If you’ve read our trip report about our first Disney cruise, then you know that the best part of it was getting the decorative pillow shown in this post. Click the link to read about our horror story… if you dare! Don’t worry, there are lots of good experiences too.

But we have truly enjoyed seeing this pillow on our bed each day:

Corduroy with Gold Braiding

Corduroy isn’t used much these days due to its association with that ugly decade called the 1970’s. For those unfamiliar with, or trying to forget, this fabric: Corduroy is a textile composed of twisted fibers that, when woven, lie parallel (similar to twill) to one another to form the cloth’s distinct pattern, a “cord.” Modern corduroy is most commonly composed of tufted cords, sometimes exhibiting a channel (bare to the base fabric) between the tufts. Corduroy is, in essence, a ridged form of velvet.

The detail, specifically the characters, doesn’t stand out too much at first. It takes a little closer examination to appreciate the work that went into the design. Let’s take just such a closer look:

Mickey in the spotlight

There isn’t too much detail in each character rendering due to the limitations of the thread, but would it have been more appropriate to have Mickey in his Captain uniform?

Next we see three characters each to the left and the right of Mickey. These are mirror images of each other with the exception of the first two characters, each directly next to Mickey. Here they are together:

Daisy to the left, Goofy (?) bodyboarding to the right

Daisy could be in Victorian beach wear with her parasol (literally: For the Sun). And the next character might look like Pluto at first, but it seems to be Goofy bodyboarding. And that is defined as: Bodyboarding is a water sport in which the surfer rides a bodyboard on the crest, face, and curl of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore. Bodyboarding is also referred to as Boogieboarding due to the invention of the “Boogie Board” by Tom Morey. The average bodyboard consists of a short, rectangular piece of hydrodynamic foam. Bodyboarders typically use swim fins for additional propulsion and control while riding a breaking wave.

Again, for some reason, these two characters are not mirrored. But the next two are:

Pluto romping in the waves

Mickey Mouse on a Jet Ski

I would have thought that this would have been Donald Duck, as he is one of the Fab Five and a main character used by the Disney Cruise Line. But from the ears in silouhette it certainly more closely resembles Mickey. I guess Donald wasn’t up for a day at the sea!

Oh, and if you’d like a little information about what Mickey is riding: Jet Ski is the brand name of a personal watercraft manufactured by Kawasaki. It was the “first commercially successful” personal watercraft in America, having been released in 1972 (after reaching a license agreement with the inventor of the Jet Ski, Clayton Jacobson II when his license agreement with Bombardier expired). The term is sometimes used to refer to any type of personal watercraft.

So we have a pillow with a mystery. Why are some of the characters mirrored and others not? And why is Minnie Mouse missing along with Donald Duck? We may never know.

To conclude, I’ll leave you with the inspirational saying found on the back of the pillow: