Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Grotto Articles

Snow White Wishing Well and Grotto provides a tranquil and romantic setting along the east side of the Sleeping Beauty Castle moat.Tucked into a quiet corner the Snow White Wishing Well and Grotto site has been a bucolic hideaway since 1961 the heart adorned wooden bridge leads from the northeastern corner of the hub to the old fashioned blue roofed wishing well from the bridge and the well guests get clear views of the lovely garden grotto.Where a gentle waterfall trickles among white marble statues of Snow White and all seven of the dwarfs and assorted woodland creatures.

Disney Legend, John Hench was responsible for this tranquil spot.These large crates were delivered to Disney in Burbank in the early 1960s and, when they opened the crates up, these beautiful marble sculptures-eight in total-had been delivered. Turns out the sculptor was licensed by Disney in Italy to sculpt the molds for Snow White soaps and he had used the molds to create these marble sculptures and had sent them as a gift to Walt Disney. John Hench also saw the predicament that arose when it came time to install the statues. The Italian sculptor intended to represent the characters as they appeared in Disney's 1937 movie all the figures were mistakenly about 3 ft high. Snow White should of course dwarf the dwarfs.

To disguise an inaccuracy Snow White is placed well at the back and added distance and elevation giving the illusion of proper height disparity. Romance is in the air here literally the Snow White Wishing Well emits soft echoing rendition of the movie's "Someday My Prince Will Come" as sung by the movies vocalist and Adriana Caselotti.All coins dropped into the well are given to charity

Disney designer John Hench was dismayed when he was given the figures by Walt Disney to display--Snow White was the same size as the dwarfs. Hench solved this problem by placing her above the rest of the characters, so her small size is not noticeable.

The song playing is Some Day My Prince Will Come sung by Adriana Caselotti

All coins dropped in well are given to charity

From WED Disneyland Dictionary 1968
Is a beautiful green glade setting, beside a charming wishing well, decorated with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs carved from white stone. Figures were carved in Italy and presented to Walt Disney.

From Steve Birnbaum brings you the best of Disneyland 1982:
Tucked away off Matter- horn Way, at the eastern end of the moat around Sleeping Beauty Castle, this is one of those quiet corners of the park easily overlooked by visitors. There's a wishing well (the proceeds go to charity); and then every so often Adriana Caselotti, the original voice of Snow White, can be heard singing the lovely Larry Morey-Frank Churchill melody "I'm Wishing" from the Oscar-winning 1937-38 release based on the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale. While she sings, jets of water rise and fall in the waterfall- fountain just on the other side of the walkway, and a quartet of small fish rise up from the bottom of the pool at the base of the cascade to swim around in little circles. You might well think that this grotto has been here since the very beginning of the park's history. Not true: The Seven Dwarfs and the Snow White figure, all of them sculpted from blocks of pure white marble, arrived at Walt Disney's studios one day in packing crates-an anonymous gift postmarked from Italy. Surmising that the carving may have been executed by a class of art students and based on some then-recently licensed Seven Dwarfs hand soaps, Walt made a place for them. John Hench, the art director whose name the keen eyed may have noted on one of the windows above Main Street's Carefree Corner, was not as delighted with the idea as Walt seemed to be, mainly because the Snow White figure was the same height as the dwarfs an error no Disney carver would ever have made. By elevating her to the top of the fountain, however, designers made sure that Snow White's diminutive size would go almost unnoticed. Ironically, when plans were being laid for Tokyo Disneyland, the Japanese insisted that their Snow White Grotto be identical to this one.