, fully rubbed up. And you know, Jasmine wasn’t looking like Jasmine, she has like a bull like coat on. And it was nice, but I think that was the reason why I didn’t interact with those characters because I was in another country so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect for myself. And the language barrier was kind of like I couldn’t put myself in, you know, Disneyland mode here because we have customs and norms that are okay, and we can you know, strike up a conversation. I I didn’t know if that was okay over there. So I never really went to venture. But if I ever go back there, I’ll definitely see if you know, there, there is a difference, because I know that a lot of cast members here do travel over there to to get work, especially if they have the right. Look.

Ariel Landrum 50:18
I know Jessica, you mentioned earlier a little bit that, that you’re in therapy that you are working in processing through some of your experiences. I’m curious if you want to share a little bit about your mental health history and what you would want to say to like the audience members, especially people in the entertainment industry.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 50:35
Yeah, absolutely. I’m very open even on my TikTok about the mental health implications of my time in entertainment. And, and I like to take the experiences that I’ve had and try and educate you know, people coming up in the industry now, especially my students. I had was diagnosed with body dysmorphia, and I also have PTSD. And my body dysmorphia is associated with my time not only at Disney, but my time as a dancer. So growing up in a lot of dance, a lot of physical scrutiny, essentially my, my image of my body and the way that I look not matching up with with reality, which is hard, because when you’re in an industry that’s constantly asking you to lose or gain or do this or do that it’s very, very hard. And so that has been quite a difficult journey. But I will say that the PTSD part is directly from my time at the parks, it does surround I’ve had some claustrophobia, that’s, that’s stemmed from that in large crowds. Because there is a lot of unconsented, grabbing from guests, that is largely uncontrolled. And like I said, the management is not really super supportive, if you do say, “Hey, this happened to me.” So a lot of times you just internalize it, and it’s now become, I have a lot of very crazy physical triggers. And it kind of can come out of nowhere. It, it doesn’t come out of nowhere, but it feels like it comes out of nowhere. And that’s something that I try to talk about people, largely, trolls in my comment section are like, “Well, you if you can’t handle it, you should never have the job.” Well, no, that’s not how that works, really, the job should be a healthy job. And people shouldn’t have to expect to experience trauma or mental illness or eating disorders from a job. Because and largely these people who are saying these things have no idea what it’s like to be in an industry, they don’t have, they’ve never grown up in that they don’t know what it takes to be a performer, all of the scrutiny, all of the auditions, all of the rejection. So it’s very easy to speak from the other side of your keyboard. But in reality, there is a lot of mental health damage that stems directly from the unhealthy processes that they do have set up there. And they still have to this day. And I really feel like there is a lot of room for growth. And I hope that you know, one of my suggestions or my videos reaches Disney, and they begin to really take it seriously and say, Hey, maybe we need to look at ourselves.

Ariel Landrum 53:43
Yeah, I’m curious for for the benefits were there is there like an employee assistance program where you got access to like a therapist or anything like that, that, you know, might have been implemented now.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 53:56
Um, they had insurance for part time and full time cast members, but at the time, largely, a lot of us were seasonal. And we didn’t have access to that. I think that it would be great if they had therapists. They have physical therapists available for all performers throughout the day, but they do not have they do not have anybody for mental health, which I think would really be a huge deal on days when when really traumatic events happen.

Ariel Landrum 54:27
That’s a job I need to make. Well, I’ll just pin that.

Stefanie Bautista 54:30
Write that one down. Oh, yeah.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 54:32
Put it on the vision board.

Ariel Landrum 54:34
Right on the vision board.

Stefanie Bautista 54:35
Yeah for sure.

Ariel Landrum 54:36
It makes me think of when a sports psychologists who are accessible to the Yeah, I was gonna say the supporters close enough to the to the athletes. I follow. She is the sports psychologist for like Cirque du Soleil, and really talking about the experience of being a performer of when you’ve injured yourself and what that could mean for your career, having to talk about dynamics between performers, between like team members and groups, and it has really made longevity in the career for some of the performers that previously you didn’t have access to that.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 55:18
Yeah, absolutely. I think that people don’t see actors and dancers in the same light that they see acrobats and football players and the like. So I’m hoping that we’re moving towards better mental health in the theatre community. But it’s, it’s hard because people in theater community are great actors. So you don’t always know when there’s a problem. It’s not clear. So

Stefanie Bautista 55:48
Good point.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 55:49
Which I you know, Ariel, you probably know, it’s sometimes hard to, to pull out honest and genuine statements from somebody who’s an actor, because they are inclined to put on a performance. And it’s, it’s hard for us to let our guard down and just be, be authentically ourselves.

Ariel Landrum 56:12
Yeah, this is where there’s a difference between individual change and systemic change. Because individually, if you, there’s a fear that if they put their guard down, I’m still stepping into the same environment. But now am I going to is it going to be harder for me to put it back up, it’s just a lot easier to keep it.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 56:28
Exactly.

Stefanie Bautista 56:29
That’s something that naturally comes after a while. So that’s like your go to, but I mean, I think you’re doing a great job, you’re reaching so many people. And, you know, these stories are, you know, absolutely essential for, you know, past members past, you know, even just Disney goers in general, and, you know, looking into the future and seeing the ways that we now interact as adults, and how we’re interacting with our children, and you know, the different perspectives that we never really thought of before coming to light, so that we’re a little more mindful when we are, you know, trying to enjoy ourselves, because us enjoying ourselves may not be enjoyable for somebody else. And it comes sometimes at the expense of not just your wallet, but also you know, people and you know, their experiences, I think the whole, you know, well roundedness of participating in something like that is I feel essential for anybody who is putting themselves in that environment on either side. So the information out there is just, you know, so invaluable to have it’s just, you cannot replace those things like you cannot make this issue up. So yeah, you know, it’s it’s good to open your eyes and listen, and you know, it totally gives me a different perspective. And I’m actually going to be visiting Disney World in about a month or two. So it’s been quite a while and now I’m visiting with my son who, before I did not have a child in tow. So we’ll see how that goes. Definitely less drinking at Epcot. That’s the only thing on my mind.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 58:07
Yeah, I’ve been there, I have two children. So I completely understand

Ariel Landrum 58:12
Any any do’s and don’ts, you want to give a Stef for her experience with her little one toe?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 58:19
Um, give him a lot of breaks. And that is not just for you. But that is a thing that I’ve noticed is a problem with a lot of people who come to Disney and Universal and really all the parks is that they they don’t allow themselves any room to breathe. And it’s because they’ve spent so much money and because it is they want to do everything and I get that worth the dollar. I get that however, when your child at three o’clock in the afternoon is having a gigantic meltdown because they haven’t had a break. Without any stimulation or without too much stimulation, it is a nightmare. Because then you can’t bring them back then you can’t do anything else. Because then they’re done for the day. So my best suggestion is the hottest part of the day, go somewhere else either go back to your resort, get a late lunch like a three o’clock lunch. And I say that because I have been that parent who’s want to do a full day and it never works out especially with young children. Just give them the space to recover because they are experiencing so much sensory wise. The sounds the sights, the people like it’s just a lot for them. And they get overloaded super easily. So yeah, that would be my suggestion.

Stefanie Bautista 59:46
Thank you. I think that’s something to keep in mind because we’re coming from just two parks here across the way to like five parks and you got to take a bus in between all of them or drive or.

Jessica Lady Tremaine 59:59
Oh Honestly, I can’t speak highly enough of resort hopping for your break. So you don’t have to do the same one every day. But if you just go and you sit at the Polynesian in the lobby, or whatever, that one’s my favorite. So I’m partial to or if you go to the Grand Floridian and you listen to the pianist, or you just kind of walk around and do something a lot more low key like, yeah, it’s, it’s a great option.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:30
Yeah, for sure. I love that. Thank you so much. I’m definitely gonna take that to heart all the way. And I’m so excited now with this new perspective on you know, just, I feel like the differences between Disney Land and Disney World really are not that much. It’s just the perspectives are so much different when you’re looking at it on a grand scale. So, I mean, being an avid Disneyland goer, and I always have a different experience when I go to Disney World. And, you know, it’s just given a lot of different just different points, points of view and things to consider every time you go there. It’ll you know, now having this perspective will definitely help make you know my experience and hopefully the experiences of the cast members who are working so so hard to keep the parks open and also have their own jobs.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:20
So, audience members if you have learned anything today please DM us at G…

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:30
@HappiestPodGT.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:31
What Stef said, @HappiestPodGT or tweet at us @HappiestPodGT. A please please follow Jessica on TikTok for TremaineTok, on Instagram TremaineTokJessica, or YouTube Tremaine Tok in order to learn more on how to interact with cast members, and how to be an advocate for their mental health and wellness. Jessica, is there anything else you want to add before we end?

Jessica Lady Tremaine 1:01:57
No, that’s it. Thank you so much for having me. It’s really been a pleasure. And yeah, I’m excited to hear the episode when it comes out.

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:05
We loved having you. Thank you.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:09
Bye, everybody.

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:10
Bye.

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Lady Tremaine
  • Evil Step Sisters
  • Anastasia
  • Drizella
  • Snow Queen
  • The Evil Queen
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • DND Bleed
  • Dissociation
  • PTSD
  • Panic attacks
  • Assault
  • Sexual assault
  • Healthy work environment
  • Access to mental health
  • Working with the public
  • Therapy

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
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 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |
 | Jessica on Instagram: @TremaineTokJessica | on TikTok: @TremaineTok | on YouTube: @TremaineTok

Geek Therapy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of advocating for the effective and meaningful use of popular media in therapeutic, educational, and community practice.
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We DO Talk About Bruno Reprise

February 4, 2022 · Discuss on the GT Forum

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#28: Ariel, Stef, and past host Josué team up for a second time to do a deeper dive into Disney’s Encanto. In this episode, themes of dysfunctional family roles, inner child archetypes, and how to inspire students and clients to discover their own inner talents.

Episode 26 is part one of this two-part Encanto deep dive, where we discuss our reaction to, and highlight themes from the movie.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Resources for this episode:

  1. Kulture Karaoke
  2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  3. The Art of Disney’s Encanto by Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones
  4. How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole LePera

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Transcription

Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef.

Ariel Landrum 0:16
I’m Ariel.

Josué Cardona 0:17
And I’m Josué.

Stefanie Bautista 0:18
And I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:24
And I’m a therapist who uses a client’s passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma.

Josué Cardona 0:29
And I’m a former educator and former therapist who teaches other educators and therapists to use their passions and fandoms in their work.

Ariel Landrum 0:35
And Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Stefanie Bautista 0:40
Why do we do that? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Josué Cardona 0:46
So team, what is the experience are we discussing today?

Ariel Landrum 0:49
This is the We DO talk About Bruno Reprise. We’re bringing Encanto back.

Josué Cardona 0:54
A sequal?

Stefanie Bautista 0:55
Oh, dang!

Josué Cardona 0:55
Para te dos?

Stefanie Bautista 0:56
Before we even knew we were gonna get one.

Josué Cardona 0:59
What?

Stefanie Bautista 1:01
Lucky, lucky you all. You got your sequal before the sequal.

Josué Cardona 1:07
Encan-dos!

Ariel Landrum 1:07
Encan-dos!

Stefanie Bautista 1:08
I like it! I like it!

Josué Cardona 1:14
Don’t use. Cut it out.

Ariel Landrum 1:15
No I’m keeping it.

Stefanie Bautista 1:18
Too late. I don’t know about you all but it has been everywhere it has not left is in and around. I hear it every day at school. We don’t talk about Bru-No, no, no, every single day Monday through Friday. The kids love it. And I mean, I think it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Like we mentioned before.

Ariel Landrum 1:39
I was walking my dog with my roommate the other day and some kids were playing musical chairs with the we don’t talk about Bruno song. And literally I heard I would say six tiny little voices go “Isabela, your boyfriend is here!” All sounds even the music stopped and it was like, “A chair!”

Josué Cardona 2:02
I don’t think we talked about last time. I’m like that song was charting, right? Like it was it was on the chart on the Billboard charts like it was on the radio.

Stefanie Bautista 2:10
I have a fast fact about that.

Ariel Landrum 2:12
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 2:12
So currently, we don’t talk about Bruno has 100 million streams. And that’s Apple, Spotify. SoundCloud. What have you? Disney Radio! So 100 million. I’m pretty sure. That’s probably changed by right now as I’m talking, but…

Josué Cardona 2:32
I appreciate the shout out to Disney Radio. Yeah, it keeps on giving. I had a huge epiphany about it today. I had therapy earlier today, and I brought up the stuff and then I was listening to the soundtrack in preparation for this conversation. And I Oh, it was like, You gotta be kidding, there’s still stuff in like, I didn’t see or I didn’t realize before.

Ariel Landrum 2:56
Like what? Share!

Josué Cardona 2:57
You know, what we talked about all the different abilities and, and, you know, I’m, I’m sticking to my version, that each of them are used to to uphold this illusion, right? That Abuela that I what I wants to protect everybody by any means. So every every ability to make that more possible. And one that I really didn’t think about was Julieta’s power. Like, and I kind of like I feel like we just like talked over it. But then it’s in the first song in the Family Madrigal, where Maribel just says real quick, like, “Oh, like she makes everything better with food.” I was like oh, that’s it, you avoid talking about stuff, right? You just you just you just cook something up, you just make a meal, you just sit down. And we don’t talk about it at the Eat this and you’re and you know, forget about it. What? And then so this morning, when I was meeting with my therapist, I was talking about basically I developed a eating disorder that I was diagnosed with. And I attribute it I’ve always attributed it to the fact that when I was a kid and my parents were getting divorced, I was six years old and my mom my grandmother just would feed me just constantly just to make me feel better. And like I gained so much weight and like I still have stretch marks from when I was that that small. And and it’s been something that I’ve struggled with always and but it’s that it’s, Oh, I’ll make it better. Don’t worry, I’ll cook you something. Let me make you something right we don’t need to talk about it. I’m not gonna tell you the truth. We’re not gonna fix it. We’re not gonna address it. But eat this.” I was like, “Damnit. It was right there!” Like I didn’t think about how obvious that version of who you know what, who yet does roll there is but it’s still it’s it’s another version of we don’t talk about anything.

Stefanie Bautista 4:51
We tamp it down.

Josué Cardona 4:52
And the version in the in the movie is is so is so harmful because it literally fixes things.

Ariel Landrum 5:00
Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Josué Cardona 5:01
Right. But superficial and physical things, you know?

Stefanie Bautista 5:04
It causesyou to not confront it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Josué Cardona 5:08
“How did you get hurt? Don’t worry about it, eat this. It’s fixed.”

Ariel Landrum 5:10
The best way to shut up piehole is to put a pie in.

Stefanie Bautista 5:15
I feel like that’s a running joke in Filipino culture where, if you, if you argue or you get in trouble with any of your elders, they don’t apologize to you, they just their way of apologizing is, have you eaten yet? And that’s all you’re gonna get. Because they’re choosing to keep you alive by feeding you. That’s all the sorry, you’re gonna get for whatever conflict there is, especially if it’s, you know, the fault it lies on the adults, they’ll they won’t admit that. They’ll just say, “Have you eaten yet?” Pop in and you don’t have to say yes. But most likely you will end up eventually going out because you’ll get hungry. So you don’t talk about it. You don’t resolve the conflict, you just eat the food in silence and go about your day.

