Zachary’s First Love

The new Fantasyland area at the Magic Kingdom is currently going through “dress rehearsals”, and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to go through the area three separate times now.

It’s really a fantastic addition to the Magic Kingdom, and honestly, it’s probably going to be my favorite spot to watch fireworks from here on out.

Last week, we decided to head into the Magic Kingdom after work (the benefits of living behind Disney property!) and school to walk around the new area again before they started making it invite only.

We didn’t have the chance to check out Enchanted Tales With Belle yet, so we decided to head in.

I won’t give everything away about the show (because, really, you need to experience some of the new audio animatronics that are AMAZING), but the basic idea is that kids (and sometimes adults) get to act out parts in the retelling of how Belle and the Beast fell in love.  People who take part in the show are given a prop of some sort, and there are plenty of parts to go around for all kids who want to be a part of the show.

When it came time to choose the Beast, the cast member asked everyone to roar in their best Beast voice.  Zachary put his hands into claws and bellowed, “RAWWWWWWWWWWR!!” as loud as he could.  I was pretty surprised they chose him to be the “lead actor”!  We all filed into the library where the kids were going to put on the play with Belle herself.

The pictures are pretty self explanatory, but you can clearly see where my son’s heart melted (and that was the moment when I honestly got teary eyed, because, come on – how freaking sweet is this?):

I die.  A million times over.

Giving her a kiss.

He received a bookmark from Belle, and was quite happy to carry that around with him for the rest of the evening.  Yay for weird lighting on my camera phone.

As we moved on to meet Ariel in the new Ariel’s Grotto area, he was pretty quiet.  When he climbed up next to her, he loudly asked Ariel where Belle was – he wanted to see her instead.

He has now asked to see Belle several times, and has been disappointed that the area is shut off again.  He said that Belle made his heart happy.