Page 42 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
Without even realising it, I’ve been chuckling at my phone for ten minutes, and new comments are being posted every few seconds. I see what Warren meant about the people responding to this idea, and I get the sense that our daily update was being waited for today. And visitor numbersareup, and so are mentions on social media and website hits. Could we really be onto something here? Something that could truly make a difference to not only my chances of keeping the museum, but to what I can do here? Even with the higher rent, with more visitors, I’d have more money to invest in the exhibits and we’d be able to grant more wishes… Especially if I stop resisting Warren’s suggestions for small changes here and streamlining tweaks there. It was unfair of me to say that not all of his ideas are bad ones last night because, to be fair, apart from the whole mermaid tank debacle, most of them have been very, very good.
I refresh the page again and one of the girls has posted another update.
Pascal’s gone missing! If you can find Rapunzel’s camouflaged chameleon friend in his hiding place on Ever After Street, take a photo and tag us, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win an ‘Unbirthday party’ at The Wonderland Teapot!
I’m so touched that I have to bite my lip to stop myself tearing up. I had no idea they were going to do something like that, or that Cleo was going to offer a prize at her Alice-themed tearoom, and I send a text to the shopkeepers’ group saying that they didn’t have to do that.
Just seen HIM leave.
Mickey texts back immediately.
He must be so annoyed that we outfoxed him on his stakeout idea. The tweets are getting so much attention on social media. This is brilliant!
I type an agreement, but it niggles at me and I don’t end up pressing send. I sit back and look at my phone again instead. While the social media engagement is truly fantastic, and I’m having a ‘pinch me’ moment on that front, it’s everything else that doesn’t feel brilliant. It feels like Warren knows exactly what’s going on. He knows I’m lying to him, and he’s given up on caring. I can’t help feeling that I’ve approached this all wrong. Fooling the public for a bit of social media fun is one thing, but trying to fool someone whoknowsI’m trying to fool him is quite another.
15
Far from sitting back and letting them get on with it, Warren has seen the potential in the living exhibits and is fully embracing whatever they get up to next. After he goes home at night, me and a couple of the other shopkeepers hang around until after dark, when Ever After Street is closed to the public, and then we dosomethingwith the exhibits. So far we’ve had Flynn Rider’s wanted posters put up all over Ever After Street and a fewTangledlanterns that have broken free, the balloons from theUphouse escaping from the chimney of the museum, and the Wicked Witch of the East’s legs sticking out from underneath Marnie’s bookshop walls. The statue of Prince Eric has been found peering into Mickey’s shop window, and multiple orange feathers from Peter Pan’s hat keep turning up, along with thimbles and acorns to represent Peter and Wendy’s interpretation of a first kiss, and rather than pushing for an explanation, Warren has quietly worked in the background, figuring out the times when our audience are most active, keywords, hashtags, and something to do with algorithms that I would’ve needed a degree in rocket science to understand.
The new website has gone up, and between the two of us, we’ve filmed several short promotional videos to appeal to different explanations for the mysterious goings-on.
There was one where I filmed as Warren walked Lumière down the street and then used video editing software to edit his arm out, so it looks like the candelabra is walking down the street alone. Another one with a focus on a spooky haunting, where we turned the lights down and filmed at night, and tied fishing wire to some of the exhibits and I stood out of shot and used it to turn them around without being seen, and Warren overlaid it with creepy music, and then another one with aNight at the Museumfocus, where we filmed a few of the Disney prince and princess mannequins in one position at night, and then moved them all around and filmed again in daylight, trying to make it seem like they’d moved of their own accord overnight. Each video is only thirty seconds long, but they were fun, and an aspect of marketing that I’d never thought of before, and there’s been something really nice about experiencing Warren’s creativity. It’s not something he gets to showcase often and he’s obviously been having a blast doing it, and I’ve been all too happy to stand back and let his imagination run wild. Marketing has never been my strong suit, but Warren instinctively knows what will get views and what will get people talking.
The video of Lumière walking down the street has got a couple of hundredthousandviews now, with hundreds of comments guessing what he might be up to and where he’s going, and the other videos aren’t far behind it, with the haunted museum angle gaining traction as well, and so far we’ve had requests from two ghost hunters to film overnight and exorcise our museum ghosts, and visitor numbers are up, up, up.