Ariel Landrum 6:00
Well, it’s interesting because when it came time for the big confrontation with Mirabel and Abuela Alma essentially the person who attempts to protect Mirabel is her dad not her mom. He’s the one who essentially steps up and starts looking for her he and and even when they found the prophecy, he’s the one who’s trying to make sure that she’s okay. He’s out looking for her and making an looking out for her where as Julieta is out, this essentially looking out for the family, even when it was when she cut herself. It was because Alma gave her that look of like, “You better to handle this. You better take care of this. You take her away from the party in the group. And you you essentially settle her down.

Stefanie Bautista 6:52
Hmm.

Josué Cardona 6:53
Yeah, this movie.

Ariel Landrum 7:01
So in doing this reprise, I think first something that we didn’t talk too much about, we focused on last time really like one specific song. And I think that I’d found some information about some of the other songs that was really interesting. Sort of like Easter eggs, or like, I don’t know, cameos, shout outs. I don’t. So the first one is that in the Family Madrigal, when Abuela, almost sings her verse, it’s in the same melody as Dos Oruguitas.

Josué Cardona 7:33
It’s true. Hmmhmm.

Stefanie Bautista 7:34
Yup. Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 7:36
So a little bit of foreshadowing there.

Josué Cardona 7:39
No only foreshadowing, because I just listened to the sound track like four times and for recording. While looking at the lyrics as they were playing through. And she, she very clearly outlined in that, in that in the the melody of Dos Oruguitas in that first song, but how we have to work hard to maintain this miracle. Right it’s like, “Things things are rough. We can’t We can’t do that again. Oh, yeah. Thanks.” That’s right. In the in the opening scene, you, you told this was going on.

Stefanie Bautista 8:13
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 8:14
And what her belief system was in regards to the families role. And then in the Waiting on a Miracle, you hear, Mirabel say “I would move the mountains. Make new trees and flowers grow. I would heal what’s broken show this family something new.” And, you know, we saw the river that nobody had ever seen before. Where Abuelo Pedro had passed away. We she definitely moved the mountain she broke it apart. And by you know, having a connection stronger with her sister Isabela, she actually grew trees which until that point, we didn’t really see Isabela grow anything but flowers. And even when you go into her room, it’s all like the topiary essentially flowers.

Stefanie Bautista 9:02
I can even see her talking about I would move mountains how she moved her strongest sister. How she was able to break through that because she was such a, like a steady rock for the entire family. And how she moved her when no one else could she couldn’t even do it herself, Luisa. So she might have foreshadowed that as well.

Josué Cardona 9:23
Yeah, metaphorically. Yeah, I think I think that even if you take it literally as if, because we talked about last time, how everybody’s using their powers in an unhealthy way. So she’s like, “If, if I if I could, I would move the mountains that are blocking everything. If I had the ability to make plants grow, I’d make new trees and new stuff like that,” right? It’s like, literally, “I can see what everybody’s powers are. And I would use them differently. If I if I could heal with food or whatever. I would heal what’s broken.” Right? Like “We don’t we don’t talk about what’s broken. We don’t actually address anything that’s broken. I would actually heal what is broken. If I if I could and show this family, maybe something new.” But like, I think it’s a completely different perspective. Like we said last time, it’s like you can see the things happening. But the way that people are talking about is is, is the warped version is like, no, we don’t actually, there’s, it’s not the truth.

Ariel Landrum 10:24
Yeah, yeah. All right, I get in with again, in the Family Madrigal, she says, “This is my family, a perfect constellation. So many stars, and everybody gets to shine.” But at the end, when we’re at All of You, she says, “Look at this family, a glowing constellation. So full of stars, and everybody wants to shine. But the stars don’t shine, they burn and the constellations shift. I think it’s time you learn, you’re more than just your gifts.” So we definitely see this idea of perfection in the first song and like everybody being allowed to be individuals. And in reality, we don’t get to see them be individuals. They are only their gifts, and it’s only the way that Al, Abuela Alma interprets them.

Stefanie Bautista 11:13
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 11:14
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 11:14
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 11:15
nother little interesting thing about that specific part when she says burn, she sings it at the exact same melody and tone as in Hamilton in the song Burn.

Stefanie Bautista 11:26
A Lin Manuel Miranda thing. There’s lots of those I hear.

Ariel Landrum 11:29
Yes. A little little call out a little shout out. And then also in Hamilton in the song Yorktown Hamilton says, “Seize the moment and stay in it.” And in All of You Dolores sings, “I’m seizing the moment. So would you wake up and notice me?”

Stefanie Bautista 11:46
Oh, I see what you did there.

Ariel Landrum 11:51
Another also interesting song thing which Stef you got it right you were right my fam Lin Manuel said the Family Madrigal was inspired by Belle from Beauty and the Beast. You..

Josué Cardona 12:01
You did it.

Ariel Landrum 12:02
You clocked that my friend.

Josué Cardona 12:04
It was all you.

Stefanie Bautista 12:04
Thank you. Thank you.

Ariel Landrum 12:06
This is your time.

Stefanie Bautista 12:07
This is my. You’re welcome.

Ariel Landrum 12:12
Another sort of songs. Shout out Luisa’s song Surface Pressure she says “Was Hercules ever like ‘Yo, I don’t want to fight Cerberus,'” as a shout out to obviously Hercules.

Josué Cardona 12:24
I don’t remember who said it. But I remember seeing a video or something it said “Like you know, ‘Was Hercules ever like yo, I don’t want to fight Cerberus,’ is the most Lin Manuel Miranda thing.” If you didn’t know he wrote the music to the movie at that point you’re like, “Oh, this must be Lin Manuel Miranda!”

Ariel Landrum 12:41
“I know who wrote this!”

Stefanie Bautista 12:43
“I know who wrote this! Who would even think of that?”

Josué Cardona 12:47
And that specific song Lin Manuel wrote as an apology and Love Letter for his older sister who he saw had to bear the burdens of the family.

Stefanie Bautista 12:57
Hmmm.

Josué Cardona 12:57
Yeah.

Speaking of apologies, when Bruno sings his apology to Pepa at the end, he says “Let it snow, let it go.” And the opening notes of Let It Go from Frozen or actually heard in the background.

Stefanie Bautista 13:09
Do you notice he also throws like white confetti? Making it act like as if it’s snowing? And he does even like Elsa’s pose. It’s really funny.

Josué Cardona 13:19
Okay, how many times have you watched the movies since the last episode?

Stefanie Bautista 13:23
You know, that’s, that’s a good question for everybody has it? Have you all watched it again? I actually haven’t. But I’ve seen so many clips online, that I feel like I’ve watched it in, like 30 second increments.

Josué Cardona 13:36
I just I just listen to the soundtrack again, about multiple times. I only listen to Dos Oruguitas before on repeat forever. But now I was like, “Oh, I could watch the whole movie or let me do let me just listen to the soundtrack.” And I mean, it’s kind of like watching the movie.

Stefanie Bautista 13:51
Yeah it is.

Josué Cardona 13:53
The beats are all there.

Ariel Landrum 13:54
I watched it two more times. Then of course everything on TikTok has me watched clips. I think that actually counts. But it was two more times. One to just do a refresher before we came in did our reprise and another time because I needed noise in the background for like doing stuff.

Stefanie Bautista 14:13
Funnily enough, it’s made its way into the karaoke cue. Me and my friends are on a trip with our families. And we play this card game called culture karaoke where it gives you like a category and then you have to like sing a song from a girl group from the 90s like, and then you would pick like I’m gonna pick Spice Girls or I’m gonna pick TLC or whatever. And then, unannounced unprompted, my husband puts on The Family Madrigal because they’re using YouTube, and I S you not we all just started singing it and we all like took parts and we I mean, we love the movie so much. I was just like, let’s do all the other songs. Now. Forget this game.

Josué Cardona 14:58
That’s gotta be the hardest song right? The Family Madrigal?

Stefanie Bautista 15:00
It is.

Josué Cardona 15:00
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 15:01
Yeah. But I think there’s a couple edits on YouTube where it like follows along with the lyrics and like who’s singing it? So it was like color coded, and they put a picture of the character. So we were definitely winded after that song. But we still sang We Don’t Talk About Bruno afterwards.

Ariel Landrum 15:21
Yeah, I think that’s interesting, because you are talking about like, everybody taking on a part. And obviously in We Don’t Talk About Bruno, everybody gets to sing a part. And the part where they are overlapping in the song at the dinner table, like setting, setting the table together, that actual composition style is actually called a madrigal,.

Stefanie Bautista 15:47
Ohh.

Ariel Landrum 15:48
Which is a poly phonetic module girl has a number of voices that vary between two and eight, usually features, maybe one prominent voice and the musical composition they interweave and overlap. And so it’s interesting that when we do actually have them all singing as a family, like that is how they’re doing it. They’re actually doing the madrigal con, vocal composition.

Stefanie Bautista 16:13
Is that similar to around? Is it like also known as around? Or is there a difference between the two?

Ariel Landrum 16:18
There’s a difference around is almost like on canon where the next person goes, the next person goes, they already had their individual song overlap with each other. And, and is if you put on if you turn it up really loud, or you put on the subtitles, the scene where they’re sort of dancing around in Mirabel’s head and she’s like looking at the… Not the fortune. She’s looking at the…

Stefanie Bautista 16:45
The prophecy?

Ariel Landrum 16:45
Yes, she’s got the fortune.

Stefanie Bautista 16:48
She’s looking at the fortune cookie! Haha!

Ariel Landrum 16:50
She’s like the prophecy. They’re all singing around her. And you can hear Isabela say, “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m fine.” That’s what she sings. And it’s the same note that and key that she hear her introduction, the song where she says that “he told me that the life of my dreams is going to be mine.” And a lot of people have noted that she has to put on the persona of perfection. But in reality, there’s a good chance that her dreams weren’t dreams. They were nightmares. Because everybody had these like bad prophecies and she’s just presenting it as not a bad one?

Josué Cardona 17:30
I love that song The Bruno’s on because every time they everything, I still think that all his prophecies were positive. And like, in her case, again, her and Dolores case, like they were absolutely true. Like, oh, that song, “The life that you want is gonna be yours. It’s just like, but it’s a prophecy. So like, it’s gonna be in the future.” It did happen eventually. And the person that Dolores wanted, it’s like, oh, he only told you to the point where like, “Oh, yeah, your guy he’s, he’s gonna be with somebody else but like, but he’s your guy like eventually.”

Stefanie Bautista 18:00
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 18:00
It’s incomplete.

Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 18:03
I mean, even the smaller ones there’s things that were gonna happen eventually like that fish wasn’t gonna live forever. Sorry.

Josué Cardona 18:09
Exactly.

Ariel Landrum 18:10
The director even said like you don’t hear it in the movie but the name of the woman is Spanish in Spanish translate to Ms. Dead Fish. Like that’s her name. Like “I knew your fish was gonna die girl it was written in your name!”

Josué Cardona 18:28
In the creds, does it appear in the credits like, Ms. Dead Fish?

Stefanie Bautista 18:31
Like you have no other identity but your Ms. Dead Fish? Like Mr. Green….

Josué Cardona 18:35
Villager one Villager two Ms. Dead Fish…

Stefanie Bautista 18:38
Fish..

Josué Cardona 18:38
Villager three.

Stefanie Bautista 18:39
Mr. Green Thumb is down there too.

Ariel Landrum 18:44
It says, while her name was never mentioned the film director Jared Bush revealed that the name of the woman whose goldfish dies is Señora Pez Muerto?

Josué Cardona 18:56
Pez Muerto!

Stefanie Bautista 18:56
It is!

Ariel Landrum 18:56
Meaning Ms. Dead Fish.

Josué Cardona 18:56
Yup. Yup.

Stefanie Bautista 19:00
It’s like that’s her occupation kind of like blacksmith.

Josué Cardona 19:03
That’s my new favorite Encanto trivia.

Stefanie Bautista 19:06
I know. It’s pretty good.

Ariel Landrum 19:08
“Who you cosplaying as?” “Ms. Dead Fish!”

Stefanie Bautista 19:10
Just go around with a fish bowl.

Ariel Landrum 19:13
And just tilt your head, “Dead.”

Stefanie Bautista 19:16
That’s actually a good cosplay. If you had like two of your friends are the three like villagers whose prophecies were read and a guy with a gut bald guy, Ms. Dead Fish.

Josué Cardona 19:26
One guy just like taking his hair off, right? Taking a wig off. But it’s it’s gonna happen because Encanto is everywhere and there’s gonna be at least one.

Ariel Landrum 19:39
Hey, if they have that Star Wars run with the guy who’s holding the ice cream maker. Definitely gonna have Ms. Dead Fish.

Stefanie Bautista 19:49
or even your your dad’s cosplay of the guy in Jurassic Park that everybody really like?

Ariel Landrum 19:54
Oh, yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 19:56
Everyone loved that cosplay.

Ariel Landrum 19:58
Yeah, my dad was a Jimmy Buffett. If you watched Jurassic World he has a cameo where he has two margaritas and he’s running away from pterodactyls so I was a pterodactyl and my dad was Jimmy Buffett with the two margaritas and that was…

Stefanie Bautista 20:10
Everyone at Comic Con was loving it. They were like, “Oh it’s Jimmy Buffett!”

Ariel Landrum 20:16
“It’s Jimmy Buffett! It’s the margarita guy! They’re like “Do the pose! Do the pose!”

Stefanie Bautista 20:22
Yup. it’s gonna be like that, for sure.

Ariel Landrum 20:25
Okay, okay, um, other other Easter Eggs. Hidden Mickey’s there too, as there should be. Well, the first one is actually in, What Else Can I Do? Isabella makes a cactus and that cactus is a Mickey shape. And then the second one, you actually would have to freeze frame like each second of the song. But Mirabel in the song waiting on a miracle when she dances around her parents in the foreground, there’s magical glitter that’s in the shape of Mickey’s head.

Stefanie Bautista 20:58
Hmm.

Ariel Landrum 20:58
Going with a theme of butterflies because that was something that we talked about…

Yes.

The new door that gets built at the end, there’s a butterfly for each family member except one and that one is you find it on Mirabel’s chest. So right above like the whole, like an archway butterfly for each family member. The other thing is that there’s a book called 100 Years of Solitude, and it’s written by a Colombian novelist named Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And in the book throughout, there are yellow butterflies that appear. And it’s actually the story of a multi generational family whose patriarch finds a town.

Stefanie Bautista 21:33
Much like Abuela. Hehe.

Josué Cardona 21:36
So Disney’s getting sued.

Ariel Landrum 21:39
I’m just saying like this no way there wasn’t some inspiration.

Josué Cardona 21:44
What was the what’s the movie? The white lion? Isn’t Simba, the white lion or?

Ariel Landrum 21:50
Oh, Kim Kim?

Josué Cardona 21:51
Kimba!

Stefanie Bautista 21:52
Kimba. Yeah, the anime movie?

Josué Cardona 21:54
Yeah. That’s nothing like it…

Stefanie Bautista 21:57
No.

Josué Cardona 21:58
No.

