Behind The Disney Princess Scene That Broke The Internet

For me, it all started one fine day at D23 Expo. The energy was potent, as 8,000 Disney fans from all over the world gathered to celebrate magic and create memories.

When directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston took the stage to introduce Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet, I was excited. I had interviewed them and producer Clark Spencer for the in-home release of Zootopia.

After being sworn to secrecy, they played an epic, exclusive clip with the Disney Princesses: 
Vanellope stumbles into the Oh My Disney dressing room and is met with initial hostility by the canon Disney Princesses, until they learn she is a princess too! Inspired by Vanellope’s clothes, they slip on some comfy wear and share their true selves with one another!

Everyone was laughing in a way that I’ve never experienced before. And then the living Disney Princesses took the stage, one introducing the other: Paige O’Hara (Belle from Beauty and The Beast), Irene Bedard (Pocahontas), Mandy Moore (Rapunzel in Tangled), Auli’i Cravalho (Moana), Sarah Silverman (Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck-It Ralph), Kelly Macdonald (Merida from Brave), Anika Noni Rose (Tiana of Princess and The Frog), Linda Larkin (Jasmine from Aladdin), and Jodi Benson (Ariel in The Little Mermaid), Kristen Bell  (Anna  of Frozen), and Ming Na Wen (Mulan). They would voice this iconic scene!

There was so much joy in my heart and I wasn’t alone. But what I didn’t know, is that this was only the start. I am so excited that Ralph Breaks The Internet comes out TOMORROW, NOV 21, 2018 and you’ll get to see THE WHOLE PRINCESS SCENE – and maybe even more! Shhhh!

During my trip to Los Angeles for Disney’s Christopher Robin premiere, I had the honor to visit Walt Disney Animation Studios for an early press day with art director Ami Thompson,  head of animation Kira Lehtomaki, and Ralph Breaks The Internet co-writer Pamela Ribon, who wrote this epic scene, and the team that helped “The Princess Scene” come to life.

Pamela Ribon is the co-writer of Ralph Breaks the Internet, with Phil Johnston, and she started in Disney in the spring of 2013 writing on Moana. She’s funny, powerful, and fierce, and she’s as humble as it gets.

She’s a mom, just like you and I, balancing all the roles. Her daughter was 4 months old when she started writing Moana, and she was 4 years old when Moana came out.

One fun and important fact she shared with us is that she’s in the Oxford English Dictionary under muffintop – NOT A PHOTO, but as an early user of the word in one of her novels.

When you have nerd dreams, you get nerd realities!

She’s done it all, she even has an acting background, and the most fun part of all for me is that her career started writing online in 1998 at pamie.com, one of the original bloggers, and she’s telling my friends and I that “we’re all peers!”

When I got to interview her again during the Ralph Breaks VR experience, which she also wrote, she joked:

I’m your George Washington!

After stealing our hearts, Pam Ribon started sharing how the princess scene came to be.

When I was working on Moana, in 2014 was when I first started meeting in treatments, I didn’t understand how Vanellope wasn’t canon. She’s a princess, and also a president, and I believe a gal can rock more than one title. She’s really my kind of princess, I’m a hoodie kind of girl.

My superhero outfit for writing are comfy pants… So I thought, if she met the princesses, they’d ask what kind of princess are you, and that was what started this.

In 2016, after Rich Moore and Phil Johnston finished working on Zootopia, they started working on a meta scene of Disney poking fun at Disney and they discussed doing this.

In this early version, she was going to need to go viral, and I thought if she meets all the princesses, that would go viral, and it’s true.

And in talking about what kind of princess she is, we could talk about tropes, what all the princesses have gone through to be here.

So I went home and I had a list of all these different tropes and I called my friend Elise, and she said, can you do me a favor, can she not have a love interest and maybe her mother lives this time?

Pamela told me I can quote her on the fact that Elise Alberti is her “work wife” and she’d be one of her guests for the Ralph Breaks The Internet Premiere. The two met while working on Moana, there Elise Alberti worked as a Production Manager.

I said, I’m going to ask you about some princesses and I need your help fitting them into these. Who was kidnapped, who was enslaved? And she was like, Pam, what are you doing? She is a true fan.

We saw Pamela Ribon’s first draft pages and we were all in awe to see how much of her first draft is still in the Disney Princess Scene – word for word!

I finished this thing and then I laid down on my living room floor and had a panic attack. I thought, I might get fired for this or it’s going to maybe be a big deal. I texted Alise some of the scenes, and I said, I just need you to tell me should I turn this in or throw it away, I don’t want to ruin anything in my life, I love this job.

Elise Alberti’s response? “I can’t wait to see this,” Pamela Ribon was convinced this was never going to be made. But she had the courage to present it to the Ralph Breaks The Internet filmmakers, and read it out loud – “in front of everyone.”

When I finished, Rich [Moore] asked, do you think we can get away with this? Let’s board it and see what happens.

We saw the original board clips, in which Pamela Ribon did the scratch voices for every single character except for the early version of Yesss. And since she was such an amazing Snow White and, unfortunately, the original voice actress, Adriana Caselotti, passed away in 1997, Pamela Ribon became a Disney Princess and debuted as Snow White on the Ralph Breaks The Internet red carpet. It’s like a real princess story within a princess story!

