Triton Vs Ursula at the Art of Animation Resort at Walt Disney World

During our December 2016 visit to Walt Disney World, we stayed at the Art of Animation Resort. We were staying in the Little Mermaid section, specifically in the King Triton building. One morning as we were walking out to go to one of the parks, I saw an interesting scene.

Here were King Triton - also known as the father of Ariel, the Little Mermaid - locked in a battle to the death with Ursula, the bad-girl sea witch from the movie who wanted to rule Triton’s kingdom. You might have to squint a little to see Ursula, or click the photo to see the larger version, but she is there. Triton has his powerful trident ready to strike, and Ursula looks to be trapped, awaiting his next action. Pretty cool! A battle scene right here at this family-friendly hotel!

However, there is one problem with this scene. Because if you view King Triton from another angle, he does not look quite so battle-ready.

When you see Triton from the front, he doesn’t have an angry, “I’m going to get you!” look on his face as you might expect. Instead, he is happy. Smiling. Happy eyes and all of that. It looks more like he is enjoying a musical performance than that he is about to strike his feared enemy across the way. So maybe that was not what they were going for here after all. Maybe it is just a happy, friendly scene, and he is saving his wrathful trident for later on when no one is looking. That is a little strange, considering Ursula is just right over there, but that makes for a happier hotel stay, I suppose.

Ursula actually looks pretty happy, too, in her own evil villain kind of way. Either she is throwing her hands up in the air celebrating her latest victory in playing Solitaire on her phone, or she is rejoicing that her evil plan is about to fall into place. Hopefully, it is the former and not the latter, for the sake of all of those staying in the hotel rooms around her. I wonder if anyone ever complains about staying in the villain building?

Although you can’t see it from the first photo, Ariel is actually in between Triton and Ursula at Art of Animation, but off to the side, watching all of the goings-on, with the same happy smile that her father has. Flounder looks to be excited, too. Maybe they are actually watching all of the fun at the pool that their buildings surround. But maybe that has them feeling a little like a fish out of water. Bad joke. Anyway, despite how things might look from the first photo, it does not actually appear that anything bad is about to happen here. Which is a good thing, because bad things would probably not be good for tourism.

Not to be left out, Sebastian the crab is close by, dancing a jig, or whatever kind of dance happy crabs choose to dance. You can see that Laura and Jaylin are there, too, although they did not join in on the dancing. You can’t blame them, though. It was early in the morning, and we were about to head for home. Neither of those things inspire all that much dancing in people. Hopefully, Sebastian was not doing his happy dance because we were about to leave or anything like that. I’m sure he is just a happy crab.

We enjoyed our stay in the Little Mermaid section of Art of Animation, and we were glad to have a little time to look around and enjoy our surroundings, even if we were not actually Under the Sea.

So God created the large sea-creatures and every living creature that moves and swarms in the water, according to their kinds. - Genesis 1:21

About the photos:

You may be thinking that each of these photos looks a bit different from the others, especially with respect to lighting, and you would be correct. As I mentioned above, these photos were taken during the early morning hours on the day that we left. The sun had just started to climb above the building roof, and the sunlight was hitting the top half of King Triton. Ursula, however, was still in the shadows, as the sun was coming up behind her building. And Ariel had a good bit of ambient light, although she did not have any direct sunlight on her.

I was able to compensate for this a good bit in processing, using the Raw files to bring up the shadows and turn down the highlights. This was particularly important in the photo of Triton by himself, since he was half in the sun and half in the shadows.

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens
Date: December 23, 2016
Location: Art of Animation Resort, Walt Disney World, Florida