Stefanie Bautista 21:58
They would have to wait a couple, what is it like it was made in the 70s and then it and then Lion King came out in the 90s. So you have to wait until that production houses defunct in order to steal their things and not feel the ramifications.

Ariel Landrum 22:16
Okay, okay. Umm in Bruno’s room and his room by the kitchen. You can see a boot with a plant in the background and that’s actually a shout out to Walle it’s the plant that like they find an Eva takes and stores.

Josué Cardona 22:29
I don’t know how I feel about Disney movies referencing Pixar movies. I don’t like that.

Stefanie Bautista 22:35
Yeah, I was gonna mention that. I’m like, hold up. Hold up. Hold up here.

Josué Cardona 22:39
Yeah. We need boundaries. Okay. Stay in your lane.

Stefanie Bautista 22:46
We have not moved that mountain yet. They have to build another Disney CGI mountain.

Ariel Landrum 22:53
But that isn’t the first time they’ve done that though. Right?

Josué Cardona 22:57
Actually was was was Marida in, in the video game movie?

Stefanie Bautista 23:05
Oh, Wreck It Ralph?

Josué Cardona 23:06
Wreck It Ralph Marida’s in it right?

Ariel Landrum 23:08
Yeah, that’s the one I’m referring to in record while she was in there. And they make a snide rude comment, which does not sound like my Disney princesses, but they were like, “Oh, she was made from the other production company.”

Josué Cardona 23:21
Right? Right. Right. So that’s acceptable. Right? It’s like that’s that. That’s how they should act.

Ariel Landrum 23:28
You shouldn’t be snarky to each other? Frenemies?

Stefanie Bautista 23:33
Make a face.

Josué Cardona 23:34
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 23:38
“They’re from the other magical town not this one.”

Ariel Landrum 23:44
“They make movies about feelings that feel okay?” Yeah, so yeah, so there’s some some Easter eggs.

Stefanie Bautista 23:54
I mean, would another Easter egg be that the Disney Pixar Disney CGI, that’s a dysfunctional family in itself, because it was like they had this partnership or family. And now they’re like all over the place animators here at I don’t know, but it could be a bigger metaphor for the messiness that is Disney CGI. Former Pixar.

Ariel Landrum 24:16
And this new generation is trying to break that generational curse?

Stefanie Bautista 24:21
I don’t know that’s going too far. But it’s a stretch.

Ariel Landrum 24:25
Stef. What have you been doing within condo in the classroom? Or have you seen teachers doing?

Stefanie Bautista 24:31
I’ve seen I mean, in, aside from playing the songs during you know, free time and like connecting with kids, because you got to kind of be hip to what the kids are listening to nowadays, right? Even though those kids are like five, just turned six. You got to know what’s cool. So I mean, everybody is you know, in and around Encanto whether it’s the clothes like what they’re, what they’re wearing, who they relate to who You know, you would find yourself like, “If you had to choose a power, what would you choose?” That’s such a popular writing prompt. Especially when you know superheroes came, you know, in the forefront of everything. It was always like, “You know, if you were a superhero, what would you be?” A couple educators, they actually twisted that a little bit to fit in Encanto when using that in the classroom. And some teachers have been using it to help kids discover their special talents. There’s this one teaching website where it says, because in the beginning of the movie Mirabele lavishes preys on her family and their unique gifts, such as healing through food, endless physical strength, even though she doesn’t have any, she figures, you know, she’s gonna contribute in big ways, like we saw. So what the teacher could do is you could ask the students to complete a writing activity where they come up with their own list of things that their family members excel, I’m not them, per se. But I, you could say, “You know, my mom’s really good at, you know, making this certain dish, or my mom’s really good at cleaning, you know, the house, or she’s really good at maybe even putting on her makeup. And you know, my dad’s really good at, you know, so and so my cousin’s good at this and this.” And then after that, “You could say, how would you transfer that into magical gifts?” So…

Ariel Landrum 26:18
Oh…

Stefanie Bautista 26:18
Let’s say for instance, if your mom is really good at doing her makeup, what if she just flick of the wrist did a whole piece of makeup? Or, you know, did it for like, even for a dog or, you know, get really silly and crazy with it? You could kind of take it to wherever. Or you could say, you know, “How would that gift? How could they? Would they be able to reflect on what their talent might be? Would you inherit that talent? Or would you take that talent further? Like, if you could change the way something looked? Would you do that? Is it a bad thing? Or a good thing? Who would it benefit? Who would it not benefit? And you know, would you do that for other people.” So there’s many different avenues that you could take a special gift.

Ariel Landrum 27:01
I like that.

Stefanie Bautista 27:02
It doesn’t have to be magical. It could just be you know, something really simple such as, you know, “I can kick a ball really, really far. Well, would you want to play a professional sport? Or would you use those talents to, you know, help other people? How would kicking a ball help someone? Oh, you know, maybe my strength could, you know, move things for people who can’t like the elderly, things like that.” So it’s kind of like taking services, to you know, your community, like a step further by making it magical. But you know, they can also scale it down by making it very accessible to students, which is really cool. But you can make it as magical or not magical as you want. The younger kids are really fun, because they can totally make it magical. And then they run wild with it.

Ariel Landrum 27:51
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 27:52
So I implore you to ask a child what they would do with you know, Luisa’s gift or Mirabel’s gift or even ask a kid what they think Mirabel’s gift is because you might get some really interesting answers.

Josué Cardona 28:07
Yeah, I like the community framing of it. Because in the movie that’s really like, the family is really serving that town. Right? Like, “Oh, if you had abilities, how would you help your town? or the school? Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 28:22
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 28:22
What a clever assignment.

Josué Cardona 28:25
I mean, they’re already talking about it. Yeah. Speaking their language.

Stefanie Bautista 28:31
Yeah. And I think a lot of kids have been, you know, identifying their family members within, you know, “This is my cousin who always listens into whatever I’m saying, and she always repeats it. I don’t want her to, but she does it anyway.” And, you know, “There’s there’s that cousin who I don’t see very often, but I know he’s around. Kind of like their Uncle Bruno. Everybody has that uncle.

Ariel Landrum 28:54
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 28:56
It always ends up being you know, like Bruno, so they they really see themselves even though they might not see themselves visually, they can find themselves in every character, which is really awesome.

Ariel Landrum 29:09
That’s interesting that you mentioned Dolores, and like a cousin that won’t keep secrets. And there is a fan theory that because Dolores can hear everything she knew the prophecy already and was just waiting to the right time to like stir the pot so that her man wouldn’t get stolen from her because she even says, “No one is worried about the magic but you and the rats in the walls.”

Josué Cardona 29:37
And in one of the songs she says “I can hear him now.” I think it’s it’s an Bruno right?

Ariel Landrum 29:46
“Mumbling and something..”

Josué Cardona 29:48
She’s like, “I can hear him now.”

Stefanie Bautista 29:49
There’s a lot of talk yeah, about what she hears and the things she shouldn’t be hearing.

Ariel Landrum 29:56
She’s got all the chisme.

Josué Cardona 29:58
So I mean, I mean she and she admits, “I I’ve always knew that Bruno was there. I could hear him. Like, I knew I know everything.” This way like, I feel like her, her power is just as sad as as Luisa and Isabela’s because like she has to stay quiet about this stuff, you know that she hears everything and she can’t say anything or do anything about it. Because for I mean, who knows what why she thinks that but that’s a lot of pressure too.

Ariel Landrum 30:27
You can also see in the background. I think her powers is the one that sucks the most. Because when well what everybody’s like clapping, she just uses her two index fingers because everything’s just so flipping loud.

Stefanie Bautista 30:41
Too loud.

Ariel Landrum 30:42
And it’s like we don’t we I don’t see her hat wearing like any earmuffs or earplugs at all. I feel so bad. Like she needs some Bose Bose noise canceling headphones. Number 45.

Stefanie Bautista 30:54
I want a Disney short of young Dolores. Like, where she did it no restraint and just said everything she heard.

Ariel Landrum 31:05
Yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 31:05
Cause there are kids who just repeat everything that they hear even though they shouldn’t…

Ariel Landrum 31:09
Oh that was me!

Stefanie Bautista 31:12
I would love to see just her just spilling the chisme. Spills everything.

Josué Cardona 31:17
It is funny because the dinner scene right, she she can’t hold it in. But then but like you learn “Oh, she said she’s had a lot of restraint.”

Ariel Landrum 31:26
Yeah. She just stirred the pot at the right moment.

Josué Cardona 31:30
Yeah yeah. I mean, this was pretty juicy.

Ariel Landrum 31:33
My girl.

Josué Cardona 31:34
I get it. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 31:37
But yeah, I agree. I think her powers you know, very burdensome, then that town is not that large? Now think if it was larger, if it continues to expand, is she is she using things to help her, you know, control block it out? Or? I don’t know.

Josué Cardona 31:55
I just I’ve never thought about how bad it could be. But what if she can actually hear outside of the town? And she can’t go. But she knows that. Like, all these things are happening. And there’s this whole world out there.

Stefanie Bautista 32:10
There’s life beyond the walls. There’s life beyond the walls. Oh, man, we need another episode for that one.

Josué Cardona 32:20
I don’t want to think about that. About Dolores’ plight now. The tragedy of the Dolores.

Ariel Landrum 32:28
We don’t really have a timeframe do we?

Josué Cardona 32:30
No not really? And like when things happen at the beginning? The story takes like 50 years after that.

Ariel Landrum 32:36
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 32:37
And….

Stefanie Bautista 32:40
We know that they make espresso. So we know that those processes are there.

Josué Cardona 32:46
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 32:47
But other than that, I mean, there’s no sign of electricity aside. I mean, they’re using carts.

Josué Cardona 32:55
But also like, we have no idea like, because we have no frame of reference for the….

Stefanie Bautista 32:59
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 32:59
initial scene…

Ariel Landrum 33:00
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 33:01
Like, technology could have advanced like, it could have been the 1900s. And now it’s 1950. And they’re still, you know, like…

Stefanie Bautista 33:07
In yeah.

Josué Cardona 33:07
There was a big change. You know, like people driving cars around that mountain. They have no idea what’s going on. They just saw about it split. And it’s like, “Wait, what?”

Stefanie Bautista 33:16
Yeah, what an homage to rural living, especially in countries like that. Because, yes, there could be cars and you know, electric cars going around. But if you live in the boonies, you would not know that. You would not know that at all. And there are places that exist today that are like that. I mean, speaking of Encanto has been so popular. So we know, the Disney route on this. We got to Frozen Two Yes, we are gonna be getting a Moana Two sometime. Do you think they’re going to push for an Enancto Two?

Josué Cardona 33:50
I mean, only because I’m sure it’s made them a lot of money.

Ariel Landrum 33:54
Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t a flop. So…

Stefanie Bautista 33:57
Yeah…

Ariel Landrum 33:57
They have to monetize it as much as they can.

Stefanie Bautista 34:00
Yeah. I did read some people say because when she rebuilt the house at the end of the movie, you see in its destruction, the mountain splits, right? So it opens up this valley. That never gets repaired. So it’s now open. People can visit the town now. Or the townspeople can go out and venture. So I wonder if this maybe sequel would be them going out or dealing with outsiders coming in? Hmm.

Josué Cardona 34:30
Again like Frozen surprised me when when they had a sequel. Like I couldn’t imagine what the sequel would be. And, and yeah, this I think they have the opportunity to do some cool stuff. That is kind of, there’ll be like hard to expect. Because I mean, we talked about it’s been 50 years. So the world like the outside world is very different. And we don’t know what kind of world they live in. That’s another part to like when we when we see Arendelle and then we kind of expand a little more in the second one, it’s like, “Oh, this world is full of fantasy, and magic.” And like, there’s all these people who’ve been trapped for 50 years, right? I mean, I don’t remember 50 years in Frozen Two right, but like, all these people who were out there, and there’s like all this other types of magic. So it’s possible that in the world of Encanto, they’re not necessarily, maybe they’re not as special. Right? Maybe there’s other families, there’s other miracles, right? There’s other families with powers and abilities nearby, you know, and like, there’s all these things you can explore. Now that they’ve grown, you know, do you introduce some kind of? I don’t know, like, what’s, what’s the we have generational trauma here? What do we do? What what could be next? What’s the challenge? Is it just now adapting? Actually, I think, okay, here’s my theory. Here’s my theory. Abeula dies.

Stefanie Bautista 36:01
Oh, I was just gonna say that.

Josué Cardona 36:03
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 36:04
I was just gonna say that.

Josué Cardona 36:05
That’s how it is, right?

Ariel Landrum 36:06
There’s too many Disney mom’s in this movie?

Josué Cardona 36:08
Yeah. Yeah. You deal with the loss of Abuela, and how are you? Like, because she had so much control. And now that she’s let go, how do you? What role does everyone else play? Who who becomes the new matriarch? Who becomes? What are our roles now? How does that power shift? There it is. Lin Manuel call me.

Stefanie Bautista 36:30
I know tight? Call Josué. Call him up.

Josué Cardona 36:33
There’s also the possibility that at the end, when because they don’t they don’t say this. They don’t show either way. But when Mirabel touches the door, the whole town kind of glows. It’s not just Casita, like everything, like, what if everybody else got powers to? You know, like?

Ariel Landrum 36:50
Like that little boy who drank all that coffee?

Josué Cardona 36:53
Yeah, yeah, like he’s a speedster, now.

Stefanie Bautista 36:55
He’s had a power. His little body just absorbing all the caffine.

Josué Cardona 37:01
Yeah, but I think I think that makes sense. I mean, right. And you can see all the same roles, like all the family dynamics, you can start to see them play out in that generational way. Right, but like they didn’t get to grow, they were stifled in the cocoon, right. And now that the cocoon has has broken, how do those, we can show how all of those roles play out?

Stefanie Bautista 37:24
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 37:25
Later on. As as you get older, just like in real life, you had these roles when you were younger, and then they can now then it can explain some of the issues you have as an adult.

Ariel Landrum 37:36
What a beautiful segue Josué to what I wanted to talk about, which was a dysfunctional family roles. So as some of you know, I’m a therapist, I’m specifically what’s called a marriage and family therapist, I was trained to think systemically. So when I treat an individual, I don’t just see them, I see, you know, the, how they have been affected by those around them, and specifically the way their family affects them. And there’s this sort of theory that when a, when there’s family dysfunction, we take on roles in the family. When we see family members struggle to self regulate themselves, we take on these roles and attempt to like create homeostasis, or rebalance the family so that we can get back to, you know, quote, unquote, being functional. And though I don’t really ascribe to dysfunctional and functional, I kind of think of it as these roles are very adaptive, they’re survivor roles. And once you’ve sort of left the family, you’ve created individuation, they’re no longer useful because you’re not in survival mode anymore. In the same way. I always use like with my clients, the example of if you’re swimming in water, you’re going to propel yourself forward with your arms, but you’re on dry land. Now. These are dysfunctional family roles as they’re called in the field. But you can also just think of them as like Survivor roles or roles that we take on to survive. And so I’m going to, I’m going to read them and I want you all to say who you think in the family, they are. The Caretaker/Peacemaker/Mediator, so these are any of the terms you can use. And this is the individual in the family who is constantly alert to addressing any family issue and conflict. They often go ahead of their own personal needs and take on the duties and responsibilities of others in the family. They are seen as the one keeping the family in balance.

