Dreamaversary: Cinderella Castle Suite Visit

There are some days in your life that you remember. Your clothes, the weather, what you had for lunch – the memories of those days are permanently etched not only in your head, but in your heart as well. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few of those good days, those unbelievable experiences that, even in my memory, seem impossible.  

Saturday, August 31st, marks the 5th anniversary of one of those days – my “Dreamaversary.” I’ve been asked often about my visit to the Cinderella Castle Suite because I can’t imagine anyone – old or young, boy or girl, believer or not – has ever stared down Main Street at those glimmering spires and not wondered what it would be like inside Cinderella Castle. Maybe you haven’t wished for it as often as I have, but you must’ve wondered…right?

The Year of a Million Dreams – 2008 – was the year that wish came true. Here’s the short version of how it came about: I was on my lunch break at work and saw an invitation from Disney to visit the suite, which was to take place just a couple of weeks after that day. I immediately told my Disney family (some related by blood, some related by pixie dust) about the event, never believing we’d hop on a plane and actually GO. There were all kinds of reasons not to. 

But we did. Because there was one major reason we HAD to: when you wait your whole life for something magical to happen, you don’t make excuses. You make magic.

Literally, within the span of our lunch break, plans were confirmed for me to join Lisa and Molly, my pixie dust family, as we celebrated Molly’s 9th birthday with a visit to the most exclusive hotel room on Disney property.

Molly didn’t know about any of it. She jumped in the car after her first day of school thinking she was joining her mom for a boring ride that MIGHT end with ice cream for dinner. A few hours later, there was a palm tree outside her window.

We didn’t tell her about the Castle Suite either. Now, to be fair, I guess I was more excited about it than she was – I mean, I HAD waited almost 20 years longer to see it – but surprising her was special for me as well. I’m sure she didn’t know what to make of the “royal decree” and tiny skeleton key presented to her with her birthday dessert at Prime Time Café, but I still have my key in a special treasure box with the badge we wore during our tour. 

The first thing you should know about the Cinderella Castle Suite is that you’ve probably passed by the entrance a thousand times without realizing it. To this day, every time I walk through the Castle, I pause for a moment at the door with the giant “C,” hoping it’ll creak open and I’ll be whisked inside. 

I never have been, but I’ll keep hoping.

Inside, there is a tiny room with a tiny desk and a giant clock and a mirror. That’s where the suite’s concierge waited to respond to any request a guest might have. Sure, you’re pretty much a prisoner because you can’t leave without permission (seems a bit more like Rapunzel than Cinderella, doesn’t it?) but on the other hand – WHO WOULD EVER WANT TO LEAVE?

One of my favorite details in the suite is the clock in this foyer, with its hands magically poised at 11:59, just on the cusp of midnight, where the magic will never end.

I was an adult when we were invited to that suite. I am fully aware that the artifacts displayed – you know, Cinderella’s crown, scepter and, of course, that glass slipper that changed everything – are props. I know that the Suite was a utility closet prior to 2008 and not the guest room of a timeless fairy tale. I understand that the windows that look out over Fantasyland are frosted not because they’re medieval glass, but to hide the maintenance happening outside the suite while guests sleep upstairs.

I get all of that. But I still felt like a 6-year-old as we rode that elevator decorated with gorgeous gold-accented mosaics, and I was a totally enamored invited guest of Cinderella. That little cinder girl did pretty well for herself.

I remember the bedroom feeling smaller than I had expected, possibly because the regal headboards on the beds seemed so gigantic. Everyone was excited about the bathroom, with the amazing starry ceiling and beautiful tile work throughout, and, yes, the details in it (and the lights changing color in the Jacuzzi!) made it the coolest bathroom I had ever been in, but for me? It was the sitting room that really took my breath away.

Someone once told me, looking at my photos, that the sitting room resembled what she imagined the Gryffindor Common Room at Hogwarts would look like. I can see that. It’s the room with the best view to the outside, which also makes it the room I can stare up into from the Magic Kingdom below. I know that if I ever visited the suite again, that’s the place I’d spend most of my time.

When we left the suite, I remember calling home to tell my family how amazing it was to step into a fairy tale. I also remember literally erupting in tears as I tried to tell the story, standing in the breezeway outside that door crested with a C. It happens a lot to me in Disney World – the littlest thing can make my eyes sweat – and I remember Lisa taking a picture of me as it happened. And then she told me we would get to go up again, so that we’d have a chance to see it at night as well.

Sooooo…yeah, something got in my eye at that point too.

We watched Wishes that night, from my favorite spot on Main Street. I call it my “wishing spot,” but I didn’t make a wish that night. I didn’t need to. 

I have bigger things to accomplish in life than visiting a well-decorated room in a Disney theme park. I have more to do than that, bigger dreams, more important wishes. But that night, standing on Main Street with Molly and Lisa, I felt both satisfied and invincible. Satisfied because a wish had come true, and invincible for the same reason. 

That day fulfilled a dream that a much younger me cooked up without realizing it was implausible. There wasn’t even a suite to visit when I made that wish more than two decades ago. And that just makes anything else seem possible.