“A lot of squirrels follow me around now, birds dress me, it’s taking some getting used to” she says about being an official Disney Princess.

I get it… After I embodied Mulan when telling my life story, I felt a little different, too. LOL

A fun fact, Pamela Ribon is also the voice for the “get rid of belly fat using this one weird trick” pop up character in Ralph Breaks The Internet. I just love her ability to find a fun side to everything!

When I asked her about second-guessing herself, she told me she hundred guessed it and she’s glad:

I am glad I second-guessed myself because it made me stop and think. I wanted to make sure this was made for the right people, for the right reason. It’s funny, but it’s also real and authentic, for the Disney fan.

So after boarding the Oh My Disney sequence, adding the most popular Disney fan site on the Internet, it was time to screen it!

Corey Loftis had explained that Oh My Disney is a futuristic version of the Disney Castle, and the dressing room and backstage area was modeled after, and inspired by the Dream Suite in Disneyland which is a secret place where you can stay overnight. They also put some motel options close by and inside it’s all things Disney: from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar. The Death Star was especially fun for them to build!

There’s so much detail that Pam Ribon says every time she watches the scene she sees something new. Corey Loftis and the team detailed every cubby for every specific princess – Snow White has the magic mirror, Rapunzel painted hers, Ariel has thingamabobs and treasures in hers!

It’s a tough room when we do these screenings, it’s all the directors, and producers, story people, writers, many directors of these princesses. They applauded and we were like ‘oh my gosh, this is happening’ and leadership got on board right away and said, ‘let’s put this thing in front of the people at D23. Don’t talk about it, let’s just make it.’

And little did I know that as I was on the edge of my seat reacting to the Ralph Breaks The Internet Princess Scene at the D23 Expo animation panel, Pamela Ribon was there, taking it all in.

She knew that you can poke fun at Disney when you put it in its own safe space, but she didn’t expect the overwhelming reaction she received:

You never get to see 8000 people laughing at your jokes – Maybe Sarah [Silverman] and Dave Chapelle! I thought ‘this is why people become rockstars! One woman screamed like Oprah had given her a car! That’s crazy!

It felt so good, we felt so relieved, so happy. It’s so nice to spread joy, and to surprise people. Joyous surprise is one of the best sound humans make. The feeling of someone learning ‘I never knew how much I wanted to see this thing that’s in front of me’ is a really great feeling.

For Pamela Ribon, this scene is so much more than playful jabs taken at Disney’s expense, it is about what women are like when they’re together. 

These princesses have their outward-facing personas that we all know and there’s a perception of who these princesses are. And when they’re off work, they’re hanging out, and they get to be their true selves… it’s a vulnerable place to let others see all of you.

It’s a true friend that can say  ‘I love that about you and this is the part of you I want you to bring more to people.’

This scene is all about letting Vanellope know she is of something that she wouldn’t had recognized before and to own it and love it and not worry what anyone thinks. . your best friend will be there for you and loves you no matter what kind of day you’re having. It passes The Bechdel Test! 

Not everything made it into the movie that she wanted, and she gets lots of texts from Phil Johnston with “lines they missed.” But since I already watched the movie, I can tell you it turned out to be perfect and you’re going to love it. 

Ami and Kira worked tirelessly to unify classic princesses from different animation eras by updating colors and design. Ami told us they first drew the Disney princesses in pajamas, but that felt “too relaxed,” and the “comfy” version with puns from their own movie was a winner. Pam joked with us that she went to a lot of shirt meetings!

Kira and her team visited the faraway kingdom of Anaheim, also known as the Magic Kingdom at Disneyland to interact with the princesses in real life, shopped for princess dolls, and watched the original films!

We actually had a princess palooza lab where all the modelers, riggers, simulation artists, animators, we were all working together to build these ladies and realize them in CG.

The original voice actresses contributed to staying true to the Disney Princesses we all know and love, so your favorite Disney princess will not disappoint. Mark Henn, who animated Belle, Jasmine, Tiana, Ariel, and Mulan, and lead Elsa and Anna in Frozen personally and painstakingly supervised the process.

It seems unreal that, at one point, the Ralph Breaks The Internet directors doubted that the scene would move forward, but the The “Oh My Disney” sequence has been a part of the story since the first script and story reels. After 3-3.5 years of rewrite to make it work, it’s a masterpiece.

We all made the scene. It wouldn’t be the same without everyone’s role and feedback, says Pamela Ribon.

Just one more sleep and you’ll get to see it! Ralph Breaks The Internet opens NOV 21 everywhere!

Stay connected for more updates by liking WRECK-IT RALPH on Facebook,  following WRECK-IT RALPH on Twitter, following  WRECK-IT RALPH on Instagram, and visiting the official RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET website. The official hashtag is #RalphBreaksTheInternet and our event hashtag is #RalphBreaksTheInternetEvent.

Elayna is a single mom of 4, award-winning Storyteller, Story Strategist, and Student of Pain. She’s a bestselling author, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and 4x TEDx speaker. Founder of the Positive MOM® and creator of the S.T.O.R.Y. System: a blueprint to craft and share powerful stories that will transform your results, so you can have the wealth, opportunities, and freedom you deserve. Connect with Elayna Fernández at thepositivemom.com/keynote-speaker and follow @thepositivemom. To receive a gift from Elayna, click HERE.

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