So So I think I think there’s a couple that fit this one.

Yeah. Yeah.

Josué Cardona 39:35
Camilo is one because he he literally takes on the duties of other people in the family because he transforms into them and then and then steps in when other people can’t And I think Julieta.

Ariel Landrum 39:49
Okay, okay.

Josué Cardona 39:50
And Mirabel, and yeah, I think those.

Stefanie Bautista 39:55
I definitely thought Julieta first just because she is the most overly motherly type. And she’s preparing food right? So it’s not usually if you’re the person cooking you eat last. And that’s what I always akin that too. So because she’s busy making food for everyone else, she probably doesn’t have time for her own needs. Especially when she has Mirabel a girl who was you know, still lost in finding herself. She’s kind of like, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m just gonna give you a big kiss on your face. Everything’s better.”

Ariel Landrum 40:32
Yeah, I definitely agree with you all. I also thought of Luisa in the sense that she does take on a lot of responsibilities and duties. And we literally see her like on a balancing tightrope…

Josué Cardona 40:42
And she’s constantly addressing issues. She’s like fixing things. She’s a fixer. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 40:46
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 40:47
I think the part that makes me sort of think more Julieta is the fact that that this individual has to be alert. They’re always essentially on guard. And it seems like even in like the partner she chose, who always gets like stung by bees. She’s just like, ready?

Stefanie Bautista 41:07
Very mother, like you gotta have everything in your purse.

Ariel Landrum 41:10
This one is The Golden Child/Hero/Saint/or Super Kid. This individual’s a family who could do no wrong and is often described as perfect. They have intense pressure to continue to achieve and only no praise through achievement. They appear to be well balanced and unfazed by the family dysfunction. Appear being the strong word.

Josué Cardona 41:29
I mean, in Family Madrigal, Mirabel, actually calls Julieta, I mean, Isabel, and Luisa perfect. Both of them in their own ways. So they both fit that.

Ariel Landrum 41:41
Miss Perfecta Isabela.

Josué Cardona 41:43
Isabela obviously, right? She’s definitely The Golden Child. She’s also called the golden child in that first song, literally…

Stefanie Bautista 41:49
And they sing her name like she’s from the angels.

Josué Cardona 41:53
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But but she also describes Luisa as perfect and that’s the thing about like her eye twitching right it’s like it’s she’s breaking that that image of perfection yeah.

Ariel Landrum 42:09
Yeah, yeah, I think that that like Super Kid in the title definitely makes me think Luisa.

Josué Cardona 42:13
You can be more than one of these by the way, you can have more than one dysfunctional family role.

Ariel Landrum 42:18
Oh, yeah. You like I said, this is a role you you is either ascribe to you or you take yourself for someone both so you may shift it up depending on what balance needs to be had in the family. So the next one is The Scapegoat/Troublemaker/ or Black Sheep. This individual in the family who speaks the truth about the family’s dysfunction. Attention is only given to them when they cause a problem or a scene and they are usually assigned this role at a young age. They identify with feeling rejected, unloved and isolated. And they are often placed in situations where they’re pinned up against The Golden Child or compared to.

Camilo and Bruno.

I definitely thought Bruno and I definitely thought Mirabel and that the being pinned up against The Golden Child. But what about Camilo?

Josué Cardona 43:05
Speaks the truth about family’s dysfunction, and that is just generally, when he’s doing when he’s playing his role correctly. He’s good, but the moment he starts messing around and imitating people that’s like, “Oh like just stop it.”

Stefanie Bautista 43:20
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 43:21
“Stop messing around!”

Stefanie Bautista 43:21
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 43:21
You know?

Ariel Landrum 43:22
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 43:24
And a lot of that has to do with you know, because he could be everybody else, you, you might get the sense that he could also get lost in who he actually is because he’s busy shape shifting. And I feel like a lot of kids who identify as the class clown usually are hiding something or they’re using humor, to, you know, cover up something that they might not want to talk about or might not want to address themselves within themselves. So they put more attention on other people so that they can that’s like their comic relief.

Ariel Landrum 43:52
So interesting that you say that because the next one is The Clown or The Mascot. This individual lightens the mood in the home, especially when tensions rise or could boil over. They appear to always be ready defuse tension with humor, and when this is successful, it perpetuates their desire to avoid conflict and conflict resolution by using amusing behavior.

Josué Cardona 44:14
Camilo.

Stefanie Bautista 44:15
Camilo.

Ariel Landrum 44:16
Finally, we have The Lost Child. This individual will do their best to blend into the background they often identify with feelings of being ignored, neglected, and fear drawing attention to themselves. They yearn for love and approval but are often withdrawn and isolated.

Josué Cardona 44:32
Bruno, Dolores, and Mirabel.

Ariel Landrum 44:35
Yes, I definitely think Bruno because he literally blends with the background, but I also think Dolores because she only speaks when she’s told to, like identify news. She’s like…

Stefanie Bautista 44:46
Yeah…

Ariel Landrum 44:47
Like a weather girl.

Josué Cardona 44:48
Also, again, her ability like it makes it so like, in many ways she has to she has to be quiet. Like she can’t even say what she knows because she knows too much.

Ariel Landrum 44:58
Yeah, I think it’s good to have some of these roles in mind, in, in therapy or when we’re doing our own work, because we can see them come out when we are trying to relate with others.We’ll and we feel tension or discomfort rise, we will take on these different roles that may not actually fit or match the needs that have to be met.

Stefanie Bautista 45:21
I noticed that we didn’t mention the husbands.

Ariel Landrum 45:23
I think Felix is the The Clown or The Mascot.

Stefanie Bautista 45:27
Yeah, I was thinking that too.

Josué Cardona 45:29
I was thinking he’s a Mediator/Peacemaker.

Stefanie Bautista 45:31
Oh, yeah that also. For sure.

Ariel Landrum 45:36
So he’s told to calm Pepa down.

Stefanie Bautista 45:38
Yeah. Augustine could be kind of the scape.. maybe not the scape… Maybe The Clown because he’s always getting stung by bees?

Josué Cardona 45:48
I don’t know… I couldn’t. I couldn’t think of one for him. I don’t think he has. I don’t think he he’s the only one that’s not dysfunctional.

Ariel Landrum 45:59
And he’s the only one.

Stefanie Bautista 46:01
Yeah. I mean, he could also be seen as The Peacemaker, or The Mediator because he loves his kids so much. And he loves his wife so much that, you know, he’s, he’s just the go to guy.

Josué Cardona 46:12
Ope like when he hides. Yeah, like when he hides the prophesy stone and stuff. It’s like no, no, yes, I think they both. I mean, yeah, they’re both playing partially that role, more more like The Peacemaker/Mediator kind of thing. Because there’s a lot of drama in that family.

Ariel Landrum 46:36
So in the book, how to do the work by Dr. Nicole LaPera, she has the Seven Inner Child Archetypes, I definitely shout out this book. And I would suggest a lot of clients get it, especially if they’re thinking of going into therapy. This is a good stepping stone if you are still not comfortable with the idea of being in the room with an individual, maybe seeing if you align with these archetypes. And so you want to think of these as internal roles. We model assign, assume and play out unconsciously again to survive. And often our responses from unmet emotional needs or broken connections. And so what I’m going to note on these roles is how, how these internal roles have us believe what love is or how we get love. So The Caretaker, this is the part of us that gains a sense of identity and self worth through neglecting our own needs. Will believe that the only way that we can resolve love, or we can receive love is by caring for others and ignoring ourselves.

Josué Cardona 47:40
That’s me. Uh-huh. Keep going.

Stefanie Bautista 47:43
Yeah. I was like “I see myself in this picture.”

Josué Cardona 47:44
Yup yup yup. Keep going.

Stefanie Bautista 47:46
Go on.

Ariel Landrum 47:47
“Shots fired. I feel called out.”

Josué Cardona 47:49
“How dare you!”

Stefanie Bautista 47:51
“How. Dare. You.”

Ariel Landrum 47:52
So in goes to the family Madrigal and not the Geek Therapy Network Family.

Josué Cardona 47:57
Oh sorry.

Stefanie Bautista 47:58
Oh, are we identifying with character? Oh, sorry. It got a little real there so.

Josué Cardona 48:01
Stef we misunderstood the assignment.

Stefanie Bautista 48:01
Yeah. Opps.

Ariel Landrum 48:07
Who do you think of the family’s a Caretaker? I definitely thought Luisa in the being self sacrificial. Or believing that the only way that she can serve the family is if she never serves herself.

Josué Cardona 48:17
Yeah. 100%.

Stefanie Bautista 48:18
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 48:19
It’s interesting, the very different way this caretaker is presented than it is like the family role.

Josué Cardona 48:25
Hmhmm.

Stefanie Bautista 48:25
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 48:26
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 48:26
I mean, Mirabel because she speaks to Casita, she, I feel like she’s the only one who speaks the Casita and, like, interacts with Casita that way. It’s like she’s taking care of the house. And we see that manifest in a more larger way. But you know, she’s the one, putting stuff back, making sure everyone’s good and making sure all the tiles are in the right place.

Josué Cardona 48:45
She’s literally in the nursery, right, she can make that she has to do a deal with a lot of stuff for for, for the sake of the others.

Ariel Landrum 48:55
She don’t get no room. Okay, the next one is the Overachiever, the part of us that feel seen, heard and valued through success and achievement. This is the part that uses external validation as a way to cope with love, self worth and value. And we see love as only received through achievement.

Josué Cardona 49:17
I mean, it sounds like it’s Isabela, but I feel like you saw a lot doesn’t work hard. Like, I don’t think she’s just valued.

Stefanie Bautista 49:25
Because she is…

Josué Cardona 49:27
Because she’s the most beautiful one because she makes beautiful things. But she does that effortlessly.

Stefanie Bautista 49:33
Yeah, I think all of Julieta’s kids, those that the three of them Mirabel, Luisa and Isabela. They’re all Overachievers in some way or another, because one is trying to overcompensate for what she doesn’t have. One just trying to be, you know, the poster child and the other one who’s just trying to be strong for everyone. So, in comparison to the other two cousins, three cousins they’re way more at the forefront of, I need to be this person.

Ariel Landrum 50:04
Okay? Okay. Because if you think of like Dolores and Camilo, they could literally hide in the background and their achievement is not to be as seen as these other three their cousins.

Josué Cardona 50:14
And nobody’s praising what they’re doing.

Stefanie Bautista 50:16
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 50:17
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 50:17
And I feel Yeah, probably Luisa is the most. Right. Like she she, what is it? Dammit, she says it. I forgot what she says in the song buti t’s like, “My worth is like, I have to have to be useful. Like I have to have to do things. And if I can’t do that, then like, what good am I?”

Ariel Landrum 50:36
The next one is the opposite of The Overachiever it is The Underachiever and this is the part that stays small, unseen, and beneath our true potential due to fear of criticism, shame, or failure. This is a part that we take when we don’t want to play the emotional game. And we believe that invisibility is the only way to get love.

Stefanie Bautista 51:00
This one might be a long shot, but I feel like because Pepa is always just trying to stop herself from crying and having big emotions. She has to feel smaller, she has to act small. Because if she lashes out or something bad happens, everyone’s gonna have consequences for it.

Ariel Landrum 51:22
Yeah. And that is beneath her true potential. Like she literally controls the weather.

Josué Cardona 51:26
She made a hurricane on her wedding day, right? She said.

Stefanie Bautista 51:29
She did.

Josué Cardona 51:29
Yeah. And I forgot all about Pepa. I’m glad you brought her up because we did not mention her in the last exercise.

Stefanie Bautista 51:36
We did not. And she’s the one with the power that can truly destroy or make everyone’s day great.

Josué Cardona 51:45
She’s always subduing right? Her ability. Yeah. I think Dolores in a way also, does that. Like she can’t talk about the fact that, you know, she knows. I think Bruno too.

Ariel Landrum 51:59
Yeah…

Josué Cardona 52:00
In a way, but a much more literal way here, right? Because, because he did speak up and was criticized. And then he literally, you know, got himself invisible. Not necessarily as the only way to get love, but like the only way to avoid….

Ariel Landrum 52:20
Rejection.

Josué Cardona 52:21
Yeah, rejection yeah.

Ariel Landrum 52:23
The Rescuer or The Protector. This is the part of us that attempts to rescue those around us in an attempt to hear from our own vulnerability and attempt to get away from our own vulnerability. So we can view others as helpless, incapable and dependent. And we derive love from them and a feeling of self worth by putting ourselves in a position of power. And this part of us believes that love is received when focusing on others wants and needs and helping them to solve those problems. Even I will highlight if if they don’t think it’s a problem. So we feel the compulsion to resolve it for them. Even though they might not have said that this was the thing that bothers me.

Josué Cardona 53:10
It’s absolutely Abuela.

Stefanie Bautista 53:13
Yep.

Josué Cardona 53:13
Ferociously.

Stefanie Bautista 53:15
Ferociously.

Josué Cardona 53:16
Attempts to rescue those around them. Yup.

Stefanie Bautista 53:18
In that grandmotherly way. “I know you guys didn’t ask for my opinion. But here it is.”

Ariel Landrum 53:25
“Here’s my unsolicited advice. You’re welcome.”

Stefanie Bautista 53:30
“About your life choices.”

Ariel Landrum 53:32
We’re down to the final three. The Life of The Party. This is the part that is always happy, cheerful or comedic, and that always wants to be perceived this way. This is the part that believes that we can make others around us happy. That’s how we’ll receive love.

Josué Cardona 53:48
Camilo.

Stefanie Bautista 53:49
Felix.

Ariel Landrum 53:51
The interesting thing about this one is some people online said that this was Pepa. And the example that they said is sometimes The Life of The Party isn’t always doing good, but because their emotions affect everybody else, they have to be good.

Stefanie Bautista 54:06
Which is why she looks so tormented. Poor girl.

Josué Cardona 54:11
Yeah, I guess in that case, right. If she, by some doing her own powers, she’s, she’s making sure that other people around her are, are better off.

Ariel Landrum 54:24
“And if they’re happy then they love me.”

Stefanie Bautista 54:25
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 54:26
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 54:27
I can see that. Because if she always just says, “I need to be sunny, so it can always be sunny.”

Josué Cardona 54:33
Yeah, the pressure of I mean, she can literally control the weather. Right? So she can she can if it’s raining, she can she can fix that. That’s uh, yeah…

Ariel Landrum 54:42
We have The Yes Person. This one drops everything and neglects all their needs in the service of others. This was most likely modeled to them when they were a child modeled self sacrifice, and they believe love is given when one is good to others. This is slightly different than The Caretaker ’cause it isn’t that they’re neglecting their own needs. It’s that they see someone else need something, so they’re going to stop what they’re doing to assist, but they don’t go out of their way to ignore their needs. And some people sort of said, online that they thought The Yes Person was Camilo. Because he literally turns into the to you like, “You go girl.”

Stefanie Bautista 55:25
Yeah!

Josué Cardona 55:25
in the opening scene, he’s just like, he walks by the mom taking care of the baby. And he immediately turns into the mom takes the baby and lets her take a nap. Right? Just immediately, “There’s someone needs something. I got you.”

Ariel Landrum 55:40
And I think that in modeled in childhood, I think that that he saw that from his father Felix in taking care of Pepa.

