The first princess to come to our TV screens was Snow White in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, this movie was also the first full-length traditional animation film as well as the earliest Disney animated feature film. When Xena: Warrior Princess debuted in 1995 and Mulan was released in 1998, they demonstrated that a princess can do more than wear a pretty dress. These two iconic women let children everywhere know that a princess can also be a strong and adventurous warrior. New wave princesses like Moana and Frozen’s Elsa show us that you can still be a princess while maintaining your independence.
We all grew up with animated and live-action princesses guiding us through life. When thinking of our favorite princesses, our minds instantly go to Disney. However, when it comes to National Princess Day, Disney had very little involvement in its inception. Nest Family Entertainment, a Texas-based entertainment company, teamed up with Rich Animation in 1994 to create the animated film The Swan Princess, a musical adaptation of Swan Lake. The studio wanted people of every age to have a day to celebrate like royalty, embodying the kindness and grace that we all associated with princesses at the time — and thus, National Princess Day was created.
The definition of a princess is constantly changing. From the 1930s until the 1990s, princesses were meant to be saved by a prince and live happily ever after. Nowadays, princesses create their own happily ever after, save the prince, and then put the prince squarely in the friend zone. Essentially, embodying a princess on National Princess Day is to represent what the kids call the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time).
Mickey Mouse at the “Festival of Fantasy Parade in Walt Disney World in 2015
Mickey Mouse is more than just a character; he’s an iconic figure for the Disney brand. But he almost didn’t exist. Mickey Mouse was only created to replace Walt Disney’s original successful creation, Oswald the Rabbit. Oswald was made by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz, a film producer and distributor through Universal Studios. With so much success from Oswald, Disney asked Mintz to increase the studio’s budget, but instead, Mintz demanded Walt take a 20 percent cut. He then reminded Disney that Universal owned Oswald and that he had already signed most of Disney’s current employees to his new contract. Disney refused to sign the new contract, finished the final Oswald comic of his contract, and ended his work with Universal.
With just himself and two loyal animators, Ub Iwerks and Les Clark, Disney had to start from scratch. From this experience, he learned to ensure he owned all the rights to characters produced by his company. His inspiration for Mickey came from a tame mouse at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. The original name for the character was Mortimer Mouse until his wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it, ultimately creating Mickey Mouse.
On May 14, 1928, Mickey appeared in a test screening of the cartoon short “Plane Crazy”, but failed to impress audiences and attract distributors. Walt then produced a second Mickey short called “The Gallopin’ Gaucho”, which also suffered from a lack of distributor interest. “Steamboat Willy”, first released on November 18, 1928, in New York, was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Intended as a parody of Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill, Jr.”, it was the third Mickey film produced and the first to find a distributor, serving as Mickey’s debut.
Lake Constance is a lake that borders Switzerland, Germany, and Austria and occupies an old glacier basin at an elevation of 1,299 feet (396 m). It has an area of 209 square miles (541 square km) and is approximately 40 miles (65 km) long and up to 8 miles (13 km) wide, with an average depth of 295 feet (90 m) and a maximum depth of 827 feet (252 m). It has about 125 miles (200 km) of shoreline. In the west, near Konstanz (Constance), it is divided by the Bodan mountain ridge into two parts: the Untersee (south) and the Überlinger Lake (north). The lake’s main body, southeast of Konstanz, is called the Ober Lake. The lake forms part of the course of the Rhine River, which enters it in the southeast near Bregenz and leaves it at the west via the Unter Lake. The island of Mainau is north of Konstanz in the Überlinger Lake, and the island of Reichenau is west of the city in the Unter Lake. Konstanz itself is a “political island,” for it is the only part of Germany on the lake’s southwestern shore; it is entirely surrounded by Swiss territory, except on the northeast, where it fronts on the lake.
On September 1, 2001, Marilyn Manson was live in concert at the “Rock am See” Festival in Konstanz. Since the concert was on Labor Day weekend, I took a few days off work, got the tickets, and planned the trip down to Lake Constance.
The concert was on Saturday, and we made our way down to Lindau by train on Friday. It was a nice relaxing ride. Once we passed Munich, we rode through the Alps. After changing trains and a 9-hour train ride, Kevin and I ended at the Lindau train station. When we walked out of the building, we were standing in front of the Lindau Harbor. It has been 17 years since I visited Lindau for the first time. And I couldn’t recall how aqua-colored the water of Lake Constance was. That evening, we got a taxi and rode from Lindau, Germany, to Bregenz, Austria. In Bregenz, we stayed at the youth hostel for the night.
The following morning, Kevin and I got up early to have breakfast and make our way to the Bregenz Harbor. We had to make it back to Lindau and change boats to travel to Konstanz. We had a three-and-a-half-hour boat ride with several stops, including Friedrichshafen, Meersburg, and the island of Mainau in front of us. And Kevin wanted to explore Lindau for a little bit before it was time to go.
In Konstanz, we finally got off the boat. From the harbor, we had to walk less than a mile to get to our hotel. There we dropped off our luggage, put on a cap, and went to the festival. By that time, it had poured rain and we got wet. But it didn’t stop us from staying to see Alien Ant Farm, Papa Roach, and the German rock band “Die Ärzte”. Die Ärzte sing German songs, and so I had to translate the lyrics to Kevin. He thought these songs were awesome.
When Manson came on stage, we had clear skies. He was on stage only for an hour, which totally pissed me off because we spent all this time and money to go see him. However, I’m still a big fan of Marilyn Manson and have attended another two concerts in Germany. I know, he’s not everyone’s “cup of tea”. But that is what I like about him.
The following day, Kevin and I tried to cross the border to Switzerland. Since Konstanz lies on the German-Swiss border, it’s hard to tell when Germany ends and Switzerland begins as a tourist. (A year later, I finally crossed the border by the train station. I walked around a building and went back into Germany just so I could say, I’ve been on Swiss soil.) We went to the Konstanz train station and waited for the train to Stuttgart, where we switched trains and rode back to Würzburg.
On that weekend, we went through the whole state of Bavaria, traveled to Austria, made it back to Germany by boat, and traveled to Baden-Württemberg to go to a concert. And all these years, we are still not sure if Kevin made it to Switzerland on that day. What a trip!
Under The Harvest Moon 