The girls have been trying to think go something to do to cheer up all the people who, because of the current situation, can’t be ay Disney World right now. They decided that one of their happiest times there is watching the Festival of Fantasy parade, so came up with a plan to reenact it in the back garden (complete with taped off viewing area and cuddly Disney goers!)
Now, when the girls decide to do something there are no half-measures, so they spent time researching to make sure they had the correct order of characters, knew some of the dance steps (although a lot were admittedly improvised!) and that they knew the soundtrack as they wanted to record their own version.
On the morning of the parade I set off with the list of me-made outfits they needed to unpack the ever-ready Disney suitcase. As you can see, this was stage 1 of a day of complete chaos!
Whilst I was doing this the girls recorded their backing track (complete with fanfare and introduction!) before looking through their wardrobes to find outfits for the characters we didn’t have actual costumes for. These are some of my favourites from the whole day (I forgot to take actual photos so most of these are screen shots from the video!)
Once the costumes were sorted and I finally got my camera in place (in an interesting, rather precarious balancing act as Mr D&P had taken my tripod to work and not turned it!) we started to get into costumes to film the actual parade. We had all the outfits set out but even so, the process took a long time as not only did they have to change costumes/ hair styles ( I drew the line at shoe changes although slightly regretted my decision after all 3 of us stood in separate piles of bird poo at different points) we had to film each set of characters in turn at the appropriate time on the backing track to make sure they’d fit together once edited. The girls had given me a plan of the extras they wanted filing such as Flynn Rider on a swing and Tinkerbell facing backwards on a float at the end of the Peter Pan section, so we made sure we filmed these separately.
The girls were so good. It was so funny watching them interact with their cuddly audience, and they had so much fun. We only filmed each section once, but luckily everything worked out once it came to editing in my trusty iMovies programme!
We had so much fun recreating the parade even if it did take me hours to tidy everything away. I’m trying hard to make sure that the girls have some lovely memories of this crazy time, whilst at the same time hopefully bringing a bit of happiness into the lives of others. They are such little rays of sunshine and I am so lucky to have them.
If you’d like to see the finished video you can find it here (and if you subscribe you’ll get to see all the other videos they have planned! I’ll be completely grey by the time this lockdown is over!!)
Thank you so much for reading. Next week it’s back to school and we have a Winnie the Pooh topic planned including finishing a board game we started making before the Easter break as well as lots of other lovely activities. I’ll make sure I share all the activities and ideas in the next blog.
Doodle & Peg Do Disney 