Josué Cardona 55:47
Yeah. Could be. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 55:49
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 55:49
Final one is The Hero Worshiper, there’s the part of us that wants to follow a person or a guru. We believe the only way we will receive love is if we reject ourselves and view others as a model to learn how to live.

Stefanie Bautista 56:03
Mirabel? ‘Cause she literally worships and loves everyone. And because she doesn’t have a power herself, she just says, “I’m part of this magical family look at what they all can do.”

Josué Cardona 56:17
We talked about like, in the in the waiting for a miracle. She’s, she’s thinking of how, you know, she could use their abilities instead of what she can do.

Stefanie Bautista 56:27
Hmhmm.

Yeah.

Josué Cardona 56:29
No… The needs to follow a person like that part. Like, I feel, I don’t know that she feels like she needs to. That part feels a little.

Stefanie Bautista 56:38
Maybe it’s manifested in her need to please Abuela in one way or the another. Not really following her but needing to please her because she doesn’t know how to do that without a power.

Josué Cardona 56:52
Yeah, yeah.

Ariel Landrum 56:53
Yeah, yeah, I definitely the way that The Hero Worshiper is essentially described in like parts work of a part of yourself, it’s like you don’t see yourself reflected around you. So you must assume that that part of you is essentially bad. And you need to hone a skill of something else that is reflected of others like, like, again, worshipping, in the sense of, “They have what I’ll never have, or I don’t have, and I need to reject different parts of myself, or how I live my life in order to be loved.” In order to be able to live it up, quote, unquote, appropriately, societally, appropriately, I don’t know.

Josué Cardona 57:33
Yeah, yeah. No.

Stefanie Bautista 57:36
I like that. I like a deep dive guys. Deep dive.

Ariel Landrum 57:41
Yeah. Okay, thank you for indulging in my family systems. Hopefully, that helps some fellow clinicians out there and talking about these characters and how they might represent family roles or parts of ourselves. I think that having something to go off of makes that conversation a little bit safer, and less scary. Because you just don’t want to be like, you know, calling out your client, right there like, “Yo, here’s your dysfunctional role.”

Josué Cardona 58:11
So whenever there’s a movie or a story with families like this, I mean, this is also why I was like, like, Inside Out, right? Oh, it was really helpful. It’s like, “Okay, you have all these examples, like, do you possibly relate to any of them? Maybe? Like, which one? Which one made you feel a certain way?” Or like, where if you have a lot of family members, you’re like, “Oh, like, help me understand how things are at home? Like who acts like, like, like, who?” You know, it’s great, because we have like that, that wide range? And it does cover these two theories really well. Like there’s a lot of videos online about that. People addressing that yeah.

Ariel Landrum 58:51
Yeah. Or to get it in a Geek Therapy mindset. “Who did you resonate with? And ah did you feel an intense repulsion towards any of the behaviors, or the individuals?”

Josué Cardona 59:02
Absolutely.

Ariel Landrum 59:02
Repulsion.

Josué Cardona 59:07
I mean, and the way that that’s, like, effective I find is you’re like, “Oh, do you feel? Do you feel like you’re like, like Camilo? Like, “No, absolutely not!” “Why?’ And then and then that’s when you go into it. And you’re like, “No, because of Ah-buh-buh-buh.” And “Ah there’s the insight.”

Ariel Landrum 59:24
“If I had the power to turn in anything, I ain’t gonna turn in other people. I serve myself.”

Stefanie Bautista 59:29
There’s so many people like talking about that, especially on like the Encanto/Reddit, like, “If I were Luisa, I would have duh duh duh all this stuff.” A lot of opinions on that one. But there was a funny one that I just saw right now. And because we were talking about Encanto 2. And what do you want to mostly if there’s an incanto sequels, somebody said, “A. backstory of the triplets getting their gifts. B. brother sister movie of Camilo doing pranks and Dolores dishing out the gossip. C. Abuela and a silver fox love interest.”

Josué Cardona 1:00:05
Oh my.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:05
Oh.

“D. A brother-in-law buddy comedy of Felix and Augustine hanging out at the tavern. E. Bruno getting on the dating scene maybe with the woman with the dead fish? What if they got together? Or just two hours of Luisa dancing because she’s living her best life.”

Ariel Landrum 1:00:24
Cosign. Add to Cart.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:29
I like all of those. Let’s just do a Disney+ thing.

Josué Cardona 1:00:33
We just need a series now.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:35
Some shorts.

Josué Cardona 1:00:36
Shorts. Yeah, just a series of shorts.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:39
Oh, and if you enjoyed the art of Encanto you can get the art book for free digitally, they’ve made it available to the public. All you have to do is search up ‘Art of Encanto Disney’ and they made it available because it is award season and you may want to promote the art of the movie. And not just our intense emotions and feelings about it. It is visually beautiful.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:01
Well, thank you Josué joining us again for this reprise.

Josué Cardona 1:01:05
Yeah, absolutely.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:07
Yeah. I love that we were able to unpack even further. This never ending suitcase.

Josué Cardona 1:01:13
I don’t know how much deeper I can go into this movie. I’m afraid of what I’ll find.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:17
This is like Mary Poppins’ bag. There ain’t no bottom.

Josué Cardona 1:01:20
No. Oh no.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:23
Well again, if you want to hear even more Encanto and you want to talk to us about it, please tweet at us or DM us @HappiestPodGT for both Instagram and Twitter. Alright Good night, everybody.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:38
Good night.

Josué Cardona 1:01:39
Bye!

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Encanto
  • Abuela Alma Madrigal
  • Mirabel Madrigal
  • Luisa Madrigal
  • Isabela Madrigal
  • Bruno Madrigal
  • Pepa Madrigal
  • Julieta Madrigal
  • Antonio Madrigal
  • Camilo Madrigal
  • Agutin Madrigal
  • Dolores Madrigal
  • Felix Madrigal
  • Frozen
  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Wreck In Ralph
  • Disney
  • Pixar
  • Karoke
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • Family
  • Family roles
  • Family systems
  • Dysfunctional family roles
  • Coping skills
  • Survival traits
  • The caretaker
  • The peacemaker
  • The mediator
  • The golden child
  • The hero
  • The saint
  • The superkid
  • The scapegoat
  • The troublemaker
  • The black sheep
  • The clown
  • The mascot
  • The lost child
  • the overachiever
  • The underachiever
  • The rescuer
  • The protector
  • The life of the party
  • The yes-person
  • The hero-worshipper

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
 | Instagram: @HappiestPodGT | Twitter: @HappiestPodGT | Facebook: @HappiestPodGT |
 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |
 | Josué on Twitter: @JosueACardona

Geek Therapy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of advocating for the effective and meaningful use of popular media in therapeutic, educational, and community practice.
| GT Facebook: @GeekTherapy | GT Twitter: @GeekTherapy |
| GT Forum: forum.geektherapy.com  | GT Discord: geektherapy.com/discord |

Celebrating Lunar New Year

January 28, 2022 · Discuss on the GT Forum

https://media.blubrry.com/happypod/media.transistor.fm/b3de1f0b/00c6e97d.mp3

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#27: Lunar New Year is a holiday that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. The year 2022 is the year of the Tiger, and tiger energy is exactly what Ariel and Stef want to take into the New Year. In this episode, they share the various cultures that celebrate Lunar New Year (and how Disney highlights them at their parks), the importance of identity in the AAPI community, and their podcast resolutions for the new year.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Resources for this episode:

  1. Ultimate Rice Battle Ft Uncle Roger – SortedFood (reference can be found at the 11:43 time mark of this episode)

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Transcription

Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef.

Ariel Landrum 0:15
And I’m Ariel. And we’re Disney fans. But really, we’re so much more.

Stefanie Bautista 0:18
I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:24
I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental and wellness. And Happiness Pod, well, it’s a place where we dissect Disney mediums with what a critical lens.

Stefanie Bautista 0:35
Why do we do that? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Ariel Landrum 0:41
So Stef, what Disney experience are we dissecting today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:45
Well, we are coming up on the end of January, which means February is just around the corner. And for many of us, especially in the AAPI community, we are celebrating Lunar New Year, which is like New Year part two.

Ariel Landrum 1:00
Okay, okay. Yes. And so for our audience members who may not be fully aware, Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year is a festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year on the traditional lunar solar Chinese calendar. And of course, contrary to popular belief, it is not just a festival that’s celebrated in China Lunar New Year’s actually, festival that is celebrated in a lot of East and South East Asian countries. This year, starting February 1 is when the when the new year is, is the year of the tiger.

Stefanie Bautista 1:35
Yep. The new Lunar New Year is something that many AAPI community members we celebrate, especially if you are from China, or Vietnam or Korea, or have, you know, descent in any of those countries. And Disney decides to celebrate that at the parks, which is really awesome. In the past couple of years at the Disney California Adventure Park, they turn the walkway from the main park all the way up to Pixar pier into a beautiful Lunar New Year festival where they have food, much like the night markets and markets in Asia. And also they bring out Mulan and many of the characters that identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander. And they decided to highlight them in such an awesome way.

Ariel Landrum 2:19
Yes. And for my understanding, you did go to the festival?

Stefanie Bautista 2:24
I did. This is my second year going. I just went and they really they really upped the amplification on AAPI representation. It was awesome.

Ariel Landrum 2:36
So because you went, this is your second time you’re able to compare the first the last but when you went the first time was that also the first time they did it?

Stefanie Bautista 2:45
From my understanding, yes, I may be wrong. This is the first me and my friend who I would go to the parks with, whenever there was a food festival. That was the first time we ever went it was the first time I knew about it. They might have done it maybe in Epcot or other Disney parks, especially in Shanghai or Hong Kong. But I know that they introduced the Lunar New Year festival as a food festival of sorts because the Food and Wine Festival had been so popular and so successful.

Ariel Landrum 3:17
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 3:17
And then you got the holiday, the festival holidays where they have that same market type of fast eats. And yeah, I think this time because they knew that they could incorporate so many Disney characters, and the addition of such characters as Raya as Moana. I mean, even Lilo and Stitch in some ways, and also pulling from a lot of the Shanghai parks and the Hong Kong parks where Mickey and Minnie would have a special costume that they would wear. They would have performers, just many elements of Disney that they already had. I feel like being transferred that over to the New York Lunar New Year festival.

Ariel Landrum 3:56
Okay. Okay. So in looking at last year, and this year, what were some of the big changes, you did mention more representation in general, but even in the fact that it started off as more of just a food festival as it now feel like more like really a Lunar New Year festival?

Stefanie Bautista 4:17
Absolutely, I think especially before so the last time they had this is obviously pre COVID. So there were a lot less restrictions that we had to abide by. But because it was more of a food base focused festival, you had the kiosks and stalls along the walkway in front of the Little Mermaid ride and all the way up to the back where they have the restaurant and kind of where they have a plaza where they have a stage and some performances. I remember that they had they had a little area where you could write on a piece of paper and you can make your Lunar New Year wish for you and your family and you can hang it up. Much like how they do in Asia and then next to it, you could take pictures with Minnie and Mickey and their lunar new year. And then they also had many performances of Chinese dancers, ribbon dancers, dancers that had tambourines of some acrobatics here and there. But that was basically it. This time around, they have Mulan’s Lunar New Year procession. Oh, they don’t call it a parade because they don’t want people gathering like that. Um, parades are still kind of not okay at the park right now. But they have a really cute little procession. It’s the Year of the Tiger.

Ariel Landrum 5:31
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 5:31
So they had Tigger leading the procession.

Ariel Landrum 5:34
Oh my god!

Stefanie Bautista 5:36
And he was in such cute as like a cute outfit. Everywhere is decked out in red like, right when you get like, through the main part of California Adventure. There’s like a huge artist Lunar New Year. But the procession happens. I think once every hour, from nine to nine. I think. I could be wrong. But I know, I think as the sun goes down it, they do their last show, but they have dragon dancers. They have Mulan and Mushu on a float with Chinese drummers. And…

Ariel Landrum 6:09
Okay wait, is Mushu a puppet or a character?

Stefanie Bautista 6:13
Full-bodied character. He is a person just dancing along next to Milan, they have two sets of dancers in the back and then they have I think that’s it actually. So it literally is a very small, small small parade because they do not want people gathering waiting, just hanging out like masks off eating. So they try to meet in the middle of by having a procession and calling it that. And while they are doing the procession, there’s a voiceover that talks about the Lunar New Year. So they inform a lot of people that this is a celebration to ring in new prosperity, new beginnings where the year of the Tiger is coming from. And yeah, it’s it’s very short, informative, and really beautiful.

Ariel Landrum 7:04
So they had Tigger. Are there any other Tiger characters? I mean, aside from Rajah?

Stefanie Bautista 7:10
Yeah, that was the only other one. AJ was like, “Where is Rajah?” I’m like, I’m pretty sure people would kind of think a little bit. Yes, here’s Rajah, but also Where’s Jasmine? Although she could celebrate in the Lunar New Year, I think a lot more questions would have been asked and answered. If we saw Raja I’ll be at he is one of the most popular Tiger characters in in the Disney World. But I think Tigger was the one that thing was the most wanted to go with because he’s just so bouncy and happy and he was everywhere. There was like little Tigger. You’d see like a little tiger in a cookie that they had, they had special items that were only for Lunar New Year. I’m going to talk about that really quick because the food is always my favorite part of any Disney festival. Not only did they honor many Chinese traditions is having boa which is like a dumpling. They also had lots of noodles, which symbolizes longevity and long life. They had many many drinks they actually had boba in the park which I’ve never seen boba in the park. But line to that was insane. I mean, the outpouring of support and just excitement for Lunar New Year you could just feel it there. Many people came in traditional Vietnamese wear. Many people came in traditional Chinese wear. I didn’t see a lot of people in Korean wear or traditional Korean wear. But I think that a lot of Asian Disney fans like really embraced just you know, being at the park very similar to going to Dapper Day or going to you know, Mermaid Day or Goth Day. Like it’s their culture. It’s, you know, something that they love and identify with. But yeah, the lines were ridiculous for every single food stalls. So I know we’ve mentioned this in the podcast before but if you can do mobile ordering ahead, this would be one of those times to do it. And that was really the only way I could get what I wanted to which was the Hong Kong style milk tea, Vietnamese iced coffee and there was also a Korean bulgogi burrito. That was super super good. And it came with Ariel I don’t know if you’ve had these before but they’re they’re like shrimp chips but they start off as little like discs and when you fry them they blossom.

Ariel Landrum 9:31
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 9:31
They have that as the chips that came with the Korean bulgogi burrito and..

Ariel Landrum 9:35
Oh clever.

Stefanie Bautista 9:36
They put like garlic oil on it and it was like a game changer like I’ve been I’ve been eating the stuff since I was small but I just fry them and I just watched them bloom and it’s so cool. But adding the level of like garlic oil was just like in my 30 some odd years of life…

Ariel Landrum 9:54
How did I not think of this?

Stefanie Bautista 9:56
Yeah, how did I not think of this but also thank you Disney for opening my eyes to doing This Asian Festival. But yeah, the food is fantastic. And you can look online to see the different Lunar New Year foods that they have available. I think the festival is running for almost the whole month of February. So it’s kind of great that it started February 1. So they started this weekend, as we are coming up on the new month, and it’ll go up until then.

