HALLOWEEN AFTERNOON, THIS IS NOT: Remember when you are a kid, and it was just about 4 o'clock on Halloween afternoon, and you asked your mom what you should wear to go trick-or-treating? Because you hadn't quite put all of your costume ideas together quite yet? The major, mondo, and oh-so-very Mouse-o costume of D23 Expo, the every-two-years Disney fan convention, is the opposite of all that. Yes, for sure, there shall be people in amazing get-ups at the Anaheim Convention Center when it lands there over the third weekend in August, but those Disney devotees will not have decided the day before what they might wear. Not, that is, if they're involved in the Mousequerade.
MOUSEQUERADE: The convention's costume contest is big, big as Space Mountain, even, and this is, in large part, why: People who want to throw their hat into the ring, to participate, must enter their costume submission by April 30. That's a full three-and-a-half months ahead of D23 Expo, so the costumes you ultimately see there at the Friday, Aug. 14 Live Contest will have been worked on for well over a fourth of a year (and probably longer). There are five categories, including "Heroes Unmasked" and "Once Upon a Costume," and fifteen participants will be selected to compete in each (making for 75 participants in all come August). The winner and a guest get a trip to Disney's Aulani in Hawaii. That sounds like a prize that suits the bigness of the planning that will go into all of those Iron Mans, Cinderellas, Haunted Mansion ghosts... Want to try for it? April 30, as mentioned, is your mouseline. We mean, the time you have to enter by.
D23 EXPO DESIGN CHALLENGE: If costuming isn't your thing but you do like to draw, there's also a contest focusing on Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Twenty three sketches will be selected to be displayed at the convention, and artists of all ages are welcome to try their hand at drawing the fairytale palace. The deadline to submit is also April 30 and the winner shall receive the sum of $2,300, a lovely amount that fits with the 23-y theme of the event. You know where the "D" comes from, but why does D23 have "23" in it, too? Because 1923 was the year Walt Disney arrived in Los Angeles, of course.
