All of our doubts had disappeared in an instant, and we had never been filled with such contentment. Our eyes lit up, and both our jaws dropped. I looked at Jenna and she looked at me, astonished. We had wanted to believe for all our lives, and we had hoped that the fairytales were all true, but we had never come across such justification proving it all to be real. Princesses were real. It was no wonder they called Disney the most magical place on Earth.
Memere and Pepere had five grandkids. There was my brother and I, and then our three cousins. Our grandparents were taking two trips to Disney, one with the three boys and the other with my cousin and I. I loved Disney, and so did she. It was even better hearing the news because I got to go with her. We were the only girls on our moms’ side of the family. I was about six years old at the time. She was about three years older than me, but that didn’t matter because we got along well. We never got into fights and always agreed on everything.
I thought Jenna was the coolest person I knew. She was older than me and I think that automatically made her a cool person. She was the most fun person to play with, especially playing dressup. She would let me try on all her dance costumes. It was great, especially because they were Jenna’s costumes, and Jenna was cool. Anything she did I wanted to do too. Anything she had I wanted to have too. And now, we were so excited because we got to go to Disney together. We dreamed of the fun we would have together. Going on a big trip together was so cool, almost as cool as our wish to be sisters.
We had actually thought about that once, but I realized it couldn’t happen. One of us would have to change our last name, and we would only be able to have two parents. We both liked our last names and we both liked our parents, so that would never work. But, going to Disney was a dream for us too, and this was actually going to happen. It wasn’t just a wish we had, the trip was already planned and we were going that year.
We wore matching clothes every day of the trip. I thought it was awesome because I always wanted to wear what Jenna wore, and now I was, and she was wearing it too. Everyone thought we were sisters. Someone would ask, and we would smile and laugh as if the answer was yes. Every princess we visited thought we were both so adorable, but Belle was the Princess we will remember forever.
Belle was wearing her sparkly ball gown when we saw her that day in Magic Kingdom. She signed our autograph books and talked to us like we were her friends.
“You are the most adorable little girls I’ve seen!”. She smiled in a way we would never forget. She made us feel like we were princesses too.
Again, we had both thought about that before. I, like most of my friends, would do anything to be a princess. It would be so cool to be a princess, but I eventually realized I would have to move away since there aren't any princesses in Massachusetts. It was still a thought in our heads, so we took every chance we got to talk to the princesses. But at the ages of six and nine, we had some doubts about princesses. What if the princesses in Disney weren't the real princesses? What if this Belle that we were talking to wasn’t the real Belle? It was not until the next day when we entered Epcot where we realized this was the real deal.
Wearing our matching outfits, we walked through the park deciding what rides we should go on and what characters we should go see next. On our way to the street where the countries are, we saw Belle, but instead of wearing her ball gown she was wearing her simple light blue dress and her apron. We both wondered if she was the same Belle we saw the night before. If she was the same Belle then she was the real Belle.
We walked over and right away she greeted us.
“Well look at you two! You girls look almost as cute as you did the last time we met in Magic Kingdom!”. She asked if we remembered talking to her the night before when she was wearing her ball gown. Of course we did. We were in shock. We were talking to the real Belle.
I was overjoyed to go on a trip to Disney with Jenna, and I’m glad we shared this unforgettable experience. We always wanted to believe in princesses, and we always wished they were real. I wanted to ignore my doubts, but they still existed. I wished that my beliefs would be true, and that I could disregard the thought of princesses not being real. To this day, a part of me still believes in princesses.