Ariel Landrum 10:23
I’m curious, is it similar to the food festivals and that you get a punch card? Or is it more of you have options at stalls? Because I haven’t been to a food festival since the pandemic. And ordering ahead is not really an option in regards. So has that changed? Because of the pandemic?

Stefanie Bautista 10:44
The short answer is yes, and no. There are abilities because they want everything to be accessible, right. And that’s really what this is all about. I think for the fans who are tech savvy, who kind of know what they’re getting into coming prepared, knowing that they are going to be battling long lines, and you know, when they’re going to be hungry, and we mentioned things like this, going back to the parks, now that, you know, we’re still in a pandemic. They have options for you to stand by in line in order, but they also have the sip and savor Pass, which is similar to what they had at the festival of holidays. And also the food, food and wine festival where you have like a badge and they have like six little tabs that you can pull off and redeem. But you also have the option of ordering ahead. So let’s say you’re in line at in a ride, and you go, “Hey, I want to eat this. But I don’t really want to stand in line. And I want to kind of just use this time to maybe order ahead and like pick it up, I’m ready.” You can always do that, too. So there’s many different ways of doing it. Definitely, if you want to reduce contact with people and standing in line, because you’re already standing in line to go on a ride, the order ahead option is always best. And I think because food is such a central part of Lunar New Year, it was very hard to avoid eating in a crowded space because it was super busy. It was the first week of Lunar New Year. And also, I mean, that’s what Lunar New Year’s all about gathering with, you know, your friends, your family, other people and just eating like market style. So I would say depending on your level of comfort, I would you know, choose the day that you would go on, because you are going to be around a lot of people and because Disney wants it to be accessible to everybody. You just kind of have to have that in the back of your mind.

Ariel Landrum 12:35
What would you say the most memorable part of the experience was?

Stefanie Bautista 12:39
Oh, the most memorable. I think just the atmosphere. The atmosphere was very different this time. I don’t know if it’s because there has been an outpouring for the AAPI community because of a lot of the struggles and a lot of the things that we’ve been seeing, you know, in social media and everything against you know, our elders and just Asian American actors and actresses, bringing awareness to the community. And I think that and mixed with Disney’s ability to reach out to a core member of their market really. I saw people who were not of Asian descent wearing the Lunar New Year jerseys wearing the Lunar New your ears. They had the ones from Mulan, so many people were wearing like their favorite Asian Disney Princess t shirt. Raya was a she is makes an appearance as a character. You can take a picture with Raya and she is near the Grand Californian where they have like this obstacle course it’s right next to grizzly River Run. And I think it’s like the Brother Bear like kind of obstacle course. They turn that into Kumandra.

Ariel Landrum 13:47
Oh, lovely.

Stefanie Bautista 13:49
Yeah, it’s awesome. And then they have lanterns and they make it look like that part of they make it look like that part of Kumandra. And she’s there. So you see little girls in their Raya outfits. And, you know, there are people of all walks of life. And I think it was just really great to see that people are embracing Asian American characters. Shang-Chi is still in his regular clothes, which I’m just like, “You guys just put him in his superhero outfit. Because he still looks like…” we saw him at Avengers campus talking to Black Widow and Captain Marvel. And we were like, “He looks like the IT guy. What is happening here?”

Ariel Landrum 14:33
When he was talking to them, was it a skit?

Stefanie Bautista 14:36
It was like pre performance.

Ariel Landrum 14:38
Ah okay okay.

Stefanie Bautista 14:39
So they were like, it was like they were existing. It was like that part where they’re just existing in the world. And they’re like talking next to the Quinjet and I’m gonna make him change.

Ariel Landrum 14:51
Oh poor IT guy.

Stefanie Bautista 14:52
But yeah, the poor IT guy but a lot of people wearing Shang-Chi shirts and just the outpouring have like the interest for Asian culture Asian food, the lines of the boba, like, I think that was just really heartwarming for me. Because you’ve you saw yourself fully represented in Disney culture. Whereas, you know, traditionally it was, you know, not like that. So I think that was a biggest thing for me taking a step back and just watching it all happen.

Ariel Landrum 15:21
Okay, okay.

Stefanie Bautista 15:23
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 15:24
Did you get a chance to try the boba?

Stefanie Bautista 15:25
I didn’t because the line was so long.

Ariel Landrum 15:28
Ah no!

Stefanie Bautista 15:28
I did it which is why I was like, I just want to get the milk tea. Because I really love milk tea and I like it a certain way. I don’t like it too sweet and I don’t like it too sugary. So I was like, okay, if every time I get boba I asked for 25% or less sweet. Like just I just need a hint of it.

Ariel Landrum 15:49
For our audience members who maybe don’t know what boba is?

Stefanie Bautista 15:54
So boba is very similar to tapioca pearls. If you eat it, it’s very much gelatinous. So it starts off as you know, like a really hard tapioca bubble and then you boil it and it kind of opens up and becomes this like jelly ball. Many people refer to it as bubble tea on in some parts of the country. Uh, we refer to it here in Southern California, and I think mainly on the west coast as boba. But they can always be referred to as like popping pearls or pearls, things like that. And then you you drink it with a bigger straw so that you can get the boba inside so, like, it’d be interchangeable with like, lychee jelly or coffee jelly, grass jelly, things like that.

Ariel Landrum 16:35
It’s in milk teas or non milk teas. We put it even in smoothies. We put in slushies.

Stefanie Bautista 16:40
Yeah, smoothies, slushies. Anything really, it’s just basically like an add on inside a drink. Yeah. So I didn’t get to try it. Because if you could visualize if anybody’s ever been to that back area of California Adventure, there’s a restaurant there. And the lines stretch all the way to almost Inside Out at Pixar pier.

Ariel Landrum 17:02
Oh, wow. That’s a long line.

Stefanie Bautista 17:06
Very long. So I didn’t get it. I was like, I just want milk tea. And it was like, oh, man, Disney you did it again. Like you nailed it. I could taste the black tea. I could taste the milk. I could. I didn’t want to put it down. I almost drink it all in one go, which was good. And I got a really cool bamboo Mulan Sipper with it.

Ariel Landrum 17:27
Oh!

Stefanie Bautista 17:28
Yeah. So what they do now is when you order like Order Special popcorn bucket, or a special sipper, they don’t put the drink in there anymore for you. They separate them so that you can have it pristine.

Ariel Landrum 17:39
Yes!

Stefanie Bautista 17:41
In case you want to sell it again, or if you want to display it and not have it tainted. So that’s really cool because I already have the Moana sipper bamboo super now I have the Mulan one. So maybe we’ll have a Raya one one day, that’d be really cool.

Ariel Landrum 17:55
Yes, complete the collection.

Stefanie Bautista 17:57
Yeah. Of Asian American characters on bamboo sippers.

Ariel Landrum 18:02
Just need Lilo and Nani.

Stefanie Bautista 18:04
I know. Oh, that’d be so cool. But yeah, I think it was it was really great. And I hope that it continues to grow. I hope that it continues to bring awareness to multicultural characters in Disney. And it’s really cool.

Ariel Landrum 18:21
Your favorite character is Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. And you mentioned they were there. Were they in a procession? Or did you actually get to like, engage and take a picture with them. Because the last time you mentioned your experience at Disney, it was at Merriest Nites. And you didn’t get to take a picture with Lilo and Stitch because of the line.

Stefanie Bautista 18:38
They were more represented in merchandise. They were not there actually.

Ariel Landrum 18:42
Oh okay.

Stefanie Bautista 18:42
I feel that because we have Adventureland at Disneyland and this was at California Adventure. They’re more represented over there than here. So I feel like because they did Merriest Nites with Hawaiian Merry Christmas, they probably decided to skip this one. And I know they’re very limited into which characters they decide to bring out because they don’t want people gathering too much. So I did not see them. But it was really nice to see Mulan and Mushu because I don’t see them very often either. They had an infographic in front of the Lunar New Year area where they would describe the different ways that Koreans, Chinese people and also Vietnamese people celebrate Lunar New Year. I think that that was beautifully represented because everybody kind of think oh Lunar New Year. It’s only you know, people who come from China, but it really isn’t. And I know that a couple of things about China and celebrating New Year’s Eve. In Northern China, they traditionally like eating food that’s made of flour like boa, like I mentioned earlier pancakes, noodles and dumplings, especially. Families often make these dishes from scratch. Everybody makes their dumplings together. They make everything as a family. Kids typically search for lucky coin inside the dumplings, please do not eat this coin. I’ve known of people who eat these and it’s just not fun. The dumplighs are usually served with fish as it symbolizes abundance. Oh my gosh, I totally, this reminds me, they serve the whole fried fish at a restaurant back then. And they specifically say good for two people had the amount of aunties and uncles that I saw just like going in on this fish, like, I felt like I was in Chinatown. And it was so awesome. And had I known that because the whole fried fish, I would have saved all my trips. But, I mean, that’s insane.

That again, is really good representation. Because I know, I know growing up, because I I grew up with more my white side of the family, the idea of a fish looking like a fish when you eat it was like so foreign and and essentially, like a little, you know, a little bit as you know, xenophobia literally like, “Ew gross that’s that’s nasty.” Trying to like really make it sound like this bad thing. And it’s like it’s fried fish. The difference is mine looks like a fish and yours is a stick!

Not in stick form. It’s true. And I think the fact that frying a whole fish symbolizes that you’re doing well. That’s not always the case. Usually, if you are frying fish, they’re very small and the you know, you just sprinkle them on top of your rice to fry a huge fish like that, like a soul fish, or even a flounder or something like that that’s symbolizes a special occasion. And I think that’s Disney really recognizing that and being able to share that with your family and friends. Kind of just goes along with the values of Lunar New Year. So it was really awesome to see whole fried fish and they’re like good for two. But really, if you’re at Disneyland, like could be good for four or five. Yeah, so they also talked about in Korea, how Lunar New Year is one of the most important traditional holidays. You are paying respect to your ancestors and elders, which was represented in you creating those paper wishes you could also honor your ancestors there too. It looked almost like it could be a shrine in itself. Everybody is bowing to each other, of course, especially deep when you’re bowing to your elders. Wearing in traditional costumes like hanbok, and also receiving money, words of wisdom for the New Year from your elders. In Vietnam, and if many of you don’t know Anaheim is situated right next to Fountain Valley in Garden Grove, which has a huge Vietnamese population like huge it could be you know, Little Saigon is what they call many parts of that area. They celebrate Tết. And they it’s also celebrated the family food. They had many versions of banh mi there, which is the traditional Vietnamese sandwich with a French baguette because of its influences from the French over the years in history. Sticky rice cakes are made and served and everybody like in other Asian cultures, they go to the temple to pray for good luck, health and fortune.

Ariel Landrum 23:15
That’s way that Lunar New Year is celebrated essentially in China and Korea and Vietnam. But those aren’t the only East Asian and Southeast Asian countries that celebrate Lunar New Year. So we definitely have Singapore. 75% of the population is actually Chinese. And so the largest Chinese New Year festival is actually held in Singapore, they move it around in different locations. And just like Stef mentioned the red envelopes, which usually have money in them. They usually have the phrase foo which means good luck. And it’s customary to also pay respect to Buddha at the temple and lighting incense.

Stefanie Bautista 24:00
Shout out to two Crazy Rich Asians was in Singapore and we saw a lot of that awesome stuff in there.

Ariel Landrum 24:06
And then in Malaysia, the Lunar New Year is seen as welcoming of spring and a chance for families to come together for an annual reunion dinner so instead of going out to a festival you’re sort of staying in and they celebrate the holiday for 15 days. They have a salad dish known as yee sang and that they serve at every table and that represents good luck and prosperity and some of the traditional outfits they wear are cheongsam which are red. And if you are celebrating your Zodiac year so if so if you’re the year the tiger you need to be wearing gold that year to attract abundance. And then in Taiwan, most people go home similar to Malaysia to celebrate New Year with their families. They of course have dumplings themselves neon gao, which is the most popular one. And then it’s closely followed by pineapple always serving pineapple.

Stefanie Bautista 25:05
Always.

Ariel Landrum 25:07
And then again an exchange of red envelopes. And of course neighborhoods set off fireworks. Stef you want to illuminate us to the sort of like final country that we have learned can cel celebrate Lunar New Year?

Stefanie Bautista 25:20
Definitely! In the Philippines, they do also celebrate Lunar New Year I’ll be it it kind of, as Filipinos love to drag on their holidays like how September marks the start of the holiday season. They do like to drag on New Year. And this is mainly because there’s so many people in the Philippines who come from other descent. So there’s a lot of Chinese Filipinos. And there’s also a lot of you can even see like Vietnamese Filipinos, Korean Filipinos. So all of those different practices come into play for people who are living in the Philippines. And because it’s such a trade based country, there’s also people who come from China, Korea, Malaysia, everywhere really in Southeast Asia living in the Philippines. So they do celebrate Lunar New Year as well as regular New Year. And many of those traditions kind of cross over. So for instance, when the clock strikes midnight in the Philippines, kids will jump really, really high to signify that you’re going to grow taller. Clearly, I did not jump high enough because that did not happen to me, even though I tried my best to jump.

Ariel Landrum 26:28
Same! Same!

Stefanie Bautista 26:30
But anyway, it’s just one of those superstitions that you could do either in regular, you know, our Solstice, New Year or Lunar New Year, the most traditional celebration of the Lunar New Year or regular New Year is media noche, which is where Filipino families come together for midnight to eat, and also celebrate a year of prosperity. This is normally when we open up our gifts. So if you got a gift for Lunar New Year, if you got your red envelope, you would open it then while you’re eating. The table is usually full of round shaped fruits, you always have to have a bowl of your oranges, your melons, your papayas. Even limes and lemons. Anything that is round in shape of avocados, if you live in America here in California. As long as it’s round, it represents good fortune. This tradition originated from China as well. The food that’s typically eaten during Lunar New Year in the Philippines includes sticky rice dishes such as beko, bibingka, and yan gao. But anything that’s sweet, you’ll probably see it on your table. One of the most unique superstitions of the Lunar New Year in the Philippines is choosing to wear polka dots, as a round shape represents prosperity and money and good fortune. You’ll also see it in the regular new year with a lot of aunties just wearing all the polka dots that they could possibly find. Hats, scarves, socks two piece suit that way. And if they do go to the temple, if they go to church, the next day, they will continue to wear those spots, bocce, that so that they can continue to having that good luck for wealth and good fortune.

Ariel Landrum 28:10
Obviously, we’re of Filipino descent. So some of these things are things that we just kind of are aware of from having a diverse friend group, and interacting with individuals who have various traditions and what their traditions look like. And then there’s a difference between being essentially Asian American, Pacific Islander American, and then actually coming from the country and migrating over here because the traditions are different in regards to accessibility of certain things. Just like Stef said, like we might do avocados, because that is essentially round. And it’s what’s accessible out here. If, technically, February might still be at least in the Midwest, some winter, so access to like oranges might not be as easily accessible. The other thing is that, and this was something that’s Stef and I were talking about before the podcast was some of the ways at least in the Philippines, that traditions are being celebrated, kind of also have to do with how you identify your heritage and the connection you have in closeness to the Chinese community. Do you want to touch on that a little bit?