Children come in and excitedly tell us that they’ve seen Cogsworth having tea in The Wonderland Teapot, or Genie’s lamp getting up to mischief, and some of the other shopkeepers have offered prizes for more scavenger hunt-type quests now Pascal has been rescued from the flower bed, and we’ve had Mary Poppins’s parrot umbrella on the roof of Mickey’s shop, and Chip the teacup hiding away in Marnie’s window.
The increase in visitors has been hard to stay on top of, so Warren’s been spending more time at the front desk and I’ve cleared out the dressing-up room and he’s arranged for shopfitters to come in this week to give it a makeover, fill it with shelves, and turn it into a gift shop.
I’ve found a site that sells wholesale Disney-inspired bits, and with the extra takings, I’ve been able to order a couple of hundred mugs that are identical to Chip fromBeauty and the Beast, vases in the shape of the Wicked Witch’s striped stockings and sparkly ruby slippers, and tiny little replicas of the Beast’s enchanted rose.
For the first time in years, it feels like something is going right. I’ve been unmotivated when it comes to the museum, happy to sit back and take the visitors that come my way without putting enough effort intogettingmore, feeling like an outsider up on the hill, but having someone to bounce ideas off, someone who works in the business industry and whose expertise has proved nothing but helpful so far has been a revelation, and so have the lengths that my fellow shopkeepers will go to in order to help me.
It’s made me feel valued and more important to the street than I thought I was. I’ve always wondered if anyone would miss me if I wasn’t here, a feeling that has followed me through life since childhood, but everything the others are doing has made me feel loved, important, and like it would reallymatterto them if something was to happen to the museum. At the same time, it’s starting to feel like the museum will be safe. I can easily afford the increased rent this month, and I try not to think about the likelihood of sustaining this level of interest in the escaped exhibit escapades, and what might happen after it fades.
It’s a Thursday morning, the beginning of November, and the weeks are flying by. I’ve just finished tidying the Moana mannequin after having to replace the green heart of Te Fiti stone in her shell necklace after it’s been stolen yet again, a fact that I don’t intend to share with Warren because he’s even more concerned that the increase in visitors means an increase in exhibits being potentially damaged. I wouldhateto make the necklace off-limits or make it unrealistic by gluing the stone inside it. Ihaveput up signs asking people not to take anything from the exhibits, and I’m prepared to put up Warren’s suggested ‘Smile, you’re on CCTV!’ signs if the more moderate approach doesn’t make a difference.
When I go back out into the lobby, he’s sitting in an old computer chair that he’s dragged out of a storage room, leaning backwards with his feet up on the wooden desk, and it’s a good thing there aren’t any customers at the moment, because he’s loosened up lately, and I can’t help smiling at the sight of him looking so comfortable. It’s something I never thought I’d see last month.
He looks up and grins at me as I go and lean over the desk so I can get a look at what he’s doing with the pencil in his hand and sketchbook on his lap. ‘Are you using actual paper and a real pencil? Not the Tablet of Gloom?’
‘Some problems call for non-technological solutions.’
‘Which particular problem is this?’ I reach over and rifle through some of the discarded pages scattered across the desk in front of him, spinning them towards me so I can see what they’re meant to be.
‘The problem is that we’ll have a gift shop ready this week and you still don’t have a logo.’
‘Oh. Wow.’ I grab a handful of the pages and spread them across the countertop in awe. ‘These are amazing. Did youdrawthese?’
He makes a noise that sounds like an agreement, clearly embarrassed by the attention, but he deserves every compliment because these are incredible.
With coloured pencils, he’s designed a circular logo with an outline of the museum building on it, almost crown-shaped with its three distinct sections, tiny door and windows, and it’s coloured in shades of blue and green. He’s even got the ivy climbing one side with tiny tendrils twirling outwards, and it sits inside the outline of a pumpkin with the words ‘museum of fairytales’ written in neat printing around the lower edge. With one glance, anyone would know exactly where it is. If someone had asked me to imagine an ideal logo for this place, something that captures it perfectly and condenses it into one instantly recognisable, memorable image,thisis a million times better than anything I could have ever dreamt of.
‘These aresogood, Warren.Youare so good at this.’ I shake my head in surprise at this until-now hidden talent. ‘I didn’t know you could draw.’
The discarded pages are all different variations in some way, with one small thing or other changed. It’s so much effort for one little thing, and yet he looks the most relaxed I’ve ever seen him, and I think he’s completely unaware of the smile tipping up his lips as he adds something to the version he’s still working on.
‘It’s kind of a relic to times gone by, back in the days when I thought I might do something creative with my life, rather than… destructive.’