Molly started high school this week, which seems like a lifetime away from that surprise trip we took only five years ago. She’s still a great kid, she still loves Disney World, and I hope she still knows that wishes CAN come true. 

She should know. She was a witness to one of mine, and I hope I can be there for a lifetime of hers.

Here we go-o-o-o-o

“Sirius is saying that nsync is going to appear on the vmas.”

That’s how all of this started. One text, and the entire context of my day…nope, week…hell, LIFE has changed.

My boys are back.

It’s not a secret that when I took my *NSYNC vows fifteen years ago, I meant them. The past few days have been nostalgic for a lot of people who have revisited their lives and mindsets circa the turn of the millennium, sharing the ways that *NSYNC sculpted their childhoods, their high school dances, their college years.

I love it. It’s given me a chance to tell stories that no one has wanted to hear for ten years. Tales of roadtrips, and lucky chances, and some of the luck that we made ourselves.

Life has changed for all of us since the last time we saw *NSYNC on a stage together, and even more since we first heard them sing. We’ve all loved, we’ve all lost, we’ve all experienced some of the best and worst the world has to offer.

I delved into my boyband treasure chest (it is definitely a real thing) for some perspective about how my life (and yours) has changed since *NSYNC came into it.

My first blog EVER - Teen People Online

The internet? Yeah, it was probably AOL, it was probably dial up, and if your mom picked up the phone to call your aunt? You were probably getting disconnected. Web pages looked like this (except in color…because back in 1999, our printer did NOT have that expensive color ink.)







Here’s our digital camera circa 2000. It holds a 3.5" floppy disk, to give you an idea of how large it is. 


We never used it for *NSYNC it because the memory “stick” held about four pictures, at a quality of a whopping 1.6 megapixels! 

So we shot regular film at every concert, which meant some pictures looked like this:   

But most of them were more like this:

Not only did it cost a fortune, but you had no idea if any of your pictures were any good until three days later. 

Here’s my adorable cell phone. Not from 2003…this was a phone from the FUTURE. My 2003 phone is on loan to the Smithsonian. So we all get the picture of what my 2003 cell phone looked like. Or, rather, we don't. Because my phone definitely didn't have a camera back then. On the bright side (no pun intended), we also didn't have thousands of screens lighting up the venue back then.

I have an iPhone now. It's also my digital camera.


 
This was how we DVR’d things. And there was no YouTube or streaming, so if you forgot to set your tape? Or someone changed the channel after you set it? NO TRL FOR YOU!

I tried watching some of them two nights ago. It infuriated me that I couldn't skip to the next chapter. Definitely need to transfer these bad boys to DVD soon.

Speaking of which, this is the first DVD I ever owned, and I bought it in 1998 not because we had a DVD player (we didn’t), but because our new GATEWAY COMPUTER (you know, in the cow box?) had one.

The Music of My Heart

It took about three days to download a song over the internet, so all the music I bought came packaged like this. I still have all these cds, in alphabetical order when they're not in a pile on my floor, because every time I migrate to the latest ipod, my *NSYNC playlists have to come with me, and iTunes has a habit of losing precious cargo. 

"Some Dreams," for example. The b-side of a 1997 single released exclusively in Germany. 

You can't find that in the iTunes store.


 
If you wanted to be the first on your block to hear Bye Bye Bye from an actual cd instead of just the radio? You better be sleeping outside FYE when it opened at midnight. And we did.

Lots of us wanted to be the first, as over ONE MILLION copies of the cd sold that first day, and another million that firstweek. It’s a record that still stands today, so SUCK IT BACKSTREET. (Sorry…sorry, that was 2000 Kylene talking. We love you BSB fans, and yes, *NSYNC's numbers are domestic while BSB kills them worldwide, so let's just call it even, shall we?) 

Here's a fun fact. MySpace was founded in 2003. Facebook didn’t even come into existence until a year later, and it would be a few more years before social media would change our landscape of connections. Tonight? I will be live tweeting the hell out of this reunion with my closest *NSYNC friends, and we’ll all be in different states sharing the moment instantly. "Digital Getdown", indeed.
 

Back in 2003, MySpace made me choose a Top 8. If I made a Top 8 of 2013, I'd see exactly one person who would’ve made the list in 2003. Four of the people on my list would be complete strangers back then. And the remaining three? We didn’t talk much ten years ago, but I don’t go a day without talking to them now. Of those people in my 2013 Top 8, there have been six marriages, eleven babies, and two green cards since *NSYNC went on hiatus.

 The funny thing is, even though a lot of changes have been technology the same way any decade will see those things evolve, the ones that really hit you are the changes in lives. The graduations, the marriages, the babies, the moves, the jobs. And I think that’s why everyone is so excited about this reunion. It’s a chance for all of us to revisit the times in our lives when the most important thing in the world was being the first person on your block to hold No Strings Attached.

You're all we ever wanted. You're all we ever needed. Thanks for coming back, *NSYNC.

With Love, Ky Ky Ky