Stefanie Bautista 29:18
Yeah, I know that for myself having an extended family of you know, Filipinos. There’s many of us who have backgrounds that come from different parts of Asia. So for example, I have a couple family members who are extended parts of my family who have Chinese heritage and that means their last names are not of Spanish descent like mine is my last name Bautista. And some of their last names are you know, Goh or Kim or Lym is a big one. Also, if you’re looking at the ways that these families decide to pick their profession is very much based on whether you are of other descent or if you are purely Filipino. I know that in the Philippines, we all look very, very different because of the years of…

Ariel Landrum 30:07
Mass colonization.

Stefanie Bautista 30:08
Yeah, mass colonization. Throughout hundreds of years of the Philippines. It was only really recently that we gained independence. So you have families that came into power because they had Chinese descent. Or because they had Korean descent or because they had Japanese descent in them. So for many of my family members who are of Chinese descent, they almost view as themselves as a little bit in a different class than a lot of other Filipinos. My personal experience traveling to the Philippines, I realized that wealth and power are associated with those who identify with having Chinese Filipino background. If you just look at people who are in the Philippine cabinet, and people who are have political power, many of them have Chinese last names. And that, you know, has a lot to do with the trade that happens there that has to do with a lot of job opportunities. People who are business, people who are doing trade with the neighboring countries. It’s just always kind of been an unspoken truth, that if you have Chinese descent, you’re most likely to be in a position of power. And that also has to correlate with your skin tone. People who have Chinese descent are naturally lighter in skin tone, as opposed to those who are coming from the Morra regions or of Spanish Spanish descent also. But if you’re like Morena, which is a little bit darker in skin tone, you might not be looked at, as you know, ideally, aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. Because you are have darker skin tone. Now, it’s 2022 I know a lot of these stereotypes have been you know, broken by you know, a lot of Filipinos who have been coming into the mainstream world. People such as even Miss Universe, Pia Wurtzbach, who is of German Filipino descent, she is a little bit darker in complexion than some of the other beauty queens that we’ve had in the past. And she completely embraces her darker skin and you know, people around her who have darker skin. But it’s you know, it goes without saying that a lot of stigma when it comes to just viewing yourself and your position in the world because of your skin tone, your last name and your family status is still very prevalent in the Philippines and in Asian countries. So although Lunar New Year is seen, as you know, a celebration for prosperity and wealth, we must also remember that that is not equal for everybody who is celebrating.

Ariel Landrum 32:44
And for those who aren’t aware what Stef is describing. She’s describing colorism. Colorism is a practice of favoring lighter skin over darker skin. It’s essentially a prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone and occurs typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. There are social implications that come with the cultural meaning attached to skin color, that end up favoring or oppressing someone within that culture. I think that it’s important to highlight this because I’m a tenant of being a clinician of being a therapist is to get continuing education and one of them being what we call cultural awareness. In this case, I say cultural humility. Essentially, cultural humility is defined as a lifelong process of self reflection and self critique whereby someone not only learns about another’s culture, but starts with an examination of their own beliefs and cultural identities. And oftentimes, what happens when you are working with diverse populations is you only know about the surface things you don’t know about the intricacies of identity. Stef really touched on sort of like the Filipino experience, and I know, I have friends and clients who are Taiwanese, and their experience is in regards to having Chinese descent is very traught in. Some people vehemently identify themselves as Chinese and some people vehemently does identify themselves Taiwanese and that cultural aspect, and essentially, a lot of political war going on, goes all the way back to even as high as the Olympics. The Olympics in Taiwan is called the Chinese Taipei. That’s that app that is their identifier. They don’t get to go in as Taiwan because the Republic of China though they fled to Taiwan and established essentially Chinese culture. China considers Taiwan part of China. And so, though Taiwan runs very much like its own country, I’ve had experiences or not personally, but I’ve had friends whose experience will say that when they want to visit home they have to have a Chinese passport. And if they write on paperwork that they are Taiwanese, they’ve had people cross it out and write Chinese. And those are experiences you aren’t going to know about if you don’t actually take the time to have cultural humility and learn about someone’s experience. There’s something that I do with my clients when it comes to creating more social awareness that I talk about the difference between understanding something and accepting something. So many clients will say that, “Oh, I understand that.” It’s like, okay, so you’re saying that you comprehend it. But you when you accept something fully when you accept someone’s full lived experience fully, you’re also saying you believe it. And there are a lot of times when we’re trying to create a connection with someone that is very different than our own will say, “Yeah, that makes sense. I understand. But…” So it’s not that we we don’t understand it’s not that we don’t comprehend, we use our critical thinking it makes sense. But we’ve now are saying just because it makes sense, doesn’t mean I think it’s true. Basically, that I understand, but I don’t accept, or in another way of putting it. I comprehend. But I don’t believe.

Stefanie Bautista 36:23
And I think that’s definitely something that not many people take the second to pause and think about, because they’re, they’re very much into how they are responding as themselves, but also how they are looking from the outside and seeing like how they are responding because they don’t want to seem insensitive, right? They don’t want to seem like they are not making an effort to understand. But there are many layers and depth to that understanding. Something that I thought about while you were explaining was as a Filipino American who has been born here, I didn’t realize those intricacies until I took myself out of my Filipino American self and placed myself as a Filipino in the Philippines. And that is a whole nother level of depth and understanding of my heritage, what my identity is, because I’m in a different setting. And I think that’s true for a lot of second generation Asian American Pacific Islanders is that not only are we grappling with ourselves as AAPI members in the American community, but who are we when we go back to our homelands? Where our true heritage lies, is it? Are we one way or another? And I think that’s where a lot of struggles happen. And a lot of self realization can occur if we take the time to be graceful to ourselves about it, but also have that humility that you mentioned.

Ariel Landrum 37:53
In regards to Disney and diversity and representation. I’m curious, Stef, do you think that there should be more representation that is based in reality or more representation that is an amalgam of or diverse like Raya? So sort of like thinking of like Raya and Mulan, which do you think has essentially more weight and representation? Or should we do more both?

Stefanie Bautista 38:20
I mean, that’s, that’s a multi layered question. I think. I know we have spoken offline about how we felt about Raya and how we felt, you know, having Mulan as somebody who we grew up with. I think, for me speaking for myself, Mulan, because it was rooted in actual Chinese tradition. It took place in China. We knew where she was they were fighting the Huns. These were people who are rooted in history that we are seeing come to life through Disney story. And of course, it was based on an actual Legend of Fa Mulan. Raya, on the other hand, was a fictional country that pulled from many Southeast Asian countries, but it was never specified. It was one or the other. It was Kumandra, which is a fictional country. Fang, Talon, all of those places it named from a dragon looking, you know, area which could represent itself from, you know, the rivers that flow through type of through Thailand, through Vietnam, the rivers that flow through the Philippines, because everything is so disjointed. I feel like it’s hard to encapsulate all of that. And Southeast Asian experience, which really, it goes from India, all the way to the Philippines and really beyond. You could even count parts of Micronesia I know you know, Guam, looking at Moana and how those themes were routed in Māori culture which is way down south and that is is another entirely deep and beautiful culture that, you know, you’re spanning over huge parts of the world here. I think a little bit of both is needed. Because yes, you want people to be introduced to these countries. But also you want them to realize that they exist to this day and they have rich histories and cultures that we can reinterpret. I don’t know if you heard of the movie coming out called Turning Red.

Yes with the red panda!

The red panda, and the red panda she is Asian American. Living in America.

Ariel Landrum 40:34
Yeah. And I think San Francisco because it’s always San Francisco!

Stefanie Bautista 40:39
Yes. And really, I mean, the only San Francisco Bay Area Asian type of representation is what we got was Big Hero Six.

Ariel Landrum 40:48
Yeah Baymax.

Stefanie Bautista 40:49
That was San Fran. Tokyo, so it wasn’t even…

Ariel Landrum 40:53
No, San Fransokyo!

Stefanie Bautista 40:54
San Fransokyo. There you go.

Ariel Landrum 40:55
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 40:56
So it wasn’t it. It was again, a fictional, mishmosh of places. But, I mean, I think that representation is completely needed, because you’re going to have little girls who are growing up now, who are third generation who are living their Asian American truth, as third generation and their parents are Asian American. It’s, I feel like as we go on through time, and how people of our generation are creating these movies, they’re our age now. So they want to see things that their kids will enjoy and identify with. And all of those levels I there’s just so much more than we could ever thought of. When it comes to that.

Ariel Landrum 41:40
I like looking at it from the lens of here’s what a traditional experience might look like for this one culture. But also here is what an experience might look like for someone who has multiple cultures or is essentially a mix. Especially if I think of like my own experience as someone who’s has has mixed culture. It really is hard for me to pinpoint something being essentially one thing, and then even having that one culture be a culture that has been colonized so much that we have adopted a lot of things as our own. And if I think of some of my family members, who might be identified, essentially more as indigenous Filipinos, how it looks nothing like what I’ve seen as considered traditional Filipino traditions.

Stefanie Bautista 42:29
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I couldn’t even tell you if I asked my nieces or nephews in the Philippines, like who who do they see in themselves? A they’re all speaking English. So I mean, there’s that they are not speaking Tagalog, or Ilocano, or Bisaya. Or their own their own native tongue unless it’s translated into that. I think the addition of Ned’s Lola in Spider-Man…

Ariel Landrum 42:55
Yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 42:55
She was not speaking Tagalog. She was speaking another dialect. She was speaking in Ilocano, which is one like the second biggest dialect spoken in the Philippines. But those are people who do not live in Manila. They live in Cebu. They live in the other major large islands. But when you think of the Philippines, you really only think of the mainland or well Manila. The main the main island, as I should say, so I think just those little instances of, “Yes, you exist.” All of that is important. And I think even though some people had things to say about Raya being is she Filipino? Is she not Filipino? I think her existence itself as a very powerful Brown, long hair just, you know, amazing all around badass of a woman. I think that was enough. I think that reach in itself was important.

Ariel Landrum 43:49
I think this also brings up the notion when it comes to AAPI awareness. And something my my clients struggle with with any form of awareness or social justice, is they experience something that is kind of identified as moral anxiety. Moral anxiety is an emotion we feel in the face of a difficult moral decision. We want to do something right or just or good, but we’re just not really sure how we’re supposed to do that. Then oftentimes, uncertainty prompts us to investigate and we find options available to us. We consider reasons for or against an action and we make a decision. So moral anxiety has a function that’s twofold. It essentially signals us to let us know that we’re facing a difficult moral decision and it motivates us to actually have gather information and make a decision. The struggle some of my clients face is they face something called analysis paralysis. A lot of my clients have anxiety disorders a lot of my clients have are neurodivergent and so their brain wants to essentially overthink a problem. Analysis paralysis occurs when we’re unable to make a decision. And we’re essentially ruminating or what’s known as like spinning the thoughts over and over. Or maybe it’s either the same thought or stream of thoughts. And it feels almost like a whirlwind going in your head or, or like falling down a rabbit hole. And that fear of peds is from doing an action because we can’t figure out which action is the most appropriate or the maybe the most superior solution to a problem. I think that that is something that has happened a lot for even the general populace in supporting the AAPI community. Because the idea of what supporting the community looks like, is very different from someone who’s within the community and someone who’s outside of the community. And so I think about ways that I teach my clients to like resolve analysis paralysis, something that we definitely talk about is executive functioning, making a decision is using your prefrontal cortex your front brain, because you have to plan you have to reason you have to execute. Some individuals have executive functioning struggles. So something that I talk about my clients who want to create more action whose morals tell them that they need to support the community, but they don’t know how I talk about ways to remove the executive functioning struggle ways to remove how to activate yourself. So a lot of them think like, “Oh, I’m only supporting the community, if I’m the person at the podium, like essentially leading the chant. If I’m the leader.” And a lot of times what we need is people to join an organization or community and do establish tasks that you don’t have to think about, but we just need you to do them. A common one my clients have found very rewarding would be just like sending emails to senators, or bill makers, that scripts already made for them. So they don’t have to come up with what they need to say. They just need to take the time out of their day to do it. That feels like moral action that is necessary, it actually is necessary. So it’s not just a feeling it’s an it’s a way to move the organization forward. And it removes the stigma of trying to come up with something from the ground up.

Stefanie Bautista 47:14
Yeah, for sure. I think when we bring that down to the level of a child, they see these things happening, and they go, “Oh, how am I supposed to change it. I’m just the kid.” And you know, the they see themselves wanting to help, but they also see themselves limited. And it’s, I feel like I’m very mild version of analysis paralysis, because they’re just like, at a loss like, “How, how do I help? How, how do I make a difference just being one kid in the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth grade?” And really, we tell our kids at our school, it just starts with being an upstander to your friends, if your friend is eating their hot bowl of rice and soup, and it doesn’t look like a peanut butter sandwich, it’s normal. Don’t call him out on it. Don’t make a comment on it. Just say, “Hey, that looks good. What is it called?” Ask questions about it. That is the best thing that you can possibly do when you are at a loss for any information. You could just ask about it. Because I don’t think there is any world where if you ask what are you eating, people be like, I don’t tell you./

Ariel Landrum 48:21
No. It’s usually oh my god, this is so good. It’s blah, blah, blah. My mom made it. I got it from this place.

Stefanie Bautista 48:27
Absolutely. I mean, I think just those little things. Why you why you do certain things. Why when you go over to a friend’s house, why do you take off your shoes before you go in? I’m not saying “Oh, that’s weird, or ew what is that?” Those things are hurtful. And, you know, for kids being themselves, they don’t want to be conscious about how they’re doing things, because it’s been something that they’ve been doing for years, or you know, they see people that they love doing those things like eating stinky tofu or eating, you know, rice and sour soup. These are things that are embedded in their identity and their culture and they don’t want to second guess themselves about it. Another thing that we tell our kids is to support small Asian businesses, if you are hungry, maybe instead of going to McDonald’s, go to you know, a local Chinese bakery or a local Filipino bakery or…

Ariel Landrum 49:19
Or Jollibee!

Stefanie Bautista 49:20
Or Jollibee!

Ariel Landrum 49:21
It’s fast food!

Stefanie Bautista 49:22
Even the Jollibee now owns coffee bean which is so bizarre to me now. Whatever, but get that get that prosperity y’all. Like whatever. I think just knowing that there are businesses that you know, aren’t the Big Four are the big three. Wanting to go to an Asian market and play with the crabs there. That’s totally normal. Like those small things that are embedded into our everyday lives. I think if we if we give a little bit of love and curiosity to them, it’ll tell kids have, you know younger generations that it’s okay to accept something that’s different. And because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Ariel Landrum 50:07
And going back to like, even the executive functioning, and moral anxiety analysis paralysis, a lot of people will say, well, like, Isn’t it rude for me to even ask? And this goes into really understanding the difference between asking a question with curiosity and questioning someone.

Stefanie Bautista 50:26
Yes, yes.

Ariel Landrum 50:27
When you’re questioning someone, it always feels like you’re being interrogated.

Stefanie Bautista 50:30
Yes…

Ariel Landrum 50:30
And you have to defend yourself. So, “Why are you eating that?” Does not sound curious. It doesn’t sound inviting, even though there’s a why in the question, it the tonal presentation implies that they have to justify their food choice, versus saying, “What are you eating?” And learning about that. Usually, that’ll come with the why that that’ll be, “Oh, I’m eating this. It’s my favorite food.” That’s all you need to know. That’s the only why you need to know or I’m eating this because it’s a Lunar New Year, and I want some good luck in my day.

