The Disneyland resort enhancement team planned to decorate a Plaza Point centerpiece display of two Victorian children mannequins pulling a wagon for the Lunar New Year with firecrackers, lucky red envelopes, oranges, tangerines and mandarins.

The Disneyland designers brought in a group of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cultural experts during the research and development phase to provide feedback on the authenticity of the Lunar New Year overlay for the year-round holiday shop on Main Street U.S.A. Their recommendation: Lose the oranges and keep the tangerines and mandarins.

“In Chinese culture, tangerines and mandarin oranges are a sign of good luck,” Disneyland Resort Enhancement Manager Dawn Pipal-Keehne said. “In Vietnamese culture, some regions consider oranges bad luck.”

That would have been an embarrassingly bad way to kick off the Lunar New Year –- especially for a place like Disneyland that prides itself on diversity and inclusion and is all about storytelling and sweating the smallest details.

“We’re advocates and we’re stewards,” Pipal-Keehne said via an online video interview. “When we’re telling somebody else’s story, we need to make sure that we’re telling it properly.”

To help tell cultural stories properly, the Disneyland design team turns to Business Employee Resource Groups made up of cast members — Disney parlance for employees.

Disneyland has several employee-led BERGs formed around a shared identity, interest or pursuit — including Compass (Asian and Pacific Islanders), Enabled (People with disabilities), Hola (Hispanic and Latino), Pulse (African and Caribbean), Pride (LGBTQ), Salute (Armed Services) and Win (Women).

Compass was tapped to offer insights and feedback from an Asian perspective on the smallest details of the Lunar New Year overlay for Plaza Point.

“Those little moments of recognition are really important for our guests as well as our cast members,” said Amanda Kim, a Main Street U.S.A. retail manager and a product review member on the Compass leadership team. “Those little things really do make a huge difference. It’s the small representations that people see and go, ‘Hey, I do that with my family for Lunar New Year.’”

Partnering with Compass and other BERGs allows Disneyland to accurately represent diverse cultures and traditions, according to Pipal-Keehne.

“I don’t want to pretend that I know their story just because I read something online,” Pipal-Keehne said. “It’s really about getting to know what people individually celebrate.”

Disneyland made a Puerto Rican woman who loves to travel the central character of a fictional backstory created for the Plaza Point holiday shop as part of Disney’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusivity.

The fictional Plaza Point proprietress Miss Evelyn Toro was inspired by Pipal-Keehne’s real-world mother Evelyn, whose maiden name is Toro.

According to the shop’s backstory, Miss Evelyn celebrates holidays from around the world that she learned about during her globetrotting travels.

“Her door is open to everybody,” Pipal-Keehne said. “She loves everyone’s celebration and feels that it’s just as important as

The Lunar New Year overlay of Plaza Point introduced design elements such as firecrackers, lanterns, flowers and food that can represent different things in the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cultures.

“Where Compass really helped us is defining those details,” Pipal-Keehne said. “It was a fantastic partnership. On a couple of different occasions they were actually able to come out and really look at those fine details and make sure that we were getting it right.”

The ever-changing seasonal makeovers of Plaza Point will focus on three key areas of the shop: The children’s wagon centerpiece, Miss Evelyn’s window office and the main show wall behind the checkout counter.

Early concepts for the shop’s centerpiece with the Victorian children featured a beautiful silk umbrella in the wagon — until the Compass cultural experts pointed out it was bad luck to have an open umbrella indoors.

Miss Evelyn’s office is filled with traditional cultural desserts like Fa Gao Chinese prosperity cakes and Dasik Korean sugar cookies. The Compass cultural experts recommended adding Tteok Korean rice cakes as another traditional celebratory dessert.

The main show wall behind the checkout counter has a battery of fireworks and dragon figurines that offer nods to Mushu from “Mulan” and Sisu from “Raya and the Last Dragon.” The Disneyland design team added some plum branches, orchids and bamboo based on suggestions from the Compass cultural experts.

The employee-run BERGs provide cultural expertise and feedback for a host of Disneyland projects and cultural events.

“They will reach out to us for everything from providing feedback on food offerings, menu names, marketing and even art that is going into the resort,” Kim said during an online video interview.

The plan is to change the Plaza Point seasonal holiday theme throughout the year with Christmas maintaining a year-round presence.

The Lunar New Year overlay will remain in Plaza Point through Tuesday, Feb. 15. After that comes a spring layer and a nod to Easter. Later in the year promises a red, white and blue Fourth of July theme and an orange and black Halloween overlay.

“The stage has been set for this location to really celebrate those different holidays,” Pipal-Keehne said.

The Disneyland enhancement team won’t be able to take on every holiday this year in Plaza Point, but the hope is to tackle more of them in years to come — with the help of the in-house cultural advisory teams.