dpsg1:

this is my favorite page in my disney world signatures book (i’m a resizing fail - click to see the full view of the actual picture).

Ariel’s signature got a little messed up by the scanner, but her signature is not really what matters here.  XD

So last summer, I went to Magic Kingdom and got in line to meet Ariel pretty early in the morning.  To my happy surprise, when she came out, Eric was with her.  This was especially great for me because you rarely get to meet the princesses’ guys, and though Eric is not particularly my favorite, this encounter raised my opinion of him tenfold.  :P

So the little girl in front of me, as her mother put it, had “stranger danger” around guys, so she only wanted to meet Ariel.  Eric kindly stepped out of her way and hovered near the front of the line while Ariel talked to the little girl.  I was next, of course, so he looked over at me and saw that I had a huge sketchbook.

“Would you like me to draw you a picture, Princess?” he asked.

“Erm…okay?”  I was a little awkward, as usual.  But I handed him my sketchbook regardless.

“What’s your favorite animal?”

“Um…elephant.”

“Oh, awesome!  I can do that,” he said excitedly, and he proceeded, to my awe and wonderment, to draw this elephant in about a minute flat.

We had a nice little conversation as he drew, mostly about me gawking over his artistic skills and him saying he had a lot of free time to practice drawing since he was the prince and all.  He plays a flute; he’s artistic; he can draw.  Makes sense.

So eventually, Ariel comes over, and she’s like, “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Princess, I—Eric.  Eric, what are you doing?  Is that…is that an elephant? Why aren’t you drawing a whale or a mermaid or Flounder or something from the ocean around where you live?”

He laughed a little, blushed (which I thought was hilarious and cute), and quickly said, “I, uh…it’s a birthday elephant!  She said it was her favorite animal.  What was I to do?”

At this point, I was pretty much dying of laughter, and so were they.  Because it was just so random and ridiculous.  

“Oh, it’s your birthday?” Ariel asked me excitedly.

“No,” I shook my head, giving Eric a confused yet amused look.

He just shrugged and shoved the pen and paper over to Ariel.  

“Just sign, dear.”

And then she did, and we laughed some more, and then we took a picture, and it was all lovely.