Stefanie Bautista 51:01
Yeah, I know, for a lot of the teacher’s assistants and people who help out during lunchtime, I think if we’ve always told them, “Hey, if you see a kid eating something that’s different, like shout them out, be like, hey, you know, that looks really good. What is that? Does your mom make that for you? Like, that looks so good and appetizing? Like, I want to try that one day? Where can I find that?” Just kind of lifting them up in the small things that they have. Or you know, hey, that lunchbox is super cute, like, where did you get that? Just praising them for you know, their small things that make up their identity, I think is huge. And also diversifying your library for any educators out there, that is the best thing you could possibly do to represent your kids, no matter if they’re AAPI descent, they’re African American, if they’re, you know, of mixed race, the more you can diversify your library, the better you can, you know, reach out to your students without you having to do the heavy lifting. Because if they see themselves represented in a book, if they see themselves, you know, represented in pictures and writing, it doesn’t have to be a profound history lesson. It could just be like, hey, that kid looks like me.

Ariel Landrum 51:02
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 51:32
There is an author out there, there’s an illustrator out there that took the time to create this character that looks like me, I think that’s cool. And because I see myself represented, therefore I exist in this world, and I am not erased. And I think that’s the one of the biggest struggles of the AAPI community is the feeling of erasure. And that, you know, we exist simply to be in the background simply to be the model minority, just to kind of blend in with the crowd. And you know, just be thankful for your life here in America, which is very important. However, that doesn’t mean that you are taking up space in this world in this community.

Ariel Landrum 52:50
And really looking at the media were engaging in in regards to Asian created media, were the creators actually AAPI or not? And even with the model minority myth, that has led to a trope of the Asian best friend. As much as I love Disney media, even up into Spider-Man, his best friend is his Asian hype boy.

Stefanie Bautista 53:15
Who was behind the computer, aka the IT guy.

Ariel Landrum 53:18
The IT Guy. Yes, yes, literally calls himself the guy in the chair, I’m really accentuating that that’s a good thing. And no, it is not a bad thing. But when it becomes the fact that you engage in media, and that’s all you see of Asian representation, that starts to distort your belief system and thinking, and I know, in regards to mental health and wellness, when you don’t see a certain culture that you think struggles, you don’t provide them the support and aid that they need. And when it comes to you the way that Asians are represented in the media, it’s, you’re the smart one, you can figure it out, you have high prestige, you probably are a doctor, you probably are an engineer, you have all these things, quote unquote, going for you, that you there shouldn’t be a reason for you to be quote unquote, struggling. And that makes it a real, it feeds into a bias that we start to internalize. And when it comes to actually taking on media, where we start to see that this community has just as much struggles, if not more unique struggles or different struggles than me, that makes it easier to get access.

Stefanie Bautista 54:25
And multi layered structures. I mean, struggles that, you know, can stem from socioeconomic status to location to position to a self identity is a huge one that we especially a second generation Asian Americans struggle with. So, I mean, you’re absolutely right, just because you’re not seeing these struggles doesn’t mean they’re not happening. Because yes, there are struggles that you know, other cultures go through which, you know, we we do want to take care to highlight and be aware of it but diminishing another culture struggles is, you know, something that I feel like we’re slowly as a society moving away from which is great. But at the same time, I think on a level where you know, you are not consuming media like this, it really just has to be conscious in your everyday life that you know, you gotta you got to open your eyes a little bit more, and see who you’re around and just kind of take a step back because I know there’s a bigger conversation when it comes to workplace and diversifying the workplace diversifying. I mean, even people I know who work for Disney, I’ve been seeing many more opportunities given to Asian Americans. Netflix has a whole Instagram dedicated to Southeast Asian Americans called Netflix Golden, which popped up on my feed, I think just a couple days ago. And I was like, whoa, wait, what? Like, this is an I feel like everybody can kind of relate when they go. “This is weird, but I don’t hate it.”

Ariel Landrum 56:03
It’s like that pause of like, “I was not expecting this. And I I need to reconcile what I’m feeling right now.”

Stefanie Bautista 56:09
Yeah, I think they had a post. And I think it was a bunch of Netflix characters with their shoes on the bed. They were just hanging out with their shoes inside. And then it said, like, “The awkward pause when you’re trying to Netflix binge, but you notice all the shoes inside the house.” And I’m like…

Ariel Landrum 56:31
Okay, I have noticed that that’s true.

Stefanie Bautista 56:33
Yeah. I mean, it was like a scene from Stranger Things. It was like Never Have I Ever and a bunch of other like, super popular Netflix series. And I was like, LOL in my head. This is kind of funny. Cuz Yeah, these are things that like we would notice. Like, why? Why would they be doing that that’s, that’s not right. Or, you know, those, just the lens of specifically a South East Asian American watching Netflix shows, I think it’s so bizarre, but I’m here for it.

Ariel Landrum 57:03
When it comes to, you know, supporting the AAPI community in allowing your morals and values to move you forward. You know, there’s definitely engaging in Asian owned restaurants, engaging in Asian created media. The other thing is really attending a lot of Asian festivals. Just like because Lunar New Year is happening the first but it’s essentially going to go on all month, depending on the culture, there will be festivals. Take the time to go to them, they are outdoor, right, you can still wear your mask, you can social distance. But sitting in immersing yourself in the cultural experience is very different than sort of hearing about it.

Stefanie Bautista 57:46
Take the time to embrace every aspect of it. Because I’ve noticed over the years attending some of these markets and festivals, of course, many people go for the food because everybody can identify and connect with each other over food. But food is bad. And our food is Yeah. And that’s how a lot of you know, social media posts happen because you know, people are foodies. And that’s how they get their exposure. But take the time to watch the performances and the dances and maybe even like a martial arts demonstration, or you know, those types of things give you a different perspective on culture and dance. And performance is such a different way of expressing your culture that I think is so unique, and many people tend to forego because you have to stop and take the time to visualize and kind of soak it in. So I would challenge everyone to just like, look at the traditional dancing, like what does it tell you? Like, what stories do you pull from it? Because I feel like a lot of people Oh, you know, like, I love noodles and dumplings. And I loved Din Tai Fung and yet they don’t remember that there’s so many other aspects to you know, embracing that culture. And I think just stepping out of your comfort zone a little bit maybe could be very rewarding.

Ariel Landrum 59:09
Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of on the surface experience and really trying to go in deeper. Okay, so I watched this YouTube channel called Sorted. It is these four British guys who are best friends that one of them was a chef taught them how to cook. They branched out since that brand, and they had a good old Uncle Roger.

Stefanie Bautista 59:31
Oh, my boy Uncle Roger.

Ariel Landrum 59:33
Yes guest starring in a competition they’re making in regards to effect essentially like a fish soup. And one of the contestants put all kinds of seafood in his soup. And Uncle Roger said “That looks like it’d be good. No one would buy that. That is too expensive. That is not streetfood.” And all a hearing that you could see like the look on his face of it, that never occurred to me, because all the ways that he had the soup was essentially in a way that was more high end.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:11
Mm hmm. Yeah. The main thing about Asian markets is that the food is close to dirt cheap.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:20
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:20
And that’s what’s fantastic about it, because then you could experience all the stalls. They’re really not supposed to be like, an I know 626 might Night Market is fantastic, but it will run your wallet a little bit if you’re not careful. I know everybody’s trying to make a living out here. And you know, food prices have gone up, especially since the pandemic happened.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:41
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:41
But at the same time, if you are looking at it from the perspective of accessibility, Night Market food is supposed to be meant to be affordable. And I totally understand that, you know, he’s right, no one would buy that. They will go to another spot and get the same exact thing for less because traditionally, it is seen as regarding to be frugal and not wasteful with your money because that is how you achieve prosperity and wealth.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:13
And even like other examples, I I know a lot of friends are like, “Well, I go to Korean BBQ.” It’s like, “Yes, but Korean BBQ is not the true like traditional regular meal. Like we aren’t sitting down and eating beef every single day. That is that’s that’s for like you graduated and we need to celebrate.”

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:34
Yes, absolutely. It’s not just like a regular meal. I mean, you lived in Korea Ariel. I’ve been to Korea. When I went I wasn’t trying to be like where is the all you can eat spot? That’s not a thing. It is an LA thing. It’s a total American thing. That I think that’s a whole nother nother conversation of Americans and the history of America changing Asian traditional foods to suit their palate and to suit their understanding of it. Their lifestyle. I mean, there’s so many documentaries around about General Tso’s chicken. There is a General Tso, he does not exist.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:16
Orange chicken!

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:17
Orange chicken, not a thing. Maybe orange or maybe fried chicken with like Mandarin peels that you could maybe find that but if you go and ask for, “Can I get orange chicken with fried rice?” You will most likely not get it. But yeah, like many of these things are just offshoots and tangents of you know, interpretations of traditional Asian dishes. And yeah, like I think the all you can eat thing was like the biggest realization of that, especially living in Southern California, where it’s a part of everyday life, but also, you really want to try not to mistake it for everyday Korean life.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:55
So we’ve definitely talked about ways that support the community certainly talked about what we hope Disney will add, change or adapt. And we talked about the festival that Disney had. Because this podcast is about a new year. I would like us to share our new year resolutions for this podcast. I’ll have you got Stef haha!

Stefanie Bautista 1:03:19
Ah, okay. Well, I mean, for me, I am so thankful that we are still doing this podcast we pass the the seven episode itch or what have you?

Ariel Landrum 1:03:29
Yes, yes, the curse. After seven episodes, it never happens again.

Stefanie Bautista 1:03:33
I think that’s a sign of prosperity. But I am so thankful for this opportunity to even like talk about things like my identity and my heritage through a Disney medium. I think that’s so unique and awesome. I know, there’s many, many podcasts out there. And I thank you all for choosing this one to spend your time with either on your drive in the shower, or whatever you want to do, we are here with you. So I want to keep it consistent. I think me and Ariel have found a really good groove on you know, doing this whole thing. And I think as we delve deeper and deeper and deeper into the layers of Disney, it’s different avenues of media. There’s just so much more to unpack. And you know, even though I think because we are coming to you with a psychological lens a educational lens, there are a lot of heavy things that we do think about and we do talk about. But we also want to highlight that, you know, this is still the Happiest Pod on Earth. And we want to make sure that we are keeping the happy in there. So I think finding that really good balance between the two helps me individually and I hope it helps you all too. So more sponsorships and partnerships if you guys want to partner with us. I would love to! Catch me at Disneyland with a tripod next time haha! And I would love to incorporate more educational resources I think as a new wave of teachers are coming in those of you who are staying in the profession, thank you. It’s hard, we are struggling every day and I see you, I’m going through it. And I understand if you are somebody who used to work in education and just couldn’t do any more I see you too It, it’s been a tough couple of years for us. So I think as you know, we get new people, we can work together and create more educational resources. And hopefully Disney sees that. That would be great. How about you, Ariel?

Ariel Landrum 1:05:28
My resolutions for the podcast is some regular shooting schedule, which is very difficult because our schedules are like not the same.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:36
Consistency!

Ariel Landrum 1:05:38
But uh, in regards to consistency, at least knowing that we released earlier podcast episode a month, at minimum? As a as a baseline baseline, not minimum. The baseline.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:50
Baseline, I like that.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:51
I’d like to dive deeper into specific characters we mentioned a few in each episode. But really diving deep into one given like highlighting or celebrating and essentially challenging one specific character, I think that would be really interesting. I want to increase connecting to the rest of the GT network, I’d like to have more of our fellow podcasters as guests on our channel here, seeing if we do some cross pollenization as it where. Definitely sponsorships and partnerships or donations and fundings would be really cool. I’d like us to present a panel and be panelists at a convention, when it comes to specifically the clinical psychological lens, say same notes to as Stef, all you therapists, whether you’re still doing it, whether you’ve stopped whether you’ve pivoted and are doing something completely different. I see you this is huge burnout in regards to most, I would say 98% of the clinicians weren’t doing telehealth, right. So that was learning that process was a huge bitch. And there’s so much burnout because everyone is struggling and we’re wanting them to be the ones holding the load were essentially Luisa. Take a break. Take a break.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:11
Take a break. The donkeys will handle it.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:14
The donkeys will handle it. Take it take a week break if you can, two weeks preferably. I just really want to see us being rejuvenated and not essentially being burnt out this year. And I’m hoping that this podcast will give new lens and insight that can rejuvenate the desire to utilize essentially Disney in mental health, seeing how our way of helping our clients doesn’t have to be like Stef said, it doesn’t have to be sad, it can be happy. It can be exciting. It can be interesting. It can be curious. It can it can have resolution and healing, and not really always being like this long void of pain.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:01
Yeah. Thank you for the work you do. By the way.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:04
Nah thank you Oh my gawd.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:07
We are both struggling. I think this brand new year I feel like is refreshing. Even though we’re like a year three into this thing. I have high hopes. And I think as long as we continue to be there for each other, continue to listen to each other and continue to have grace and humility for one another. I think we can all come out of this with a better understanding of each other so that we can live our lives and hopefully even though it’s probably not going to be the same normal. We’re used to some sense of normality.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:46
Yes, yes. So in signing off if you are the year of the Tiger if you want to let us know your traditions for Lunar New Year or how you celebrated the calendar New Year. Please please tweet at us @HappiestPodGT or DM us at @HappiestPodGT. If also you have suggestions for things you want us to talk about on the podcast please holler at us let us know. We know there’s been a lot of random Disney drama going on out there. We don’t be sipping in the drama too much but if you need us to spill the tea we will spill the tea.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:29
We will spill it in through through a therapy and an education lens. We will spell it. It will still be spelt but it will have a filter.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:38
Yeah, it’ll be it’ll be contained spillment.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:40
Contained spillment? Alright everyone, we will see you next episode. Take care.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:48
Bye!

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:48
Bye!

Media/Characters Mentioned
  • Tiger
  • Rajah
  • Mulan
  • Raya
  • Lilo
  • Nani
  • Moana
Topics/Themes Mentioned
  • Holidays
  • Music
  • Tradition
  • Diversity
  • Family
  • Festival
  • Food
  • AAPI
  • Support
  • Social jusice
  • Social awareness
  • Analysis paralysis
  • Moral anxiety
  • Colorism
  • Anxiety

Questions? Comments? Discuss this episode on the GT Forum.

—

 Website: happy.geektherapy.com
 | Instagram: @HappiestPodGT | Twitter: @HappiestPodGT | Facebook: @HappiestPodGT |
 | Stef on Twitter: @stefa_kneee | Ariel on Instagram: @airyell3000 |

Geek Therapy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of advocating for the effective and meaningful use of popular media in therapeutic, educational, and community practice.
| GT Facebook: @GeekTherapy | GT Twitter: @GeekTherapy |
| GT Forum: forum.geektherapy.com  | GT Discord: geektherapy.com/discord |

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Welcome to The Happiest Pod on Earth! On the Geek Therapy Network we believe that the best way to understand each other, and ourselves, is through the media we care about. On this show, we focus exclusively on Disney!

Hosted by Stefanie Bautista and Ariel Landrum!

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